1651 The so-called English Civil War has been dragging on for nine long years. Oliver Cromwell's troops have defeated the Royalist army at Dunbar, and an uneasy peace prevails throughout the land. Battle weary, and nursing a wound to his thigh, Rob Haddon, cavalryman in the New Model Army, rides home to his family's farm in the Lune valley on the borders of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Westmorland. But instead of the peaceful, cheerful welcome he expects, he discovers a corpse, and his mother, brother and sister missing. Friends and neighbours rally to try to help him find them, but even as one mystery is solved, another rears its head. Clearly all is not as it seems amongst the summer sunshine and the ripening hayfields. Storm clouds are gathering over the dale.