THE SILENT WOMAN
by Peter Tonkin
Footpads, assassins, and the Spanish Armada threaten Master of Defence Tom Musgrave as he seeks to protect Lady Margaret, Countess Cotehel, from the dark forces imperiling her life and fortune.
Raped and rendered mute as a young girl by the Earl of Essex and later locked in a madhouse, Lady Margaret has looked upon Musgrave (One Head Too Many, 2002) as her savior ever since he rescued her from Essex’s attempt on her life. So she naturally sends for the Master of Defence years later when she believes she and her young son, Baron Outremer, are being watched. But when Lady Margaret’s messenger arrives at Black Friars stabbed and dying, it’s as the Master of Logic that Musgrave decodes the bloody missive. Together with apprentice logician Ben Jonson carrying safe passage signed by Robert Poley himself, he journeys to Elfinstone only to find the Baron and his mother departed for their ancestral home on the Cornish coast. So they turn southward, riding through Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Devon at a steady gallop, overtaking the countess’s knight, St. Just; her secretary, Percy Gawdy; and the Baron’s tutor, Ezekiel Rowley, before catching up to the royal party at Easter Mass in Buckfast Abbey. There, Lady Margaret wordlessly welcomes Musgrave and they travel together to Cotehel, where dangers mount until all secrets are revealed.
Love, lust, and Elizabethan politics enliven Tonkin’s briskly paced puzzle.