Heartstone

Summer, 1545. England is at war. Henry VIII's invasion of France has
gone badly wrong, and a massive French fleet is preparing to sail across
the Channel. As the English fleet gathers at Portsmouth, the country
raises the largest militia army it has ever seen. The King has debased
the currency to pay for the war, and England is in the grip of soaring
inflation and economic crisis. Meanwhile Matthew Shardlake is given an
intriguing legal case by an old servant of Queen Catherine Parr. Asked
to investigate claims of 'monstrous wrongs' committed against a young
ward of the court, which have already involved one mysterious death,
Shardlake and his assistant Barak journey to Portsmouth. Once arrived,
Shardlake and Barak find themselves in a city preparing to become a war
zone; and Shardlake takes the opportunity to also investigate the
mysterious past of Ellen Fettipace, a young woman incarcerated in the
Bedlam. The emerging mysteries around the young ward, and the events
that destroyed Ellen's family nineteen years before, involve Shardlake
in reunions both with an old friend and an old enemy close to the
throne. Events will converge on board one of the King's great warships,