‘It is your privilege to take his hand, Prince Loholt,’ Mordred decreed. He stood and limped carefully down the pile of heads with the drawn sword in his right hand. ‘But it is my privilege,’ he said when he was close to me, ‘to take his life.’ He lifted the sword blade between my legs and gave me a crooked smile. ‘Before you die, Derfel,’ he said, ‘we shall take more than your hands.’

‘But not tonight!’ a sharp voice called from the back of the crowd. ‘Lord King! Not tonight!’ There was a murmur from the crowd. Mordred looked astonished rather than offended at the interruption and said nothing. ‘Not tonight!’ the man called again, and I turned to see Taliesin walking calmly through the excited throng that parted to give him passage. He carried his harp and his small leather bag, but now had a black staff as well so that he looked exactly like a Druid. ‘I can give you a very good reason why Derfel should not die tonight, Lord King,’ Taliesin said as he reached the open space beside the heads.

‘Who are you?’ Mordred demanded.

Taliesin ignored the question. Instead he walked to Fergal and the two men embraced and kissed, and it was only when that formal greeting was done that Taliesin looked back to Mordred. ‘I am Taliesin, Lord King.’

‘A thing of Arthur’s,’ Mordred sneered.

‘I am no man’s thing, Lord King,’ Taliesin said calmly, ‘and as you choose to insult me, then I shall leave my words unsaid. It is all one to me.’ He turned his back on Mordred and began to walk away.

‘Taliesin!’ Mordred called. The bard turned to look at the King, but said nothing. ‘I did not mean to insult you,’ Mordred said, not wanting the enmity of a sorcerer.

Taliesin hesitated, then accepted the King’s apology with a nod. ‘Lord King,’ he said, ‘I thank you.’ He spoke gravely and, as befitted a Druid speaking to a King, without deference or awe. Taliesin was famous as a bard, not as a Druid, but everyone there treated him as though he were a full Druid and he did nothing to correct their misapprehension. He wore the Druidical tonsure, he carried the black staff, he spoke with a sonorous authority and he had greeted Fergal as an equal. Taliesin plainly wanted them to believe his deception, for a Druid cannot be killed or maltreated, even if he is an enemy’s Druid. Even on a battlefield Druids may walk in safety and Taliesin, by playing the Druid, was guaranteeing his own safety. A bard did not have the same immunity.

‘So tell me why this thing,’ Mordred pointed to me with his sword, ‘should not die tonight.’

‘Some years ago, Lord King,’ Taliesin said, ‘the Lord Derfel paid me gold to cast a spell on your wife. The spell caused her to be barren. I used the womb of a doe that I had filled with the ashes of a dead child to perform the charm.’