The Drummer's Coat

In the sunlit village of Ashacombe, tucked between the rolling hills of Devon, two children wander through a summer that holds more shadows than they know. Dick and Elsie Bracefort live in the long shadow of their father's death in the Peninsular War, a loss that haunts Bracefort Hall and the village alike. When the children encounter Tommy Fry, a mute boy whispered to be touched by witchcraft, the quiet streets of Ashacombe grow strange and watchful. At the Hall hangs a drummer's coat, its buttons dulled by time, its story wrapped in both glory and grief. What the coat means, and what it cost to bring it home, forms the beating heart of this tender, eerie novel about the secrets children sense but cannot name, and the way the dead live on in the objects we inherit.