The Breath of Peace

14th century Yorkshire: the time of Chaucer.

"The combination of impeccable research and relational and spiritual adventure is irresistible. We are in a real place, with real people. A feast of characters and ideas." - Adrian Plass, author of The Sacred Diary series

Madeleine Hazell and William de Bulmer have been married a year.

She is a healer, a wise woman, intelligent and blunt. He is both an ex-monk and an ex-abbot, a man accustomed to authority, at home with figures - but perhaps less capable when shutting up chickens for the night.

They are deeply, irrevocably in love. And every conversation may become a battlefield that leaves them wounded and resentful.

When the aged monk who handles the finances dies, Father John, the Abbot of nearby St Alcuin's Abbey, finds himself critically short-handed. Who will handle the rents and provisions? John is a gifted infirmarian, a shrewd leader, but not an estate manager.

With rising panic he turns to his friend William, the man who renounced his vows for love - only to find that his own pastoral skills may be required in matters matrimonial. But what does a monk know of matrimony? Except that everyone is only human, and kindness is the oil of grace for both cloister and hearth.

The series continues with The Beautiful Thread. Pen Wilcock publishes a popular blog at www.kindredofthequietway.co.uk.