All Saints’ Eve, 1211. A wealthy nobleman desperate to secure an heir dies during a feast, and although the death appears natural, the healer Sabin cannot dismiss her doubts. She turns to Meggie, daughter of Sir Josse d’Acquin, whose own healing knowledge gives her a way into a household where inheritance and expectation have created dangerous tensions.
Meggie’s investigation shifts the Hawkenlye sequence towards a younger generation while retaining the series’ concern with medicine, family and concealed violence. In King John’s England, the pressure to preserve estates and bloodlines gives apparently domestic choices consequences that can become lethal.
