Gothic mystery based at Corfe Castle (From Dorset Echo)

Gothic mystery based at Corfe Castle

9:15am Thursday 20th November 2008 in Search By Ruth Meech

AVANT-GARDE French musician Margaux has taken Corfe Castle as her latest inspiration.

Spookydubois at Corfe Castle is a gothic mystery with almost filmic qualities that flies between Dorset’s premier ruin and the south of France.

It is a supernatural tale which, when finished, will be in three parts – Spookydubois at Corfe Castle, The Miracle Cross and The Battle of the World. Set in 1650, the world is under threat from the Dark Lord Matravers and his force of Parliamentarians who have wrongly taken over from the king. The heroine, Spookydubois, awakes during a lunar eclipse and is told by the Wiseman Peter of Pomfret that she must run to Corfe’s clock tower in order to climb it and save the world.

As she does so, she is pursued by Lord Matravers’ men and as the lunar eclipse comes complete, she reaches the top of the tower and grabs the clock hands, which causes time to turn backwards. The sky rains caterpillars and Spookydubois is taken back in time to Pic Saint Loup in ancient France where she realises her destiny is to defeat Lord Matravers and restore the king, or his heir, to the throne.

So far, Margaux has only completed the first part of the trilogy – and that has taken 10 years!

She said: “Ten years ago I came to Dorset with a friend whose mother lived in Wimborne. They wanted to show me the area and when I saw Corfe Castle for the first time, I just went ‘wow!’.

“There are some places that just resonate with you and you don’t know why. Corfe is such a place. It is so amazing, with the castle ruins and the pretty thatched cottages. It is so quaint and British and it has such an atmosphere that we don’t really have here in France.”

Margaux was classically trained and learned the double bass at the Conservatoire in Montpellier.

Following this she played with several orchestras before eventually striking out on her own.

When Margaux started writing her saga, she was trying to compose a Hallowe’en song – ‘although I didn’t want to write one about ghosts’.

Then came her trip to Corfe and the tale of Spookydubois almost started to write itself.

“I love the place, I feel quite Anglo-French,” she said.

“I have a house in France as well but I love going back and forth between there and Dorset.

“I went to a place in France called the Pic Saint Loup, a mountain in the Languedoc region, and I realised that I could link it to Corfe Castle and so the story came about.”

You can hear Spookydubois on Margaux’s website at margauxmusic.com and listen to Spookydubois at Corfe Castle via the website on MXP4. There is also an interview and excerpts of her work on YouTube.