Features

Before I Knew Their Names

Published

1 month ago

2026/09/13

Thilina Walpola

From the Pathfinder Collection

Cinnamon, Chilli and the Journeys That Brought Them Together

By Jennifer Moragoda
jennifermoragoda787@gmail.com
All photos by the author.

I was passionate about Sri Lankan cinnamon and dried Mexican chillies before I could put a name to either of them. I first encountered them together in a Mexican chicken stew.

Years ago, on a hot summer’s day, my sister and I had been invited into the modest home of Mexican migrant farmworkers, people doing the hard, unwanted work of bringing in California’s harvests while living with the fear that an immigration raid might sweep them up before payday. There we shared an impromptu lunch cooked by our host’s grandmother—a simple meal of rice and chicken, with, if memory serves, a pot of pinto beans.

What I remember most clearly is the extraordinary aroma that enveloped us—the kind of kitchen fragrance that welcomes you before anyone has said a word. I have encountered it many times since, entering anonymous apartment buildings around the Mediterranean and Latin America, their stairwells redolent with someone’s lunch or dinner being cooked, inviting me to imagine the meals behind those doors.

When we sat down and I took the first bite, the chicken dish astonished me enough that I had to ask what it was. I was told it was a mole—pronounced molay—but there was little further explanation, and my Spanish was not then good enough to pursue the question. The simmering sauce was relatively thin and, as far as I remember, contained none of the chocolate with which mole is now so often associated. Yet its perfume and flavour made a deep and lasting impression.

Cinnamon harvesting in Ceylon: A stylised illustration from Philippus Baldaeus’s seventeenth- century book is a reminder that European representations did not always portray true Ceylon cinnamon accurately—a confusion that persists today, with cassia still sometimes pictured online as “Ceylon cinnamon

This, in retrospect, was my first gastronomic epiphany, though I did not yet have the understanding to describe it. It was only later—after a year in Spain, a subsequent summer in Mexico, and finally my arrival long ago in Sri Lanka—that the pieces would begin to fall into place.

Bouquet, Not Burn

Spain gave me my first clue. There, Sri Lankan cinnamon was ubiquitous and prized for its delicacy. I found it in many Spanish classics such as arroz con leche, flans and leche merengada—the blanco in a blanco y negro, iced coffee served with a scoop of cinnamon-and-lemon-infused ice milk that seemed designed for a scorching Madrid summer. What surprised me was how often cinnamon stood out so clearly in these dishes. Milk, eggs and rice provided quiet backgrounds against which its floral and citrusy bouquet could unfold, while sugar accentuated its natural sweetness. Yet this cinnamon was far more delicate than the hotter, more assertive “cinnamon” I remembered from the cinnamon buns and French toast of my childhood in the United States, where cassia is far more common. I noticed the difference and wondered about it, but I still did not understand why.

Bouquet, not burn: Mexico has at least 64 recognised types of chilli, including at least 25 in Oaxaca. Different varieties bring distinctive flavours, aromas and colours to moles

During a later summer in Oaxaca, another part of the mystery began to resolve itself. By then I was fluent enough in Spanish to ask questions, and in one of the great centres of Mexico’s indigenous food traditions I discovered that what I had previously thought of simply as ‘chilli’ was in fact an entire vocabulary of flavours. Market stalls displayed dried chillies of every shape and size and mounds of freshly ground powders in chocolate brown, turmeric yellow, deep red and earthy green. Then I tasted mole again. The recognition was immediate: this was a more elaborate version of the chicken mole I had eaten years earlier in California, but still unmistakably recognisable. Only now could I begin to name what I was tasting, especially the distinctive flavours and aromas of the dried chillies; the cinnamon in the background was still a mystery.

For someone accustomed to thinking of chilli principally in terms of heat, this was a revelation. Mexican cooks do not choose chillies merely according to how fiercely they burn. One may be valued for fruitiness, another for smokiness, earthiness, colour or a particular fragrance. Many of the larger dried chillies used in moles have relatively restrained heat compared with the small, more potent dried or fresh chillies familiar in Sri Lankan cooking. Their importance lies as much in bouquet as in burn.

An aromatic arsenal: Some of the characteristic spices and fragrant leaves used in Sri Lankan cooking

What had so captivated me in that Californian kitchen was becoming clearer. Its fragrance came from a composition: the floral and fruity qualities of dried Mexican chillies, with the quieter perfume of true cinnamon in support. In the Oaxacan mole, seeds and nuts lent body, while the ingenious touch of everyone’s favourite—chocolate—added another dimension. Cassia in place of true cinnamon would, to my palate, change that delicate balance completely.

Two Cinnamons, One Name

The distinction between cinnamon and cassia is difficult to miss when quills of the two are viewed side by side. A Sri Lankan cinnamon quill is pale and soft, built from thin strips of inner bark overlapped telescopically to form a long quill and packed with smaller pieces. Cassia is darker, harder and much thicker, each quill formed from a single piece of bark whose edges curl inward, leaving a hollow centre.

Their personalities are equally distinct. Cassia announces itself quickly—sharper, earthier and more pungent, and sometimes slightly bitter. True cinnamon is more silent at first, patiently waiting for its floral, citrusy sweetness to be unleashed as the bark is broken, heated or infused. Grind them, however, and the visual distinction disappears: two different spices become anonymous brown powder carrying the same name.

The distinction between cinnamon and cassia has older precedents. In a thirteenth-century Andalusian cookbook I have been examining, some recipes call for cinnamon, others for what the modern editor identifies as “Chinese cinnamon”, or cassia, while a few combine both in the same dish. We cannot map medieval Arabic terminology with complete confidence onto modern botanical species, but the recipes make one thing clear: medieval cooks in al-Andalus treated the two as distinct ingredients.

In 1563, in Goa, Garcia de Orta published his extraordinary Colóquios dos simples e drogas da Índia. A Portuguese New Christian of Spanish-Jewish parentage who had studied medicine in Spain before settling in India, Orta drew on direct observation and conversations across the Indian Ocean world. His account of cinnamon was remarkably acute. He described it as the inner or “second” bark, distinguished the fine cinnamon of Ceylon from coarser barks, and accurately observed that it retained its qualities longer as a stick than as powder. He also recalled that Spanish cooks seasoned many dishes with cinnamon water, and described two such aromatic waters—one distilled from the flowers and another from newly peeled inner bark before it was dried—judging the fresh-bark water the more fragrant. I once tasted fresh bark in a cinnamon peeling shed on a Ja-Ela estate, straight from the peeler’s knife, but it never occurred to me then to infuse it in water.

In 1611, Covarrubias’s Spanish dictionary shows how completely cinnamon had entered both the Spanish kitchen and the language itself. Its long entry records water distilled from cinnamon flowers and from fresh or “green” cinnamon, notes the custom of sprinkling sugar and cinnamon over rice, and gives the expression flor de la canela. Here flor meant not simply the literal blossom but, figuratively, the finest or choicest part of something. To call something la flor de la canela was to call it the essence of excellence.

The phrase survived into the twentieth century. Federico García Lorca invoked it in his 1935 play Doña Rosita la soltera. Fifteen years later, across the Atlantic, Peruvian singer-songwriter Chabuca Granda titled her composition La Flor de la Canela. Often described as the unofficial anthem of Lima, the song remains enormously popular throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

The old Hispanic preference for true cinnamon survives across Latin America, perhaps nowhere more clearly than in Mexico, where Sri Lanka remains overwhelmingly the largest source of imported cinnamon by value. Diana Kennedy, who spent decades documenting Mexico’s regional cooking, was emphatic: ‘Nobody in Mexico would consider using the hard-barked cassia that often passes for cinnamon in the US, for it is less aromatic, more difficult to grind, and darker in colour.’ Cuban-born culinary historian Maricel Presilla reaches the same conclusion from a wider perspective: ‘The softer, more complex true Ceylon cinnamon is the flavour of tradition for Mexicans and most Latin Americans.’

An Aromatic Arsenal

All this sharpens an intriguing question. For an island whose name became almost synonymous abroad with the finest cinnamon, why does it stand out less as a solo performer in Sri Lankan cuisine?

Perhaps the answer lies not in cinnamon’s absence but in its context. In Sri Lanka it has long co-existed with other powerful aromatics. Our cooking characteristically builds flavour in layers, and cinnamon readily joins pepper, cardamom, clove, curry leaf and other spices without demanding attention for itself. After a rice-and-curry meal laden with roasted spices, chilli, coconut and aromatics, cinnamon’s delicate perfume might simply be lost if asked to carry a dessert by itself.

Watalappam offers an instructive example. A dish of Southeast Asian ancestry, probably brought to the island through Sri Lankan Malay communities, it has been transformed into something unmistakably Sri Lankan. Its eggs, coconut milk and dark jaggery are perfumed with cardamom, nutmeg and clove, sometimes with pandan leaf. Yet cinnamon—the spice for which the island became famous abroad—is not one of its characteristic flavours.

The Dutch Burgher tradition makes the contrast still more intriguing. Reading Deloraine Brohier’s A Taste of Sugar & Spice, which draws in part on a family recipe manuscript dating from 1770, I was struck by how infrequently cinnamon appears. This was, after all, a culinary tradition reaching back to the period when the Dutch were making fortunes from the island’s cinnamon. The delicate ijzer koekje is one of the few exceptions, using cinnamon as its sole spice; other sweets generally combine it with aromatics such as nutmeg, cardamom and cloves. More surprisingly, Brohier’s five-ingredient love cake contains no spices or even rosewater. Later versions add rosewater, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg and sometimes cloves. The combination of semolina, nuts, honey and rosewater in those later versions echoes Middle Eastern semolina confections and Arab-Mediterranean influences already absorbed into Iberian cooking, suggesting a cake shaped by several culinary worlds and transformed again on the island.

The contrast with parts of Europe is striking. There, cinnamon arrived as an exotic and once costly import, and in many Iberian and Mediterranean sweets it was given the spotlight: rice, milk, egg and sugar provided a quiet, uniform canvas against which its floral, citrusy sweetness could fully emerge. In Sri Lanka, surrounded by an abundance of equally compelling spices, cinnamon remained more often a member of the orchestra than the soloist.

Commercially, however, cinnamon was anything but ordinary. For centuries it was a source of tribute and royal revenue, as well as a coveted export commodity; under the Dutch VOC its harvesting and trade were subjected to an extraordinarily severe monopoly. Unauthorised peeling, private trade and even damage to cinnamon plants could attract draconian penalties, in some circumstances death. Such restrictions may themselves have helped keep cinnamon out of the everyday kitchen, even while the Dutch were making fortunes from it abroad. The irony is difficult to miss: cinnamon could dominate the economy yet remain relatively inconspicuous in the cuisine. At home it was but one member of an extraordinarily rich spice repertoire; abroad it became something singular.

The Journey in the Other Direction

The chilli presents almost the opposite story. Native to the Americas, it travelled east after the Columbian encounter through the new Portuguese maritime networks, reaching India and Sri Lanka with extraordinary speed. Cinnamon had travelled west; chilli travelled east.

And there lies the symmetry I had unknowingly tasted all those years ago. Cinnamon travelled west from Sri Lanka and became embedded in Hispanic cooking. Chilli travelled east from the Americas and became indispensable in Sri Lanka. In that modest California kitchen, the two great migrations had somehow met in the same pot, just as a good meal and the fellowship around it can bring together people and histories that have travelled by very different routes.

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Features

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

Published

11 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

11 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

11 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.