The Legacy

Epilogue

THE talisman follows the lives of the two brothers: Edward’s meteoric rise to vast wealth, Alex’s prison sentence and release. To ensure they were never to forget their origins, Edward took from his mother’s grave the necklace his father had given to her the night he had claimed his championship belt. He melted the gold to make two medallions, and had their names inscribed, so they would never forget. Unknowingly he had committed a Romany sin. By opening the grave he had taken from his father and his mother their treasure. He had taken his father’s life, and now he ransacked his soul, ignorant of the old customs and the curses. Edward evoked the unquiet dead.

The Talisman introduces the brothers’ women, their wives and their children, all of them inexplicably bound by ghosts from the past. The murder of their’ father, Freedom Stubbs, the Champion fighter, constantly draws them back to their Romany origins … they have his blood in their veins, and his death on their consciences. They have inherited the Romany second sight and, as they reach a phenomenally high pinnacle of both material wealth and power, attained deviously and violently, one of them must now pay the debt. One must pay at last for the murder. It is the law of the Romanies, be it sons or daughters, wives or mothers, fathers or brothers, a debt must be paid. A tear for a tear, a heart for a heart, blood to blood, soul to soul …