1121. The trail of a mass murderer and a hunt for a runaway nun. King Henry I has lost his heir in the sinking of The White Ship and his reign is fraught with the succession crisis. The king is obsessed with relics and prophecies. He summons his daughter, the Empress Maud, to return to England, and considers putting a woman on the English throne.

King Henry's former mistress, Nest ferch Rhys, is unhappily married to the Norman constable of Cardigan Castle. She becomes increasingly embroiled in the Welsh resistance to the Norman occupation of her family's lands.

Sheriff Haith distracts himself from his loss of Nest by plumbing the mystery of the shipwreck in which the King's heir died along with three hundred other young Norman nobles.

As Haith pieces together fragments of the tragic shipwreck, he discovers a chest full of secrets, but will the revelations bring a culprit to light and aid the grieving king?

Book III in the Conquest trilogy centring on Nest ferch Rhys and the reign of King Henry I.