Portia’s Curse

Portia, a widow living in the fifteenth-century village of Sunnymead, has paranormal abilities that she is careful to conceal for fear of being accused of witchcraft. Despite her attempts to hide her "gifts" and "be normal, like everyone else", Portia has a reputation for being a little odd, and there is some gossip among the villagers that she is perhaps a witch or a madwoman. Her dreams of living a quiet, normal life are shattered by the unwelcome arrival of three strangers. One is an enigmatic traveler harbouring secrets of his own. Another is an aging, battle-scarred knight nearing the end of his days as a warrior. The third is a powerful sorcerer seeking to harness her abilities for his own purposes. Although she attempts to dismiss these men, she is soon drawn into their quarrels with each other and finds herself in conflict with each of them and ultimately with herself. The intrusion of these men casts her into trials and dangers that the "non-gifted" could never understand. As she deals with the three men and with the intervention of Tess, an eccentric recluse who is in fact a witch, she is forced to face up to being "gifted" and decide how to live with being different from everyone else in Sunnymead.