A wealthy benefactor dies inside Michaelhouse, placing the college under immediate suspicion. Matthew Bartholomew and Brother Michael must establish who killed him before rivals use the death to threaten the institution's standing and finances.
Elsewhere in Cambridge, a thief is attacking affluent pilgrims and university pranksters are escalating harmless tricks into dangerous factional conflict. The apparently separate troubles begin to overlap, revealing a killer who uses the movement of pilgrims and the divisions among scholars to hide a more ambitious crime.