Cruel as the Grave

Zusatztext “Penman writes about the medieval world and its people with vigor! compassion! and clarity.” – San Francisco Chronicle “Penman’s lively! articulate prose brings to life history as it could have happened–high praise for a historical mystery.” – Houston Chronicle “Sharon Kay Penman tells her stories with passion and a strong sense of time and place.” –MARGARET FRAZER Author of the Sister Frevisse Novels “Once you enter Penman’s world! you’re hooked.” – Seattle Post-Intelligencer Informationen zum Autor Sharon Kay Penman has lived in England and Wales and currently resides in New Jersey. She is the author of six other novels: Falls the Shadow , Here Be Dragons , The Reckoning , The Sunne in Splendour , When Christ and His Saints Slept , and the first Justin de Quincy adventure: The Queen’s Man . Klappentext April 1193. England's King Richard Lionheart languishes in a German prison, and treason scents the air. Richard's younger brother, John, seizes Windsor Castle, and Dowager Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine summons her trusted personal "queen's man,” Justin de Quincy, to do the impossible- mediate a truce with her rebel son. Amid such fateful events, the murder of a Welsh peddler's daughter seems small. But the cruel demise of the beautiful Melangell so troubles Justin that not even a threatened French invasion can keep him from investigating her death. Yet can he bring Melangell's craven killer to justice?TOWER OF LONDON, ENGLAND April 1193 They were intimate enemies, bound by blood. Here in the torchlit splendor of the Chapel of St John the Evangelist, they’d fought yet another of their battles. As always, there was no winner. They’d inflicted wounds that would be slow to heal, and that, too, was familiar. Nothing had changed, nothing had been resolved. But never had the stakes been so high. It shimmered in the shadows between them, the ultimate icon of power: England’s royal crown. Few knew better than Eleanor of Aquitaine how seductive that power could be. In her youth, she’d wed the French king, then left him for the man who would become King of England. That passionate, turbulent marriage of love and hate was part of her distant, eventful past; if Henry’s unquiet ghost still stalked the realm of marital memory, she alone knew it. Now in her seventy-first year, she was England’s revered Dowager Queen, rising above the ruins of her life like a castle impervious to assault. If her fabled beauty had faded, her wit had not, and her will was as finely honed as the sword of her most celebrated son, Richard Lionheart, the crusader king languishing in a German prison. But she was much more than Richard’s mother, his invincible ally: She was his only hope. The torches sputtered in their wall sconces, sending up wavering fingers of flame. The silence grew louder by the moment, thudding in her ears like an army’s drumbeat. She watched as he paced, this youngest of her eaglets. John, Count of Mortain and Earl of Gloucester, would-be king. He seethed with barely suppressed fury, giving off almost as much heat as those erratic torches. His spurs struck white sparks against the tiled floor, and the swirl of his mantle gave her a glimpse of the sword at his hip. This might be her last chance to reach him, to avert calamity. What could she say that he would heed? What threat was likely to work? What promise? “I will not allow you to steal Richard’s crown,” she said tautly. “Understand that if you understand nothing else, John. As long as I have breath in my body, I will oppose you in this. As will the justiciars.” “You think so?” he scoffed. “They held fast today, but who knows what may happen on the morrow? They might well decide that England would be better served by a living king than a dead one!” “Richard is not dead.” “How can you be so s...

Product details

• Authors: Sharon Kay Penman
• Publisher: Fawcett Book Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 30.10.2001
• EAN: 9780345441447
• ISBN: 978-0-345-44144-7
• No. of pages: 272
• Dimensions: 105 mm x 170 mm x 18 mm
• Series: Queens Man; Queens Man
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense