Martin Hyde, the Duke's Messenger

Martin Hyde is a boy who knows the Suffolk countryside like his own heartbeat, wild, free, certain that nothing in the world could be finer than racing the wind across the marshes. Then his father dies, and Martin is packed off to London to live with an uncle he barely knows. The city is a labyrinth of shadow and suspicion, its towering buildings closing in around him like a cage. But everything shifts when he encounters the mysterious Edward Jermyn, a man with dangerous eyes and a dangerous cause. Martin is drawn into a conspiracy stitched to the Duke of Monmouth, a rebellion brewing against the brutal reign of King James II. Suddenly the boy who once chased swallows over fields is running secret messages through moonlit streets, sailing toward the coast of Lyme, and learning that the world demands more from him than he ever imagined he had to give. Masefield crafts adventure with genuine teeth: the tension of hidden passages, the terror of being hunted, the weight of choosing loyalty over safety. This is a book for anyone who has ever wanted to be more than they were told they could be, and who suspects that courage might be found in the very places that scare them most.