A medieval mystery novel concerning English knights, ladies of the manor, servants, and villagers in the year 1400.

The Lady Apollonia of Aust, medieval sleuth and wealthy daughter of an earl, faces widowhood for the third time. She chooses to guarantee her sovereignty by vowing to become a Bride of Christ, declaring that she will live a nun@s life but remain in the world. @Her household takes up residence in Cirencester. There they encounter an ongoing power struggle between the local Augustinian Abbey and the townspeople. After centuries of the abbot@s declaration of being lord of the manor, the people of Cirencester search for ways to stop the abbey@s abuses of power against the town. @Upon her arrival the Lady learns that, in the absence of the abbot, the abbey is being run by its prior, an evil living canon. He is known to abuse his power as a manipulative predator without a shred of human compassion or call to Christian ministry. @Lady Apollonia is not only forced to deal with murder, she finds herself under attack by one whose muddled mind regards her as the source of evil.

The first signs of early spring have begun to blossom in the year l392, and the Lady Apollonia is living in the home of her third husband in the city of Gloucester. Master Robert Windemere is a wealthy wool merchant and furrier, a former bailiff of the city. Lady Apollonia is faced with the news of the death of her fourth son when his squire is finally able to return to her in fulfillment of a vow to his master. Losses in her personal life are echoed by an outbreak of major crime and murder in Gloucester, led by the most fiercely inhuman villain the Lady has ever encountered. Apollonia and her husband must deal with the realities of schism within the church and Wycliffe's insistence upon reform. The Lady takes up the challenge to safeguard those who serve her and find a way to rid Gloucester of vicious criminals who enjoy powerful protection.

This second novel in the author's historical mystery series is set in the year is 1380. Lady Apollonia is living with her affinity and three younger sons in Exeter House at the end of summer while her husband is away in London. The images of English medieval people here shift to the emerging towns and the growing merchant class who struggle with a gang culture organized by the local nobility.

In late 14th century Worcester, the Lady Apollonia of Aust struggles to protect the affinity of her son, the sheriff, against undercover usury deviously directed from behind monastic walls while upper middle class sexual misconduct forces him to solve three murders.

Chichén Itzá ("mouth of the well of the Itza") was one of the great centers of civilization in prehistoric America, serving between the eighth and twelfth centuries A.D. as a religious, economic, social, and political capital on the Yucatán Peninsula. Within the ancient city there were many natural wells or cenotes. One, within the ceremonial heart of the city, is an impressive natural feature with vertical limestone walls enclosing a deep pool of jade green water some eighty feet below ground level. This cenote, which gave the city its name, became a sacred shrine of Maya pilgrimage, described by one post-Conquest observer as similar to Jerusalem and Rome. Here, during the city's ascendancy and for centuries after its decline, the peoples of Yucatán consulted their gods and made ritual offerings of precious objects and living victims who were thought to receive prophecies. Although the well was described by Bishop Diego de Landa in the late sixteenth century, its contents were not known until the early 1900s when revealed by the work of Edward H. Thompson. Conducting excavations for the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, Thompson recovered almost thirty thousand artifacts, most ceremonially broken and many beautifully preserved by burial in the deep silt at the bottom of the well. The materials were sent to the Peabody Museum, where they remained, unexhibited, for over seventy years. In 1984, for the first time, nearly three hundred objects of gold, jade, copper, pottery, wood, copal, textile, and other materials from the collection were gathered into a traveling interpretive exhibition. No other archaeological exhibition had previously given this glimpse into Maya ritual life because no other collection had objects such as those found in the Sacred Cenote. Moreover, the objects from the Cenote come from throughout Mesoamerica and lower Central America, representing many artistic traditions. The exhibit and this, its accompanying catalog, marked the first time all of the different kinds of offerings have ever been displayed together, and the first time many have been published. Essays by Gordon R. Willey and Linnea H. Wren place the Cenote of Sacrifice and the great Maya city of Chichén Itzá within the larger context of Maya archaeology and history. The catalog entries, written by Clemency Chase Coggins, describe the objects displayed in the traveling exhibition. Some entries are brief descriptive statements; others develop short scholarly themes bearing on the function and interpretation of specific objects. Coggins' introductory essay describes how the objects were collected by Thompson and how the exhibition collection has been studied to reveal the periods of Cenote ritual and the changing practices of offering to the Sacred Cenote.