He watched in horror as the swine attacked the dead man.They had overturned the cart in the first attack and now the corpse lay splayed out so that several pigs at once could get to work on his four limbs. Then the big sow opened her mouth wide and plunged her sharp incisors in to the bloated stomach.The Stench that filled the air made the young man retch but seemed to drive the swine to greater heights; fighting each other for the prime cuts, they plunged their snouts into the wide cavity of the dead man's belly and ate his innards in a matter of moment.

The young man, body aching, sick at heart and numb with horror at what he had done, sat in his tree and waited...

The winter of 1193 is cruel and starvation is rife.Richard the Lionheart is still held hostage after his crusade and it is his English subjects who must pay the mercilessly high ransom money. Abbess Helewise is struggling to keep the abbey going when a much-loved person returns to her after nearly twenty years, in desperate need of help: her son. His wife is suffering mental torments and his small boy is mute.

Soon after, a man is found strangled, dangling from a tree near the abbey. The next day Helewise's son and his family have disappeared. With Josse's stout support, Helewise must look deep into her own past, to the days before she took the veil, to prevent another murder.