It is 1193 and the King, Richard the Lionhearted, is being held prisoner by the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI. A huge ransom in gold has been demanded which Richard's mother, the ageing termagant Eleanor of Aquitaine is busy extorting from Richard's impoverished subjects in England. Apart from some sympathy shown by Abbess Helewise for her poorer tenants, though, we see little of the hardship, only enthusiasm for raising the money and freeing the (French-born and French-speaking) King from his humiliating captivity. Probably because the main characters are all Norman aristocracy.
Sir Josse d'Aquin (our hero, for those of you - like me - new to these books) is introduced to an elderly nobleman who promptly informs him that his very young and very beautiful wife, Galiena, is barren, and that she is desperate for a child. 'She is a herbalist herself, my Galiena [he tells Josse]. She has tried everything she can think of. Even what I believe are quite desperate remedies.' The anguished expression making him look even older, he went on, 'I see her at night, you see. Oh, she thinks that she does not disturb me, that I sleep blissfully on when she creeps out of my bed. But I awake, sir, always I awake. I perceive her sudden absence, even if I am deeply asleep. And I go to the window, from which I can look down on the garden, and I watch as she enacts her rites. Only often she conceals herself, you understand, she slips away to where I can no longer see her. It is easily done.' He sighed. Staring out over the garden, dropping to a whisper, he said, 'Naked under the moonlight she is, her lovely body so pale and white. So beautiful. So beautiful.'
Josse is embarrassed by these revelations, and sceptical about Galiena's supposed barrenness (after all, the man is old enough to be Galiena's grandfather) but keeps his thoughts to himself and, when pressed to do so, agrees that a visit to the infirmerer at Hawkenlye Abbey can do no harm and might well help.
Medieval Outsiders
> a Saxon shaman, inheritor of an ancient tradition, living in Norman (Roman Catholic) times
> the remnants of an earlier, pagan, society, existing in seclusion among the marshes
> a teenage wife labelled "barren" because she has not yet given her elderly husband a son
Then a murder is committed - two murders - and Josse finds himself up against a strange pagan community left over from Saxon times and living deep in the marshes. What is the connection between the blonde, blue-eyed Galiena and these people whom she so resembles physically? Josse remembers the pagan dance Galiena used to perform in the garden at home before she ever went to Hawkenlye ...
Excellently written, it held me through the night (though unlike JM, I am not usually a great one for straightforward medieval detective stories of the Brother Cadfael type) and has a stunning dénoument.
MBG
