The Butcher Bird, Sykes - B -

                                               In the second book, Oswald is again up against ignorance and fear as the locals think a bird carried off and killed an infant.  He also struggles with the fact that the King has passed a law forbidding the payment of wages higher than before the Plague, while his people are agitated, leaving for elsewhere, and believe they should be paid more for doing more work. A family intrigue takes him off to London, where the plot thickens and complicates matters back in Somershill. In the end, he and his sister, Clemence, settle into a peaceable accommodation and he concludes that he will violate the King's writ, and pay his people the wages needed to keep them.