Flood waters make it necessary to disinter the cherished bones of Saint Winifred leaving Brother Cadfael to solve the mystery of their theft and a murder at the Abbey in Shrewsbury in 1144.

Brother Cadfael, a crime-solving monk in medieval Shrewsbury, has a disturbing encounter with his past when his investigation of wealthy Gervase Bonel's death by poisoning puts him in touch with Bonel's widow--the childhood sweetheart Cadfael left behind when he went to fight the Crusades forty years earlier.

In 1143, Brother Cadfael becomes involved in a mystery when the corpse of a young woman is plowed up in a potter's field near his monastery.

Brother Cadfael, a crime-solving monk in medieval Shrewsbury, goes searching for answers when he is called upon to bury ninety-four rebel soldiers executed on King Stephen's orders, and finds himself with one corpse too many.