1558: Twelve children, gifted far beyond their years, are banished by their Tudor queen to the town of Rotherweird. Some say they are the golden generation; some say the devil''s spawn. But everyone knows they are something to be revered - and feared.Four and a half centuries on, cast adrift from the rest of England by Elizabeth I and still bound by its ancient laws, Rotherweird''s independence is subject to one disturbing condition: nobody, but nobody, studies the town or its history.Then an Outsider arrives, a man of unparallelled wealth and power, enough to buy the whole of Rotherweird - deeply buried secrets and all . . . Welcome to Rotherweird.