The year of Our Lord 1120 is a time of great unrest in England, after the death by drowning of William, the only legitimate son of Henry, King of England, Duke of Normandy, and third son of William the Conqueror. Beyond the gates of the Abbey of the Virgin Mary and Edward King and Martyr at Shaftesbury, a hunting party led by the Abbess Cecily happens upon a man in the forest. Weakened by loss of blood, he cannot explain how he came to be there, but the cause of his lack of speech is soon discovered: his tongue has been cut out! Whose wish to silence him could have spurred such an outrage? Despite Dame Averilla's own troubles-a tremor of the hands, the specter of looming blindness, and the divisive arrival of two lepers at the abbey-it falls to Averilla to unearth the treasonous longings that lie beneath the mutilation of an innocent serf and the heartless murder of a young nun.