The Heretic's Creed
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
“Buckley draws even the most minor characters with subtlety and skill, making the dramatic conclusion that much more satisfying.”
Publishers Weekly Starred Review
February, 1577. Sir William Cecil has a dangerous new mission for Ursula Blanchard. He has asked her to visit Stonemoor House on the bleak Yorkshire moors, the home of a group of recusant women led by Abbess Philippa Gould. In their possession is an ancient book, and the Queen’s advisor, Dr John Dee, is eager to get hold of it.
However, while the Abbess is anxious to sell the book, others such as her half-sister Bella believe it to be heretical and demand that it be burned. It is not Sir William’s first attempt to secure the book. His two previous emissaries vanished without trace. What happened to them – and will Ursula suffer the same fate?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Buckley's outstanding 14th Tudor mystery (after 2015's A Perilous Alliance) takes Ursula Blanchard, the intelligent, resourceful gentlewoman with a secret family connection to Elizabeth I, to an unofficial convent in a remote corner of the Yorkshire moors. An ostensible diplomatic visit to the court of the child king of Scotland, James VI, plays cover for Blanchard's investigation of Stonemoor House, where two men have gone on the queen's business before and never returned. Buckley manages not only to imbue the would-be convent, reached in the midst of a snowstorm no less, with mystery and menace but also to dramatize how difficult it was for a woman to live an independent life in the 1570s, whether she be Protestant widow or aristocratic Catholic spinster. It was a time when religious calling was hopelessly tangled with political loyalty, and people could easily mistake an herbal cure for a witch's potion. Still, there are no caricatured villains in this layered entry. Buckley draws even the most minor characters with subtlety and skill, making the dramatic conclusion that much more satisfying.
