London, 1396. Cornish treasure hunter Carantok Teague approaches Crispin Guest with a map that supposedly leads to Excalibur, the sword of King Arthur. Crispin and Jack travel with him to Cornwall and Tintagel, where the quest reunites Crispin with a woman from his past. What begins as a search for a legendary object becomes a murder investigation after a body is found, forcing Crispin to decide which parts of Carantok’s story are folklore, fraud or evidence of something worth killing for.
By the late Middle Ages Arthurian material had become deeply embedded in aristocratic culture, romance and ideas of British kingship. Tintagel’s association with Arthur made Cornwall an especially potent setting for a relic hunt, even though the historical basis of the legend was uncertain. Westerson uses that tension rather than resolving it: Excalibur matters because people believe it might matter. The journey away from London also broadens the physical world of Richard II’s England, contrasting metropolitan investigation with Cornwall’s landscape, local memory and competing claims over the past.
