Banished from Bamburgh for murky reasons, Freia arrives with her fatherless child at the Northumbrian frontier court of Edinburgh. There just might be a future for them there, but much depends on the good graces of powerful men like Earl Edwin and perhaps the enigmatic Pictish Bishop Boniface. And there's always prayer.

Meanwhile, the bishop's niece Euphemia has not one but two fatherless children. When her busy uncle asks her to seek out and read a new 'History of the Picts' on his behalf, she has cause to reflect on her own murky past as well as her family's. But, as illuminating as the manuscript is, the past is not everything. When the two mothers cross one another's paths, it is with hope of redemption.