‘Then they shouldn’t try so hard to fill their bellies,’ Igraine said tartly. She paused to listen as Sansum screamed at Brother Llewellyn for having left his milk pail in the passageway. Poor Llewellyn. He is a novice in our monastery and no one works harder for less thanks and now, because of a limewood bucket, he is to be condemned to a week of daily beatings from Saint Tudwal, the young man – indeed scarce more than a child – who is being groomed to be Sansum’s successor. Our whole monastery lives in fear of Tudwal, and I alone escape the worst of his pique thanks to Igraine’s friendship. Sansum needs her husband’s protection too much to risk Igraine’s displeasure.

‘This morning,’ Igraine said, *I saw a stag with only one antler. It’s a bad omen, Derfel.’

‘We Christians,’ I said, ‘do not believe in omens.’

‘But I see you touching that nail in your desk,’ she said.

‘We are not always good Christians.’

She paused. ‘I’m worried about the birth.’

‘We are all praying for you,’ I said, and knew it was an inadequate response. But I had done more than just pray in our monastery’s small chapel. I had found an eagle stone, scratched her name on its surface and buried it beside an ash tree. If Sansum knew I had made that ancient charm he would forget about his need for Brochvael’s protection and have Saint Tudwal beat me bloody for a month. But then, if the saint knew I was writing this tale of Arthur he would do the same.

But write it I shall and for a time it will be easy, for now comes the happy time, the years of peace. But they were also the years of encroaching darkness, but we did not see that, for we only saw the sunlight and never heeded the shadows. We thought we had beaten the shadows, and that the sun would light Britain for ever. Mynydd Baddon was Arthur’s victory, his greatest achievement, and perhaps the story should end there; but Igraine is right, life does not have tidy endings and so I must go on with this tale of Arthur, my Lord, my friend and the deliverer of Britain.

Arthur let Aelle’s men live. They laid down their spears and were distributed among the winners to be slaves. I used some of them to help dig my father’s grave. We dug it deep into that soft damp earth beside the river, and there we laid Aelle with his feet facing north and with his sword in his hand, and with the breastplate over his broken heart, his shield across his belly and the spear that had killed him alongside his corpse, and then we filled the grave and I said a prayer to Mithras while the Saxons prayed to their God of Thunder.