Two young men of very different backgrounds, a spice merchant from Alexandria and a construction supervisor in the Temple in Jerusalem, set out on a newly-discovered open sea route to India, the home of black pepper.
In Rome the demand for black pepper is insatiable and its price, sky-high. If the young men can successfully exploit this new route and thereby end the Arab monopoly on the pepper trade, glory and profits are theirs. But their assignment is fraught with danger: three murders have already been committed in order to preserve the secret of the open sea passage.
Woven into...