MARTIN DAVIES

An old Englishman sits by a harbour in Spain, hoping each day to hear what might have happened to the son he last saw as a child, many years before. He cannot die in peace until he knows. Dominic was sent to the royal court of Sicily, as page to the great scholar Antioch, and travelled with him on an expedition to the East, from which they never returned. Gradually, through meetings with travellers, the old man puts together most of the story and now the narrative of the expedition alternates with his own. The mission to the East is shrouded in secret motives and mysterious encounters. The boy is befriended by the party's interpreter, Venn, and embroiled in an exotic, dangerous adventure involving lost Cathar treasure, capture by the unimaginably cruel Emperor of China and a plan to bring the Mongol hordes of the Great Khan west to destroy the culture of Christendom. And at the heart of the web of politics and deceit, Venn falls in love with a woman whose sad story he has deciphered from the secret women's language which really existed in China for hundreds of years. As magically evocative as an ancient silk painting, this is a novel of the medieval world which illuminates our own

Estamos en Londres a mediados del siglo XIX, y la señora Hudson, un ama de llaves entrada en años, astuta y muy competente, busca una casa donde ella misma y su ayudante Flottie puedan encontrar cobijo y trabajo. Finalmente llega la oportunidad que tanto esperaba: dos solterones un tanto excéntricos buscan a una persona discreta que se haga cargo de su nueva casa en Baker Street. Así es cómo Mrs. Hudson y Flottie entran en la vida de Sherlock Holmes y el doctor Watson, y aunque lo hagan por la puerta de serivicio, muy pronto la inteligencia de la ancina y la sagacidad de la joven las convierten en la mano derecha de los dos investigadores, hasta el punto de que son ellas quienes finalmente resuelven los casos más difíciles. 

A bestselling Richard and Judy Book Club title, THE CONJURORS BIRD is a dazzling debut novel, spanning three centuries of secrets and surprises.