The King's Bishop (Owen Archer Mystery S.) - Softcover

Robb's fourth chronicle of 14th-century church and crown power-plays, highlighting Owen Archer, her Welsh, one-eyed soldier hero (The Nun's Tale, 1996, etc.). King Edward is determined to make William of Wykeham the next Bishop of Winchester, despite the Pope's objections, and he needs the support of the influential Cistercian monks of the abbeys at Fountains and Rievaulx. Archer is to lead the group traveling north on that mission. Sharing the task is his friend Ned Townley, a spy for the Duke of Lancaster, the King's son, who is now in France. Ned is in trouble with the household soldiers of Sir William Wyndosore. Sir William's page Daniel has drowned after a threatening encounter with Ned--who was known to be wildly jealous of Daniel's innocent friendship with Ned's dearly beloved Mary, maid to the King's mistress Alice Perrers. The traveling mission has not reached its goal when Ned gets the news that Mary, too, has drowned. In short order, the group's friar Don Ambrose disappears, as do two of his soldiers. Ned is on the run, tagged a murderer, and only Archer can save him- -with help from a surprising source and the revelation of a dark secret. Meantime, amid the proliferation of characters, long-winded conversations, chases through desolate landscapes, and detailed accounts of Archer's idyllic domestic interludes with his adored apothecary wife, only the incisive portraits of Alice Perrers and Lord Chancellor John Thoresby stand out. The rest is a jumbled scenario. Likely to be appreciated mainly by history buffs and medievalists. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In 1367, in the waning years of his reign, Edward III opposes Pope Urban V by trying to win the personal loyalty of English churchmen. Meanwhile, the king is also dealing with his own advisors' hatred of the royal mistress, Alice Perrers. Owen Archer, spy and steward for Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England, last encountered in The Nun's Tale, must come to the rescue of his old friend, Ned Townley, a soldier and spy for the Duke of Lancaster and subject of gossip after the suspicious death of a young page whose attentions to Townley's intended, Perrers' maid, had angered the soldier. Sent away from court to help garner support for the king from powerful monasteries, Townley, in the company of a friar, Don Ambrose, disappears in the wilderness north of York. Archer considers his dual loyalties as he searches the northern desolation. After finding the friar's murdered corpse, he strives to prevent Townley from becoming a disposable pawn in tangled intrigue. Robb's complex and sometimes ambiguous tale is replete with plausible nobles, churchmen and commoners, particularly Alice Perrers, who lives life on a tightrope while trying to help her maid, whose lowly origins reflect her own. Robb continues to adeptly blend politics with period detail and three-dimensioned characterization in the Owen Archer tales.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.