LITMIR.BIZ

Copyright

       Harper

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street,

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain in 2002 by HarperCollins

      Copyright © Reginald Hill 2008

      Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

      Source ISBN: 9780007313204

      Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007396351

      Version: 2015-06-22

Dedication

      For Julia

      who never hassles

      thanks

      The woodcut illustrations which prefigure each of the novel’s thirteen sections are taken from Hans Holbein the Younger’s Dance of Death

Epigraph

      For death is more ‘a jest’ than Life, you see Contempt grows quick from familiarity. I owe this wisdom to Anatomy.

      T. L. BEDDOES Lines to B.W. Proctor

      … fat men can’t write sonnets

      T. L. BEDDOES The Bride’s Tragedy l.ii.

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

1. The Physician

2. The Robber

3. The Knight

4. The Newly-Wed

       5. The Cemetery

       6. The Ship

       7. The Temptation

       8. The Queen

       9. The Drunkards

       10. The Friar

       11. The Pedlar

       12. The Child

       13. Judgment Day

       Keep Reading

       About the Author

       Praise

       By Reginald Hill

       About the Publisher

1

The Physician

       Imagined Scenes

      from

       AMONG OTHER THINGS:

       The Quest for Thomas Lovell Beddoes

      by Sam Johnson MA, PhD (first draft)

       Clifton, Glos. June 1808

      ‘That’s it, man. Hold her head, hold her head. For God’s sake, you behind, get your shoulder into it. Come, girl. Come, girl.’

      The shouter of these instructions, a burly man of about fifty years with a close-cropped head and a face made to command, stands halfway up a broad sweeping staircase. A few stairs below him a rustic, his naturally ruddy complexion even more deeply incarnadined by exertion, is leaning backwards like the anchor in a tug-o’-war, pulling with all his strength on a rope whose lower end is tied round the neck of a large brown cow.

      Behind the beast a nervous-looking footman is making encouraging fluttering gestures with his hands. From the marble-floored hallway below a housekeeper

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