Italy in the 1580's and in a town just south of Florence, a doctor is mourning the death of his young daughter. She has been cruelly taken from him by a plague that has swept through his village. In despair at his failure to save her from the disease, he begs God to spare his remaining child, his heir from the same fate, vowing to undertake a great pilgrimage if he survives. His son endured. As time and the pestilence moves on, his life returns to a sort of normality but the thought of the debt that needs to be repaid to God is weighing heavily on his mind. In a bid to unburden himself, he goes to meet with a family friend, a priest who is considered an expert in the 'art of pilgrimage'. The priest suggests that he should take a route north, believing that a short journey like that to Rome, would not do justice to the great miracle that had been gifted to him, after all, the contrition must match the granted privilege. Leaving his wife and son, he travels from his home in Arezzo, setting off on the epic journey to visit some of the great wonders of the medieval age, meeting the good, the bad and the mad along the way. He travels over the Alps by the Great St Bernard Pass, walking north through Switzerland then up through France before crossing the channel into Elizabethan England, a country hostile to foreign catholics like himself. Under constant suspicion, he makes his way across this alien land before sailing to Ireland to do penance at the shrine of a once famous Saint, Begnet, on a tiny island just off the coast of this mystical land.
