November, 1382. The month of the dead. At the Feast of St. Martin in the fifth year of King Richard's reign, a nun rides out for York and the Abbey of Meaux. But this is no ordinary journey. Rival popes, a boy on the English throne and a volatile peace in the savage aftermath of Wat Tyler's murder. Travelling alone, Hildegaard encounters a gibbet with five bloodied crow-stripped corpses, and later the body of a youth, brutally butchered. Who is he? And what is his connection to the hanged men? Murder will touch Hildegaard and those she loves even more closely as she rides on to her childhood home. Castle Hutton is riven by treachery. Old loyalties are shifting. Hildegard will need all her courage to counter the dark forces in the land.
