The French name for High Wood is not Raven Wood, though this is what Robert Graves asserts in his autobiography, Goodbye to All That. It was from here that I took the idea for Alexandra’s visions, but I have not been able to find any other original source calling the wood by that name. The French word for raven is corbeau, or in the dialect of Picardy, cornaille, but the French name was Bois des Foureaux, or sometimes Bois des Fourcaux. (These names have no obvious translation, the former meaning maybe “waters of the kiln,” but though the wood may have once been the home to charcoal burners, there is no river or stream running through it. I think the name is more likely to be a corruption of fourchette—the sweet chestnut trees were used by the local people to make pitchforks.)
Whatever the name of the place, it was here that the Nineteenth Brigade, with the Twentieth Royal Fusiliers among them, were heading in mid-July 1916. On Saturday the fifteenth they became part of the vast number massing in Death Valley, in readiness for their part in the assault on High Wood. Gas shells fell among them that morning.
On July 20, their turn came to go up to the engagement in High Wood, and the battalion was almost annihilated.
The official divisional record simply states: Attack continued, extremely difficult to form précis of fighting.
About the Author
Marcus Sedgwick worked in children’s publishing for ten years; before that he was a bookseller. He is also a stone carver and a wood engraver. His first book, Floodland, was hailed as “a dazzling debut from a writer of exceptional talent” and won the Branford Boase Award for a best first novel for children. Witch Hill and The Book of Dead Days were nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery for Young Adults. The Dark Horse was short-listed for the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Award and was a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Marcus Sedgwick’s most recent books are the thrilling companion novels The Book of Dead Days and The Dark Flight Down.
Also by Marcus Sedgwick
THE DARK FLIGHT DOWN
THE BOOK OF DEAD DAYS
THE DARK HORSE
WITCH HILL
FLOODLAND
Published by Wendy Lamb Books
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Marcus Sedgwick
All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sedgwick, Marcus.
The Foreshadowing / Marcus Sedgwick.
p. cm.
Summary: Having always been able to know when someone is going to die,
Alexandra poses as a nurse to go to France during World War I to locate her brother
and to try to save him from the fate she has foreseen for him.
[1. Extrasensory perception—Fiction. 2. World War, 1914–1918—France—Fiction.
3. World War, 1914–1918—England—Fiction. 4. Nurses—Fiction. 5. Great Britain—
History—George V, 1910–1936—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S4484For 2006
[Fic]—dc22
2006005135
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-43388-6
v3.0
Marcus Sedgwick, The Foreshadowing
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