The Hawk and the Dove · Series One, Book 7
The Breath of Peace
Historical fiction
14th century Yorkshire: the time of Chaucer.
“The combination of impeccable research and relational and spiritual adventure is irresistible. We are in a real place, with real people. A feast of characters and ideas.” – Adrian Plass, author of The Sacred Diary series
Madeleine Hazell and William de Bulmer have been married a year.
She is a healer, a wise woman, intelligent and blunt. He is both an ex-monk and an ex-abbot, a man accustomed to authority, at home with figures – but perhaps less capable when shutting up chickens for the night.
They are deeply, irrevocably in love. And every conversation may become a battlefield that leaves them wounded and resentful.
When the aged monk who handles the finances dies, Father John, the Abbot of nearby St Alcuin’s Abbey, finds himself critically short-handed. Who will handle the rents and provisions? John is a gifted infirmarian, a shrewd leader, but not an estate manager.
With rising panic he turns to his friend William, the man who renounced his vows for love – only to find that his own pastoral skills may be required in matters matrimonial. But what does a monk know of matrimony? Except that everyone is only human, and kindness is the oil of grace for both cloister and hearth.
