In December 1377, as London prepares for Christmas, a great frost has the city in its icy grip; even the Thames is frozen from bank to bank. Murder, revenge and treachery also make their presence felt, for an ancient grudge is about to be settled in a city seething with discontent.
The Constable of the Tower of London, Sir Ralph Whitton, is found murdered in a cold bleak chamber in the North Bastion. The door is still locked from the inside and guarded by trusted retainers — so how did the assassins slip across a frozen moat and climb the sheer wall of the fortress to commit such a dreadful crime? And why was Sir Ralph so terrified of the message he received a few days before his death — a crude drawing of a ship and a flat sesame seed cake?
The Dominican friar, Athelstan, and Sir John Cranston, the fat, wine-loving coroner of the city of London, are appointed to investigate these mysteries. They soon discover Sir Ralph’s murder is only the first in a series of macabre killings which have their roots in a terrible act of betrayal committed many years previously.
Don’t miss the other Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan,
THE NIGHTINGALE GALLERY, MURDER MOST HOLY and THE ANGER OF GOD, also available from Headline.
‘Vitality in the cityscape... angst in the mystery; it’s Peters minus the herbs but plus a few crates of sack’ Oxford Times
‘Paul Harding writes with such skill that you really can picture and almost (but thankfully not quite) smell 14th century London. Absolutely superb’
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