Richard the Lionheart remains a captive after the Third Crusade, and the enormous ransom demanded for his release has pushed communities across England towards hardship. At Hawkenlye, Abbess Helewise struggles to feed her nuns and the poor through a brutal winter when her long-estranged son arrives asking for help with his troubled wife and silent child.
A man is then found strangled and hanging from a tree near the abbey, turning a painful family reunion into a murder inquiry. The investigation combines domestic secrets with the economic effects of Richard I’s captivity, making royal ransom, winter scarcity and the obligations of family part of the same tightening crisis.
