The year is 1600; a new century dawns, full of omens and portents. War with Spain has dragged on for fifteen years, the conflict in Ireland for six. Unease stalks England in the dying years of Elizabeth I's reign.

Martin Marbeck is bored. After a recent botched assignment he's in the spymaster's bad books, dicing and kicking his heels in the Dolphin Inn by Bishopsgate while he awaits instructions.

Then a message from his spymaster, Sir Robert Cecil arrives: the existence of a spy has been discovered, code-named Morera, and it is up to Marbeck to uncover the true identity of this traitor - and quickly, before rumours of the young King Philip III forming a new Armada prove themselves to be true.