Storyline

In 1348, in a small English parish, the crops have been ruined by blight, and the local lord Sir Walter Mellerby (Jon Finch) is off at war in France, leaving his young wife Matilda (Lena Headey) to fend off the local Bishop (Ian McNeice), a potbellied debauchee with rapacious designs on both the parish lands and Matilda herself. To make things worse, soldiers return from the war with news that Walter has been taken prisoner, but they also have a valuable hostage of their own a man in an iron mask with an inverted cross branded into his chest (David La Haye), said to be Jacques de Saint Amant, the son of a French count.