In the small village of Castel Villa in Southern Burgundy, not far from the medieval town of Cluny, where the towers of the great Abbey reached to the sky, lived the heroes and heroines of this story. Claudette was born into a peasant family who struggled to survive and were often starving when their small harvest failed. Her life and that of her family changed dramatically when she went to work at the Chateau, to a tumultuous life she could not have imagined. In the Middle Ages, girls and women had to struggle to make their place. Labelled by the Church as the 'first sinners' and compared by misogynous clergy to the devil, they were at an enormous disadvantage.