Argante screamed a last protest, but Guinevere seized and hugged her. ‘It doesn’t become princesses,’ Guinevere murmured softly, ‘to show anger in public. Be mysterious, my dear, and never let men know what you’re thinking. Your power lies in the shadows, but in the sunlight men will always overcome you.’

Argante had no idea who the tall, good-looking woman was, but she allowed Guinevere to comfort her as Issa and his men dragged the wagons onto the grass verge. I let the women take what cloaks and gowns they wanted, but we abandoned the cauldrons and tripods and candle-holders, though Issa did discover one of Arthur’s war-banners, a huge sheet of white linen decorated with a great black bear embroidered in wool, and that we kept to stop it falling into the hands of the Saxons, but we could not take the gold. Instead we carried the treasury boxes to a flooded drainage ditch in a nearby field and poured the coins into the stinking water in the hope that the Saxons would never discover it.

Argante sobbed as she watched the gold being poured into the black water. ‘The gold is mine!’ she protested a last time.

‘And once it was mine, child,’ Guinevere said very calmly, ‘and I survived the loss, just as you now will.’

Argante pulled abruptly away to stare up at the taller woman. ‘Yours?’ she asked.

‘Did I not name myself, child?’ Guinevere asked with a delicate scorn. ‘I’m the Princess Guinevere.’

Argante just screamed, then fled up the road to where her Blackshields had retreated. I groaned, sheathed Hywelbane, then waited as the last of the gold was concealed. Guinevere had found one of her old cloaks, a golden cascade of wool trimmed in bear fur, and had discarded the old dull garment she had worn in her prison. ‘Her gold indeed,’ she said to me angrily.

‘It seems I have another enemy,’ I said, watching Argante who was deep in conversation with her Druid and doubtless urging him to put a curse on me.

‘If we share an enemy, Derfel,’ Guinevere said with a smile, ‘then that makes us allies at last. I like that.’

‘Thank you, Lady,’ I said, and reflected that it was not just my daughters and spearmen who were being charmed.

The last of the gold was sunk in the ditch and my men came back to the road and picked up their spears and shields. The sun flamed over the Severn Sea, filling the west with a crimson glow as we, at last, started northwards to the war.

We only made a few miles before the dark drove us off the road to find shelter, but at least we had reached the hills north of Ynys Wydryn. We stopped that night at an abandoned hall where we made a poor meal of hard bread and dried fish. Argante sat apart from the rest of us, protected by her Druid and her guards, and though Ceinwyn tried to draw her into our conversation she refused to be tempted and so we let her sulk.