The Rebel’s Mark
- Автор: Perry S. W.
- Серия: Nicholas Shelby #5
- Год: 2022
- Язык: английский
- Год: Corvus
- ISBN: 978 1 83895 399 7
- Жанр: Исторические детективы
Электронная книга - «The Rebel’s Mark». Краткое содержание книги:
Elizabeth’s reign is reaching its winter and England’s old adversaries are fading. But in a world on the brink of change, showing any weakness can be fatal…
1598. Nicholas Shelby, unorthodox physician and reluctant spy for Robert Cecil, has brought his wife Bianca and their child home from exile in Padua. Welcome at court, his star is in the ascendancy. But he has returned to a dangerous world.
Two old enemies are approaching their final reckoning. England and Spain are exhausted by war. In London, Elizabeth is entering the twilight of her reign. In Madrid, King Philip of Spain is dying. Perhaps now is the time for one last throw of the dice.
Elizabeth has seen off more than one Spanish attempt at invasion. But still she is not safe. In Ireland, rebellion against her rule is raging. And if Spain can take Ireland, England will be more vulnerable than ever.
When England’s greatest living poet, Edmund Spenser, sends Robert Cecil an enigmatic and mysterious plea for help from his Irish fastness, Cecil dispatches Nicholas to investigate. Soon he and Bianca find themselves caught up not just in bloody rebellion, but in the lethal power-play between Cecil and the one man Elizabeth believes can restore Ireland to her, the unpredictable Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
The Merrow remains just one of Ireland’s many enticing myths. Unless, of course, you know otherwise.
Acknowledgements
When I was growing up, no one in my family had ever known my paternal great-grandfather. His very identity was a mystery, though a proper Y-DNA search has now established beyond much doubt that he was a Donovan from County Cork, who must have come to the East End of London sometime in the late nineteenth century. Thus I can reliably claim possession of at least a modicum of Irish blood in my veins.
But I am undeniably English, and it would be foolish of me to profess great authority when writing about the millennia-old relationship between England and Ireland. There is no doubt that the Elizabethan enterprise in Ireland was at times brutal. Starvation and massacre were commonplace. The shockwaves caused by the Tudor plantation of Protestant landowners still reverberate to this day. But I am not a historian, and I have therefore set the story you have just read firmly in the experiences of Nicholas and Bianca. I must also confess to having taken a few minor liberties with the timescale of some events, purely in the interests of a fictional narrative.
For those interested in finding out more about this relatively unfamiliar period of English-Irish history, some fifty years before Oliver Cromwell ever set foot on Irish soil, I recommend the following: Tyrone’s Rebellion by Hiram Morgan and Elizabeth’s Irish Wars by Cyril Falls are fine accounts told from each side of the divide.
I am also indebted to Robert Lacey, having made much use of his superb Robert, Earl of Essex: An Elizabethan Icarus, and to Andrew Hadfield for his excellent Edmund Spenser: A Life.
Heartfelt thanks are due to Susannah Hamilton for her belief in the Jackdaw series. Likewise, to my agent Jane Judd, Emma Coode, and the great crew at Corvus. To Mandy Greenfield I owe an equal debt, for once again saving me from far too many self-induced embarrassments.
And finally I must express my boundless appreciation for the support and encouragement of Jane, my wife, who bears being married to a time traveller with extraordinary forbearance.
S. W. Perry
Worcestershire, September 2021