Washoe County Library System

It is the year of Our Lord's grace 1431, and the nuns of England's St. Frideswide sweetly chant their Paternosters behind gracious, trellised walls. But their quiet lives are shattered by the unwelcome visit of the hard-drinking, blaspheming dowager Lady Ermentrude, with her retinue of lusty maids and men, baying hounds, and even a pet monkey in tow. The lady demands wine, a feast, and her niece, the frail and saintly novice Thomasine.

It was Christmastime, and the sisters of St. Frideswide cannot turn away travellers...even the players knocking at the nunnery door. But along with the motley troupe comes the grievously wounded husband of the cloister's scullery maid, Med. They swear they found the drunken wastrel in a ditch...but the tale sounds like another song and dance. Especially when two dead bodies are waiting in the wings.