It is 1560. Elizabeth Tudor has been on the throne for a year, and Dr. John Dee, mathematician and expert in the hidden arts, is already famous throughout Europe. But neither Elizabeth nor Dee feels entirely secure. The Queen's religious reforms are proving unpopular, and Dee is regarded with suspicion in an England where the line between science and sorcery is indistinct. And the assignment he's been given by the Queen's chief minister will blur it further: Ride to the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey to bring back certain bones. The mission takes the mild, bookish Dee to the tangled roots of the Arthurian legacy so important to the Tudors. Along with his risk-taking friend and former student, Robert Dudley, Dr Dee encounters unexpected violence, spiritual darkness, the breathless stirring of first love ...and the cold heart of a complex plot against Queen Elizabeth herself.