Arthur ignored the question. ‘Cut the boy down,’ he commanded.

Nimue turned on him. ‘Do you wish to be cursed, Arthur?’

‘I am cursed,’ he answered bitterly.

‘Let the boy die!’ Merlin shouted from the ladder. ‘He’s nothing to you, Arthur. A by-blow of a King, a bastard born to a whore.’

‘And what else am I?’ Arthur shouted, ‘but a by-blow of a King, a bastard born to a whore?’

‘He must die,’ Merlin said patiently, ‘and his death will bring the Gods to us, and when the Gods are here, Arthur, we shall put his body in the Cauldron and let the breath of life return.’

Arthur gestured at the horrid, life-drained body of Gawain, his nephew. ‘And one death is not enough?’

‘One death is never enough,’ Nimue said. She had run around Arthur’s horse to reach the gallows where she now held Mardoc’s head still so that Merlin could slit his throat.

Arthur walked Llamrei closer to the gallows. ‘And if the Gods do not come after two deaths, Merlin,’ he asked, ‘how many more?’

‘As many as it needs,’ Nimue answered.

‘And every time,’ Arthur spoke loudly, so we could all hear him, ‘that Britain is in trouble, every time there is an enemy, every time there is a plague, every time that men and women are frightened, we shall take children to the scaffold?’

‘If the Gods come,’ Merlin said, ‘there will be no more plague or fear or war.’

‘And will they come?’ Arthur asked.

‘They are coming!’ Nimue screamed. ‘Look!’ And she pointed upwards with her free hand, and we all looked and I saw that the lights in the sky were fading. The bright blues were dimming to purple black, the reds were smoky and vague, and the stars were brightening again beyond the dying curtains. ‘No!’ Nimue wailed, ‘no!’ And she drew out the last cry into a lament that seemed to last for ever.

Arthur had taken Llamrei right up to the gallows. ‘You call me the Amheramdr of Britain,’ he said to Merlin, ‘and an emperor must rule or cease to be emperor, and I will not rule in a Britain where children must be killed to save the lives of adults.’

‘Don’t be absurd!’ Merlin protested. ‘Sheer sentimentality!’

‘I would be remembered,’ Arthur said, ‘as a just man, and there is already too much blood on my hands.’

‘You will be remembered,’ Nimue spat at him, ‘as a traitor, as a ravager, as a coward.’

‘But not,’ Arthur said mildly, ‘by the descendants of this child,’ and with that he reached up and slashed with his sword at the rope that held Mardoc’s ankles. Nimue screamed as the boy fell, then she leapt at Arthur again with her hands hooked like claws, but Arthur simply backhanded her hard and fast across the head with the flat of his sword blade so that she spun away dazed. The force of the blow could easily be heard above the crackling of flames. Nimue staggered, slack-jawed and with her one eye unfocused, and then she dropped.