In 1430, Joan of Arc, the prisoner of a powerful lord of the north of France is sold to the English. As a captive awaiting her death, she is approached by different men for whom she is believed to be the embodiment of the infinite.

1959. Guilty of a double-murder, a man is beheaded. At the bottom of the basket that just welcomed it, the head of the dead man tells his story: everything was going so well. Admired priest, magnificient lover, his earthly paradise seemed to have no end.

When Ahab's mother dies in childbirth, the infant's gruff father places his son in the care of his pious aunt. It is Rose who sparks the imagination of the young boy by teaching him to read the Bible, though when Ahab is reclaimed by his father a decade later the growing boy strives to become a hunter like his old man. Later, after Ahab warms to his father's lover Louise, the old man dies and the boy is sent back to his God-fearing aunt. Rejecting Rose and her abusive husband Henry's unforginv brand of discipline and infuriated that his aunt confiscated the locket given to him by Louise, young Ahab boldly stages his own kidnapping as an ingenious escape plan.