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Before Thomas More is sent to the Tower by the will of King Henry VIII, he entrusts his illegitimate son, Arthamaeus into the guardianship of Thomas Cromwell as the means to expel his guilt. Already a young man, Arthamaeus is restless to depart from the abbey where he has spent his formative years, a recluse tolerated for his unnamed father's beneficence. Yet the journey which he embarks upon is one which neither he nor Cromwell had anticipated -- taken away aboard a slave ship and sold to an eccentric nobleman who holds court in the fashion of King Darius, inspired by similar enigmas as the likes of Ludwig II of Bavaria in building his grand palace in ruinous opulence and grandeur. Arthamaeus is chosen as one of the eunuchs who adorn these marble halls, waiting at table and at bedchamber, while passing the time between court ceremonies in writing the memoirs of his strange life for one he hardly knows -- his remaining tie to his father and England: the pragmatic statesman who takes the role of conscience and advisor. Since their first encounter, Cromwell is deeply struck by the man's resemblance to More, the imperious friend he had admired in his youth, a friendship scorned by difference in rank, existing only in the periphery of his mind, the hidden daydreams of a blacksmith's son. Cromwell struggles to subdue these phantasms which threaten his position at a precarious time of royal upheavals and court intrigues -- yet he cannot fully sever the tie that binds him to this fatal attachment, an obsession which grows with absence.
