In late seventeenth-century Great Britain, an eccentric, deeply misanthropic philosopher named Ursus travels from town to town earning a living as a wandering peddler, performer, and self-taught doctor.
Possessing a profound education in Latin, classical poetry, and botany, he crafts and sells medical panaceas made from overlooked wild plants. He also works as a skilled ventriloquist, mimicking human crowds and animal cries to captivate public audiences. Ursus shares an inseparable, egalitarian friendship with Homo, a highly intelligent and docile wild wolf. Together, they travel in a small, weathered wooden caravan on wheels. Homo serves as a beast of burden, pulling the cart along difficult country roads alongside Ursus, while also helping collect coins from the crowd after their theatrical shows.
The interior of the caravan serves as Ursus's home, laboratory, and philosophical sanctuary. Inside, he utilizes a dual-compartment iron stove to concurrently brew alchemical formulas and boil cheap potatoes, a food typically reserved for swine and convicts. The walls of his living quarters feature extensive, handwritten inscriptions that outline the absolute privileges, legal immunities, and strict hierarchical structures governing the British aristocracy. These texts explicitly state that lords are entirely exempt from taking legal oaths, can command total submission from the common people, and possess extreme historic legal protections, including unique immunities regarding simple homicide.
The overarching narrative shifts toward a dark, perilous sequence of events set against a freezing, snow-covered night on the rocky coast of Portland. A band of Comprachicos—notorious, ruthless criminals known for buying, mutilating, and trafficking children for profit—urgently prepares to flee England to escape the law. Operating under severe, newly enforced royal decrees that criminalize their trade, they hurriedly board an urk, a robust Dutch transport vessel, to escape across the turbulent sea. In their frantic rush to flee the shoreline and escape impending prosecution, they callously abandon a young, shivering, and barefoot boy alone in the dark on the freezing cliffs.
Battling the piercing wind and deep snow, the abandoned child wanders aimlessly through the desolate, wintry landscape. Along his treacherous path, he encounters a bleak gibbet holding a decaying corpse, intensifying the overwhelming horror of his isolation. Despite his exhaustion, the boy discovers a freezing, dying woman buried in the snow. Clutched in her frozen embrace is a barely breathing infant girl. Driven by a desperate instinct to survive, the boy rescues the baby, wrapping her protectively in his own jacket, and resumes his exhausting trek through the blinding storm. He eventually stumbles upon the dark, quiet town of Weymouth. Seeking shelter, he knocks on numerous closed doors, only to be repeatedly rejected by the sleeping inhabitants. Ultimately, his desperate journey leads him to Ursus's parked caravan. Taking pity on the freezing children, Ursus welcomes them inside, feeds them, and provides them with life-saving warmth, establishing a brand-new, makeshift family.