Virgin in ice
E-book, Czech
Virgin in ice
When war drives children from their homes...
The year is 1139. The war between the supporters of King Stephen and Empress Matilda has driven more than half the population from Worcester in the north of England. The siblings Yves and Ermina Hugonin have also fled, accompanied by the young nun, Hilaria. They were supposedly heading for Shrewsbury, but they never arrived…
Brother Cadfael decides to travel to the monastery in Bromfield to find out more about their fate. By a fortunate chance, he runs into Yves there, but all he knows about his sister is that she disappeared with Evrard Boterel, who had courted her long ago.
When Cadfael discovers the body of a young girl in a frozen stream on his way home, he becomes terribly suspicious. A gang of thugs is terrorising the area, taking advantage of the confusion caused by the war to enrich themselves. To add to the case, an exotic stranger appears, who reminds Cadfael of someone. But who? Does he have something to do with the crime? And whose body has the wise monk actually discovered?
Ellis Peters
Ellis Peters, real name Edith Mary Pargeter (1913–1995), was an English writer of Welsh descent, whose work mainly includes war, historical, and detective fiction. She also had close ties to Czech and Slovak culture, fell in love with Prague, and, as a Bohemianist, translated a number of books by acclaimed authors such as Jan Neruda and Bohumil Hrabal into English. She made her mark on world literature with the trilogy The Heaven Tree, a twenty-part series of historical detective stories featuring Brother Cadfael set during the civil war in twelfth-century England, and also the cases of Inspector Felse and his son, which comprise thirteen volumes. She spent practically her entire life—with a few exceptions, such as a short stay in Prague—in her native county of Shropshire. It was here that she died at the age of eighty-two.
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