Dafydd, the clerk of the justice who translates these parchments into the British tongue, arrived to collect the newest skins today and he told me that the fires were almost certainly Saxon mischief, and afterwards informed me that Igraine’s new son is to be named Arthur. Arthur ap Brochvael ap Perddel ap Cuneglas; a good name, though Dafydd plainly did not approve of it, and at first I was not sure why. He is a small man, not unlike Sansum, with the same busy expression and the same bristly hair. He sat in my window to read the finished parchments and kept tutting and shaking his head at my handwriting. ‘Why,’ he finally asked me, ‘did Arthur abandon Dumnonia?’

‘Because Meurig insisted on it,’ I explained, ‘and because Arthur himself never wanted to rule.’

‘But it was irresponsible of him!’ Dafydd said sternly.

‘Arthur was not a king,’ I said, ‘and our laws insist that only kings can rule.’

‘Laws are malleable,’ Dafydd said with a sniff, ‘I should know, and Arthur should have been a king.’

‘I agree,’ I said, ‘but he was not. He was not born to it and Mordred was.’

‘Then nor was Gwydre born to the kingship,’ Dafydd objected.

‘True,’ I said, ‘but if Mordred had died, Gwydre had as good a claim as anyone, except Arthur, of course, but Arthur did not want to be King.’ I wondered how often I had explained this same thing. ‘Arthur came to Britain,’ I said, ‘because he took an oath to protect Mordred, and by the time he went to Siluria he had achieved all that he had set out to do. He had united the kingdoms of Britain, he had given Dumnonia justice and he had defeated the Saxons. He might have resisted Meurig’s demands to yield his power, but in his heart he didn’t want to, and so he gave Dumnonia back to its rightful King and watched all that he had achieved fall apart.’

‘So he should have remained in power,’ Dafydd argued. Dafydd, I think, is very like Saint Sansum, a man who can never be in the wrong.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but he was tired. He wanted other men to carry the burden. If anyone was to blame, it was me! I should have stayed in Dumnonia instead of spending so much time in Isca. But at the time none of us saw what was happening. None of us realized Mordred would prove a good soldier, and when he did we convinced ourselves that he would die soon enough and Gwydre would become King. Then all would have been well. We lived in hope rather than in the real world.’