The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and secure a place at the revered Fulda monastery. So begins the life of John the a matchless scholar and scribe of Fulda, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome. There, Agnes (as John) dazzles the Church hierarchy with her knowledge of the old and new languages of Europe, theology and Church law - and finds herself at the heart of political intrigue in a city where gossip is a powerful (and deadly) currency. And when the only person who knows her identity arrives in Rome, she will risk everything to once again feel what it is to be known - and loved.