‘Far, Lord, far. To where the winds spring and the rains begin and the mists are born and no kings rule.’ She danced on the path, her energy apparently endless. All that day she danced, and all that day she spoke nonsense to me. I think she was mad. Once, as we walked through a small valley where silver-leaved trees shivered in the little wind, she pulled off the dress and danced naked across the grass, and she did it to stir and tempt me, and when I doggedly walked on and showed no hunger for her, she just laughed, slung the dress across her shoulder and walked beside me as though her nakedness was no strange thing. ‘I was the one who carried the curse to your home,’ she told me proudly.

‘Why?’

‘Because it had to be done, of course,’ she said in all apparent sincerity, ‘just as now it has to be lifted! Which is why we’re going to the mountains, Lord.’

‘To Nimue?’ I asked, knowing already, as I think I had known ever since Olwen had first appeared in the courtyard, that it was to Nimue we were going.

‘To Nimue,’ Olwen agreed happily. ‘You see, Lord, the time has come.’

‘What time?’

‘Time for the end of all things, of course,’ Olwen said, and thrust her dress into my arms so that she was unencumbered. She skipped ahead of me, turning sometimes to give me a sly look, and taking pleasure in my unchanging expression. ‘When the sun shines,’ she told me, ‘I like to be naked.’

‘What is the end of all things?’ I asked her.

‘We shall make Britain into a perfect place,’ Olwen said. ‘There will be no sickness and no hunger, no fears and no wars, no storms and no clothes. Everything will end, Lord! The mountains will fall and the rivers will turn on themselves and the seas will boil and the wolves will howl, but at its ending the country will be green and gold and there will be no more years, and no more time, and we shall all be Gods and Goddesses. I shall be a tree Goddess. I shall rule the larch and the hornbeam, and in the mornings I shall dance, and in the evenings I shall lie with golden men.’

‘Were you not supposed to lie with Gawain?’ I asked her. ‘When he came from the Cauldron? I thought you were to be his Queen.’

‘I did lie with him, Lord, but he was dead. Dead and dry. He tasted of salt.’ She laughed. ‘Dead and dry and salty. One whole night I warmed him, but he did not move. I did not want to lie with him,’ she added in a confiding voice, ‘but since that night, Lord, I have known nothing but happiness!’ She turned lightly, dancing a twisting step on the spring grass.