London, in the reign of Charles II, is a city of squalor, cruelty, status, splendour, and fear, where even survival itself can be a familiar game of life and death. In the teeming markets of the East End, a mixed-race teen called Jinx entertains the crowds, helping to support his mother. She is a gifted embroiderer whose remarkable talent conceals an even greater enigma beneath their impoverished lives: both hold a mysterious power rooted in a benign variant of Jamaican voodoo they dare not reveal. In a nation gripped by superstition, even the faintest suspicion of black magic and witchcraft can lead to torture, public execution, and ruin.