The Stage: While Brother Pacificus hides from his own past, the old world â?? monasteries, hospitals, guilds â?? is being squandered. Now he awakes to a new world order: the rise of the restless rich, the omnipotent state, the triumph of fact. The Players: They were nobodies; pawns, misfits, caught in the cogs of other menâ??s schemes. A monk, a leper, a whore, an eel-catcher, three children with parents accused of heresy, washed up like flotsam in these Norfolk backwaters. The Inferno: Heresy, sedition, betrayal, murder; Englandâ??s last Benedictine house boils over. Trust no one. Watch your back. Good advice, yet these unlikely heroes must now trade trust for survival. From the crypts of Saint Benetâ??s Abbey, to the brutal streets of London and Antwerp, the companions must face their darkest fears to protect those they love. From the coarse woollens and shattered dreams of the marsh, to the silks and intrigues of the Tudor court, they must learn to hang together. Or, of a certainty, they will hang separately. A thriller, romance, and novel of ideas, The Heretic is based on historical events and real people.

Vyner-Brooks, Henry