Abbess Hildegard of Meaux
5 primary works
Book 1
November, 1382. The month of the dead. At the Feast of St. Martin in the fifth year of King Richard's reign, a nun rides out for York and the Abbey of Meaux. But this is no ordinary journey. Rival popes, a boy on the English throne and a volatile peace in the savage aftermath of Wat Tyler's murder. Travelling alone, Hildegaard encounters a gibbet with five bloodied crow-stripped corpses, and later the body of a youth, brutally butchered. Who is he? And what is his connection to the hanged men? Murder will touch Hildegaard and those she loves even more closely as she rides on to her childhood home. Castle Hutton is riven by treachery. Old loyalties are shifting. Hildegard will need all her courage to counter the dark forces in the land. First in an engrossing new series of mediaeval mysteries, Hangman Blind" introduces an intrepid new heroine.
Book 2
Black February in the year 1383: rain started to fall before Martinmas, sweeping through France, Flanders and Tuscany, and barely ceased all year. Floods brought famine. Famine brought disease. The Black Death bestowed its grace on town after town. Bodies were piled in open pits. The lime was spread. Paris shut its gates; Cologne and Florence followed suit. Into this watery world, against a background of plague and the political turmoil of the Hundred Years War, the nun Hildegard is sent across Europe in search of a precious relic, the Cross of Constantine. Strong-willed and independent, she will need remarkable skills to survive such a dangerous quest. For with the English Crown at stake there are many who want her mission to fail - and one, above all, who plans a deadly revenge ...
Book 3
York, 1385. Just as the Mystery Plays are about to unfold, a young woman witnesses a terrible crime and turns to Abbess Hildegard for protection.
Book 4
Autumn 1386. Hildegard of Meaux - a Cistercian Abbess with a keen instinct for crime solving - is accompanying the Archbishop of York, Alexander Neville, to London for the opening of Parliament amid much civic unrest. While packing to leave, the Archbishop's saucier is found brutally murdered in the ale vat, and it emerges that the culprit must be one of the Archbishop's party. The journey from York to London is fraught with more deadly surprises, and it becomes clear to Hildegard that this sinister plot may also involve King Richard, and those looking to depose him at all costs. Traitors, murderers, noblemen and madmen come together to create a puzzling scheme that only Hildegard can solve, digging up past grudges, new weapons and a mysterious friar. The most recent instalment in the highly acclaimed Hildegard of Meaux series, A Parliament of Spies paints a vivid picture of medieval London, where loyalty and treason are very difficult to identify.
Book 5
"Hildegard, no longer a member of the Cistercian order of nuns, has returned to the priory after more than a year from her pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Still unsure whether she'll rejoin the Order, the Prioress suggests that a visit to Handale Priory might help provide some clarity. While walking about its grounds, Hildegard discovers the corpse of a young man in the morgue. His body bears deep gashes from neck to groin. His wounds appear to be the ravages of claws, but larger than any animal Hildegard knows of. Is it possible that the young man was killed by a dragon, as Hildegard's been told?"--Adapted from publisher description.