Set against a rugged medieval frontier, the story unfolds as a knight rides off to battle the English, leaving his young son François de Cortemart at the castle to guard his wife. When the father is away, the son discovers his mother in bed with another man, and in a brutal moment he stabs the lover to death and retreats to a high tower, waiting for his father’s return. The incident seeds a tale of fear, loyalty, and a fortress frozen in time.
Years pass, and the father goes to war again, this time with his older son, Arnaud de Cortemart, leaving behind his young daughter Béatrice de Cortemart to guard the castle. Béatrice grows into a capable, resilient presence in a place stripped of its former golden age, tending to the keep and the surrounding lands as threats loom.
With the male guardians away, Béatrice takes on responsibility for the estate, selling goods and lands to raise ransoms when English raids threaten the village. The home front remains precarious, and every decision weighs on the family’s fragile heritage as the war continues to drain what remains of their resources and power.
Years into the conflict, disillusionment settles over the family. Arnaud de Cortemart remains soft and idealistic, while François de Cortemart has become hardened, ruling his household with a growing, brutal ruthlessness. The community grows tense under his iron grip; fear and resentment braid through the streets as his authority expands and then tightens its grip.
François’s dominion turns outright tyrannical: he terrorizes the neighborhood, rapes and loots, and enforces his will with cruel efficiency. The man’s lust culminates in forcing a brutal act on Béatrice, declaring that she is now his wife, a claim that neither the village priest nor the laws of the land appear to respect.
The village priest refuses to sanctify their union, and François hatches a plan to marry Béatrice to a wealthy, land-owning commoner who has already purchased portions of their estate. The prospective husband, however, balks at sharing a wife with her father, preferring to find a true virgin who does not bear the burden of familial complicity.
Refusing to surrender, Béatrice turns to cunning and magic. She casts spells and even seeks the aid of a witch to lay curses on her aggressor, choosing to fight fire with fire in a world where power is earned through fear as much as through faith or law.
When Béatrice realizes she is pregnant, she confides in her brother and asks him to kick her in the abdomen, a desperate act born of a bedrock belief in protecting the unborn child from a future shaped by coercion and violence. François witnesses the move as a brutal expression of revenge, intensifying the conflict and driving the family deeper into ruin.
In a shocking turn of events, François dresses Arnaud as a girl and leads a ferocious manhunt, chasing them through the countryside with his henchmen and forcing Béatrice to ride with them. The pursuit ends back at the castle, where Béatrice discovers that in the chaos she has not only lost her brother but their cherished pet birds have also been killed.
Driven by grief and fury, she ascends to her father’s chambers, where she ends the struggle in a final, deadly act by stabbing him to death, breaking a cycle of violence that has haunted the family for years and leaving a haunting question about the price of vengeance.
