When a mummy in the Museum of Albion is unpacked it is found to contain a bundle of curious objects & documents which tell of the wanderings of an unknown woman Leto. On the run in a far-off era of civil strife Leto gives birth to twins shelters with wolves survives in a desert stronghold as the lover of its commander stows away on a ship loaded with plundered antiquities & then works as a maid in a war-torn city. She loses her son but saves her daughter during a long siege. As the novel sweeps from mythological times & the Middle Ages to the treasure-hunting of Victorian Europe & into the present day Leto reappears in different guises. Eventually she becomes a servant to a rock singer & begins to search for her son.