In this mystery in the award-winning series featuring a
twelfth-century Benedictine monk, Brother Cadfael must travel to the
heart of a leper colony to root out the secret behind a savage murder.
Setting out for the Saint Giles leper colony outside Shrewsbury, Brother
Cadfael has more pressing matters on his mind than the grand wedding
coming to his abbey. But as fate would have it, Cadfael arrives at Saint
Giles just as the nuptial party passes the colony's gates.
When he sees the fragile bride looking like a prisoner between her two
stern guardians and the bridegroom--an arrogant, fleshy aristocrat old
enough to be her grandfather--he quickly discerns this union may be more
damned than blessed. Indeed, a savage murder will interrupt the
May-December marriage and leave Cadfael with a dark, terrible mystery to
solve. Now, with the key to the killing hidden among the lepers of Saint
Giles, the monk must ferret out a sickness not of the body, but of a
twisted soul.