The Widow's Guild

The third book in Anna Castle's Francis Bacon Mystery series opens with Lady Alice Trumpington, "Trumpet," hastily arranging her marriage to the ill and elderly Ralph Gumery, Viscount Surdeval.  Friends Tom Clarady and Ben Whitt are invited to the wedding but Tom gets a special invitation to stay for the wedding night. Trumpet has plans to provide Surdeval with sons but through Tom. However, as much as Tom desires her, he will not sleep with Trumpet. In the morning they find Surdeval dead in his bed with a cross carved into his chest.  Surdeval's nephew enters the bedroom, sees Tom and Trumpet together, accuses them of murder and they are sent to the Tower. Barrister Francis Bacon's aunt, Lady Elizabeth Russell, hires him on behalf of the widow's guild that she runs, the Andromache Society, to defend Trumpet. Bacon soon learns that there are two other victims, all lords who were nominal Catholics and had crosses carved into their chests, and that their private chapels were robbed on the night of their deaths. He must determine why and how these lords were killed and whether the robberies are connected to the deaths.

I am enjoying reading this series with its well developed characters and information on the English legal system. With character Francis Bacon taking the lead in this novel, the reader learns how barristers are educated, the law on widows benefits, the selling of wardships, and who can be tortured for being Catholic.  Trumpet is an interesting character. She occasionally dresses as a male in order to publicly meet with friends Tom Clarady and Ben Whitt. In prior books she dressed as a man in order to attend law school with them. As a woman in Elizabethan England she was prohibited from attending school but almost finished her education before she got caught. I admire her spunk. She doesn't want to be married so she chooses an elderly, rich man as a husband with the plan that he will die soon after the marriage leaving her a wealthy widow who can live however she desires.

The Widow's Guild is a fabulous installment in the Francis Bacon series. I rate it 5 out of 5 stars.