‘You never do, Lord,’ I said, ‘but you always win them.’

‘So far,’ Arthur said gloomily, ‘so far.’

He picked up his tongs to rescue the shoe-plate from the fire, and I went to find a boat with which to snatch a kingdom.

NEXT MORNING, ON A falling tide and in a west wind that whipped the River Usk into short steep waves, I embarked on my brother-in-law’s boat. Balig was a fisherman married to Linna, my half-sister, and he was amused to have discovered that he was related to a Lord of Dumnonia. He had also profited from the unexpected relationship, but he deserved the good fortune for he was a capable and decent man. Now he ordered six of my spearmen to take the boat’s long oars, and ordered the other four to crouch in the bilge. I only had a dozen of my spearmen in Isca, the rest were with Issa, but I reckoned these ten men should see me safe to Dun Caric. Balig invited me to sit on a wooden chest beside the steering oar. ‘And throw up over the gunwale, Lord,’ he added cheerfully.

‘Don’t I always?’

‘No. Last time you filled the scuppers with your breakfast. Waste offish-food, that. Cast off forrard, you worm-eaten toad!’ he shouted at his crew, a Saxon slave who had been captured at Mynydd Baddon, but who now had a British wife, two children and a noisy friendship with Balig. ‘Knows his boats, that I’ll say for him,’ Balig said of the Saxon, then he stooped to the stern line that still secured the boat to the bank. He was about to cast the rope off when a shout sounded and we both looked up to see Taliesin hurrying towards us from the grassy mound of Isca’s amphitheatre. Balig held tight to the mooring line. ‘You want me to wait, Lord?’

‘Yes,’ I said, standing as Taliesin came closer.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Taliesin shouted, ‘wait!’ He carried nothing except a small leather bag and a gilded harp. ‘Wait!’ he called again, then hitched up the skirts of his white robe, took off his shoes, and waded into the glutinous mud of the Usk’s bank.

‘Can’t wait for ever,’ Balig grumbled as the bard struggled through the steep mud. ‘Tide’s going fast.’

‘One moment, one moment,’ Taliesin called. He threw his harp, bag and shoes on board, hitched his skirts still higher and waded into the water. Balig reached out, clasped the bard’s hand and hauled him unceremoniously over the gunwale. Taliesin sprawled on the deck, found his shoes, bag and harp, then wrung water from the skirts of his robe. ‘You don’t mind if I come, Lord?’ he asked me, the silver fillet askew on his black hair.

‘Why should I?’

‘Not that I intend to accompany you. I just wish passage to Dumnonia.’ He straightened the silver fillet, then frowned at my grinning spearmen. ‘Do those men know how to row?’