As a child, Rose is fascinated by words and their meanings, and loves being told stories. She believes she is named after the Princess Rosetta of the famous fairytale, who married the King of the Peacocks and lived happily ever after (just as Rose herself thinks she surely will). But when she finds that it is a mysterious port town in Egypt that gave her the name, she becomes transfixed by this foreign land and its hieroglyphs.
The repercussions of the French Revolution; the rise of the power of the English Church; the battles for Egypt between the French and the English; the sudden exciting discovery in that same small port town of a possible key to the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone – and, above all, the machinations of a rich, amoral member of the ‘new' English aristocracy – all whirlpool together around Rose's marriage into high society. Events carry her to France , and then to the dark, unknown world of Egypt and the River Nile and to the knowledge, finally, that words – and especially the word ‘love' – have many meanings, and that they also have power. And can save your life.
