435 CE, in the Saxon lands. A girl, the daughter of the village midwife and herbalist dreams of the lands which lie out of sight the river which flows past her home. One day she is torn from her family by a band of passing boatmen and sold as a slave. Beyond the horizon, on the frontier of the fading empire, she discovers fear and pleasure, hatred and love, men and women she thought only existed in tales, and lands she could never have imagined, follow one another as the Fates decide. But each twist in the thread of her life provides an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to develop into a woman who can offer health and happiness, life or death.