The most important event of the year, the King’s Pageant to ratify his Independent Charter, is approaching, and a sinister stranger is lodging in the old Book Depository: an inept itinerant Tiler is laying a new floor of heraldic tiles on the courtyard and causeway: Harbinger has ill-advisedly hired Griswolde Pauncefoote & the cacophonous Plangent Strains Waits to play triumphal fanfares: Griswolde’s brother in his ancient mould-encrusted armour is retained as the official Black Knight for the ceremony, and the arrival of the Plantagenet King Henry II and his Court is imminent. It only needs the hand of Wizard Prang to tip the scales towards total disaster and a brush with death for the visiting Angevin Monarch.