Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
Aldcaster is a small market town in the Lincolnshire fens, in flat drained country where the tower of St Botolph's is the highest thing for eleven miles and the first thing you see from the Sleaford road. The town got its charter from its market, which is six stalls on a Thursday now where it used to be forty. The ironmonger's has shut. The bank went to a hole in the wall, and then the hole in the wall went too. The sugar-beet factory closed years ago. The pub is the Coach & Horses, low and warm, with the racing on the telly in the corner and the same old men in the settle by the fire. Beyond the last houses, the pumps and dykes keep the water off the fields, as they have since the Dutchmen first drained it.