Autumn 1210. King John has been excommunicated for a year, and royal officers arrive to take control of Hawkenlye Abbey, leaving Abbess Caliste struggling to sustain the community and its charitable work. Helewise now lives at Hawkenlye Manor with Sir Josse d’Acquin, but political pressure on the abbey soon gives way to a more intimate disaster.
After a visit to St Edmund’s Chapel, Helewise’s eleven-year-old granddaughter Rosamund disappears. The search pulls Helewise and Josse through a landscape shaped by the conflict between King John and the Church, while the danger to Rosamund exposes how quickly public coercion and private vulnerability can converge.
