Thymbra Farm, a tranquil estate cradled among the gently rolling hills north of Constantinople, is the seat of the Calvert family. This comely farmhouse, girt about with bright fields, full trees, and flowers in their bloom, has grown a favoured place for the entertainments given by Frederick and Evelyn Calvert. At present a certain quiet has settled upon the farm, many of the labourers from a neighbouring archaeological dig — which uncovers an ancient Greek site — having taken their leave in the wake of a recent festival.
The calm of Thymbra Farm is now and again broken by guests of distinction: the royal polymath Osman Hamdi Bey, the French General Patrice de MacMahon, and those enthusiasts of the spade, Heinrich and Sophia Schliemannn. The talk at a recent dinner ran through a whole spectrum of tongues — French chiefly, with Turkish and English besides — as the company traded observations upon the promising fruits of the excavation, a megaron among them. The children, young Sidra al-Najjar and Ahmet Yusuf, were commended for their part in the digging, whilst the evening's entertainment fell to Jean-Zera Mongé.
But the peace of Thymbra Farm was shattered when a mysterious report rang through the morning air, and a nearby flowering tree suffered a startling change — the ground for thirty feet about it drained of all colour, though the tree itself endured, alive amidst the strangeness. Ahmet Yusuf, curious and quick of eye, ventured nearer, whilst among the household unease began to gather at the unaccounted absence of Heinrich Schliemann and Frank Calvert.
The inquiry that followed led to a narrow crevice hard by, which opened upon a cave rich in the treasures of antiquity. This close-knit bond between the land and the relics of the past has made of Thymbra Farm not a seat of comfort and good company alone, but a very focus of mystery, danger, and peril — the whole culminating in an encounter with a Serpent that lurked within the depths of the cave. As residents and guests alike make their way through the enigmatic doings about the farm, its weight in the life of the neighbourhood and in the wider work of discovery only deepens.