1121. The trail of a mass murderer and a hunt for a runaway nun. King Henry I has lost his heir in the sinking of The White Ship and his reign is fraught with the succession crisis. The king is obsessed with relics and prophecies. He summons his daughter, the Empress Maud, to return to England, and considers putting a woman on the English throne.
King Henry's former mistress, Nest ferch Rhys, is unhappily married to the Norman constable of Cardigan Castle. She becomes increasingly embroiled in the Welsh resistance to the Norman occupation of her family's lands.
Sheriff Haith distracts himself from his loss of Nest by plumbing the mystery of the shipwreck in which the King's heir died along with three hundred other young Norman nobles.
As Haith pieces together fragments of the tragic shipwreck, he discovers a chest full of secrets, but will the revelations bring a culprit to light and aid the grieving king?
Book III in the Conquest trilogy centring on Nest ferch Rhys and the reign of King Henry I.
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'Stephen de Marais and Nest fetch Rhys'. The sound of my name had barely ceased to resonate around the courtyard walls of Cardigan Castle when Haith shouldered his way the crowd to gape at me.- 1: LOST UPON THE TIDE
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(Self-Published, 1 May 2023, e-book, 382 pages, copy from the author)
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I loved The Anarchy, the final book in the trilogy. The events in the preceding two books come full circle. Being widowed is bad enough but King Henry forces Nest to marry a younger man who is indifferent to her. Reduced to almost nothing she plots to give her unwelcome husband an heir and take steps to untangle herself from an unhappy marriage. Haith determines to find the truth behind a shipwreck which cost King Henry his heir and tries not to think about Nest, the woman he loves. King Henry, now getting on in years struggles to control his kingdom with no heir and enemies on every side. This is packed with as much action and intrigue as the previous two books. I loved it.