Peter Staunton, wandering one misty summer afternoon near the ruined castle of Carreg Cennen in the hill country of the Welsh border, stumbles across a rusted metal gauntlet, and idly slips it on. This is the start of an adventure which takes him back in time to the fourteenth century, when his Norman ancestors held the castle. As Peter de Blois, he is plunged into a bewildering medieval world of cruelty and chivalry, where falconry, tourneys and jousting ominously give way to a rebellion among the Welsh tribes, culminating in a fierce assault on the castle fortress and its Norman defenders.