London in 1543 is a city of turbulence and intrigue.
Stinks, mud and ships characterise the wide river, while
the streets are full of ragged people and beribboned
merchants. Those who move in the night seem sinister. THE
ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER Bianca Goddard keeps a workshop in
Southwark where she tinkers with potions, medicinals and
physicks. Having seen her father waste his life in search
of a philosopher's stone, she's not so keen on alchemy for
its own sake.
Bianca's friend John would happily wed her, but he's only
an apprentice silversmith. He'll need to be a master with
his own shop before he can support a wife. Her other
friend
Jolyn, a mudlark turned housemaid, sadly has minutes to
live, as we are told when we first meet her. Bianca then
has to explain away Jolyn's unexpected death in her shop.
Between plagues of rats, coroner's evidence, purgatives
and
emetics, this tale isn't for the dainty or tender. Bianca
has to deduce what might have caused her friend's death,
or
be condemned as a murderer. Where to start?
A ship with some deceased crewmen aboard ties up at the
docks, but the customs official finds the bodies as he
tots
the taxes due on ivory and silks. Immediately he
quarantines the Cristofur, but is it too late? The rats
have already started swimming to shore. Plague has hit
London many times during the past two hundred years...
will
it rear its head again? Also, during Henry the Eighth's
reign, there are many ways to offend the King, such as
following a different religion. Those thrown in jail can
expect short lives. With Constable Patch of Southwark
holding a warrant for her arrest, Bianca must work fast,
despite the perils of the City.
With Bianca and her associates as guides we explore the
past of London in all its unsavoury, unsanitary glory. The
river may be a running sewer and the inns full of
cutpurses, offal pies and watered ale, but we can
recognise
the people and their fight for a better, or at least a
sufficient, life. 'The Bianca Goddard Mysteries' will
continue to explore Tudor England, and this first
instalment THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER leaves us shivering,
aware of our miraculously improved living conditions and
in
awe of our forebears. Mary Lawrence has drawn this
portrait
with much research, empathy and admiration. And plenty of
rats.
In the year 1543 of King Henry VIII’s turbulent reign,
the daughter of a
notorious alchemist finds herself suspected of cold-blooded
murder…
Bianca Goddard employs her knowledge of herbs and medicinal
plants to concoct
remedies for the disease-riddled poor in London’s squalid
Southwark slum. But
when her friend Jolyn comes to her complaining of severe
stomach pains, Bianca’s
prescription seems to kill her on the spot. Recovering from
her shock, Bianca
suspects Jolyn may have been poisoned before coming to her—
but the local
constable is not so easily convinced.
To clear her name and keep her neck free of the gallows,
Bianca must apply her
knowledge of the healing arts to deduce exactly how her
friend was murdered and
by whom—before she herself falls victim to a similar fate…
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