Worcester, 1651: the King's cause is finished, and a drunken cavalier called Crispin Galliard — who has spent eighteen years looking for the man who burned his house and killed his wife — is chained to a young Puritan he ought to hate. Sabatini spoke five languages and wrote in English because, he said, all the best stories are told in it; the Civil War here is dirty, and the hero is genuinely unpleasant.