Author Description

This is the story of a quest - the attempt of a seventeenth-century aristocrat to transmute arcane knowledge into wealth, power and salvation. Goodwin Wharton was the most unfortunate member of the, politically powerful and influential Wharton family. Overshadowed by his elder brother, he was desperate for love, sympathy and recognition. When Goodwin met Mary Parish in 1683 he was consumed by debt and close to despair. He had tried his hand at any number of money-making enterprises deep- sea diving, alchemy, an early form of fire engine-all of which had proved calamitous failures. Mary, he decided, would change all this. She had a peerless knowledge of the arcane, - she could converse with angels, - she enjoyed a close acquaintance with the fairy inhabitants of the'lowlands' situated somewhere beneath Hounslow Heath. Her skills ran to the manufacture of 'magic purses' - which mysteriously generated money-the location of buried treasure, and match-making Goodwin with Penelope, the Queen of the Fairies. So was born the remarkable partnership of a desperate young man and a con-woman nonpareil, one which was to last the twenty years until her death. In all that time none of Mary's promises were realised. She failed even to keep her promise to revisit Goodwin after her death. Goodwin's political fortunes had changed, however, with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 - he entered the Commons and rose to the Lord of the Admiralty but wealth and fame were of little consequence to him beside the huge spiritual adventure he had embarked upon with Mary, and to his dying day he was to keep faith with the bizarre world he had glimpsed through her eyes.