The year is 1581.
Thomas Walsingham is the 19-year-old cousin of Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, and is thrilled to be given the job of confidential courier, carrying messages between London and Paris for that illustrious man. He is given a double-duty assignment of carrying confidential instructions to the English ambassador in Paris while escorting a noted British glove-maker heading to the French royal court. Then they are waylaid, the glove-maker killed and the confidential papers stolen. Determined to learn who was behind it, Walsingham will come to realize there is so much more at play and the safety of his monarch is in peril.