In October 1142 a local landlord had made a present of the Potter's Field to an Augustinian Priory close to Shrewsbury. This substantial meadow adjoining the river had gained its name from the fact that a potter called Ruald had lived and worked there for fifteen years with his beautiful young wife. Now, in August 1143, the field is to be transferred, for the sake of convenience, to the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter and St Paul in Shrewsbury. Shortly afterwards the Benedictine monks begin to plough it.
The plough turns up the long, raven tresses of a young woman, dead a year or more; even Brother Cadfael, herbalist and student of all things medical, cannot say how long.
Cadfael had taken his vows in middle age, after years of roaming and adventure in distant lands; and in the course of his duties in charge of the Abbey gardens and their herbal remedies had more than once been obliged to turn detective. The body of this young woman brings with it complex and delicate problems, for Ruald had abandoned his lovely wife when he felt the call to take monastic vows, and she is believed to have gone away secretly with a new lover.
It is not known who the dead woman is or how she died. But it seems likely that this is Ruald's wife, Generys, and that someone has murdered her. With the arrival at the Abbey of young Sulien Blount, a novice fleeing homewards from an abbey ravaged by the civil war then raging in East Anglia, the mysteries
surrounding the woman and her death start to multiply.