Marsh

Bewitching art experts and enthusiasts alike for centuries, the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries hang today in the Cluny Museum in Paris.

Milan, 1497: Leonardo is completing "The Last Supper". Pope Alexander VI is determined to execute him after realizing that the painting contains clues to a baffling and blasphemous message that he is driven to decode. The Holy Grail and the Eucharistic Bread are missing, there is no meat on the table, and the apostles, shockingly, are portraits of well-known heretics and none of them are depicted with halos. And why has the artist painted himself into the scene with his back turned toward Jesus?

The bus from Dublin to Limerick has never meant much to the inhabitants of Kilbrody, until a woman steps off it, marches into the pub, and drinks herself into oblivion. When she finally wakes up, several days later, it is to discover that Charlie Finn (who put her to bed), the local garda, and indeed the whole village are talking about her. Who is the woman on the bus? The question is, will she tell them?

Edward Rutherfurd's stirring account of Irish history, the Dublin Saga, concludes in this magisterial work of historical fiction. Beginning where the first volume, The Princes of Ireland, left off, The Rebels of Ireland takes us into a world transformed by the English practice of "plantation", which represented the final step in the centuries-long British conquest of Ireland.