The Shadow of Albion (Carolus Rex, Book 1) - Softcover
For well over a half century, Andre Norton has been one of the most popular science fiction and fantasy authors in the world. Since her first SF novels were published in the 1940s, her adventure SF has enthralled readers young and old. With series such as Time Traders, Solar Queen, Forerunner, Beast Master, Crosstime, and Janus, as well as many stand-alone novels, her tales of action and adventure throughout the galaxy have drawn countless readers to science fiction.
Her fantasy, including the best-selling Witch World series, her "Magic" series, and many other unrelated novels, has been popular with readers for decades. Lauded as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, she is the recipient of a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. Not only have her books been enormously popular; she also has inspired several generations of SF and fantasy writers, especially many talented women writers who have followed in her footsteps. In the past two decades she has worked with other writers on a number of novels. Most notable among these are collaborations with Mercedes Lackey, the Halfblood Chronicles, as well as collaborations with A.C. Crispin (in the Witch World series) and Sherwood Smith (in the Time Traders and Solar Queen series). An Ohio native, Ms. Norton lived for a number of years in Winter Park, Florida, and now makes her home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where she continues to write, and presides over High Hallack, a writers' resource and retreat.
Her fantasy, including the best-selling Witch World series, her "Magic" series, and many other unrelated novels, has been popular with readers for decades. Lauded as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, she is the recipient of a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. Not only have her books been enormously popular; she also has inspired several generations of SF and fantasy writers, especially many talented women writers who have followed in her footsteps. In the past two decades she has worked with other writers on a number of novels. Most notable among these are collaborations with Mercedes Lackey, the Halfblood Chronicles, as well as collaborations with A.C. Crispin (in the Witch World series) and Sherwood Smith (in the Time Traders and Solar Queen series). An Ohio native, Ms. Norton lived for a number of years in Winter Park, Florida, and now makes her home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where she continues to write, and presides over High Hallack, a writers' resource and retreat.
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The Shadow of Albion
1A Lady Bought with Magic (Wiltshire, April 1805)The house had always been called Mooncoign, though it had passed through several families before becoming King Charles III's gift to the first Marchioness of Roxbury over a century ago. The Roxburys had reigned at Mooncoign for longer than living memory ran, and to those within their domain, it seemed they always would.Even in that bygone generation there had been no one left who could say how the house had come to be so named--or if there were, they deemed it wiser, in a climate of uncertain political and theological tolerance, to keep the knowledge to themselves. For while Charles II, that merry monarch, had often said that the witches of England should be left in peace, the temper of his son, the once-Earl of Monmouth, was a chancier--and far more Protestant--thing.But the time of both merry father and ambitious son was long past now. It was early in April, on a morning of no particular note in the calendars of alchemists and philosophers: a day much likeany other day on the Wiltshire downs for every inhabitant of the great house save one.
The room's furnishings were opulent and old; heavy walnut pieces that might have occupied this very chamber when Charles Stuart had used it to shelter from his Roundhead persecutors some one hundred fifty years before. The oak wainscoting glowed golden with long and loving application of beeswax and turpentine even in this pallid early spring sunlight, while higher upon those same walls fanciful plasterwork ornamentation spread its delicate lacelike tracery against the darker cream of the limewashed background. The room was oven hot, heated by the blazing fire of sea-coals upon the hearth and by the tall bronze braziers the doctor had prescribed.Now that same physician regarded the luxurious scene with disapproval, although it was not the elegant Jacobean room itself which had earned his censure. He turned to the waiting servant and, reluctantly, said what he must say."You ought to have called me earlier. Her Ladyship's condition is very grave. In fact--" He hesitated, choosing how best to break the hateful news."Speak louder, Dr. Falconer; I cannot quite hear you." The mocking young voice was hoarse with coughing and breathless with its owner's affliction, but it still held arresting power.Dr. Falconer straightened from his colloquy with Lady Roxbury's formidably-correct dresser and returned to the ornately-caparisoned bed of state. Pulling back the bedcurtains with one well-manicured hand, he gazed down at the bed's occupant. His patient stared back with brilliant unflinching eyes.Sarah, Marchioness of Roxbury, had never been a beauty--her eyes (quite her best feature) were grey, her hair was silk-straight rather than fashionably curled (and light brown rather than guinea-gold or raven-black or any of the other unlikely hues so beloved of the romancers), and she was tall and slender--but she had always carried herself with the arrogance and style of the Conynghams. Now, however, even the animal vitality that had lent her passableplainness an aura of glamour was gone: the Marchioness of Roxbury looked exactly like what she was. A plain woman, and a dying one."As bad as that, is it?" she whispered. "You had best tell me, you know; Knoyle is a treasure with hair, but she will only cry."
The Marchioness's mother, the second Marchioness of Roxbury and illegitimate daughter of James the Second, the present king's grandfather, had died in childbed along with the babe who would, had he lived, have been the two-year-old Sarah's younger brother and heir to the Marchionate. Now mother and son slept in the small family burial ground at Mooncoign, and from the moment of their deaths, Sarah Marie Eloise Aradia Dowsabelle Conyngham had become Lady Roxbury, Marchioness of Roxbury in her own right. And each year, since her presentation to the Polite World at the early age of sixteen, the young Marchioness of Roxbury had anticipated the Season with a houseparty at Mooncoign. The entertainment was lavish and theatrical, and in this year of Our Lord 1805, ten days since, during an enactment of the Battle of the Nile upon Mooncoign's ornamental water, her ladyship's craft had accidentally been sunk, even though it was meant to represent Admiral Nelson's flagship, the Victory.She had been rescued by the Vicomte Saint-Lazarre and, though her crew had deserted to the house to repair their soaked toilettes, Lady Roxbury had remained to fight the engagement to an English triumph. She had ignored a steadily-worsening cough to mastermind the entertainment of her guests all the following week; the cost of that mock sea-battle was something she had not counted until today.
Outside the windows, pale April daffodils pushed up through the rich loam of the downs. Dr. Falconer studied Lady Roxbury for some moments before he spoke. "It is a galloping consumption, Your Ladyship. You will not see out the month."Lady Roxbury's mouth tightened and the teasing light vanishedfrom her eyes. She had suspected as much; only a fool would not, once the blood began to appear on her lawn kerchiefs.There was a strangled sob from Knoyle."Hush your howling," Lady Roxbury rasped hoarsely. "Anyone would think you were to be turned out without a character! It was only a chill," she said to Dr. Falconer, hating the note of pleading she heard in her voice."It has settled on the lungs." His voice was gentle, but her ladyship heard the death sentence in it. Dr. Falconer was no country horse-leech after all, but King Henry's own physician. His skill was preeminent; there were few he would have left Town for, but the Marchioness of Roxbury was one."I ... see," she said. Each breath was a struggle. A greater struggle was to resist the feathery unsoundness in her throat and chest that brought the wracking spasms of bloody coughing. "Thank you for coming, Doctor," Lady Roxbury said. She held out one slender jeweled hand, and Dr. Falconer bent over it with courtly punctilio."Please consider yourself my guest for as long as you care to--and assure my other guests I will be joining them soon," she said.Dr. Falconer hesitated a moment before replying. "Of course, Your Ladyship. I shall carry out your wishes to the letter." He hesitated over her hand a moment longer, as if there were something he would say, then turned and left.Lady Roxbury turned to her abigail."Knoyle." The one word was all she could manage; the tainted brittleness in her chest was rising into her throat, choking her. She reached out blindly, grabbing the abigail's broad warm hand with chill fingers of surprising strength."No one! Tell--no one!" she gasped. Then the treacherous creature in her chest woke to willful life and spasm after spasm shook her slender body, until she lay weak and trembling beneath a coverlet starred with her life's blood.
It is not fair, she thought to herself some hours later. The pop and hiss of the burning coals and the measured ticking of the long-caseclock in the dressing room were the loudest sounds in Lady Roxbury's world. She did not doubt that all was being done within Mooncoign's walls just as she would have it done, but she realized unwillingly that the time was coming when she would no longer be able to enforce her wishes--when, in fact, she would have no wishes at all.And then Mooncoign and the Marchionate, which was entailed upon the heirs of her body, male or female, would revert to the Crown, and someone not of her blood would walk Mooncoign's galleries of age-mellowed stone.It is not fair! Though the side-curtains of the bed were closed, Lady Roxbury had ordered the curtains at the foot drawn back so that she could see the portrait over the fire. Within its frame of gilded plaster, the painted visage of Lady Roxbury's grandmother Panthea, the first Marchioness, gazed mischievously down at her descendent, magnificent in satin and lace. Panthea's bejeweled hands toyed with a key, a dagger, and a rose, in sly allusion to the Roxbury arms and their motto: "I open every door."Oh, if there were only a door for this, away from the cruel weakness of her body and the knowledge of duties unfulfilled--!"A visitor for you, my lady." Knoyle's voice trembled--as well it might, since she was acting against her mistress's express orders to admit no one.Lady Roxbury struggled upright against her pillows, anger deepening the hectic color in her cheeks. "Who--" she began, before the inevitable spasm of coughing took her. As she clutched her handkerchief to her lips, she felt strong cool hands against her back, supporting her and pressing the worst of the pain away."Who dares?" she demanded at last, when the paroxysm passed."I dare," a voice said calmly. "As Your Ladyship knows, there is little I do not."Lady Roxbury's eyes widened fractionally as she caught sight of her visitor for the first time.Dame Alecto Kennet had been a great beauty in her day, and was still a woman of commanding and formidable presence. In her time she had been actress and confidential agent, mistress to two Kings, and more. In later life she had chosen obscurity as the companionof the Dowager Duchess of Wessex, herself a woman who shunned the limelight. Even so, only the veriest of greenheads would hold Dame Alecto at naught."I had thought you in Bath with Her Grace of Wessex," Lady Roxbury managed to say. She lay back against the mounded lace-trimmed pillows, trembling with the effort of showing an untroubled countenance to her visitor."And so I might yet be, did you not need me more," Dame Alecto replied. She unpinned her wide, plume-t...
From Kirkus Reviews:
1A Lady Bought with Magic (Wiltshire, April 1805)The house had always been called Mooncoign, though it had passed through several families before becoming King Charles III's gift to the first Marchioness of Roxbury over a century ago. The Roxburys had reigned at Mooncoign for longer than living memory ran, and to those within their domain, it seemed they always would.Even in that bygone generation there had been no one left who could say how the house had come to be so named--or if there were, they deemed it wiser, in a climate of uncertain political and theological tolerance, to keep the knowledge to themselves. For while Charles II, that merry monarch, had often said that the witches of England should be left in peace, the temper of his son, the once-Earl of Monmouth, was a chancier--and far more Protestant--thing.But the time of both merry father and ambitious son was long past now. It was early in April, on a morning of no particular note in the calendars of alchemists and philosophers: a day much likeany other day on the Wiltshire downs for every inhabitant of the great house save one.
The room's furnishings were opulent and old; heavy walnut pieces that might have occupied this very chamber when Charles Stuart had used it to shelter from his Roundhead persecutors some one hundred fifty years before. The oak wainscoting glowed golden with long and loving application of beeswax and turpentine even in this pallid early spring sunlight, while higher upon those same walls fanciful plasterwork ornamentation spread its delicate lacelike tracery against the darker cream of the limewashed background. The room was oven hot, heated by the blazing fire of sea-coals upon the hearth and by the tall bronze braziers the doctor had prescribed.Now that same physician regarded the luxurious scene with disapproval, although it was not the elegant Jacobean room itself which had earned his censure. He turned to the waiting servant and, reluctantly, said what he must say."You ought to have called me earlier. Her Ladyship's condition is very grave. In fact--" He hesitated, choosing how best to break the hateful news."Speak louder, Dr. Falconer; I cannot quite hear you." The mocking young voice was hoarse with coughing and breathless with its owner's affliction, but it still held arresting power.Dr. Falconer straightened from his colloquy with Lady Roxbury's formidably-correct dresser and returned to the ornately-caparisoned bed of state. Pulling back the bedcurtains with one well-manicured hand, he gazed down at the bed's occupant. His patient stared back with brilliant unflinching eyes.Sarah, Marchioness of Roxbury, had never been a beauty--her eyes (quite her best feature) were grey, her hair was silk-straight rather than fashionably curled (and light brown rather than guinea-gold or raven-black or any of the other unlikely hues so beloved of the romancers), and she was tall and slender--but she had always carried herself with the arrogance and style of the Conynghams. Now, however, even the animal vitality that had lent her passableplainness an aura of glamour was gone: the Marchioness of Roxbury looked exactly like what she was. A plain woman, and a dying one."As bad as that, is it?" she whispered. "You had best tell me, you know; Knoyle is a treasure with hair, but she will only cry."
The Marchioness's mother, the second Marchioness of Roxbury and illegitimate daughter of James the Second, the present king's grandfather, had died in childbed along with the babe who would, had he lived, have been the two-year-old Sarah's younger brother and heir to the Marchionate. Now mother and son slept in the small family burial ground at Mooncoign, and from the moment of their deaths, Sarah Marie Eloise Aradia Dowsabelle Conyngham had become Lady Roxbury, Marchioness of Roxbury in her own right. And each year, since her presentation to the Polite World at the early age of sixteen, the young Marchioness of Roxbury had anticipated the Season with a houseparty at Mooncoign. The entertainment was lavish and theatrical, and in this year of Our Lord 1805, ten days since, during an enactment of the Battle of the Nile upon Mooncoign's ornamental water, her ladyship's craft had accidentally been sunk, even though it was meant to represent Admiral Nelson's flagship, the Victory.She had been rescued by the Vicomte Saint-Lazarre and, though her crew had deserted to the house to repair their soaked toilettes, Lady Roxbury had remained to fight the engagement to an English triumph. She had ignored a steadily-worsening cough to mastermind the entertainment of her guests all the following week; the cost of that mock sea-battle was something she had not counted until today.
Outside the windows, pale April daffodils pushed up through the rich loam of the downs. Dr. Falconer studied Lady Roxbury for some moments before he spoke. "It is a galloping consumption, Your Ladyship. You will not see out the month."Lady Roxbury's mouth tightened and the teasing light vanishedfrom her eyes. She had suspected as much; only a fool would not, once the blood began to appear on her lawn kerchiefs.There was a strangled sob from Knoyle."Hush your howling," Lady Roxbury rasped hoarsely. "Anyone would think you were to be turned out without a character! It was only a chill," she said to Dr. Falconer, hating the note of pleading she heard in her voice."It has settled on the lungs." His voice was gentle, but her ladyship heard the death sentence in it. Dr. Falconer was no country horse-leech after all, but King Henry's own physician. His skill was preeminent; there were few he would have left Town for, but the Marchioness of Roxbury was one."I ... see," she said. Each breath was a struggle. A greater struggle was to resist the feathery unsoundness in her throat and chest that brought the wracking spasms of bloody coughing. "Thank you for coming, Doctor," Lady Roxbury said. She held out one slender jeweled hand, and Dr. Falconer bent over it with courtly punctilio."Please consider yourself my guest for as long as you care to--and assure my other guests I will be joining them soon," she said.Dr. Falconer hesitated a moment before replying. "Of course, Your Ladyship. I shall carry out your wishes to the letter." He hesitated over her hand a moment longer, as if there were something he would say, then turned and left.Lady Roxbury turned to her abigail."Knoyle." The one word was all she could manage; the tainted brittleness in her chest was rising into her throat, choking her. She reached out blindly, grabbing the abigail's broad warm hand with chill fingers of surprising strength."No one! Tell--no one!" she gasped. Then the treacherous creature in her chest woke to willful life and spasm after spasm shook her slender body, until she lay weak and trembling beneath a coverlet starred with her life's blood.
It is not fair, she thought to herself some hours later. The pop and hiss of the burning coals and the measured ticking of the long-caseclock in the dressing room were the loudest sounds in Lady Roxbury's world. She did not doubt that all was being done within Mooncoign's walls just as she would have it done, but she realized unwillingly that the time was coming when she would no longer be able to enforce her wishes--when, in fact, she would have no wishes at all.And then Mooncoign and the Marchionate, which was entailed upon the heirs of her body, male or female, would revert to the Crown, and someone not of her blood would walk Mooncoign's galleries of age-mellowed stone.It is not fair! Though the side-curtains of the bed were closed, Lady Roxbury had ordered the curtains at the foot drawn back so that she could see the portrait over the fire. Within its frame of gilded plaster, the painted visage of Lady Roxbury's grandmother Panthea, the first Marchioness, gazed mischievously down at her descendent, magnificent in satin and lace. Panthea's bejeweled hands toyed with a key, a dagger, and a rose, in sly allusion to the Roxbury arms and their motto: "I open every door."Oh, if there were only a door for this, away from the cruel weakness of her body and the knowledge of duties unfulfilled--!"A visitor for you, my lady." Knoyle's voice trembled--as well it might, since she was acting against her mistress's express orders to admit no one.Lady Roxbury struggled upright against her pillows, anger deepening the hectic color in her cheeks. "Who--" she began, before the inevitable spasm of coughing took her. As she clutched her handkerchief to her lips, she felt strong cool hands against her back, supporting her and pressing the worst of the pain away."Who dares?" she demanded at last, when the paroxysm passed."I dare," a voice said calmly. "As Your Ladyship knows, there is little I do not."Lady Roxbury's eyes widened fractionally as she caught sight of her visitor for the first time.Dame Alecto Kennet had been a great beauty in her day, and was still a woman of commanding and formidable presence. In her time she had been actress and confidential agent, mistress to two Kings, and more. In later life she had chosen obscurity as the companionof the Dowager Duchess of Wessex, herself a woman who shunned the limelight. Even so, only the veriest of greenheads would hold Dame Alecto at naught."I had thought you in Bath with Her Grace of Wessex," Lady Roxbury managed to say. She lay back against the mounded lace-trimmed pillows, trembling with the effort of showing an untroubled countenance to her visitor."And so I might yet be, did you not need me more," Dame Alecto replied. She unpinned her wide, plume-t...
Alternate-world historical romantic fantasy from veteran Norton (Scent of Magic, 1998, etc.) and new collaborator Edghill. In this alternate 1805, colonial America is governed by Lord Protector Thomas Jefferson, the Louisiana Purchase was never purchased, and though Stuart king Henry IX rules England, Europe still trembles before the threat of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. At Mooncoign in Wiltshire, the Marchioness of Roxbury lies dying of consumptionbut, as her mentor Dame Alecto Kennet reminds her, she swore a magical oath to serve the People and the Land. Somehow, the Marchioness must keep from dying. Orphan Sarah Cunningham of Baltimore, traveling to London on a vague pretext, is involved in an accident and knocked unconsciousand when she wakes up, everyone thinks she's the Marchioness of Roxbury! Dame Alecto magically fills Sarah with knowledge of the Marchioness's home and doings, including the news that she's betrothed to the Duke of WessexKing Henry's most trusted spy. Poor Sarah finds the situation bewildering, but her independent, tomboyish upbringing has equipped her with the skills shell need to survive in Wessex's duplicitous digs. Plots unfold rapidly. Wessex informs Sarah that an assassin is heading for the house, intending to kill a guest, a French Royalist leader. Meanwhile, King Henry aims to cement an alliance against Napoleon by wedding his spirited son, Prince James, to the equally mettlesome Princess Stephanie of Denmark, a development that Napoleon's chief of secret police, Cardinal Talleyrand, works assiduously to thwart. Swirling intrigues, restrained magics, subtle spies, and dauntless heroines: jolly good. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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- PublisherTor Fantasy
- Publication date2000
- ISBN 10 0812545397
- ISBN 13 9780812545395
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- Edition number1
- Number of pages416
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