7/5/2023 0 Comments Tidelands by Philippa Gregory![]() ![]() The sun unset, the throne upset, the world overset: a king imprisoned, rebels in power, and a pale moon, white as a skull amid gray flying banners of clouds. Everything was out of its place and time on this full-moon Midsummer Eve. ![]() She had no doubt that if he had drowned, his ghost would be coming, dripping water through the misty graveyard, on this white night of midsummer, when the sallow gleam from the west showed the sun refusing to sink. If she were to see him, she would know he was dead for sure, and she could declare herself a widow and think herself free. She did not know if he was run away, or dead, or pressed as a sailor in the disloyal fleet that had turned on their king and now sailed under the rebel flag for parliament. ![]() She could not imagine angelic eyes on his erratic progress from sea to alehouse, and back again. ![]() This was the walking night for the dead, this night and their saints’ days but she did not think that her drunken violent husband had been under the care of any particular saint. It was the height of summer, the eve of midsummer, the apex of the year, and though the night was warm, she felt chilled, for she had come to meet a ghost. The young woman could hear the faint stir of the shingle as the tide came in, whispering across the mudflats, recoiling from the beach with a little hiss. The church was gray against a paler gray sky, the bell tower dark against the darker clouds. TIDELANDS, SUSSEX, MIDSUMMER EVE, JUNE 1648 ![]()
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