Chronicles of Ashwrath

England, 1348. The Black Death is in the village. Something else is too.

John Pike, priest of Ashwrath, reads from a chronicle that knows more than he does — a record of a village dying of one sickness while another moves quietly through its lanes, leaving cold where warmth should be, silence where there should be sound, a mark in the mud with corners too sharp for any sole he knows.

Two girls are still missing. A wisewoman waits in her leaning house for what she has known was coming. A careful constable keeps a list he has not yet finished.

And in the iron case on Pike's desk, the seventh volume waits.