On August 29, 2024, we learned from JK Rowling’s Twitter that A Maid of the Silver Sea by John Oxenham will be one of the five epigraph sources for the upcoming Strike & Ellacott novel, The Hallmarked Man.
Naturally, as soon as the three of us found this out, we immediately read Oxenham’s book and loved it. (We may have spent a lot of time exploring Sark virtually on Google Maps!)
In the beginning of episode 36 of our season covering The Running Grave, we discussed which passages from A Maid of the Silver Sea we thought JK Rowling might have chosen for the epigraphs.
In the final six months leading up to the September 2, 2025 release of The Hallmarked Man, we have decided to revisit these epigraphs and explore the likelihood that each passage will appear in the novel.
Let us know which of the below you think we’re most likely to see in The Hallmarked Man, or add some suggestions of your own!
“For that quick blow had been struck on her behalf, she knew; and it was vastly strange, and somehow good, to feel that a great strong man was ready to stand up for her and, if necessary, to fight for her.” (Chapter 7)
“And, oh, the thrill of that first living touch of her! The feel of the warm nervous little hand sent a tingling glow through him such as he had never in his life experienced before. Verily, a white-stone day this, in spite of winds and darkness!” (Chapter 7)
“The man who hesitates is lost, or saved. When the contemplator of evil deeds begins also to contemplate consequences, reason is beginning to resume her sway.” (Chapter 8)
“… he was an upright man, and true, and bold, with a spirit which he kept well in hand but which could blaze like lightning on occasion, and a strength which he could turn to excellent purpose when the need arose.” (Chapter 11)
“The path was quite invisible to him. He tripped and stumbled at times on tangled roots of gorse and bracken, but she kept on swiftly and unerringly, as though the night were light around her.” (Chapter 20)
“He was almost in the dark now, and could only feel his way. But he was used to groping in narrow places, and a spirit of investigation urged him on.” (Chapter 25)
“He fairly ached for the sight and sound of her—and the feel of her little hand, and a warm frank kiss from the lips that knew no guile.” (Chapter 26)
“Some women’s hearts are so wonderfully constituted that the greater the demands upon them the more they are prepared to give. At times they give and give beyond the bounds of reason, and yet amazingly retain their faith and hope in the recipients of their gifts.” (Chapter 26)
“Except this—that these various demands on Nance’s fortitude, incurred by her love for Stephen Gard, far from weakening her love only made it the stronger. As that love came more and more between her and her old surroundings, and exacted from her sacrifice after sacrifice, the more she clung to it, and looked to it, and let the past go.” (Chapter 26)
““The partial ostracism brought upon her by Gard’s outspoken declaration of their mutual feeling—even this final offering of her dearly-loved brother—these only bound her heart to him the tighter.” (Chapter 26)
“Then, after an age of this numb agony of waiting, a tiny bead of light flickered on the outer darkness, as though Hope with a golden pin-point had pricked the black curtain of despair, and let a gleam of her glory peep through.” (Chapter 27)
“But if … if the worst comes, you will remember all your life, dear, that to one man you were as an angel from heaven.” (Chapter 27)
“He had no more preparations to make, and he had no wish to fight. No wish? The thought of it was hateful to him, and yet it was not in human nature to give in without a struggle.” (Chapter 28)
“Never in his life had he tasted bread so sweet!—and the strips of boiled bacon in between came surely from a most unusual pig—a porker of sorts, without a doubt, and of most extraordinary attainment in the nice balancing of lean and fat, and the induing of both with vital juices of the utmost strength and sweetness. Truly, a most celestial pig!—and he was very hungry.” (Chapter 28)
“ […] it was only the dogged determination to leave no chance untried that drove him, […]” (Chapter 29)
“And it seemed to Nance, as she hurried through the familiar hedge-gaps and lanes and across the headlands, that the world had lost its brightness, and that life was desperately hard and trying.” (Chapter 32)
“And then the weight fell off her heart, and it was all she could do to keep from screaming.” (Chapter 32)
“She wanted to sing and dance and scream her joy aloud. They had not found him.” (Chapter 32)
“for there is nothing so galling to an angry soul as to find its most venomous shafts fall harmless from the triple mail of quiet self-possession.” (Chapter 34)
“He was not the first who had paid the price for what he had not done, and human nature must fall to pieces if hung too long on tenterhooks.” (Chapter 35)
“And at thought of her, his bruised soul found somewhat of comfort and courage once more.” (Chapter 35)
“And the thought of it thrilled his cold blood and set it coursing through his veins like new life. Yes, truly, while there was Nance there was hope.” (Chapter 35)
“He felt like one granted a day’s respite as he stands on the scaffold with the rope round his neck.” (Chapter 35)
“Never had the sun shone so brightly. Never had the silver sea danced so merrily. It might be the last he would see of them.” (Chapter 35)
“And Stephen Gard lay there under the ridge on L’Etat, with the wonder and beauty of it all in his face and in his heart, and said to himself that it was probably the last sunset he would ever see, and he was glad to have seen it at its best.” (Chapter 35)
“If grisly Death, all bones and scythe, had come stalking along it before their eyes at that moment, they would have shrieked, no doubt, and fallen flat, but he would have no more than answered to their feelings and fulfilled their expectations.” (Chapter 36)
“For Peter considered he had been supplanted in Nance’s regards, though Nance had never regarded him as anything but a nuisance and a boor” (Chapter 36)
“This matter brings another matter home to all our hearts.” (Chapter 36)
“ “Who is it, then, that is doing these things amongst us?” (Chapter 36)
“Three times!” said the Sénéchal. “Ma fé, but she’s a garche to be proud of!”
“Ay, and to be more than proud of,” said Gard. “She has given me my life, and I will give it all to making her happy.” (Chapter 37)
““Give me another kiss, then!”—from which it was apparent that he knew very well what kind of medicine was best adapted to his ailments.” (Chapter 39)
“You’re to lie quite still,” said Nance dictatorially, with lifted finger. “And you’re not to talk or think till the Doctor comes.” “Give me a kiss, then!”—good prima facie evidence, this, that his brain had suffered no permanent injury. (Chapter 39)
A couple of my favorites:
“Thanks to Nance, he had turned the tables on them. It was they who were taken unawares.”
“Coming in, they knew, meant certain death for one among them, and, keen as they were to lay hands on him, no man had any wish to be that one.”
I had several of your quotes for sure – especially in the last chapter! We can only hope!! This novel had so many great descriptions of the land and sea! I’m excited to see how much of Sark will play into The Hallmarked Man – could it all happen in the islands? Here are some more great passages from The Maid of the Silver Sea…
Chap. 4 “He dreamed that night that he was cautiously treading an endless white path that swung up and down in the darkness like a piece of ribbon in a breeze. And a great white horse came plunging at him out of the darkness, and just as he gave himself up for lost, a sweet firm face in a black sun-bonnet appeared suddenly in front of him, and the white horse squealed and leaped over them and disappeared, while the stones he had displaced went rattling down into the depths below” The white horse! Later I noted Gard seeing the Flying Horse in the sky.
Chap 7 – I had yours marked too but also: “..it was a fresh experience to think of some one going out of his way to be of possible service to her.” – the way Strike does for Robin (that Matthew did not).
Chap. 11 – that one is SO Cormoran Strike!
Chap. 14 “Later on there would be a remnant of a moon, but as yet the sky above was an ebon vault without a star, and the gulfs at his feet were pits of darkness out of which rose the voices of the sea in solemn rhythmic cadence.”
Chap 18. “ For, as Peter said, she knew what the Sark men were—a law unto themselves, and slow to move out of the deep-cut grooves of the past, but, once stirred to boiling point, capable of going to any lengths without consideration of consequences.”
Chap. 20 “Still, he was a Cornishman, and dour to beat. And, if he had incurred unreasonable dislike, he had also lighted on the virgin lode of Nance’s love and trust, and that, he said to himself with a glow of gratitude outweighed all else.”
Chap. 21 “But the marvel was where those gigantic waves came from. Save for the dancing wind-ripples and its long, slow internal pulsations, the sea was as smooth as a pond to within twenty yards of the rocks. Then it suddenly seemed to draw itself together, to draw itself down into itself indeed, like a tiger compressing its springs for a leap, and then, with a rush and a roar, it launched itself at the rocks with the weight of the ocean behind it, and hurtled blindly into the chasm where the black rock lay.”
Chap. 24 – lots of RED “The sky, right away into the farthest east, was flaming red with a hint of underlying smoke below the glow. The sea was a weltering bath of blood, and the cliffs of Sark, save for a gleam of white foam at their feet, shone as red as though they had just been bodily dipped in it.”
Chap. 25 “He broke one presently, in answer to a clamour inside him that would brook no denial, and found it good, and lived on it that day, and mused between times on the strange fact that a man could feel so mightily grateful for the difference between a bad egg and a good one.”
Chap. 38 “Even the cormorant does not fish where fish are never found.”