Cover

Also by Philip Womack

for children

The Other Book

The Liberators

The Darkening Path Trilogy

The Broken King

The King’s Shadow

The King’s Revenge

The Double Axe

The Arrow of Apollo

non-fiction for children

Write Your Own Myths

for adults

How to Teach Classics to Your Dog

Title

WILDLORD

First published in 2021 by

Little Island Books

7 Kenilworth Park

Dublin 6w

Ireland

© Philip Womack 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system in any form or by any means (including electronic/ digital, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, by means now known or hereinafter invented) without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

A British Library Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover by Karen Vaughan
Typeset by Kieran Nolan
Proofread by Emma Dunne

Print ISBN: 978-1-912417-97-1

Little Island has received funding to support this book from the Arts Council of Ireland

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my daughters
Xenia and Amalia Womack von Preussen

Chapter 1

14th April, 1846

Look long into the eyes of a Samdhya, he said, and you shall change. I looked long. I looked deep. Blossom fell from the tree, yet I did not notice. Already, I sense myself changing.

— From the diary of Margaret Ravenswood,
daughter of the Reverend Laurence
Ravenswood, Rector of Haughley

White Quad bell rang out into the mid-morning air, and Tom Swinton slumped down onto a wooden bench underneath a statue of his school’s founder. In front of him, a lone figure moved across the well-tended lawn, picking up and bagging detritus from last night’s Summer Ball. Tom was still wearing his dinner jacket, his bow-tie poking out of his pocket, his top shirt buttons undone.

He closed his eyes.

The party had continued into the early hours, and he’d fallen asleep on someone’s study floor, wrapped in a duvet. Sunlight had woken him at dawn. His friends were snoring gently, sprawled on their beds or on rugs. He’d gone to walk in the woods, which he always liked to do, taking with him a cold can from a vending machine.

He wanted to be alone among the trees. He hadn’t wanted to say goodbye to anyone. He’d wandered around the grounds for hours, making the fizzy drink last, waiting until he was sure all the cars, with their loads of schoolbooks and sports clothes and teenage boys, had gone.

Now, sinking back, the hard slats of the bench pressing into him, he counted the tolls of the bells.

8, 9, 10 …

It was almost eleven o’clock, and at some point he would have to properly face the fact that he was the only pupil left in the whole school, for the entire summer holidays.