The Tide Mill
Edition: First
Publisher: RichardHerley.com
Published: February, 2008
Place of publication: Hampshire, England
Format: Downloadable eBook; multiple formats available at RichardHerley.com
Subjects: power-politics; 13th-century Sussex; feudal Sussex;  medieval engineering; illicit love-affair; Westminster; Rome; English novels; ebooks
Genres: Historical Fiction / Action
First sentence: "Ralf turned to look at his sister and found her still sleeping, curled up behind him in a bed their mother had contrived from a fleece." . . .
Description: In 13th-century Sussex, an illicit love-affair and ruthless power-politics find focus in a masterwork of medieval engineering.

Published at RichardHerley.com for the first time, February 2008!
 

The setting is feudal Sussex in the thirteenth century, a landscape and society that have changed almost beyond recognition.

The power of the Church is at its zenith, and the bishop of Alincester is one of the richest men in England. He derives income from the watermills in his diocese: the forces of wind and rain are held to be divine.

Ralf Grigg is the only son of a master carpenter whose business fails when Ralf is small. The family go to live in the seaside village of Mape, where Ralf's mother was born.

Its lord, Baron Gervase de Maepe, is in debt. He hopes to make a strategic match for his elegant young daughter, Eloise - a match of great importance to the pacific faction at court, lessening the danger of war with France. An exorbitant dowry must be found.

Despite his lowly rank, Ralf makes a close friend of the Baron's youngest boy. Ralf regards Eloise as haughty; but her attraction to the good-looking carpenter's son is as strong as it is turbulent, and she must keep her feelings hidden.

At seventeen, still imagining that she despises him, Ralf falls headlong for his best friend's sister. By now she also is seventeen. Her marriage, sanctioned by the King, has been contracted. The wedding will take place in the autumn of the following year.

Learning of the Baron's forlorn wish that he could afford a mill, Ralf's father has the novel idea of a wheel driven not by the wind or rain, but by the tide. Dismissive at first, Gervase changes his mind when he finds that the Church apparently has no call upon such a mill. Here is the answer to his woes. He commissions Master Grigg to build it, and Ralf discovers his vocation: engineering.

The King rules by divine right. His sanction is likewise divine. To violate it is treasonable. The mill forms the focus not only of an intense and dangerous love-affair between Eloise and Ralf, but a legal dispute between baron and bishop which, spiralling out of control, turns into a ruthless power-struggle between Westminster and Rome.
Notes: Richard Herley is the renowned, prize-winning, English author of "The Penal Colony". In this later novel, "The Tide Mill", Mr Herley takes us on a heartfelt journey of a young boy into manhood. Naturally it is still Richard, with his vivid description and action-packed adventure! ------------------------------------------------

Copyright:                The ebooks by Richard Herley, including those available from RichardHerley.com are copyight © Richard Herley. The authorship of each previously unpublished title has been legally authenticated. Richard Herley's ebooks are issued under a Creative Commons Licence: Creative Commons Legal Code 'Attribution - Non-Commercial - NoDerivs 2.0 England and Wales' You are welcome to make integral copies (converting the texts if you wish into other ebook formats) and to share them with your friends.
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