A young Catholic English aristocrat, Anthony, orphaned by the guillotines of the French Revolution, raised too delicately by a doting grandmother, sent to be a midshipman in the Royal Navy, deserts his ship, and takes on a new identity, Zachary, near Gentian Hill.

A younger girl, Stella, orphaned by a ship-board explosion at Plymouth, and raised by a country farming couple, wears a locket, with a handwritten Shakespearean quote. Boy meets girl. Things are not what they seem. There are dark forces haunting them, and mid-way through the story, the boy is revealed to be a deserter. He returns to the Navy, and eventually fights at the Battle of Trafalgar. Stella has a second-sense, and in a vision is present with Anthony-Zachary during the battle. All of these rich threads weave steadily together: the teenage love matures into adult marriage, and the revelations of lost identities and connections.

This novel is a retelling of the legend of St Michael's Chapel at Torquay, on the south-west coast of England. The chapel was a place of pilgrimage for any Roman Catholic sailors whose boats anchored in Torbay. She briefly names a village, and a nearby hill which are used, with fictional names, as key locations in the novel. From shreds of place, history, and legend, Goudge creates a vast tapestry of character, events, and epic, romantic themes.