As England's young king struggles with illness, one of his advisors is poisoned. Elizabeth Tudor, fearing her brother was the target, asks her old friend Simon Maldon to investigate the crime. Aided by his fiancée, Hannah, Simon, now an apothecary's apprentice, braves the corridors of power to protect the king. Power is all-important to the inhabitants of Whitehall Palace. Families band together to collect and keep it, from the well-known Dudley clan to lesser but no less determined members of the nobility. In the days after the first murder, a knight, a baron, and a serving girl also die in mysterious circumstances, but it is unclear how their deaths benefit any of the possible suspects. Are the Beverleys, a brother and sister of great ambition, committing murder to advance their cause? Is it the Fullers, a fussy mother and her charming son, who seek a brilliant marriage to end their genteel poverty? Or is it someone else, whose reasons are yet to be discovered? In order to find out, Simon employs various (sometimes embarrassing) disguises, and Hannah uses her position as Elizabeth's newest chambermaid. As the crimes multiply, the danger they face grows. In the end, Elizabeth herself is accused of the murders. To save the princess he admires, Simon faces a fight for his life against a wickedly clever adversary who will not be caught. This fast-paced historical will delight mystery lovers, Tudor admirers, and all who love a whodunit with (to quote one critic) "panache."