The Equal Sky

by Stephen Reardon

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In the winter floods of 1886 in the village of Icingbury where the borders Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Essex meet, the River Icing has burst its banks and given up the remains of an Icenian warrior from the time of Queen Boudicca's uprising against the Roman occupiers. Henry Turner, the son of a farm bailiff and already, at twenty, because of his intuitive rapport with the heavy work horses, set to be accepted into the secretive Horsemen's Guild, senses he has been chosen by the ancient warrior for a mysterious purpose.

Turning his back on his village home and the future everyone assumes he has with Annie Lilley, Henry is taken on as a groom in the London house of a former army officer who also has an estate in turbulent Ireland – and a sinister past.

Henry befriends a member of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show which is in London for Queen Victoria's jubilee year. He is Shunka Wicasa, a Sioux Indian interpreter with the Show and a veteran of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Henry and Shunka share their gifts of intuition: together they set out to fulfil the purpose of the Icenian warrior and in doing so discover their own destinies.

 

Published by Lulu in paperback, price £10.95

ISBN 978-1-84753-146-9