Counterfeit: Part II of The Warbeck Trilogy

“An Earl of this realm, the Queen’s cousin, to be impersonated by an ill used, frightened serving man with no flesh on his bones? My lord, it’s insanity!”

July 1554. Perkin Warbeck’s grandson Jan, who has been working as a menial up north to hide his identity, is among a group of Lord Paget’s servants ordered to Winchester to help in the kitchens at Queen Mary’s wedding to Philip of Spain.

When the group is arrested for brawling with Spaniards, Jan’s resemblance to Edward Courtenay, the Plantagenet Earl of Devonshire, is noticed by the mob, and by Lord Chancellor Stephen Gardiner, who seeks to protect the royal Earl from the Spanish.

Despite the misgivings of his former employer John White, now Bishop of Lincoln, Jan is drawn into a conspiracy in which he must feign Courtenay in front of Philip of Spain.