The last hours
(Book)

When the Black Death enters England in 1348, no one knows how it spreads and kills so quickly. The Church cites God as the cause, and religious fear grips the people as they come to believe that the plague is a punishment. But Lady Anne of Develish has her own ideas. Anne is a rarity among women, being both literate and knowledgeable. With her brutal husband absent when news of the pestilence reaches her, and being well-versed in the importance of isolating the sick from the well, she withdraws her people inside the moat that surrounds her manor house and refuses entry even to her husband. She makes an enemy of her daughter and her husband's steward by doing so, but her resolve is strengthened by the support of her leading serfs ... until food stocks run low and the nerves of all are tested by continued confinement and ignorance of what is happening outside. The people of Develish are alive. But for how long? And what will they discover when the time comes for them to cross the moat?