As Black Death approaches a small English town, Niccolai, a young unskilled laborer, accepts the job of undertaker's apprentice. He surveys the town daily for markers representing death on resident's doors, collects and buries the deceased. Although forbidden, he falls in love with an aristocrat's daughter, Joanna. His biggest concern becomes her safety, keeping her from catching the disease—a disease that wipes out half the population, history's greatest pandemic.