The village of Lavenham lay under a perpetual veil of smoke and ash. The plague carts had stopped coming weeks ago because there were simply too many bodies to collect. Every night the church bell tolled to mark the hour another soul slipped away. Mary, the apothecary’s widow, had grown used to the sound of the bell. She kept a candle burning in the window for her husband. The rats would have picked his bones clean in the burial pit by now. Her fingers were stained with herbs