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by Henry Garnett (Author)
It's 1585, and Nicholas Thorpe is little more than a schoolboy, but old enough to know that the safe secure world in which he had grown up is rapidly changing. When his widowed mother marries Sir James Croome, a prominent Catholic, Nicholas begins to realize that all Catholics, no matter how powerful, are in danger. Spies from the court of Queen Elizabeth are everywhere; great houses are searched and possessions destroyed as priests are hunted and their protectors imprisoned. English Catholics are torn between loyalty to their Protestant Queen and to their forbidden religion, and Nicholas, like many others, longs to plunge into the conflict that is dividing Elizabethan England.
His opportunity comes sooner than he expected when he joins the Companions, a group organized to shelter priests and transport them across the country in strictest secrecy. Nicholas's assignments bring dangerous adventure in the hidden places of the English countryside as he takes active part in the exciting events of a tense and turbulent period of English history. An adventure for grades 5 and up.
