In the Island of Angels Series, Book 2
(Can be read as a standalone)
Historical Fiction
Date Published: 10-28-2024
Publisher: The Book Guild
1580.
Nelan Michaels is a young Flemish, Protestant immigrant who seeks to right the wrongs committed against his family by Catholic Spain, the most powerful nation of the time.
On the way to delivering a message to Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Nelan finds a plough head buried in the ground. It sparks a premonition that shapes his future.
Nelan sets out to find Eleanor, his long lost love. During his search, he meets a Gypsy shaman who prophesies that he’s to become a Fyremaster and play a leading role in the unfolding destiny of the Island of Angels.
In 1588, Nelan meets his destiny on the night of the Harvest Moon off Calais in France. It was midnight when it happened. His mysterious intervention changed the course of the sea battle between the English fleet and the Spanish Armada, and changed England’s destiny.
It was a midnight of eights.
The Midnight of Eights is the final book in The Island of Angels series: a two-book saga that tells the epic story and secret history of England's coming of age during the Elizabethan era.
In Book 1, The Mark of the Salamander, Nelan is pressed onto the Golden Hind. During the circumnavigation, he embarks on a voyage of discovery of himself, and learns the arcane arts of the salamander, the mysterious spirit of fire.
READ AN EXCERPT BELOW
About the Author
JUSTIN NEWLAND’s novels represent an innovative blend of genres from historical adventure to supernatural thriller and magical realism.
Undeterred by the award of a Maths Doctorate, he conceived his debut novel, The Genes of Isis (ISBN 9781789014860, Matador, 2018), an epic fantasy set under Ancient Egyptian skies.
His second book, The Old Dragon’s Head (ISBN 9781789015829, Matador, 2018), and is set in Ming Dynasty China in the shadows of the Great Wall.
Set during the Great Enlightenment, The Coronation (ISBN 9781838591885, Matador, 2019) speculates on the genesis of the most important event in the modern world – the Industrial Revolution.
The Abdication (ISBN 9781800463950, Matador, 2021) is a mystery thriller in which a young woman confronts her faith in a higher purpose and what it means to abdicate that faith.
The Mark of the Salamander (ISBN 9781915853271, Book Guild, 2023), is the first in a two-book series, The Island of Angels. Set in the Elizabethan era, it tells the epic tale of England’s coming of age.
The latest is The Midnight of Eights (ISBN 9781835740 330, Book Guild, 2024), the second in The Island of Angels series, which charts the uncanny coincidences of time and tide that culminated in the repulse of the Spanish Armada.
His work in progress is The Spirit of the Times which explores the traumatic events of the 14th Century on the Silk Road and featuring an unlikely cast of Genghis Khan, the Black Plague, all shrouded in the mystery of a nursery rhyme that begins ‘Ring a-ring a-roses’.
Author, speaker and broadcaster, Justin gives talks to historical associations and libraries, appears on LitFest panels, and enjoys giving radio interviews. He lives with his partner in plain sight of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England.
Contact Links
Twitter @JustinNewland53
Pinterest @jnewland0711
Purchase Links
https://mybook.to/TheMidnightofEights
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Chapter One: The Plough Head
The
village of Mortlake, near London, England
14th
October 1580
… Turning his back on the derelict site, he
headed upriver towards a large ramshackle mansion, the house of Dr John Dee,
the renowned astrologer to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Nelan desperately
wanted to renew his acquaintance with the man, but he had a message from
Admiral Drake to deliver, so a reunion would have to wait.
He headed east. The smells and sight of the
fields and meadows were pleasantly familiar. A fox darted across the stubbled
field, stared at him, and sniffed the dank air as if to ask, ‘Who is this who
disturbs the peace of the hedgerow?’ Another fox stalked the roof of his
destination, Barn Elms - a black metal weather vane, a clue to the nature of
its distinguished owner.
It rained and he sought shelter beneath a plane
tree. As he dismounted, he nearly tripped on a piece of wood jutting out of the
ground. He reached down to grab it. His gloved hands slipped off the muddy
surface of the wood. He tried pulling it out of the sodden earth, but it held
fast. It was a piece of rotting oak.
Something nudged him. Take a second glance.
Lo-and-behold, it was the curved handle of a plough. He dug around it until his
blade struck metal. Now he had to uncover all of it. With
the evening shadows closing in, he knelt down, removed his gloves and felt the
surface with his palms. A piece of iron was attached to the wooden handle. Ah!
A plough head. Pulling
it free, it fractured in two. As he wrenched the other half from the soil, it
released an odour as foul as the devil’s breath.
Ignoring
the odious smell, he felt around the moist earth and found a bone. His heart
missed a beat. What was this - a day of graves? If so, whose? Too small to be
human. He unearthed the skeleton of a bird. It had a hooked beak, so a bird of
prey. With a bell and leather thongs attached to each leg, it was a falcon,
belled and jessed.
A
falcon and a plough head made strange bedfellows. The jessed young bird must
have got loose from its straps and died. Was he, Nelan, jessed to the straps of
his past, forever strangled by his unfortunate history? Would he ever cut them
loose?
It
surprised him that the plough head had been left to rot, because carpenters
would normally resharpen and repair the wood. When he worked as an apprentice
blacksmith, he’d often reforge old plough head irons. Holding the bones in his
hand, he turned it over in his mind; the straps and the share, the bird and the
bell, the plough head and the falcon, belled and jessed. These were clues, but
to what?
In
the distance, he heard the rumble of cart wheels. Looking through the hazy
light drizzle, he saw only the meadow and the manor house. Yet he could hear
them trundling over cobblestones as clear as if he stood in the middle of a
bustling city street. Then he heard the snort of an ox. He was hearing and
seeing things that weren’t there. What was happening?
Then
he realised. The cart and the ox were not of this world. No, they belonged to
the other world. During his voyage around the globe, Nelan had learned how to
look through the veil and peer into that mysterious, astral realm. Beneath the
middle finger on his right hand were three wavy lines, like three letter S’s
- the mark of the salamander. Sometimes,
when he rubbed the lines, a vision unfolded before his astonished eyes. This
time, the vision pressed itself upon him of its own accord.
In
it, a man dressed in white robes stood in the ox cart. He was surrounded by pikemen
and pipes, louts and lutes. There was festivity, and there was terror. As the
great bell tolled, the crowd chanted,
You’re
gonna be seen,
On
the tree that’s ne’er green!
Nelan’s horse neighed and tossed its head,
jolting him out of the vision. He felt chills
down his spine.
What’s a
tree that’s never green?
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