The fire and the rose / Robyn Cadwallader.

Includes bibliographical references.

England, 1276: Forced to leave her home village, Eleanor moves to Lincoln to work as a housemaid. She's prickly, independent and stubborn, her prospects blighted by a port wine birthmark across her face. Unusually for a woman, she has fine skills with ink and quill, and harbours a secret ambition to work as a scribe, a profession closed against women. But Eleanor discovers that Lincoln is a dangerous place, divided by religious prejudice, the Jews frequently the focus of violence and forced to wear a yellow badge. Eleanor falls in love with Asher, a Jewish spicer, who shares her love of books and words, but their relationship is forbidden by law. A priest threatens to expose her, and she is pulled into the dark depths of the church's machinations against Jews - and when the King issues an edict expelling all Jews from England, Eleanor and Asher are faced with an impossible choice.