Penhallow Amid Passing Things

By Iona Datt Sharma

Magic, in common with all things, is passing from this world. In a coastal village in eighteenth-century Cornwall, Penhallow -- an honourable smuggler par excellence -- has more pressing problems. One of her boys has just been hauled up before the magistrates. A mysterious King's messenger has arrived from London. Something nasty -- and possibly magical -- is afoot in the smugglers' caves beneath water.

And then there's Trevelyan, the town's austere, beautiful Revenue officer...

"An author to watch: Iona Datt Sharma's Penhallow Amid Passing Things skilfully builds a strange magical Cornwall with a lovely understated f/f Revenue/smuggler romance that I wanted a lot more of." -- K.J. Charles, author of A Charm of Magpies

"What’s not to like about a genderbent tale about age-old rivalry between smugglers and Revenue inspectors, with magic thrown in for good measure?" -- Bookdaze

"Lyrical and stunning" -- Candid Ceillie

• Language: English
• Publisher: Iona Datt Sharma
• Release date: Oct 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463197981

Book preview

Penhallow Amid Passing Things

Penhallow Amid Passing Things

Iona Datt Sharma

Contents

Penhallow Amid Passing Things

Acknowledgments

About Iona Datt Sharma

Penhallow Amid Passing Things

It is said that in the lands over the ocean, where birds rise from their own ashes and cats sing like larks, the court magicians can create twelve wondrous enchantments over breakfast and no one thinks anything of it. Nothing like England, where magical things fade like sun-bleached cloth, and nothing at all like this miserable Kernow, where the sea flows in all the moth-eaten holes and resets everything to true north. Nothing here but the unadorned real, for now and—perhaps—for all time.

Penhallow and the scholar Merryn–the wits and pedantry of the operation, respectively–have been arguing about this all the way from the wreck of the Leander, though their oars clank softly, and their voices are pitched as not to carry over the water. Merryn thinks the English magicians will find the trick of it again someday, so they might once again cast something extraordinary even on these godforsaken shores. Never, says Penhallow. The sea will give up her dead before she allows enchantment at her edges.

And it’s just as well, she adds. We don’t have need of it. We want for nothing.

In the broadside of this outrageous opinion Merryn is mustering return fire when the lights flash over the headland. Two fast blinks, then two slow: hurry, hurry.

Quickly! Penhallow calls to the flotilla ahead; she and Merryn are the rear guard. Out and unload!

They’re on the shore now, pulling up the boats. Hurry, but handle carefully: this is all precious stuff, potions and packages, rum bottles, fine lace. Leander went down with no loss of life three days past and what’s left is decidedly salvage.

Over the hill, silver tack jingles, and a horse picks up speed at the prick of spurs. This is Newlyn Trevelyan, who rides for the Crown. An austere figure, Trevelyan; a precise speaker, a born horsewoman; no home or hearth fire that anyone knows of. Saltwater for blood, say the villagers along the coast, hissing through their teeth, but that’s nothing untoward in this place where all souls sing of the sea. Trevelyan has grey eyes and ice in her marrow and is so much the living embodiment of His Majesty’s Inland Revenue