Hand of the Baptist
Jonathan Hopkins
Type: Beta project
Genre: Historical fiction
Word count: 104,000
Warnings:Â Graphic violence, swearing
Hand of the Baptist follows the continuing story of Joshua Lock and John Killen, two light dragoons in the future Duke of Wellington’s army fighting Napoleon’s French invaders through Portugal and Spain.
Summer, 1809. With Bonaparte’s invaders once more driven from Portugal, Sergeant Joshua Lock and Captain John Killen pursue the enemy into Spain with Sir Arthur Wellesley’s small army.
To have any hope of defeating the French here the British must co-operate with Captain-General Cuesta’s far more numerous Spanish troops in a country of Catholic piety and antiquated superstition, profoundly wary of its new ally.
Unexpectedly promoted as Liaison Officer to the Duke of Albuquerque, Cuesta’s cavalry brigade commander, Killen is ordered to report back how far he believes Wellesley’s new allies can be trusted. But to keep his temporary rank he must provide conclusive evidence of Albuquerque’s fealty or rely on some outlandish act of courage in the coming battle, which ally and enemy alike seem determined to provoke.
Lock, meanwhile, falls foul of a local bandit leader who will stop at nothing to recover what he believes his rightful property. Sent to serve another regiment in Killen’s absence, can Lock keep the brigand at bay while discharging his new orders?
And in a region still mired in ancient myth, is the dragon rumoured to prowl the wilderness of Castille a chimaera of folklore, or horribly real?
Always a keen reader, Jonathan wrote a novel in his teens. For twenty five years it lived in a box in a few different attics until he finally admitted to himself it was only good enough to fuel a bonfire, so began a new one.
A lifelong horse-keeper and long term chair of an affiliated Riding Club close to his home in South Wales, his interest in the cavalrymen who served under the Duke of Wellington originally grew from research into saddlery worn by troop horses of the period, for which there are no surviving patterns.
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