The first in a dramatic historical trilogy about the rise and fall of the Knights Templar. It is 1088. While many French nobles continue their occupation of a violently hostile England, one young knight, Hugh de Payens, is inducted into a powerful secret society in his father's castle in Anjou. When the new Pope calls for knights to join his Crusade to redeem the Holy Land, Hugh is commanded by the Order to go along and finds himself in hellish battle in Jerusalem.