Lisbon, 1st November 175. The morning begins calmly in the city, but in the Inquisition's prison in Rossio, Sister Margarida, a young nun condemned to die at the stake, tries to hang herself in her cell. In his house in Santa Catarina, Hugh Gold, an English sea captain, looks at the river and dreams of his days at sea. In the Church of São Vicente de Fora, before Mass begins, a young boy is angry with his mother because he wants to go home to find his twin sister. In Belém, a minister's secretary attends Mass in the presence of the King, Dom José. And in the Limoeiro jail, the pirate Santamaria gets involved in a vicious fight with a gang of Spanish deserters. Suddenly, at nine-thirty in the morning, the city begins to shake. With a violence never seen before, the earth rips itself apart, houses collapse, church roofs cave in and chaos reigns, killing thousands. In the hours that follow, a giant wave engulfs Terreiro do Paço and for several days huge fires terrorise the kingdom's capital. Lost and in a state of shock, the survivors wander the streets in search of their destiny. While Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo tries to reorganise the city, a pirate and a nun try to escape justice, an Englishman tries to find his money and a twelve-year-old boy tries to find his twin sister who is buried under the rubble.