Born in Flanders, the illegitimate son of an Italian prelate, and reared in the household of his wealthy merchant uncle, Henry Justus Lire of Bruges, Zeno is destined for the Church, but he early abandons his theological studies in Louvain to seek for knowledge untrammeled by doctrine. Drawn to the subversive dynamism of medieval alchemy, he pursues that science host under the auspices of a high churchman in Ghent, and next with a learned jew of Leon, in Spain. He then goes to France to study medicine and anatomy at the ancient college of Montpellier. The practice of his various arts takes him across Europe and the Levant attending sometimes upon sultans and kings, and some times upon the poor and the plague-ridden, everywhere in danger in a world torn by war, and by religious and social upheaval. Often a target for jealous colleagues, he is suspect for the daring of his experiments, for his writings, and for his barely avowed atheism. After the burning of one of his books in Paris, following censorship in Basel, that is to say, attacked by Catholics and Protestants alike, Zeno risks a return to Bruges for the first time in more than thirty years. Under an assumed name, Sebastian ThÔeus, he carries on a charitable practice in the dispensary of a Franciscan monastery, the prior of which becomes a friend and, unknown to Zeno, a protector.