Harlequins are lost souls, so loved by the devil that he would not take them to hell, but left them to roam the earth. In French, the word is hellequin - the name given to the English archers who crossed the Channel to lay waste the towns and countryside. In the fourteenth century the English were just beginning to discover their national identity, and one of the strongest elements of this was the overwhelming success in battle of the English bowmen....

In the last decade of his reign, Edward III was condemned to see his conquests overrun by the armies of his enemies. When he died, in 1377, he was succeeded by a vulnerable child, who grew into an unstable adult presiding over a divided nation. Meanwhile, France entered one of the most glittering periods of her history.

In 1347 the English capture Calais and the war with France is suspended by a truce. But for Thomas of Hookton there is no end to the fighting. He is pursuing the Grail, the most sacred of Christendom's relics, and is sent to his homeland to engineer a confrontation with his deadliest enemy.