When Camilla, a young North African girl, travels from Leptis Magna to Britain with her family, she believes that she is going on a great adventure and will eventually return to Roman Libya enriched with life experience. However, on the journey she is separated from half of her family. When they arrive in Britain, they discover that the Roman emperor Septimus Severus has died. Lost in the confusion of an empire without a ruler, Camilla is believed dead by her father and left behind on the island of Britain when her family sail away.