This time the silence was so thick you could have cut it. I heard the young officer take breath to speak, but the other put out a hand. He must, by the way they waited for him, be their commander. “Wait. He’s not being insolent. Look at him. Hold the torch higher, Lucius. Now, what’s your name?”

“Myrddin, sir.”

“Well, Myrddin, I’ll listen to you, but make it plain and make it quick. I want to hear this about the bull. Start at the beginning. You saw my brother stable his horse in the shed yonder, and you took the cloak off its back for warmth. Go on from there.”

“Yes, my lord,” I said. “I took the food from the saddlebags, too, and the wine—”

“You are talking about my bread and wine?” demanded the young officer.

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, but I’d hardly eaten for four days—”

“Never mind that,” said the commander curtly. “Go on.”

“I hid in the brushwood stack at the corner of the shed, and I think I went to sleep. When I woke I saw the bull, over by the standing stone. He was grazing there, quite quiet. Then you came, with the rope. The bull charged, and you roped it, and then jumped on its back and pulled its head up and killed it with a knife. There was blood everywhere. I was running to help. I don’t know what I could have done, but I ran, all the same. Then I tripped over the cloak, and fell. That’s all.”

I stopped. A horse stamped, and a man cleared his throat. Nobody spoke. I thought that Cadal, the servant who had held me, moved a little farther away.

The commander said, very quietly: “Beside the standing stone?”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned his head. The group of men and horses was very near the stone. I could see it behind the horsemen’s shoulders, thrusting up torchlit against the night sky.

“Stand aside and let him see,” said the tall man, and some of them moved.

The stone was about thirty feet away. Near its base the frosty grass showed scuffled by boots and hoofprints, but nothing more. Where I had seen the white bull fall, with the black blood gushing from its throat, there was nothing but the scuffled frost, and the shadow of the stone.

The torchbearer had shifted the torch to throw light towards the stone. Light fell now straight on my questioner, and for the first time I saw him plainly. He was not as young as I had thought; there were lines in his face, and his brows were down, frowning. His eyes were dark, not blue like his brother’s, and he was more heavily built than I had supposed. There was a flash of gold at his wrists and collar, and a heavy cloak dropped in a long line from shoulder to heel.