When Judith Perle's husband dies, the young widow bestows one of her properties, a house in the Monk's Foregate, on the Abbey of Shrewsbury The only rent due is a single white rose to be delivered annually upon the day of translation of St Winifred But it seems that there is someone who will stop at nothing to prevent payment of the rose in the summer of 1142 the rose is hacked down and lying beside it, hacked with equal brutality, is a murdered man