December 1262 is one of the harshest in living memory. A series of terrible blizzards strikes England, falling with particular heaviness on the March, the blood-soaked borderland between England and Wales.

The blizzards have one salutary effect in that they drive the Welsh under Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, who had attacked all along the March, back to their fortresses, but otherwise it is still a time of suffering, misery, and death, with sensible people shivering about the fire in their homes.

How much death, however, is not fully known until there is a sudden thaw on Christmas Day, when the beggar Harry finds a dead girl of extraordinary beauty frozen beneath the snow off the pathway to Saint Laurence's church in Ludlow.

No one has ever seen the girl before or knows who she is. But there are hints as to how she died. It looks like murder, and deputy coroner Stephen Attebrook feels compelled to find those responsible.

It is a task that propels him into the domain of his worst enemy, Earl Perceival FitzAllan, where he must play an involuntary role in the shadow war being waged between the supporters of King Henry III and the rebellious barons under Simon de Montfort.

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