Features

UNCHANGING HAMBANTOTA

Published

1 year ago

2025/05/11

Thilina Walpola

Man with buffalo

CHAPTER 1

I came from a humble family and did not have any privileges of class or

caste. I only had a great longing to study, and believed, even as a child,

that education would open up vistas of greatness for me. As I grew older

I had no desire to stagnate in a village that had few opportunities for the

young to realize their dreams. Each of us when we are young, whatever

our social and economic status, have visions of achieving greatness and

leaving behind a mark for posterity.

(N.U. Jayawardena, interview with Manel Abhayaratne)

The Family

Ubesinghe Jayawardenage Nonis, later Neville Ubesinghe (NU) Jayawardena (1908-2002), was born on 25 February 1908 in Hambantota. His father, Ubesinghe Jayawardenage Diyonis was born in Tangalle, in the Hambantota district, in 1879, and his mother, Gajawirage Podinona (known as ‘Nona Akka’), born in 1887, was from Devundara (Dondra) in the neighbouring Matara district. They were both Buddhists of the Durava caste. Of their 11 children, a daughter died in infancy and two sons died from illness in childhood – a not uncommon feature at that time.

NU’s parents already had two daughters, Charlotte and Rosalind, when the eldest son NU was born. In a society where a male child was much desired, NU’s birth was welcomed and celebrated. As was customary, his horoscope was cast. His maternal grandfather carefully read it, and gave it to NU’s father with the request that he should not show it to anyone. When asked whether there was bad news in it, the grandfather had assured his son-in-law that there was no such thing, but that he should keep it carefully for reference at some future date (de Zoysa manuscript, p.37).

As the eldest son, NU held a privileged position, and much care and attention were lavished on him by parents, grandparents and elder sisters. The latter referred to him as budu malli – a term of great affection. Subsequently, there were two more surviving sons, David and Peter. In addition to the two elder girls, three more daughters were born to the family – Wimala, Sita and Hilda.

Hunting party

NU’s life in rural Hambantota is reflected in the nutritious food he ate – namely, buffalo milk, curd and kurakkan pittu – and the comments he made about his early childhood: I was the third in the family and the eldest among the boys. My parents were very concerned and affectionate towards me. The first memorable event I recall is how my parents, particularly my mother, looked after me. She would give me every morning a glass of hot buffalo milk and never failed to send me a glass of warm buffalo milk to school during our tea break. (Carol Aloysius, 2000)

He recalls that he crouched near a wall to drink the milk unseen, so that other students would not tease him. NU frequently claimed in later life that, perhaps, it was this glass of milk and buffalo curd that contributed to his robust health and longevity (ibid).

Hambantota in Colonial Times

In the Southern Province of Sri Lanka, the districts of Matara and Galle were relatively prosperous compared to the poverty-stricken Hambantota district. NU was to be linked closely with all three districts of the Southern Province in his youth. The Hambantota district was 1,013 square miles in extent, and in 1911 the population of the district was 110,508, mainly Sinhala, except for the townof Hambantota, which had a large Muslim population – many of Malay origin, dating from the time of Dutch rule in the maritime regions.1 NU’s parents had many Malay friends, as recollected by his sister Rosalind.

The district of Hambantota had three divisions – West Giruvapattu, East Giruvapattu and Magampattu – with a Mudaliyar as well as superior and minor headmen involved in the administration. While the Government Agent (GA) of the Southern Province was stationed in Galle, the Hambantota district was administered by an Assistant Government Agent (AGA) resident in Hambantota.

A Malay man and boy

A few months after NU’s birth in February 1908, Leonard Woolf became AGA of this district, serving there from August 1908 to May 1911. Woolf had joined the civil service in 1906, and on returning to Britain in 1911, he became a Labour Party political activist, anti-imperialist agitator, writer, publisher, and author of The Village in the Jungle, a novel of rural poverty based on his Hambantota experiences.

But he was, perhaps, to achieve most fame as the husband of the novelist Virginia Woolf, whom he married on his return from Sri Lanka. Valuable insights into life in the Hambantota area in that period are given in the second volume of Leonard Woolf ’s autobiography, Growing – which also describes his years in other parts of the country. His Diaries in Ceylon (1908-1911), published in 1962, details his day-to-day activities and observations as a civil servant.

Woolf ’s vivid descriptions of the environment and the climate of Hambantota, not only help set the backdrop to NU’s childhood, but also help us understand what may have propelled him and his family to leave the area. Hambantota was the poorest district in the island at that time, and is currently still one of the least developed. As Saparamadu, in his introduction to Leonard Woolf ’s Diaries, writes: The Hambantota District… was somewhat dissimilar from the other districts of Ceylon. The land was flat and low and the climate particularly in the eastern half of the district was very hot and dry. The rainfall was usually as low as 25 inches a year. As a result of this climate, no settled forms of agriculture were possible except where irrigation facilities were available, and ‘the people generally were among the poorest in the whole island’. (Woolf,1962, p.xxxvi-vii, emphasis added)

Persistent Poverty and Disease

Woolf in his Diaries refers to the “small scattered and usually poverty stricken villages of the area” (ibid, p.175), and to areas where there had been no rainfall for four or five years. The town of Hambantota had the only hospital of the district in 1908, dealing mostly with cases of malaria. Leonard Woolf was concerned with the health of the region and recommended another hospital for Tissamaharama, pointing out that the death rate for the Hambantota district was extremely high – almost double the national rate (ibid, p.5). Woolf writes of the pauperized, almost famine-stricken people of Andarawewa and Beddewewa, whose pathetic plight he portrays movingly in his novel The Village in the Jungle, written on his return to Britain. In his Diaries, he expresses disquiet and solicitude for these village people and records that:

The villages are decimated by malaria. It is an awful sight to see the children. In Beddewewa tank, I saw a child about five… absolute skin and bones, but his belly was about three times the size of the body… I told the uncle that the child would die… he said ‘probably he will die, most of our families here are dying.’ I had the child taken to Hambantota. (ibid, p.215)

The persistent poverty and disease in the Hambantota district were frequently mentioned by Leonard Woolf and clearly concerned him deeply. He referred to a book by J.W. Bennett, a former Assistant Government Agent of Hambantota from 1827 to 1828, who described the severity of the malaria epidemics in the 1820s. This led Woolf to speculate on the better sanitary facilities, hospitals and dispensaries in 1910, but adding that: “it is difficult to account for the difference between Hambantota then and now for the town itself and its immediate surroundings appear to have changed very little” (Woolf, 1962, p.132, emphasis added).

Leonard Woolf with kachcheri staff and ‘native’ officials

The Hambantota district had very poor communications with the outside world; and since the railway line from Colombo did not go beyond Matara, the Hambantota district relied on the sea and road routes. Steamers were run by a private company (under government subsidy) every two weeks, linking Colombo with the ports along the coast, including Batticaloa and Trincomalee. The Colombo-Hambantota journey cost Rs. 5 ( ibid, p.1xxii). As Woolf recalled:

We travelled about our districts on a horse, on a bicycle or on our feet. The pulse of ordinary life was determined by the pace of a bullock cart. There were no motor buses – even the ‘coach’ from Anuradhapura to the Northern Province was… a bullock cart… You could only get to know the villagers… by continually walking among them sitting under a tree or on the bund and listening to their complaints and problems. (ibid, p.1xxix-xx)

Agriculture and Chena Cultivation

Paddy was the main crop of the district and the principal occupation was agriculture – facilitated by major irrigation works linked to the Valave Ganga and Kirinde Oya. As Saparamadu notes: “Paddy production was done according to traditional… methods,” but rinderpest was a problem, which in 1909 “wiped out almost the entire buffalo and cattle population, without which the extensive cultivation of paddy was impracticable” (quoted in Woolf, 1962, p.xxxvii). Where there was no irrigation, villagers resorted to the primitive ‘slash and burn’ (chena) – namely, the practice of burning patches of forest for cultivation. The scourge of malaria also added to the woes of the poverty-stricken villagers. In Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon (1907, p.753), the Hambantota district was described as “the least promising and most sparsely populated portion of the Southern Province,” where agriculture took “the pernicious form of chena cultivation,” referred to as “a wasteful system which flourishes in spite of all official efforts todiscourage it.” Woolf noted that the people of East and West Giruvapattu “show no progress”:

Archduke Franz Ferdinand Of Austria Hunting In Ceylon

Fever stricken, fatalists by nature, unable and unwilling to procure any occupation other tha n that which has earned the opprobrium of half a century of officials… fever and emigration has caused the disappearance of some and the reduction of many of these villages. (quoted in Denham, 1912, p.87-88)

Other crops of the region were coconut and citronella, with most of the revenue for the district coming from the production of salt. Major Forbes, of the 78th Highlanders, author of Eleven Years in Ceylon, published in 1840, describes many spectacular panoramic views from the town of Hambantota – of sea, salterns, forests and hills.

Details of the economy and the means of livelihood of the region – based on rice cultivation and salt production – were also described by Forbes: Cattle and buffalo were the people’s most valuable property; the prosperity of the whole district depended upon them. It was almost entirely an agricultural district and rice, the most important crop, was dependent for ploughing and threshing upon cattle and buffaloes. Everywhere the only form of transport was the bullock cart, and in Hambantota town… there were a large number of carters, many of them Mohammedans, who depended for a living upon the transport of salt and so upon their bulls who pulled the carts. (quoted in de Zoysa manuscript)

Leonard Woolf gives us a vivid impression of the Hambantota district in his time:

Twenty miles east of Hambantota was Tissamaharama with a major irrigation work and a resident white Irrigation Engineer. Here was a great stretch of paddy fields irrigated from the tank and a considerable population of cultivators… Magampattu also produced salt. All along the coast eastwards from Hambantota were great lagoons or lewayas. In the dry season between the south-west and the north-east monsoons the salt water in these lewayas evaporates and ‘natural’ salt forms, sometimes over acres of the mud and sand. Salt… was a government monopoly, and it was my duty to arrange for the collecting, transport, storing, and selling of the salt– a large-scale complicated industry. (Woolf, 1961, p.175)

What is notable is that in the 68 years between the accounts of Forbes and Woolf, the economy and society of the region remained more or less unchanged.

A hackery

Hunting and Shooting with the International Elite

One feature of the Hambantota region, referred to as a “sportsman’s paradise,” was game hunting during the ‘open season.’ Magampattu was famous for its game and wild animals. Woolf (1961, p.200) writes that there was a Government Game Sanctuary located there, of “about 130 square miles, in which no shooting was allowed.” Its unusual Game Ranger, named Henry Engelbrecht, was a former Boer-War soldier from South Africa, who had been imprisoned in the island, and then stayed on and died in Sri Lanka in 1928.

The big game in Magampattu jungles were leopard, bear, elephant, buffalo and deer. There was also wild boar, snipe and teal. Although Woolf disapproved of shooting animals, he had to be officially involved in catering to the ‘hunting-shooting culture’ of the time, and to entertaining the international elite, of (in Woolf ’s words) “Princes, Counts, Barons,” as well as “less exalted people, soldiers, planters” (ibid, p.178). The international sportsmen included royalty and aristocrats, such as the Crown Prince of Germany, and Baron Blixen, a Danish cousin of Queen Alexandra. As Woolf wrote, “Big game shooting was organized in Colombo as big business,” a Colombo firm providing the hunters with carts, trackers, tents and food (ibid,p.218). Some of the hunters stayed at Woolf ’s official residence and no doubt also patronized the Hambantota Resthouse, where NU’s father would have seen to their comfort. Woolf describes his distaste for the hunting scene, and the “sportsmen” whom he described as “uncongenial” (ibid, p.218):

The issuing of licences to shoot big game… was in my hands and in the open season sportsmen from all over the world used to come to Hambantota… I got to know a great deal about… the business of big game shooting; the more I learned, the less grew my love and respect for those who shoot and for those who organize shooting. (ibid, p.176)

Leonard Woolf

As Woolf further elaborated:

As time went on and my experience of the jungle, shooting, and shooters increased, I became more and more prejudiced against my fellow white men… a great deal of this big-business organized safari… was despicable butchery. (ibid, pp.217 & 224)2

The foreign royalty, nobility and celebrities, along with the Sri Lankan rich, who visited the area for ‘big game’ hunting would have been a stark contrast to the pauperized, unhealthy villagers, whose plight had changed little over the century. Woolf had to deal with both groups; however, he had less empathy for these wealthy ‘sportsmen’ and more for the poor villagers. He became attached to the place and the people during his time there.

Map of Hambantota

As he recalled: It was Magampattu and the eastern part of the district which really won my heart and which I still see when I hear the word Hambantota: the sea perpetually thundering on the long shore, the enormous empty lagoons, behind the lagoons the enormous stretch of jungle, and behind the jungle far away in the north the long purple line of the great mountains. (Woolf, 1961, p.176)

But to the young NU of the 1920s, Hambantota district had no romantic appeal. It had not changed and still remained among the poorest parts of the island – where only the fittest survived – from where ambitious young persons had to migrate to the more-developed areas, for their education, and future employment. Looking back on his life, NU often expressed the view that he had never intended to stagnate in a place with no opportunities. An event in 1911 that galvanized people of the island was Halley’s comet, which shot across the skies. NU, aged three at the time, would have seen this spectacle – in fact, his elder sister Rosalind, aged six, recalled seeing the comet. Another witness to the event was E.F.C. Ludowyk, who recalled Halley’s comet and going with his family to view the phenomenon from a house near the sea in Galle, noted that “there were crowds to watch the comet, which blazed like a torch in a dark vault” (Ludowyk, 1989, p.71).

Leonard Woolf was also stunned by the sight in Hambantota: …[T]he head of the comet was just above the horizon, the tail flamed up the sky… The stars blazed with… brilliance only on a clear, still black night in the Southern Hemisphere and at our feet the comet and the stars blazed, reflected in the smooth velvety, black sea… it was a superb spectacle… magnificent… awe-inspiring. (Woolf, 1961, p.192) Like Halley’s comet, NU’s rise to success would prove to be meteoric.

N.U. JAYAWARDENA THE FIRST FIVE DECADES
By Kumari Jayawardena and Jennifer Moragoda

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Features

Combining local resources,traditional knowledge and science to build a food-secure Sri Lanka

Published

2 hours ago

2026/10/16

Thilina Walpola

World Food Day 2026: Innovating today for a better food future

by Dr. Kaushalya Wijayasekara

What will be on the Sri Lankan dinner table ten years from now? Will our children be able to get nutritious food at a price their families can afford? Will farmers be able to grow enough despite changing weather and rising costs? And how much of the food we produce will actually reach the consumer, instead of being lost or wasted along the way?

These questions can’t wait. A farmer faces unpredictable weather. A family faces rising food costs. Fruit goes unsold after a good harvest. Some children do not get enough nutrition. The future of food is tied to the future of Sri Lanka itself.

World Food Day 2026 is a chance to look beyond the immediate problems and ask whether we can build a food system that feeds our people well, gives farmers better opportunities, protects the environment and makes better use of what we already have. The answer can be yes, but we will have to think differently.

We are not starting from zero. Sri Lanka has diverse crops, fisheries, traditional food knowledge, indigenous varieties, research institutions, universities and a young generation able to create new solutions. What we need is to bring these together and act. Producing more will not secure our food future on its own. It will depend on how intelligently we produce, process, preserve, distribute and consume food.

Making more of what we already have

Innovation does not always mean inventing something new. Often it means finding better uses for the resources we have.

Sri Lanka grows traditional rice varieties, kurakkan, green gram, cowpea, jackfruit, breadfruit, cassava, sweet potato, coconut and palmyrah. All of them have great potential for modern, nutritious, value-added foods. Jackfruit and breadfruit can be made into flour and other convenient products. Traditional rice varieties can go into new foods that suit changing consumer needs. Palmyrah, with its strong cultural heritage, can create new income through better processing, packaging, quality assurance and market development.

The aim is to connect our traditional food knowledge with modern consumer needs and technology, while keeping our food heritage.

Stop wasting the food we produce

Reducing food loss and waste should be a major priority. Seasonal fruits such as mango, banana, papaya and pineapple can be lost in large quantities when production exceeds demand or when storage, transport and processing facilities are inadequate. With suitable technology, these fruits can become dried products, pulps, powders, beverages and other shelf-stable foods.

Agricultural and fisheries by-products are resources too. They could be turned into food ingredients, animal feed, bio-based products and other useful materials, which would move us toward a more circular food economy.

Technology alone is not enough. We need stronger local processing facilities, cold storage, efficient transport, collection centres and market information systems, especially close to where food is produced. Cutting food loss raises the value of what our farmers and fishers already produce.

Nutrition and food safety come first

Food security means more than having enough food. People also need food that is safe and nutritious.

Sri Lanka can develop affordable, nutritious foods from local pulses, grains, vegetables, fruits and fish. Children and other vulnerable groups should get particular attention. Schoolchildren in particular deserve a focus: safe, nutritious, locally sourced products for school feeding programs would support child nutrition, local farmers and domestic food industries at the same time.

Food safety must stay at the centre of food innovation. Good hygiene, quality control, laboratory testing, traceability and appropriate food safety systems are what make new products safe as well as attractive and nutritious.

A food system that can cope with climate change

Climate change is already affecting agricultural production, water availability, crop yields and food prices. We need food systems that can handle changing conditions. That means climate-resilient crops, efficient water use, soil and water conservation, better storage and resource-efficient food processing.

Traditional knowledge matters here. Generations of Sri Lankan farmers have developed practices suited to local climates and ecosystems. Combining that experience with modern science can give us solutions that fit local conditions and are sustainable. Technology alone will not build the future of food. Science, experience and local knowledge together can.

Give young people a bigger role

Sri Lanka’s universities have an important part to play in shaping our food future. Young people should be encouraged to identify real problems in the food system and work on practical solutions in areas such as food waste, sustainable packaging, nutrition, food safety, modernising traditional foods and digital technologies.

A good research project should not always end as a research paper. Where appropriate, research should be supported to move on to products, technologies, enterprises and community solutions. That needs stronger partnerships between universities and industry, along with mentoring, research funding, business support and market connections. If young researchers and entrepreneurs can turn their ideas into viable food innovations, both consumers and producers will benefit.

A pathway designed for Sri Lanka

We do not need to copy food-system models from other countries. We can build a pathway that suits our own resources, culture and needs. It would bring together local resources, traditional knowledge, scientific research, appropriate technology and entrepreneurship, with farmers, fishers, universities, research institutions, food industries, entrepreneurs and policymakers working side by side.

The goal goes beyond selling raw materials. We need to create more value, reduce waste, improve nutrition, generate jobs and strengthen rural livelihoods. This matters especially for small and medium-scale food enterprises, which can drive local economic development when they get the right technical, financial and market support.

The choices we make today

The food future will not create itself. It will be shaped by what we grow, what we research, what we process, what we consume and what we choose not to waste.

So, the question for World Food Day 2026 is this: what can we do today so that every Sri Lankan has safe, nutritious, affordable and sustainable food tomorrow?

The answers are already around us, in our farms, fisheries, food businesses, universities, laboratories and communities. We have the resources, the traditional knowledge, the scientific expertise and talented young people. What we need now is to connect them and act.

A better food future begins with the choices we make today.

Dr. Kaushalya Wijayasekara

Senior Lecturer, Department of Biosystems Technology, Faculty of Technology, University of Ruhuna

Features

20th Anniversary of Digampathana blast – the day Sri Lanka Navy cried

Published

3 hours ago

2026/10/16

Thilina Walpola

Aftermath of the terror attack

By Admiral Ravindra C Wijegunaratne
WV, RWP and Bar, RSP, VSV, USP, NI (M) (Pakistan), ndc, psn, Bsc
(Hons) (War Studies) (Karachi) MPhil (Madras)
Former Navy Commander and Former Chief of Defence Staff
Former Chairman, Trincomalee Petroleum Terminals Ltd
Former Managing Director Ceylon Petroleum Corporation
Former High Commissioner to Pakistan

The Digampathana suicide truck attack on 16th October 2006 remains the deadliest single strike in Sri Lanka Navy history, leaving scars that time cannot erase.

It was a seemingly ordinary Monday morning on 16 October 2006, but the calm of that day would soon be shattered in a way none of us could have imagined. As the Commandant of the Naval and Maritime Academy and Flag Officer Commanding Naval Fleet at Trincomalee, I was aware that a number of my cadets were travelling that morning, part of a convoy of fifteen buses carrying naval personnel from Trincomalee, Colombo, and other bases, heading toward Dambulla to rendezvous with another group. The convoy also included trucks and escort vehicles, a routine movement planned and coordinated with the army to ensure the roads were clear. The morning started quietly. Some personnel greeted friends, handed over their weapons, or strolled to a nearby tea shop. It all seemed so ordinary—too ordinary for what would come next.

Sri Lanka Navy sunk LTTE Ships carrying arms, ammunition and warlike materials thousand miles away from Sri Lanka in Indian Ocean in September and October 2007.

By late morning, both convoys had reached the small ground at Digampathana, near the Sigiriya junction, and personnel mingled briefly, unaware that a carefully orchestrated act of terror was waiting. Then, suddenly, an empty half-truck veered directly into the convoy. It exploded with a ferocity I can still recall as if it were yesterday. Nuts, bolts, and high explosives tore through the air. Pandemonium erupted instantly. I later learned that 107 of our naval personnel were killed on the spot and another 153 critically injured. The scene was indescribable—bodies scattered, vehicles mangled, personal effects strewn across the ground. I remember later hearing that the head of the suicide bomber was recovered more than 100 meters away from the blast, a grim testament to the sheer force of the explosion.

I was in my office at the Naval and Maritime Academy when my mobile phone rang. A young midshipman from the 21st intake called, his voice trembling: “Sir, there was a huge explosion at the convoy point! Many are dead … my batch mate Wijesundara is among them.” I immediately jumped into my jeep with my escort Chief Petty Officer and driver and rushed to Digampathana, relying on every ounce of my driving skill to reach the scene. The journey, which usually took little more than an hour, felt endless that day, each passing mile weighed down by dread.

When I arrived, I was confronted with a sight that no training can prepare you for. The injured were being rushed to Dambulla Hospital, where doctors and nurses worked tirelessly, improvising in ways that saved lives despite the overwhelming chaos. I went back to the site after visiting the hospital. The remains of our naval personnel were scattered across the ground, and someone had begun collecting weapons and protective gear. I immediately contacted Surgeon Rear Admiral Nico Jayasekara and received his instructions: collect all body parts in separate bags and transport them to the Trincomalee Naval Hospital mortuary. This gruesome work had to be done with care and dignity, and it filled the icebox in my vehicle. Through DNA testing initiated by Rear Admiral Nico, we were able to identify every naval personnel lost that day, bringing some closure to grieving families.

The Navy Commander at the time, Vice Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda, was devastated. I had worked closely with him and knew how deeply he cared for his men. He ensured that the fallen were honoured with full ceremonial naval funerals at Welisara Naval Base, attended by families and comrades. Sixty-seven funerals were conducted in a single day—a number that still haunts me.

The Digampathana attack remains the largest single loss of naval life in our history. It was a day of sorrow, but also a day that reinforced our resolve. The tragedy galvanized the Navy to target the LTTE Sea Tiger wing with renewed determination and reshaped our maritime operations forever. Every time I think of that day, I remember not just the lives lost, but the courage, professionalism, and dedication of those who survived, those who treated the injured, and those who ensured the fallen were honored properly. May the souls of our naval hero’s rest in peace, their sacrifice guiding us and inspiring generations of naval personnel to come.

Features

‘Murder at Whitby Abbey’

Published

3 hours ago

2026/10/16

Thilina Walpola

Tales of Mystery and Suspense – 24

I was intrigued by the title of a book I found in a book drop at the condominium of a friend, Murder at Whitby Abbey, and I brought it home with me though I will not be able to return it in the near future. It was described on the cover page as ‘a standout in the crowded medieval mystery field’, though I fear I do not know of other books in this field, apart from the Cadfael series, which I have dealt with earlier.

The book, by Cassandra Clark, is set during the reign of Richard II and has as a backdrop his precarious position, which led to his being replaced, and murdered, by his cousin Henry, who reigned as Henry IV. It is a gloomy book, the action taking place in the twelve days of Christmas leading up to the Epiphany. And the gloom is pervasive, even though this is supposed to be a time of festivity, with mummers performing, and many of those in the guest house where the heroine stays going to town to enjoy themselves, with much drinking and much music, which also fills the guesthouse.

The heroine Hildegarde is a nun, sent to try to acquire a relic being sold by Whitby Abbey, though this was also a penance set by the Abbot of the monastery that governed her abbess because she had had sex with a man. Soon after she and her companions reach the Abbey set high on a cliff, she finds that there are other bidders, and soon suspects that the hierarchy, not perhaps the Abbot who seems a weakling, but his rapacious bursar, is determined to make money, and not above creating false relics to sell to several aspirants.

After Hildegarde and her Cistercian companions – Whitby is a Benedictine Foundation – two monks, Gregory and Egbert, and a young priest Mark, reach the abbey, they find that Aelwyn, a monk they had met on their way to the guesthouse had died. This was in the apple store, and they realize, when they find the surplices of novices stuffed into the air vents, that he had been left to suffocate in the overwhelming scent of apples.

Clark

The Cistercians are asked to look into the death, perhaps because they are likely to get no cooperation from the Abbey folk, but perhaps because those in charge are keen to know what happened. And the infirmarer, an old monk, suggests Hildegarde talk to a man called Edred who worked for the bursar, and had been a friend of Aelwyn’s. But Edred too is killed, before he can keep an appointment he had made with Hildegarde, drowned in a pool near the farmhouse of the Abbey.

Meanwhile tensions arise between the fisherfolk and the abbey for the bursar wants to charge them for using the beach that technically belongs to the abbey to dry their fish and their nets. This leads to physical battles, when the guards used by the abbey, under the command it seems of the bursar whose determination to make money is not resisted by the abbot and the prior, try to storm the area where the fishermen live.

Hildegard finds out more about what had happened through two youngsters, one of whom Torold is the son of Aelwyn by a woman who worked as a prostitute for a cartel, and with whom Mark fell in love. The other works on the farm and had seen Edred meet someone near the pool, after which that someone left the place by himself. And the boy had also found in the pool a sort of dagger with the seal of the abbey.

He and his dog, and Torold who follows her, rescue Hildegarde from a man at arms who has waylaid her and tries to rape her earlier. Escaping into the abbey she was nearly been raped then by the bursar, but she managed to escape, in the process setting fire to him and the muniments room, which led, when he was rescued, to the discovery of a box with the money he said had been stolen, blame being cast on both Aelwyn and Edred.

Matters come to a head when the fisherfolk try to storm the abbey, being resisted by the men at arms stationed on the towers. But then Hildegarde realizes that behind the murders was the bursar’s clerk, whom she pursued to the cathedral. There is great drama then as she escapes from him when he tries to kill her, and then from the man at arms who had tried to both rape and kill her, but they both fall from the scaffolding she had climbed, the latter coming from a tower where he had been stationed.

Both of them think they run the rapacity of the abbey, the latter claiming to work for the nobles opposed to Richard, who is presented throughout the book as devoted to his subjects, not to power or money. But though the villains die, the bursar continues, having got over the hysteria the fire had caused and his acknowledgment then of guilt – and though the abbot and the prior seem less vicious, whether they will be able to assert themselves is questionable.

Before the climax, when the others in the guesthouse were leaving, Hildegarde found that two of them were in possession of the relic, for which they seem to have paid well. Hildegarde herself had made a derisory offer, but before she leaves the abbot gives her the relic, perhaps in gratitude for what she and her fellow Cistercians had discovered, the abbey having made as much money as it needed and more from the gullible other buyers.

Mark’s inamorata is saved from the stews because she moves in with Edred’s widow whom the bursar had thrown out of the rooms he occupied when her husband was found dead. Hildegarde had paid for lodgings, in a house run by the man who ran the brothels, but he had a kindly side and was going to finance them to make nets for the fishermen.

So, the Cistercians set off for their home as swiftly as they can to get there on the day of the Epiphany, having stopped en route to pray for King Richard whose birthday it was.