GARDENS FOR THE GAMBIA is a registered charity in the UK and a registered NGO in The Gambia. Every donation, however small, goes to The Gambia without any deductions. If you would like to learn more about the work that Philippa calls “the best thing that I do,” visit her website, PhilippaGregory.com, and click on GARDENS FOR THE GAMBIA, where you can make a donation and join with Philippa in this project.

“Every well we dig provides drinking water for a school of about 6oo children, and waters the gardens where they grow vegetables for the school dinners. I don’t know of a more direct way to feed hungry children and teach them to farm for their future.”

Philippa Gregory

More from this Series

Dark Tides Book 2

More from the Author
The Last Tudor	Three Sisters, Three…
The Taming of the Queen	The King's Curse

Keep reading for a preview of

Dark Tides

by

Philippa Gregory

Reekie Wharf, Southwark, London, Midsummer Eve

Dear Ned, my dearest brother,

I have to tell you that we have had a letter from Rob’s wife from Venice.

It’s bad news. It’s the worst news. She writes that Rob is drowned dead drowned. Rob’s wife widow says that she is coming to England with his baby. I write to you now as I cannot believe it as I know you would want to know at once. But I don’t know what to write.

Ned—you know that I would know if my son was dead.

I know he is not.

I swear to you on my soul that he is not.

I will write again when she has come and told us more. You will say—I think you will say—that I am lying to myself—that I cannot bear the news and I am dreaming that everyone but me is wrong.

I don’t know. I can’t know. But I do think I know.

I am sorry to write such a bad a sad letter. It is not possible that he be dead and I not know it. I would have felt it its not possible that he could be drowned.

How could I have come up out of deep water and twenty-one years later it hold him down?

Your loving sister, Alinor.

Of course I pray that you are well. Write me.

MIDSUMMER EVE, 1670, LONDON

The ramshackle warehouse was on the wrong side of the river, the south side, where the buildings jostled for space and the little boats unloaded pocket-size cargos for scant profit. The wealth of London passed them by, sailing upstream to the half-built new Custom House, its cream stone facade set full square on the fast-flowing river, as if it would tax every drop of the roiling dirty water. The greatest ships, towed by eager barges, glided past the little wharves, as if the quays were nothing but flotsam, sticks, and cobbles, rotting as they stood. Twice a day even the tide deserted them, leaving banks of stinking mud, and piers of weedy ramps rising like old bones from the water.