The Heretic’s Creed

Buckley’s outstanding 14th Tudor mystery (after 2015’s A Perilous Alliance) takes Ursula Blanchard, the intelligent, resourceful gentlewoman with a secret family connection to Elizabeth I, to an unofficial convent in a remote corner of the Yorkshire moors. An ostensible diplomatic visit to the court of the child king of Scotland, James VI, plays cover for Blanchard’s investigation of Stonemoor House, where two men have gone on the queen’s business before—and never returned. Buckley manages not only to imbue the would-be convent, reached in the midst of a snowstorm no less, with mystery and menace but also to dramatize how difficult it was for a woman to live an independent life in the 1570s, whether she be Protestant widow or aristocratic Catholic spinster. It was a time when religious calling was hopelessly tangled with political loyalty, and people could easily mistake an herbal cure for a witch’s potion. Still, there are no caricatured villains in this layered entry. Buckley draws even the most minor characters with subtlety and skill, making the dramatic conclusion that much more satisfying. (Jan.)