But affairs take a strange turn when, a year later, a woman appears claiming to be the nun, saying that she has risen from the dead. And when murder follows close on her heels, John Thoresby, Archbishop of York, asks his favourite sleuth, Owen Archer, to investigate.
Busy training archers for John of Gaunt, Owen is not pleased to be sent of to Leeds and Scarborough to delve into the nun's mysterious absence, and to try to find her co-conspirators - particularly when they keep turning up as corpses. But when he meets Geoffrey Chaucer, who has been spying for King Edward, Owen learns that the woman's involvement may stretch as far as the Free Companies of soldiers fighting on the continent.
Owen's wife Lucie, the apothecary, is the only person able to win the nun's confidence. Drawn in despite her reservations, concerned by the woman's deep unhappiness, Lucie tries to unravel the nun's troubled revelations to find a clue to the past. But the secrets which finally emerge - and the violence they provoke - will shock the community to its core.
© William Heinemann 1995