On their way to a feast hosted by the de Courtenays, Sir Baldwin Furnshill, Keeper of the King's Peace, and Bailiff Simon Puttock find the murdered corpse of Sir Gilbert, a Knight Templar and old comrade of Baldwin's. The situation is confounded when a decapitated body is found, and Baldwin and Simon's suspicions that the two deaths are linked seem to be justified when Baldwin himself is attacked. Baldwin and Simon find themselves caught up in a baffling investigation, in which the participators will stop at nothing to achieve their sinister aims...