The year is 1189 AD and Henry, Duke of Normandy and King of England, is in Normandy as usual, trying to bring his unruly barons to heel. Bertold, the twenty-one-year-old bastard son of one of these barons, has just been released from seven years' education in a local abbey. He has a mastery of Latin, maths and other subtle arts but is desperate to learn the subject of Women. He soon falls for Juliana, daughter of the King and wife of an ambitious local Count. She employs Bertold as a tutor for her little girls and his love is returned. But the disputes and intrigues of the barons and the Court cannot be kept at bay. Juliana's daughters are offered as hostages for a strategic castle, and a tragedy is unleashed that overtakes them all.