The Bridge 3

The voice of King Offa of Mercia thundered through the great hall.
"Enough!" he roared. "No longer shall the Welsh barbarians raid our lands and burn our villages. We will build a boundary - a great dyke stretching the length of our border. Let it be known: any who cross it will die."
The sense of peace that had settled after Neville Chamberlain's broadcast in the autumn of 1938 - his promise of "peace in our time" - proved short-lived. On September 2nd, 1939, the Prime Minister announced that Britain was at war with Germany. Yet, after the first panic, life on the farm changed less than anyone expected. Alfred, Billy, and Tommy were too old to be called up; their children were still too young. So the ploughs turned, the cows were milked, the crops sown and gathered. Beyond the fields, the world was once again tearing itself apart. But at Panpwnton Farm, under the same sky that once watched over Offa's Dyke, life went on - steady, dutiful, unaware that the ancient curse was stirring once more. Daniel was born in 1944, in the fading shadow of the Second World War. His very existence might be called an accident of history - a life that might never have begun had the war not raged across Europe, or had contraception been easier to come by. But he was born nonetheless, in a world that was trying to piece itself back together. And a curse that would yet tear it apart.