The Chalk Hound of Ashcombe

About this book

Above the downland town of Ashcombe runs the Hound, a dog four hundred feet long cut into the white chalk of Carrow Hill and scoured clean every seventh summer. For forty years Maudry Fenn has kept it. Then, in the war against the Varn raiders, she buried it under turf so their night columns could not steer by it, and Ashcombe has never quite forgiven her. Now, in the year 412, the Hound is to be uncovered. Maudry is seventy-four, slow in the hip and stubborn in her habits, and her best apprentice, Ivo Larch, is about to lead the work. An old apprentice returns to town with a demand, and Maudry must decide whether to tell Ivo the one thing she has never written in her ledger. Told backwards through a long life, this is a story about what a custom costs, and who pays.