About this story
Plague empties London while you chart the dead ward by ward; Adrian, who twice refused a crown, feeds a dying England from Windsor's granaries. Thirty survivors march a pianoforte over the Alps, and a tempest off Italy takes Adrian and Clara. Forty chapters carry Lionel from a keeper's horsewhip to the middle sea, alone with the log.
How it opens
The monarchy had ended, but Windsor wealth still remade the neglected estate above your Cumberland valley.
PerditaAdrian did not choose what his father failed to do for ours, Lionel.
PerditaYou remember Father's unanswered appeal so fiercely that poverty has become its only meaning.
Cumberland FarmerMind my sheep instead of counting another man's carpets through his windows.
The arrival of the young Earl gave your old resentment a living target.
Park StewardHis lordship protects every creature in the park and forbids all shooting there.