‘What does that matter? It would have made a very good ending to the battle. Not everyone likes to hear about spears and killing, Derfel. Tales of men fighting can get very boring after a while and a love story makes it all a lot more interesting.’ And no doubt the battle will be filled with romance once she and Dafydd maul my story. I sometimes wish I could write this tale in the British tongue, but two of the monks can read and either could betray me to Sansum; so I must write in Saxon and trust that Igraine does not change the story when Dafydd provides her with the translation. I know what Igraine wants: she wants Arthur to run through the corpses, and for Guinevere to wait for him with open arms, and for the two of them to meet in ecstasy, and maybe that is how it did happen, but I suspect not, for she was too proud and he was too diffident. I imagine they wept when they met, but neither ever told me, so I shall invent nothing. I do know that Arthur became a happy man after Mynydd Baddon, and it was not just victory over the Saxons that gave him that happiness.

‘And what about Argante?’ Igraine wanted to know. ‘You leave so much out, Derfel!’

‘I shall come to Argante.’

‘But her father was there. Wasn’t Oengus angry that Arthur went back to Guinevere?’

‘I will tell you all about Argante,’ I promised, ‘in due time.’

‘And Amhar and Loholt? You haven’t forgotten them?’

‘They escaped,’ I said. ‘They found a coracle and paddled it across the river. I fear we shall meet them again in this tale.’

Igraine tried to prise some more details from me, but I insisted I would tell the story at my own pace and in my own order. She finally abandoned her questions and stooped to put the written parchments into the leather bag she used to carry them back to the Caer; she found stooping difficult, but refused my help. ‘I shall be so glad when the baby’s born,’ she said. ‘My breasts are sore, my legs and back ache, and I don’t walk any more, I just waddle like a goose. Brochvael’s bored with it too.’

‘Husbands never like it when their wives are pregnant,’ I said.