Excerpt from Peculiar Ground by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He was seated on the opposite side of the curving rows of seats, high up and very much to the side. He didn't smile, or nod, or make any sign with his hand. We stared at each other. Sometimes a cat and dog meet and become as still as statues, eye to eye, until it seems that only a merciful interruption – some horse or human clattering by - can free them from a lifetime of immobility. They are held by mutual distrust. My friend and I were held by something stronger. I was all in my eyes. He seemed to soften, his whole face gentled as wax in a warm room. Whether Mr Rose was still speaking I couldn't have known. I had awoken that morning avid and proud. Now I was entirely subdued.

A boy was tugging at Mr Norris's arm. From the stage came a rumbling of wooden wheels and a squealing of metal hinges. We had been within the city of Jericho, in the harlot's house. Now screens were being trundled about so that their backsides faced us. Where drapery had been depicted, and shelves cluttered with golden vessels and clumps of ostrich plumes, now we saw only palm trees and masonry. Fluted columns crowned with carved acanthus leaves, all executed most skilfully in trompe l'oeil style, and sandy coloured stones. 'Shockingly anachronistic, said Mr Rose, 'But skilfully done. We were fortunate to have a team of Italian muralists at our command'. Two palm-trees of cut paper were wheeled on, and the Israelite army, marched back on led by a bear, whose second, human, face was visible through the slit in its hide only when it reared up. The audience rose to its feet to salute it.

The bond which had held me to Mr Norris had ruptured at the moment he turned away. I looked for him again but he was gone from his seat. I glimpsed him just outside the playing floor, in earnest conversation with the trumpeters.

The ladies and gentlemen settled back into their seats, the brave colours of their clothes making a rippling beauty like that of oil in water. Lord Woldingham rose up. His wig was in every sense hyacinthine. Its luxuriant dark curls were just perceptibly tinted blue.

The Israelites and the bear, the latter beaming with one face, snarling with another, withdrew behind the palm trees. My lord stepped onto the stage, his shoebuckles twinkling in concert with his rings, and addressed us. He said, 'The people of Jericho congratulated themselves upon the sturdiness of the walls that encircled their city. As you will presently see, their confidence was ill-founded. It is not upon heaps of stone that our safety depends, but upon the loyalty of our friends.'

'My walls,' said Mr Rose, 'are not heaps.' His tone was still facetious, but I thought his irritation was real.

'We welcome you all here,' went on my cousin. 'Because you are all friends of that loyal stamp. My wife has chosen to represent one who did God's will by offering succour and protection to strangers. Rahab had strayed from virtue's path, but there was still kindness in her. For many years we were, as it were, walled out of our own country, our own home, but there were always some, under the Canaan of the commonwealth, who were ready as Rahab was to risk their own safety to aid and abet those who sought to reclaim this nation for legitimacy. Now, safely restored to Wychwood after the tumbling down of that commonwealth, we open our gates and invite our friends to celebrate with us our own return to this blessed spot, and the return of right government to this realm. And now I must ask you once more to pay attention as the climax of our show approaches.'

He bowed and performed a quite astonishing flourish with his hat, as though he were inscribing the design of a labyrinth upon the air with its plume, and then resumed his place where his small daughter now awaited him, having scrambled up, to the detriment of her sky-blue petticoats, into his vacated seat.

From the book Peculiar Ground by Lucy Hughes-Hallett. Copyright ©2018 by Lucy Hughes-Hallett. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.