THE WEAVER'S TALE

Five months after he's killed (in March 1473) by whoever stole the money his employer, Edward Herepath, had briefly lodged with him, and two months after Edward's ne'er-do-well younger brother Robert has been hanged for his murder, Edward's debt collector, William Woodward, limps back into Bristol, a great deal the worse for wear (he's been badly beaten and has lost most of his memory) but incontestably alive. Woodward insists he was sold into slavery in Ireland, but itinerant peddler/investigator Roger the Chapman (The Plymouth Cloak, 1993, etc.), laid up in Bristol a month after Woodward's second death, can't find any corroboration of his story when he investigates for Woodward's family (his hospitable daughter Margaret and his predatory granddaughter Lillis). What he does find is heresy, fraud, sexual jealousy—and, sadly, an unsurprising solution. Despite its promise, the mystery turns out to be little more than an anecdote. The reward here is the continuing modernity lurking under the shifts and doublets of Sedley's medieval figures.