Pierre Tardieu, a day laborer, lives with his sick father. Reminiscing about his childhood with his mother on the beach, he can't free himself from her. Murdering someone becomes the only way of realizing his existence. One day, he meets a pianist called Laure in a bookstore and falls in love with her.
The story unfolds in the winter of the year 1215. A mysterious stranger who has escaped from prison arrives in a tiny, remote village in the kingdom of France plagued by famine and leprosy, and ruled by an ageing lord, a former hero from the Crusades, Lord Ocam. Together with his horde of knights, Ocam abducts a young girl from the village in order to exert his droit du seigneur over her. A handful of villagers, backed up by The Stranger, attempt to release her, but they only have until nightfall…
