obyn Stafford has just experienced a crushing blow to her ego. Having fallen in love with an exotic Englishman named Collin Grey—who romanced her in Hollywood, where Robyn has a minor movie-studio job—she followed her heart and flew unannounced to England to be with her new lover. There she found Collin married, and herself an intruder. Luckily, Collin's sister, Jo, and Jo's daughter, Joy, sympathized with her plight and welcomed her into their own home. While tromping through the Welsh countryside on a recuperative walk, Robyn meets a most solid apparition: a fellow on horseback fully costumed as a late-medieval knight.
He calls himself Edward Plantagenet, and wonders why Robyn is abroad alone in this hostile land. An incoming call on Robyn's cell phone tends to bolster her notion that Edward is a wandering lunatic. But then a clash with swordsmen on horses seems to confirm Edward's view of events. The two eventually part, and Robyn walks back to Jo and Joy. But these women—practiced witches, it eventuates—inform her that her encounter was real, and, with their coven, they plan to send her back temporarily to Edward's era. But their scheme goes awry, and Robyn finds herself stranded in the year 1459.
Immediately under suspicion as a witch, Robyn is jailed by the king's vigilantes, the Swans, and faces certain torture and death. She is rescued by none other than the 15th-century incarnation of Collin Grey. Robyn soon learns that all her other modern friends have counterparts in this era, and begins to suspect that more is going on than she first realized. Her marooning in this era now appears foreordained, for she seems to have a part to play in this period's events.
Adopted into the Greystone household, Robyn begins to learn the ins and outs of medieval living. Some of her worst fears about sanitation, health and prejudice are confirmed, but are more than counterbalanced by pleasant surprises: the freedom of upper-class women, the pace of life and the sense of community. All the while she is being initiated deeper into the practice of witchcraft by the medieval Jo and Joy. When the Swans eventually take Castle Greystone, Robyn is cast loose on a wild run that will take her to Ireland, France and London—as well as back to the 21st century for a brief yet crucial interval—and into and out of mortal peril. Will Edward's and Robyn's love survive the anarchy loose in the land, as factions battle to depose Mad King Henry? Or will her days end in the Tower of London on the Swans' rack?
A charming clash of cultures
Prior to the appearance of Knight Errant, nothing could have seemed staler or less enjoyable than the prospect of reading another timeslip romance. After such disappointments as the pro-forma The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent (2000) by Gordon Dickson and the incoherently pedantic Timeline (1999) by Michael Crichton, the whole notion of sending a modern sensibility back to medieval times seemed most unappealing. But Garcia y Robertson—known for his flair with wild yet logical adventures, such as those on exhibit in his collection The Moon Maid (1998)—has such a blithe, easy manner, and offers such a fresh portrait of life in the late 1400s, that he triumphs over all the stumbling blocks littered in his way by his predecessors.
First among Garcia y Robertson's smart moves is his characterization of Robyn Stafford. No ditzy, whiny airhead, she is nonetheless preoccupied with trivial concerns: her nowhere job and love life, to be precise. She's smart and resourceful, but stifled and diverted into dead ends. In this sense she calls to mind Bridget Jones, of recent diary fame. Robyn's charm carries her through, with both the reader and those she meets, and by the time she is fully committed to the Middle Ages, she has become a different, more mature and complex person. Witnessing this transformation is a major part of the pleasures of this novel. And, of course, Garcia y Robertson exhibits the same sure hand with the other personages in both eras. Edward and Collin are radically different men, yet each undeniably a representative facet of his culture. The famed historical figures, such as King Henry (of Shakespeare's plays), are just as vivid.
Which brings the discussion round to the historical verisimilitude and depth of Garcia y Robertson's period portrait. The land and society he portrays is both refreshingly unexpected and nostalgically rich. He neither belabors his research nor scants it, inserting just enough facts and details to bring the people and places to vivid life. As for plotting, he keeps his story spinning in surprising directions. The reader is never quite assured of either Robyn's success or her failure. Each incident comes with its own share of suspense. And Robyn's filter of 21st-century consciousness makes for plenty of humor. She sees medieval things through a thoroughly modern lens, calling Edward a picture out of "the Gutenberg edition of Gentleman's Quarterly," for instance.
Blending a sense of witchcraft as an alternate religion with a sense of historical sweep, mixing battle and bedroom eyes, this novel is the best of its kind since Jack Finney's Time and Again (1970).
