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How a Tudor priest-hunter and sexual deviant went about his business during the brutal Catholic purges of Henry VIII's reformation and beyond. The main character is Seb Gunner, former builder and soldier who is recruited by Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as a hunter of priests and tower torturer. This vivid portrait of Gunner and his band does not shirk the brutality and dehumanising sexual inequalities of the time, including Gunner's torture of his own sister and subsequent nod to her being burned at the stake. There is, however, a softer and more redeeming side to him including his loyalty to the archbishop and his men, and an unforgettable and intensely physical love for a certain high-born shire lady who seduces Gunner from the bed of the torture rack in the tower dungeon.