Hannah Bokenham, an accused heretic in Tudor England, finds herself in a race against the tide to solve clues to a mystery that will recover an artefact that her missing husband has concealed. The puzzle, of Dan Brown proportions, seems to require the religious decryption of a whole genre of medieval literature to crack. Does Hannah have what it takes, and does she care enough about her husband's gift to risk her life in this way, while her friends attempt to spirit her away? And is Sister Matilda right in believing that this object will link Hannah's husband to a fraud of Biblical proportions?

In this transposition of Plato's Socratic dialogues, the Da Vinci Code meets Jorge Luis Borges in an English castle and its surrounding countryside for an intellectual, slow-burning suspense/mystery/thriller set on the Isle of Wight in southern England. The year is 1509. Relapsed heretics are burnt alive at the stake, and to avoid Hannah being one more of them, Sir Henry Wolsingham is doing all that he can to get her safely abroad as quickly as possible. But is it a compelling destiny that is making his job so devilishly difficult? The irresistible re-enactment of events that took place almost two thousand years before? Or a work of Leonardo da Vinci complicating matters? Or just the Franciscan friars who are pursuing Hannah, intent upon finding evidence that will have her consigned to the flames? Or perhaps the Church assassin who is out to murder her for a wholly different reason.