November, 1382. The month of the dead. Close to the Feast of St. Martin in the fifth year of King Richard's reign, Abbess Hildegard rides out for York and the Abbey of Meaux. This is no ordinary journey. It is a time of rival popes, a boy king, and a shaky peace in the savage aftermath of Wat Tyler's murder. As Hildegard embarks on a perilous mission to secure the future of her priory, with only her two hounds for protection, she encounters a gibbet with five bloodied corpses and then the body of a youth, brutally butchered. Who was the boy, how was he connected to the men hanging from the gibbet, and what do these gruesome deaths mean? Hildegard is determined to uncover the truth, no matter how terrible it may be.