The Lady Chapel

The Lady Chapel (1994) Candace Robb

Set England in 1365.

The second Owen Archer mystery finds Owen and Lucie married–her now the Apothecary and him her apprentice.

When a mercer (a trader in textiles) is murdered and his had left in the room of his business partner, Archbishop Thoresby sends Owen to search out why the man was killed, and who could have murdered him.

Lucie remains home in York, searching for the boy who may have witnessed the murder, and learning to deal with Owen’s desire for adventure. And of course do her own investigations into the murder.

Lucie was quiet for a time, enjoying her friend’s cooking. “I hated asking. All those years in the convent, being told over and over that gossip was a sin. I cannot do it with an easy conscience.”

Bess sniffed. “I cannot see why gossip is considered a sin. How else is a body to know what’s going on?”

What I find fascinating (and what reminds me most that this is a different time) is how Owen struggles with his desire to keep Lucie safe. From a modern point-of-view, it seems ridiculous that Owen would rail against her for going out alone (or barely guarded) or allowing a stranger to help her along the road, but the times were very different, and it is the independence he allows her that is so strange for that time.

Of course there are also the glimpses of life in that time.

King Edward, obsessed with his ongoing war with France, knew that his longbowmen were his most important assets. He had gone so far as to outlaw all sports but archery. And then he had made it compulsory for all able-bodied men to practice at the butts on Sundays and holy days.

Jasper crouched under a tree near a one-armed man and a woman with two babies tucked under her tattered cloak. He’d heard about twins, God’s special blessing. But the woman did not look as if she felt blessed. Her eyes were sunken and expressionless, her jaw slack, revealing blackened and missing teeth. Her face was fleshless. Skull-like. She was starving. Why had God given this woman two babes when she was starving already?

One of the other things I particularly appreciate is just how common death is the men, women, and children of that time. Jasper loses his mother not to murder, but to a miscarriage. When one reads of street children in historical stories, the chances are the death of their mother in childbirth or during pregnancy is likely how they ended up on the streets.

I may enjoy these mysteries, but they remind me how glad I am not to live in the past.
Rating: 8/10

Published by Diversion Books

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