This is the first of a new series of books in which the Oxford dropout turned wandering player Joliffe, who has appeared occasionally in the Dame Frevisse novels, takes over as the lead. We also step back in time from 1447, the date of The Bastard's Tale, the latest Frevisse novel, to 1434, soon after the events in The Servant's Tale, the book in which Joliffe made his first appearance.
He and the troupe of players of which he is a member are visiting Oxford to perform The Play of Abraham and Isaac in the Corpus Christi celebrations. But a stage-struck Eden-child suddenly refuses to be parted from them.
By then Joliffe had taken a clear look at the stocky, undergrown, widely smiling man in the doorway and somewhat eased out of his readiness for trouble. He had rarely seen one of that fellow's kind grown to man-size because they mostly died young, but there was no mistaking their soft-fleshed slant-eyed faces. Eden children they were sometimes called, and children they stayed in most ways, no matter how long they lived, and there was rarely any harm in them.
And so the adventure begins, for this is Lewis, Master Fairfield, and when he refuses to leave them the Players are invited by his "keepers" to spend the next few days at the home of his guardian, a large house on the outskirts of the city - not in the house itself, they are, after all, merely players, but a large barn is put at their disposal. They of course are delighted.
But why, Joliffe wonders, is Lewis heir to the family fortunes rather than his far more suitable brother Simon? What is the dangerous secret linking their host with the playmaster, Tom Bassett? And who is the dead man whose body is dumped outside the barn door that night? The players make convenient scapegoats - but before Joliffe can solve the first murder a second occurs.
