One of the better Hawkenlye mysteries; I couldn't put this one down. Three men commit a dastardly crime and their bodies later are found, one with a complicated design carved into his chest; it is interpreted as a series of three runes signifying vengeance--"Lex talionis" [Eye for an eye]. Then two more men are punished in the same form in which they had inflicted evil on others--a tax extortioner, by flogging and a sometime deputy of the sheriff, death in water, since he had stood by doing nothing while a family had drowned in a raging river. The investigation of Josse and Helewise try to find the innocence of someone accused of the crime. Ninian, who has been with the Cathars in France is led to Chartres, as well as the couple. Who is the "Brown Man"? Has he anything to do with the deaths? Helewise decides to change the direction of her life henceforth. I wonder what direction the mysteries will take now. ( )