‘I don’t want to be so far away, Derfel,’ she said. ‘Do you know what it’s like to be in a distant country when your man is fighting? You wait in terror. You fear every messenger. You listen to every rumour. This time I shall stay.’

‘To give me something else to worry about?’

‘What an arrogant man you are,’ she said calmly. ‘You think I can’t look after myself?’

‘That little ring won’t keep you safe from Saxons,’ I said, pointing to the scrap of agate on her finger.

‘So I shall keep myself safe. Don’t worry, Derfel, I won’t be under your feet, and I won’t let myself be taken captive.’

Next day the first lambs were born in a sheepfold hard under Dun Caric’s hill. It was very early for such births, but I took it as a good sign from the Gods. Before Ceinwyn could forbid it, the firstborn of those lambs was sacrificed to ensure that the rest of the lambing season would go well. The little beast’s bloody pelt was nailed to a willow beside the stream and beneath it, next day, a wolfsbane bloomed, its small yellow petals the first flash of colour in the turning year. That day, too, I saw three kingfishers flickering bright by the icy edges of the stream. Life was stirring. In the dawn, after the cockerels had woken us, we could again hear the songs of thrushes, robins, larks, wrens and sparrows.

Arthur sent for us two weeks after those first lambs were born. The snow had thawed, and his messenger had struggled through the muddy roads to bring us the summons that demanded our presence at the palace of Lindinis. We were to be there for the feast of Imbolc, the first feast after the solstice and one that is devoted to the Goddess of fertility. At Imbolc we drive newborn lambs through burning hoops and afterwards, when they think no one is watching, the young girls will leap through the smouldering hoops and touch their fingers to the ashes of Imbolc’s fires and smear the grey dust high between their thighs. A child born in November is called a child of Imbolc and has ash as its mother and fire as its father. Ceinwyn and I arrived in the afternoon of Imbolc Eve as the wintry sun was throwing long shadows across the pale grass. Arthur’s spearmen surrounded the palace, guarding him against the sullen hostility of people who remembered Merlin’s magical invocation of the glowing girl in the palace courtyard.