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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in 2012
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Copyright © Barbara Erskine 2016
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover photographs © Charles Smith/Corbis (heron); Duncan George/Getty Images (horizon); Guy Edwardes/Getty Images (trees); Jason Edwards/Getty Images (reeds); Shutterstock.com (branch)
Barbara Erskine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of 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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780007455652
Version: 2017-09-07
For Jon, who keeps the wheels on the wagon
… rich swords lay … eaten with rust, as they had lain buried in the bosom of the earth for a thousand years … the princes who placed their treasure there had pronounced a solemn curse on it which was to last until doomsday: that whoever rifled the place should be guilty of sin, shut up in dwelling-places of devils, bound in bonds of hell, and tormented with evil …
Beowulf
Contents
Keep Reading Barbara Erskine’s Novels
The woman was watching, flattened against the wall of the house, her eye to a knothole. She hardly dared breathe as she watched the scene unfolding inside.
With