February 1194. A desperately ill man reaches Hawkenlye hoping for a miracle cure, but before he can find sanctuary he is struck on the head and his body disappears beneath the frozen water. When the thaw reveals the corpse, an apothecary’s remedy provides one of the few clues to his identity, and Abbess Helewise asks Sir Josse d’Acquin to trace his journey.
As Josse follows the dead man’s route, more sick travellers arrive and Hawkenlye faces an outbreak that threatens the entire community. The murder mystery is therefore bound to questions of contagion, healing and movement during the winter in which Richard I’s long captivity was finally ending.
