Germany, 1500: a roadside inn called the Blue Pike, a company of travellers snowed in together — a knight, a monk, a player, a Jewish physician — and one night of talk in which the coming century is argued out. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; here he leaves Egypt for the eve of the Reformation, and the inn is a cross-section of a world about to break.