In 1585 Nicholas Thorpe was little more than a schoolboy, but old enough to know that the safe secure world in which he had grown up was rapidly changing. When his widowed mother married Sir James Croome, a prominent Catholic, Nicholas began to realize that all Catholics, no matter how powerful, were in danger. Spies from the court of Queen Elizabeth were everywhere; great houses were searched and possession destroyed as priests were hunted and their protectors imprisoned. English Catholics were torn between loyalty to their Protestant Queen and to their forbidden religion, and Nicholas, like many others, longed to plunge into the conflict that was dividing Elizabethan England. 

His opportunity came sooner that he expected when he joined the Companions, a group organized to shelter priests and transport them across the country in strict secrecy. Nicholas' assignments bring dangerous adventure in the hidden places of the English countryside as he takes an active part in the exciting events of a tense and turbulent period of English history.

From the dust jacket