‘Yes.’

‘Then come with me now,’ she whispered back, and pulled out of my embrace. ‘Now,’ she repeated when she saw my hesitation.

‘Let me fetch a cloak and a sword,’ I said.

‘You will need no sword where we go, Lord Derfel, and you may share my cloak. Come now, or let your lady suffer.’ With those words she turned and walked out of the courtyard.

‘Go!’ Taliesin urged me, ‘go!’

Galahad tried to come with me, but the woman turned in the gate and ordered him back. ‘Lord Derfel comes alone,’ she said, ‘or he does not come at all.’

And so I went, following death in the night, going north.

All that night we walked so that by dawn we were at the edge of the high hills, and still she pressed on, choosing paths that took us far from any settlement. The woman who called herself the Dancer walked barefoot, and skipped sometimes as if she was filled with an unquenchable joy. An hour after the dawn, when the sun was flooding the hills with new gold, she stopped beside a small lake and dashed water onto her face and scrubbed at her cheeks with handfuls of grass to wash away the mix of honey and ashes with which she had whitened her skin. Till that moment I had not known whether she was young or old, but now I saw she was a woman in her twenties, and very beautiful. She had a delicate face, full of life, with happy eyes and a quick smile. She knew her own beauty and laughed when she saw that I recognized it too. ‘Would you lie with me, Lord Derfel?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said.

‘If it would cure Ceinwyn,’ she asked, ‘would you lie with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it won’t!’ she said, ‘it won’t!’ And she laughed and ran ahead of me, dropping her heavy cloak to reveal a thin linen dress clinging to a lissom body. ‘Do you remember me?’ she asked, turning to face me.

‘Should I?’

‘I remember you, Lord Derfel. You stared at my body like a hungry man, but you were hungry. So hungry. Remember?’ And with that she closed her eyes and walked down the sheep path towards me, and she made her steps high and precise, pointing her toes out with each high step, and I immediately recalled her. This was the girl whose naked skin had shone in Merlin’s darkness. ‘You’re Olwen,’ I said, her name coming back to me across the years. ‘Olwen the Silver.’

‘So you do remember me. I am older now. Older Olwen,’ she laughed. ‘Come, Lord! Bring the cloak.’

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.