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Authors: Siobhan Burke

Perfect Shadows

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Perfect Shadows

Siobhan
Burke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stellar Phoenix Books

Philadelphia, USA

Toronto, Canada

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright ©2011 Siobhan Burke. All rights
reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in part or whole, in any form
or by any means, without permission from the publisher. This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

Stellar Phoenix Books

Philadelphia, Toronto

 

Printed and bound by CreateSpace in the USA

 

Front cover design by Jonathan Cresswell-Jones

 

 

 

 

“What are kings, when regiment is gone,

But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?”

—Christopher Marlowe

 

In Memory

Siobhan Burke

1950 — 2011

 

It is with joy as well as
sadness that I sit here writing this introduction to
Perfect Shadows
. Joy
because the novel that Siobhan labored over with so much care has finally been
published and sadness that such a talent was cut short with so many projects
left unfinished.

She was a life-long student of
English history, and a member of the Richard III society. She thoroughly
researched the period, and the historical persons portrayed in this novel,
though she made no attempt to have the characters converse in purely
Elizabethan English, or, in the words of Josephine Tey, have the characters
speak too
forsoothly
, as she felt that, for all but a small number of
modern readers, that distracts rather than attracts. She has, however,
endeavored to avoid anachronistic modern slang, as she felt that just as
distracting.

Although this was her first
novel, she has had short stories published including two in
Dreams of
Decadence
, one of which involved the main character of this novel some two
hundred years after the events therein and was reprinted by ROC in
The Best
of Dreams of Decadence
edited by Angela Kessler. Another story, A Bad Day
in Sherwood was awarded first place in a national competition. She was working
on, and had half completed, a sequel to Perfect Shadows, as well as outlines
for a number of other novels concerning the major characters.

Her characters took on a life of
their own and like wayward children, they sometimes went off in directions that
surprised her. She had to cajole them into behaving when she
wasn’t
acquiescing to their demands. Oftentimes she
followed their lead with amazing results.

I do hope that you, the reader,
enjoy the completed work as much as Siobhan did writing it.

I want to thank her publisher,
Jonathan Cresswell-Jones, without whose help this book might be forever
languishing as a manuscript in some forgotten slush pile.

 

Michael Burke

South Portland, Maine — March 2012

Table of Contents

Shadows In The Sun
.
7

Or An Undead Man In Deptford
.
7

Chapter 1
.
7

Chapter 2
.
14

Chapter 3
.
14

Chapter 4
.
19

Chapter 5
.
23

Chapter 6
.
30

Chapter 7
.
31

Chapter 8
.
32

Shadows Relict
36

Chapter 1
.
36

Chapter 2
.
39

Chapter 3
.
41

Chapter 4
.
47

Chapter 5
.
51

Chapter 6
.
59

Chapter 7
.
62

Chapter 8
.
65

Chapter 9
.
69

Chapter 10
.
71

Chapter 11
.
72

Chapter 12
.
73

Chapter 13
.
79

Chapter 14
.
82

Chapter 15
.
87

Chapter 16
.
92

Chapter 17
.
94

Chapter 18
.
95

Shadows of Treason
.
98

Chapter 1
.
98

Chapter 2
.
101

Chapter 3
.
104

Chapter 4
.
110

Chapter 5
.
113

Chapter 6
.
115

Chapter 7
.
117

Chapter 8
.
125

Chapter 9
.
129

Chapter 10
.
130

Chapter 11
.
132

Chapter 12
.
134

Chapter 13
.
136

Chapter 14
.
141

Chapter 15
.
142

Chapter 16
.
146

Chapter 17
.
148

Chapter 18
.
149

Chapter 19
.
153

Chapter 20
.
157

Chapter 21
.
161

Chapter 22
.
165

Chapter 23
.
166

Chapter 24
.
166

Chapter 25
.
168

Chapter 26
.
173

Chapter 27
.
175

Chapter 28
.
177

Chapter 29
.
181

Chapter 30
.
185

Chapter 31
.
190

Chapter 32
.
191

Chapter 33
.
192

Chapter 34
.
193

Chapter 35
.
193

Chapter 36
.
194

Chapter 37
.
198

Chapter 38
.
199

Chapter 39
.
203

Chapter 40
.
204

 

PART ONE
:

 

Shadows In The Sun
Or An Undead Man In Deptford

 

Chapter
1

“Kit! You, Kit! Come here, I want you!” Tommy, Sir Thomas
Walsingham, called as I crossed the great hall in search of coals for my
brazier; my ink had frozen again. He motioned me to follow him, and I trailed
him to his office. To my dismay Ingram Frizer stood leaning over his shoulder,
pointing out something on the papers spread on the table before them. Tommy
looked up as I entered, and motioned me to join them.

“I have work for you!” Tom exclaimed, waving a handful of paper
at me.

“A commission?” I asked eagerly. “I am well begun on
Hero and
Leander
. In fact I was working on it just now, remembering how we swam in
the moat last summer....” I faltered, stopped more by the smirk on Frizer’s
face than by the annoyance on Tom’s. Tom was more than half drunk, I observed,
though it lacked an hour to noon. Frizer drifted over to settle upon the chest
under the casement window as Tommy started to gabble at me.

“No, no, nothing so slow or uncertain as
that
. What we
thought was this.” His voice dropped to just above a whisper as the words
tumbled out faster and faster.

“Slowly, Tommy,” I said gently. “I cannot make out more than a
word in three. You’ve found another way to reline our purses, I take it?” He
took a deep breath, and began again.

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