Whispers of the Dead
Read Whispers of the Dead Online
Authors: Peter Tremayne
Tags: #_rt_yes, #Church History, #Fiction, #tpl, #_NB_Fixed, #Mystery, #Historical, #Clerical Sleuth, #Medieval Ireland
WHISPERS
OF THE DEAD
BY PETER TREMAYNE AND FEATURING
SISTER FIDELMA
Absolution by Murder
Shroud for the Archbishop
Suffer Little Children
The Subtle Serpent
The Spider’s Web
Hemlock at Vespers
Valley of the Shadow
The Monk Who Vanished
Act of Mercy
Our Lady of Darkness
Smoke in the Wind
The Haunted Abbot
Badger’s Moon*
*forthcoming
PETER TREMAYNE
OF THE DEAD
Fifteen Sister Fidelma Mysteries
St. Martin’s Minotaur
New York
For the wonderfully supportive members of
The International Sister Fidelma Society,
with gratitude
WHISPERS OF THE DEAD.
Copyright © 2004 by Peter Tremayne. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Design by Kathryn Parise
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Tremayne, Peter.
Whispers of the dead : fifteen Sister Fidelma mysteries / Peter
Tremayne.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-30382-3
EAN 978-0312-30382-2
1. Fidelma, Sister (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Ireland—
History—To 1172—Fiction. 3. Women detectives—Ireland—Fiction.
4. Detective and mystery stories, English. 5. Historical fiction, English.
6. Nuns—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6 070.R366W47 2004
823’.914—dc22
2003070096
First Edition: May 2004
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Astrologer Who Predicted His Own Murder
W
elcome to the second volume of Sister Fidelma short mystery stories. The Sister Fidelma mysteries are set during the seventh century
A.D.
, mainly in her native Ireland.
Sister Fidelma is not simply a religieuse. She is, indeed, a member of what we now call the Celtic Church, whose conflicts with Rome on matters of theology and social governance are well known. As well as the differences in rituals, the dating of Easter and the wearing of a dissimilar tonsure, celibacy was not widely practiced and many religious houses contained individuals of both sexes who raised their children to the continued service of God. However, Fidelma is basically a qualified
dálaigh,
an advocate of the seventh-century law courts of Ireland, and using the ancient Brehon Law system. In
those days women were co-equal with men and could aspire to all the professions. Many women were lawyers and judges and wrote law texts as well as interpreted them. Indeed, we even know the names of many of them.
Those who have followed Sister Fidelma’s adventures in the series of novels and in the previous volume of short stories,
Hemlock at Vespers,
will no doubt be acquainted with the historical and social background to these stories. Those volumes contain an explanatory “Historical Note.” Such background details have also been put on the amazing International Sister Fidelma Society Web site at
www.sisterfidelma.com
and I feel it is superfluous to add it to this volume.
In these short stories, as with the previous fifteen tales collected in
Hemlock at Vespers,
Fidelma usually appears without her companion, the Irish-trained Saxon Brother Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham, from the land of the South Folk. There is an exception in this volume. “The Lost Eagle” features Brother Eadulf because it is an event that occurs while Sister Fidelma is visiting Canterbury with him, and chronologically occurring between the events in the novels
Smoke in the Wind
and
The Haunted Abbot
. Every other tale is set in Ireland.