In this, his third anthology of historical whodunnits, Mike Ashley break with his usual strict chronological order and actually opens the collection with an authentic medieval mystery, His Master's Servant, placing it before even a story set in the time of King Solomon. One of Saladin's cousin's has been murdered and a Templar Knight is called in from Jaffa to help solve the mystery. An unlikely scenario. Yes, but in fact he is only there to rubber-stamp (i.e. add his seal to) Saladin's prior decision as to the identity of the murderer. As it turns out, though, Sir Roger de Belcourt, "servant and slave of the One True God, Knight of the Order of the Poor Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon", is nobody's yes-man.
Can he prove that the "murderer" is innocent?
However, the best part of the story is the interaction between the fanatically celibate knight and Saladin's daughter, Leyla. Or is Leyla not Saladin's daughter at all, but a slave. a dancing-girl, pretending ?
Then there is another good Sister Fidelma story, The Spiteful Shadow, set in seventh-century Ireland. A murder in a monastery had been prophesied; but did the "prophet", a sixteen-year-old girl, commit the murder?
Also another excellent Dame Frevisse story, The Stone-worker's Tale by Margaret Frazer, in which her cousin, Lady Alice, now thrice-widowed, is supervising the building her own sumptuous tomb when one of her ladies-in-waiting disappears with the stone-mason who had been carving the angels.
There is another story by Cherith Baldry. In this one, The Duke's Tale, Chaucer investigates the death in Italy of Prince Lionel, Duke of Clarence and son of Edward III, following his marriage to Violante, daughter of Galeazzo, Duke of Milan.
There is a story in which the young Portuguese Prince Henry (the Navigator) investigates a death among his followers in Sagres, at the western edge of the known world, looking out across the Sea of Darkness.
And there is a tale by Sharan Newman whom we have overlooked so far on this site I shall rectify that! Catherine and the Sybil (from which our extract in Tasters 31 was taken) is about an aristocratic girl forced to become a nun because she cannot marry the (socially unacceptable) man she loves, and features both Catherine LeVendeur (from previous stories) and the world-famous visionary nun Hildegard of Bigen.
And more. Another excellent collection.
JM
