In his new novel Henry Treece takes as his subject the insurrection of the British queen, Boudicca (Boadicea), in the year 61 A.D. This bloody upheaval, caused by the unjust demands of Nero, resulted in the deaths of some seventy-thousand Romans and their ‘collaborators’. Colchester and St. Albans were gutted and London reduced to ashes.

Against this background, Henry Treece sets his hero, Gemellus, a young Roman soldier who is sent out on a mission which might make or break him. His love for Eithne, a British girl, gives rise to a poignant division of loyalties, of a kind that soldiers have known throughout history.