In a remote coastal village in medieval Wales, the King's tax assessor and a woman he knows only as The Ferryman's Daughter, sit up by a fire of driftwood through a long winter's evening and far into the night. She tells him how she once stupidly helped the man she loved, Jack Ladd, steal into a castle to woo Lord Cedric's spoilt daughter who Jack wrongly believed was in love with him. So traumatic has her life been as a result of this that she has forgotten her real name and her guest sets out to help her recall it.