At midday the urgency was even greater for it was then that we saw the first distant smears of smoke against the eastern and southern sky. No one commented on the tall, thin plumes, but we all knew that we saw burning thatch. The Saxons were destroying as they came, and they were close enough now for us to see their smoke.

I sent a horseman south to find Issa while the rest of us walked the two miles across the fields to the Fosse Way, the great Roman road that Issa should have been using. I planned to wait for him, then continue up the Fosse Way to Aquae Sulis which lay some twenty-five miles northwards, and then to Corinium which was another thirty miles further on. Fifty-five miles of road. Three days of long, hard effort.

We waited in a field of molehills beside the road. I had over a hundred spearmen and at least that number of women, children, slaves and servants. We had horses, mules and dogs, all waiting. Seren, Morwenna and the other children picked bluebells in a nearby wood while I paced up and down the broken stone of the road. Refugees were passing constantly, but none of them, even those who had come from Durnovaria, had any news of the Princess Argante. A priest thought he had seen Issa and his men arrive in that city because he had seen the five-pointed star on some spearmen’s shields, but he did not know if they were still there or had left. The one thing all the refugees were certain of was that the Saxons were near Durnovaria, though no one had actually seen a Saxon spearman. They had merely heard the rumours that had grown ever more wild as the hours passed. Arthur was said to be dead, or else he had fled to Rheged, while Cerdic was credited with possessing horses that breathed fire and magic axes that could cleave iron as though it were linen.

Guinevere had borrowed a bow from one of my huntsmen and was shooting arrows at a dead elm tree that grew beside the road. She shot well, putting shaft after shaft into the rotting wood, but when I complimented her on her skill, she grimaced. ‘I’m out of practice,’ she said, ‘I used to be able to take a running deer at a hundred paces, now I doubt I’d hit a standing one at fifty.’ She plucked the arrows from the tree. ‘But I think I might hit a Saxon, given the chance.’ She handed the bow back to my huntsman, who bowed and backed away. ‘If the Saxons are near Durnovaria,’ Guinevere asked me, ‘what do they do next?’

‘They come straight up this road,’ I said.

‘Not go further west?’

‘They know our plans,’ I said grimly, and told her about the golden buttons with the bearded faces that I had found in Mordred’s quarters. ‘Aelle’s marching towards Corinium while the others run ragged in the south. And we’re stuck here because of Argante.’