The Oswald de Lacy Medieval Murders

It's 1358. Oswald de Lacy, Lord Somershill, is in Venice awaiting a pilgrim galley to the Holy Land. While the city is under siege from the Hungarians, Oswald lodges with an English merchant and soon comes under the dangerous spell of the decadent and dazzling island state that sits on the hinge of Europe, where East meets West. Oswald is trying to flee the chilling shadow of something in his past, but when he finds a dead man on the night of the carnival, he is dragged into a murder investigation....

1361. Plague has returned to England - 13 years after the devastation of the Black Death. As destruction advances towards his estate in Kent, Oswald de Lacy leads his family to the safety of a remote castle in the marshes - where his friend Godfrey is preparing a fortress to survive the coming disaster. The rules are clear: once the de Lacys and other guests are inside the castle the portcullis will be lowered and no-one permitted to enter or leave until the Pestilence has passed. And then a murderer strikes.       

Oswald de Lacy, Lord of Somershill, sits at his mother's deathbed. Before she dies, he must make a confession. He needs to tell of the days when he was 18 years old, the third, disregarded son of the family, sent off to become a monk, working in the infirmary while plague raged outside the monastery. Of how he was sent to a nearby village and witnessed the death of a local girl, and how he swore to investigate...and how he was drawn into a crime so dark and terrifying, it haunts him - and his family - still.