A curtain of death advances towards England as King Philip of Spain's Armada closes in ? the largest fleet the world has ever known. The Spanish believe that none can stand in its path.

In it sails a man who works for the Inquisition and plans to open a Holy Office in London after the conquest. He hates all Jews and is determined to destroy them all, in England as well as Spain.

Amid the chaos, Merula ? a slave woman ? desperately searches for her son. In the cold north, she finds comfort in the arms of a man haunted by visions of England laid to waste beneath the boots of the Spanish army. Are the visions a true prophecy, or only one possible future?

Simon Ames is now living his worst nightmare: a prisoner of the Inquisition, he is chained to an oarbench in the belly of the Armada itself. Yet he may hold the key to stopping the attack ? and his own salvation.

With the fate of two empires hanging in the balance, all will be swept up in the storm.