Why a Booktrail?
Destination: Kent Departure Time: 1530s
Kent is reeling from the black death.
The Butcher Bird (Somershill Manor Mystery 2)
What you need to know before your trail
Oswald de Lacy is now firmly entrenched as his position as Lord of Somershill Manor. The Black Death has taken everything and everyone he’s ever known and both he and the villagers left behind are feeling the strain. There is more work now for less people and so the villagers feel they should be paid more by the King. but the King disagrees.
As well as the black death, there is something else spreading around the region: the story of the Butcher Bird which soars in the sky and flies down targeting children and new born babies spiriting them away. When a baby is found impaled on a thorn bus, Oswald is very nervous and very keen to find out the truth.
Travel Guide
From the plague-ruined villages of Kent to the thief-infested streets of London this novel takes you on a tour of the most shocking kind – deep in the heart of Medieval England and on the trail of a cursed mystery.
Just as the people of England are beginning to recover from the horrific loss of life from the Bubonic Plague. The land is awash with devastation and a feudal system which not longer works for lack of people to farm the land. If the plague hasn’t killed them the rank conditions of life and the lack of food certainly has. Day-to-day living conditions within these small, rural communities is a harsh life indeed.
The Butcher Bird – Kent
A myth which comes from the rumour that a man has opened his wife’s coffin and produced a butcher bird with her body which claims the life of children. The man is considered mad and show how madness and utter confusion and horror would have spread quicker than any plague would have done. Could Tonbridge Castle be a good setting for experiencing medieval Kent?
London
London might be the capital city and the scene of civilization to contrast with the rural depravity of Kent but here there is a different plague – one where thousands of immigrants from all over England have tried to escape to, filling the streets with hostility, empty dreams and poverty concentrated in huge areas. Lawlessness on the streets of the capital…
Eloise Cooper’s home in comparison is on the Strand, the height of luxury and where she eats nice food and wears nice clothes, the world outside is vastly different. Oswald spends time here and wants to spend more.
The Kent and London of the Butcher Bird are screeching and squawking with atmosphere.
Where Next?
