Volume IX of the Domesday Books.
Henry Beaumont, constable of Warwick Castle, keeps a renowned pack of fox hounds: quick, brave and ruthless at the kill, just like their master. Yet one December hunt, to the horror of the riders, the dogs uncover more than a fox in the woodlands - the crushed body of Martin Reynard, reeve to the neighbouring estate of the old Saxon thane, Thorkell, and a former member of Beaumont's own household. Enraged, Henry swears to find the killer.
By chance, justice is already on the way, in the form of Domesday Commissioners Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret, sent to adjudicate land disputes in the Warwick area. To their minds, the man Henry has arrested seems an unlikely villain: Boio, Thorkell's bear-like but gentle blacksmith. Why has Henry leaped to such a strange conclusion? And could Reynard's death be linked to his forthcoming evidence in the land disputes? With dissent already brewing between their two new commissioners and Beaumont baying for blood, Ralph and Gervase have little time to save Boio's neck...
