The Scarlet Women

She was born in a poor-house and, at fourteen, was wedded to a nobleman of France. But the vagaries of the fifteenth century were such that, when widowed, Avice found herself an outcast from church and society alike.

And so she came to the brothel, to the one place where a woman outside the church could be sheltered and protected—and with her came the others—the women shunned by mediaeval France—Blanche, ridden with her own unnatural desires—Emilianne, carrying a strange immunity from the plague—Catalina, whose mother had been burned as a witch...