The Keys of Hell and Death

West Country, July 1643. England’s civil war has reached a bloody stalemate, neither side able to secure advantage. A Royalist victory at Roundway Down comes an opportunity to seize the precious port city of Bristol.

Prince Rupert, leads his army out of Oxford to snatch the prize, supported by his brother, Prince Maurice, attacking from the south.

The ensuing struggle will harness the enmity between the two Reeve brothers: carefree and dissolute Ralph, now a corporal of dragoons in Prince Maurice’s Regiment, and Francis, the embittered and fanatical puritan in the Parliamentary horse. It will also determine the fate of Moussa Dansocko, the west African slave accused of sorcery and witchcraft and threatened with a lynching, and others, all with their diverse reasons for finding common cause in the brutal struggles of the divided kingdom.