There come moments in history when all the locked doors seem to whisper, and we glimpse—if only for the briefest instant—the secret lives of women whose power both shaped and unsettled the world around them. While the White Ladies lingered in barrows and mists, the stones of abbeys and the clamor of towns called forth new guardians and rivals: abbesses, beguines, alewives, and midwives—women of real agency, whose daily acts and rituals sometimes raised suspicion,...
