'Those things done in secret will be exposed in God's good time in the full light of day.'

In the late autumn of 1380, Brother Athelstan is busy enough. He and his parish council are preparing for the annual Christmas mystery play when a series of brutal murders occur at a Southwark tavern. Two young whores are found slain in the hay barn of the tavern. But their deaths are only the beginning of a series of gruesome killings which occur around the parish of St. Erconwald's. A whole host of mysterious characters assemble to this pageant of murder; the Misericord, master thief and cunning man, the Judas man, a bounty hunter who tracks down outlaws and wolfheads and finally the Knights of the Golden Falcon who assemble at the tavern known as the 'Night in Jerusalem' to celebrate their annual reunion.

Brother Athelstan and Sir John Cranstone have to resolve not only these grizzly deaths but also their source - the Great Robbery of the Lombard treasure, which occurred in Southwark some twenty years earlier...