Sequel to: The winter queen. Originally published: London : Jonathan Cape, 2002.

"Stevenson provides the second installment of the historical trilogy she began with The Winter Queen (2002). Balthasar Stuart is the son produced by Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia and Pelagius van Overmeer, an African prince brought to Europe as a slave. Raised in relative anonymity in Holland, Balthasar pursues a career as a physician until political circumstances and the onset of a plague drive him out of Holland to Restoration London. When he has the opportunity to marry an impoverished gentlewoman who has inherited property in Barbados, he does so, intrigued by the possibility of a new life in the Caribbean. Once in Barbados, however, a racially segregated society dependent on slave labor, he is even further torn between his European and African heritages. After surviving a slave revolt and a hurricane, Balthasar and his family return to a London beset by intrigue and turmoil, as discontent with the Catholic King James--Balthasar's cousin--grows deeper. Stevenson artfully sets the stage for a thrilling conclusion to an epic steeped in vivid seventeenth-century social, political, and cultural detail"