A Crowning Mercy
In a country at war, a secret inheritance reveals a dark conspiracy …On a sunlit afternoon in seventeenth-century Dorset, a young girl falls in love with a stranger.But when her Puritan brother tries to force her into an unbearable marriage she flees, taking with her only the gift left to her by her unknown father, a gold pendant sealed by an engraving of an axe, and the words: St Matthew.One of four intricately wrought seals – each holding a secret within – it can, when combined with the other three, bring great wealth and power. This power is her true inheritance – but it’s a perilous legacy others will kill for …
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A CROWNING MERCY
BERNARD CORNWELL
and
SUSANNAH KELLS
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain 1983
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2003
Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018 Cover image © The Print Collector/Getty Images (scene); Shutterstock.com (texture)
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007168231
Ebook Edition © February 2016 ISBN: 9780007289998
Version: 2018-10-01
For Michael, Todd and Jill
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, The bed be blest that I lie on, Four angels to my bed, Four angels round my head, One to watch, and one to pray, And two to bear my soul away.
Thomas Ady
Contents
Part One: The Seal of St Matthew
Part Three: The Seal of St Luke
1633
The boat slammed into a wave. Wind howled in the rigging and brought water stinging down the treacherous deck, driving the shuddering timbers into the next roller.
‘Cap’n! You’ll take the bloody masts out of her!’
The captain ignored his helmsman.
‘You’re mad, Cap’n!’
Of course he was mad! He was proud of it, laughing at it, loving it. His crew shook their heads; some crossed themselves, others, Protestants, just prayed. The captain had been a poet once, before all the troubles, and all poets were touched in the head.
He shortened sail an hour later, letting the ship go into irons so that it jerked and rolled on the waves as he walked to the stern rail. He stared through the rain and windspray, stared for a long while at a low, black land. His crew said nothing, though each man knew the sea room they would need to weather the low, dark headland. They watched their captain.
Finally he walked back to the helmsman. His face was quieter now, sadder. ‘Weather her now.’
‘Cap’n.’
They passed close enough to see the iron basket atop the pole that was the Lizard’s beacon. The Lizard. For many this was their last sight of England, for too many it was their last sight of any land before their ships were crushed by the great Atlantic.
This was the captain’s farewell. He watched the Lizard till it was hidden in the storm and still he watched as though it might suddenly reappear between the squalls. He was leaving.
He was leaving a child he had never seen.
He was leaving her a fortune she might never see.
He was leaving her, as all parents must leave their children, but this child he had abandoned before birth, and all that wealth he had left her did not assuage his shame. He had abandoned her, as he now abandoned all the lives that he had touched and stained. He was going to a place where he promised himself he could start again, where the sadness he was leaving could be forgotten. He took only one thing of his shame. Beneath his sea-clothes, hung about his neck, was a golden chain.
He had been the enemy of one king and the friend of another. He had been called the handsomest man in Europe and still, despite prison, despite wars, he was impressive.
He took one last, backward look and then England was gone. His daughter was left behind to life.
She first met Toby Lazender on a day that seemed a foretaste of heaven. England slumbered under the summer heat. The air was heavy with the scent of wild basil and marjoram, and she sat where purple loosestrife grew at the stream’s edge.
