The Codeword Of The Rows

A Medieval Yarmouth Mystery - Book 1

Medieval Great Yarmouth, 1375. In a town of 145 narrow alleys where secrets pass in whispers, a Flemish shipmaster is found dead in a cut-through between Row 57 and Row 59, his purse untouched but his precious locked coffer gone. Scratched in the mud beside him is a single, indecipherable word: COLPATHE.

Sixteen-year-old Etheldreda "Ethel" Cristemasse, a net-mender and Row-runner with a memory that never forgets a single whispered word, knows the stranger's death was no common robbery. But no one listens to a penniless servant girl. When a simple-minded boat caulker she calls a friend is arrested for the crime, Ethel must use her gift to navigate a labyrinth of merchant greed, smuggling rings, and silent conspiracies hidden in the very walls of the Rows. The truth is written in mud, coded on oyster shells, and buried in a secret coal-cellar?and Ethel is the only one who can dig it out before the real killer silences her forever.