Meet young Brother Athelstan, a dedicated Dominican monk with two callings. In one of medieval London's poorest parishes, he atones for his past sins by ministering to prostitutes, thieves and other castoffs. But it is as clerk to the Falstaffian coroner of London, Sir John Cranston, examining the bodies of the freshly, foully murdered, that he has come to understand how dark and villainous the human heart can be.