In 1368 Sir Henry Burley arrives at Bampton Castle as a guest of Lord Gilbert Talbot. He asks Hugh de Singleton for a sleeping draught, then retires after an evening of music, conversation and dancing. By morning the apparently healthy knight is dead. Because Hugh supplied the potion, the death immediately places his medical judgement under scrutiny, while Sir Henry’s grieving widow is quick to suspect wrongdoing. Lord Gilbert charges Hugh with establishing whether illness, accident or poison ended the knight’s life.
The investigation turns the domestic routines of a noble household into evidence: what a guest ate, drank, requested and was given matters as much as motive. Starr uses Hugh’s dual role as surgeon and bailiff to explore the uncertain boundary between medieval medicine and criminal inquiry, when remedies could heal in one dose and harm in another. Set during Edward III’s reign, the novel also shows how rank shapes an investigation, since the unexplained death of a knight carries political and legal consequences beyond those of an ordinary villager.
