It is a children's historical fantasy and an Arthurian legend, and recounts the story of the squire Arthur de Caldicot in the year 1200 after the events of The Seeing Stone.

[2] Arthur is now fourteen-years-old, and has left his foster family to live with Lord Stephen de Holt as his squire in training, and is preparing to join him on the Fourth Crusade.

It has also been revealed that his blood-father is his foster father's brother, mean-tempered Sir William, and his mother is still unknown, but Arthur is intent on finding her.

Joanna Long wrote in her review for The Horn Book Magazine that this "volume is less dramatically intense than the first, and some of the crusaders ideas seem rather pacific and multicultural for their time, but Crossley-Holland once again evokes a rich and credible panoply of circumstances and characters".

[7] Connie Rockman, a children's literature consultant, wrote in Young Adult Library Services, that in order for a fantasy novel to be successful, "the setting and characters created ... must be believable".