Monk's Hood
It is the Christmas season of 1138, and Shrewsbury Abbey has a guest for the holidays: Gervase Bonel, his wife Richildis, and her son from a first marriage, Edwin. When Bonel dies suddenly after supper, poisoned by oil pressed from monk's-hood in Cadfael's own herbarium, suspicion falls immediately on Edwin, who stood to lose his inheritance to his stepfather.
Cadfael has his own stake in the matter beyond professional pride in his herbs: Richildis was the woman he nearly married before he took the cowl and went off to the Crusades. Torn between old feeling and present duty, he sets out to prove the boy's innocence, following a trail of old grudges, land disputes, and secrets that reach back further than anyone at the abbey expected.
Third in the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, this is a quieter, more intimate entry in the series, built around a small cast and a domestic crime rather than a battlefield or a siege.
Shrewsbury Abbey's herbalist and a former Crusader, whose knowledge of plants and human nature drives the investigation.
A guest at the abbey whose sudden death by poisoning sets the plot in motion.
Bonel's widow, and a woman Cadfael once nearly married before entering the monastery.
Richildis's son, wrongly suspected of murdering his stepfather.