Showing results by author "Cassandra Clark" in All Categories

London. July, 1399. As rumors spread that his ambitious cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, has returned from exile in France, King Richard's grip on the English throne grows ever more precarious. Meanwhile, the body of a young woman is discovered at Dowgate sluice. When it's established that the dead woman was a novice from nearby Barking Abbey, the coroner calls in his friend, Brother Chandler, to investigate. Who would cut the throat of a young nun and throw her remains in the river? And what was she doing outside the confines of the priory in the first place?

Late December, 1389. Ordered to undertake a grueling three-day journey to bleak Whitby Abbey in the Far North of England in a bid to purchase the Abbey's priceless holy relic - a lock of St. Hild's hair, said to be 700 years old - Hildegard of Meaux and her three companion monks arrive to find the abbey a decidedly unwelcoming place, a place of strange customs and practices very different from their modest lifestyle at Meaux. Nor, as Hildegard discovers, is she the only visitor intent on acquiring the relic.