The Lady of the Cliffs is the second book in The Bury Down Chronicles by Rebecca Kightlinger. As part of the blog tour for The Lady of the Cliffs, I’m sharing a special excerpt from this beautiful historical fiction novel!
Title: The Lady of the Cliffs
Author: Rebecca Kightlinger
Series: The Bury Down Chronicles #2
First Published: November 1, 2020
Publisher: Rowan Moon
Categories: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Women’s Fiction
Long ago, before this cusp of land was known as Cornwall, there dwelt in a cave at the foot of a cliff on Kernow’s rugged coast a healer.
“You know them, don’t you, Megge of Bury Down?” asks a voice that is silk over silk. “These cliffs of Kernow.”
Cornwall, 1285 CE
Now nearly seventeen, Megge and Brighida must endure another brutal loss. And as they perform the rites of transition that precede a burial, Megge accepts a daunting new charge that carries consequences not even her cousin the seer can predict. It brings visions. Dreams. And voices that come to her as she goes about her work.
A silken voice beckons her back to the cliffs of Kernow, which she has seen only in dreams. A commanding voice orders her back. And the menacing voice she’s heard since she was a girl is now ever at her ear, bringing new a haunting meaning to her grandmother’s words, “You’re never alone.”
But only when the tales of an old woman, a stranger to Bury Down, echo those voices and conjure those cliffs does Megge embark on a journey that leads to a secluded cove they call The Sorrows and a destiny none of the women of Bury Down could have foreseen.
About Rebecca Kightlinger
Rebecca Kightlinger holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. A fulltime writer and literary critic, she divides her workday between researching and writing the Bury Down Chronicles, reviewing novels for the Historical Novel Society, and reading fiction submissions for New England Review. She travels to Cornwall to carry out on-site research for each book of the Bury Down series.
In her twenty years of medical practice as an obstetrician gynecologist, she had the privilege of caring for the women of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Guyana, South America. A lifetime Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a member of the American Association for the History of Medicine, she also studies ancient medicine, medieval midwifery, the history of Cornwall, and the manuscripts and arts of the mystical healer.
She and her husband live in Pennsylvania.
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A sneak peek from The Lady of the Cliffs
*** Thank you to the author, Rebecca Kightlinger, for giving me permission to share this excerpt from her book ***
A woman I had not seen approach stood next to the fire, from which white smoke rose straight up into a cloudless sky.
“Please,” Brighida said. “Sit.”
She sat on one of the logs and waited. Brighida closed her eyes for a moment, her lips moving over an incantation, and then opened them and turned to her. “Your hood.”
She pushed back her hood and turned her face to Brighida.
My cousin breathed deeply as she regarded the woman’s countenance. “Those circles beneath your eyes—” She traced crescents beneath her own. “They speak of worry, of anxious nights, days of dread. What is it you would ask of me?”
The woman pulled her gaze from Brighida’s, closed her eyes, and dropped her head.
A widow.
The thought surprised me. I did not know this woman. Why had I thought her a widow? I drew nearer. She began to speak in a voice so low I had to strain to hear.
“It’s my man. He went north.” She raised her head, her expression begging Brighida to understand. “He’s not a fighting man, my lady, but a farmer. His father holds land north of the wall. Rich farmland, he’s always said, and he’s old now. And though my man’s now a Cornishman, he’s gone to join his family. To help them fight our king. He left under cover of night.” She covered her face and wept.
Treason, I thought. Her husband is a traitor.
“Who else knows of this?” I asked.
She turned to me as I approached and sat beside her. Her thin face was taut, those violet smudges stark against blanched skin.
“No one, lady.” She shook her head in small, fast jerks. “Not a soul.”
“He has no other family here?”
“They’re are all north of the wall.”
I shivered and leaned closer to the fire. In its rising smoke I saw lands put to the torch, great flames leaping high in the night sky. I heard men scream as their limbs were severed and watched their blood flow into the scorched ground. I had to look away.
“She’s gone white,” the widow said to Brighida. “What’s happening? What does she see?”
“You’ve family, here in Cornwall,” I began.
She drew away. “Family? No—”
“Sons, Mistress. You’ve three sons.”
She looked fearfully from me to Brighida and then back at me. “Aye. One nearly grown.”
“Set them to work on your lands, for your man shan’t return.” Cold words. Not words of solace. But they rose from my chest and would not be stopped. “More work than they think they can bear. Tilling, planting. A new crop. Your eldest will speak to you of a grain that will grow in days of heat and cold. Dry times and wet. He has spoken of it to his father, who told him nay. But now is his time. Keep him at home. Give him his head. Let him and his brothers sow their father’s land. ’Twill hold them here. And the grain will serve you in times of need.”
Though I had delivered the words slowly, deliberately, they had come to me in a rush, had filled my chest and throat and pushed until the last had been spoken. I felt as breathless as if I had run up to my rock all in one burst. I had to breathe long and slowly to steady my voice, for there was more.
“Your man fought valiantly for his ancestors’ land,” I said quietly, seeing the man’s face now, grimacing, sweating, mud-smeared, and streaming with blood and tears. “He called your name at the last,” I said. “Amareth.”
