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Summary
Summary
Are the nude spies lolling in the ancient Roman communal baths of Elizabethan England plotting the return of Mary Queen of Scots? She is said to be clamoring to return to these healing waters. Once again Susanna, Lady Appleton, encounters murder and treason, and only she can unravel the crimes in the intriguing year of 1575. Rosamund, Susanna's twelve-year-old foster daughter, is certain her French tutor has been murdered. Rosamund and her friends are quite modern: they cut school, rebel against authority, and giggle over secrets. But can teenage mischief be construed as spying and treason? These are most significant matters to the Elizabethans, as the wrong religion, the wrong marriage, the wrong friends...may all be seditious.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in Buxton, Derbyshire, in 1575, the 10th entry in Emerson's Elizabethan historical series (Face Down Under the Wych Elm, etc.) smoothly mixes engaging characters, political intrigue, period customs and crime. Rosamond Appleton, the impetuous 12-year-old foster daughter of Susanna, Lady Appleton, is horrified when she learns that her French tutor, Madame Louise Poitier, has drowned face down in St. Anne's Well. Unable to accept the crowner's ruling of accidental death, Rosamond calls on Lady Appleton to investigate. Conspiracies and murders surrounding the imprisonment of Mary Stuart, the abdicated queen of Scots, complicate the process, but Lady Appleton and her friend and housekeeper, Jennet Jaffrey, as ever rise to the occasion. Those readers who need help keeping the characters straight can refer to a list at the front. There's also a glossary of unfamiliar Elizabethan words. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Louise Poitier, a French tutor in the spa city of Buxton, plays the Early Modern Mata Hari, assiduously confirming everything the English suspect about the French, except of course that she isn't really French, and not much of a tutor either. When Madame Poitier drowns in the heretofore healing waters of St. Anne's Well, Lady Susanna Appleton (Face Down Below the Banqueting House, 2005, etc.), foster mother of Poitier's 12-year-old tutee Rosamond Appleton, investigates. Susanna, herbalist, housewife and detective (a real Renaissance woman, since she lives in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I) discovers intrigue everywhere at Bawkenstanes Manor, home of Lady Bridget and Sir Richard Hawley, who care for and educate Rosamond and other girls, including their own daughter, Penelope. Rosamond is impetuously convinced that Madame Poitier was murdered. Her natural mother, Lady Pendennis, is busy matching her with Will Hawley, heir to the manor and unfortunately to his father's dissipations as well. Then Susanna recognizes the substitute French tutor as Annabel MacReynolds, a spy for Catherine de Medici and Mary, Queen of Scots, imprisoned only a few miles away. Annabel claims, like Susanna, to be merely investigating Louise's death, but the possibility of sedition only adds to the danger lurking in the waters of the "spaw." Susanna's ninth investigation is slowed by more speculation than actual intrigue among the sprawling cast. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Susanna, Lady Appleton, herbalist extraordinaire and amateur detective, returns in an all-new mystery fraught with plenty of sixteenth-century intrigue. When her stepdaughter's French tutor drowns in the soothing waters of one of Buxton's renowned naturally heated baths, Susanna is compelled to investigate. With the help of the precocious 12-year-old Rosamund Applegate and her ever-faithful housekeeper and friend Jennet Jaffrey, Lady Appleton unravels a tangled web of passion, deceit, and possible treason. As usual, the twisted affairs of state provide a colorful backdrop for Susanna's machinations, as Tudors and Stuarts vie for both political and religious power and control. Like Edward Marston in his Nicholas Bracewell series, Emerson steeps her period whodunits thoroughly in Elizabethan-era manners, language, and historical detail. --Margaret Flanagan Copyright 2006 Booklist
