“Because I was afraid they didn’t mean to bring me to you after all. I thought that they might have realised how—how little use I would be to you.”

“So you came ashore on your own in the middle of a winter’s night, and in a strange country, and the god threw you straight at my feet. You and your god between you, Myrddin, make a pretty powerful combination. I can see I have no choice.”

“My lord?”

“Perhaps you are right, and there are ways in which you can serve me.” He looked down at the table again, picked up a pen, and turned it over in his hand, as if he examined it. “But tell me first, why are you called Myrddin? You say your mother never told you who your father was? Never even hinted? Might she have called you after him?”

“Not by calling me Myrddin, sir. That’s one of the old gods—there’s a shrine just near St. Peter’s gate. He was the god of the hill nearby, and some say of other parts beyond South Wales. But I have another name.” I hesitated. “I’ve never told anyone this before, but I’m certain it was my father’s name.”

“And that is?”

“Emrys. I heard her talking to him once, at night, years ago when I was very small. I never forgot. There was something about her voice. You can tell.”

The pen became still. He looked at me under his brows. “Talking to him? Then it was someone in the palace?”

“Oh, no, not like that. It wasn’t real.”

“You mean it was a dream? A vision? Like this tonight of the bull?”

“No, sir. And I wouldn’t have called that a dream, either—it was real, too, in a different way. I have those sometimes. But the time I heard my mother . . . There was an old hypocaust in the palace that had been out of use for years; they filled it in later, but when I was young—when I was little—I used to crawl in there to get away from people. I kept things there . . . the sort of things you keep when you’re small, and if they find them, they throw them away.”

“I know. Go on.”

“Do you? I—well, I used to crawl through the hypocaust, and one night I was under her chamber, and heard her talking to herself, out loud, as you do when you pray sometimes. I heard her say ‘Emrys’, but I don’t remember what else.” I looked at him. “You know how one catches one’s own name, even if one can’t hear much else? I thought she must be praying for me, but when I was older and remembered it, it came to me that the ‘Emrys’ must be my father. There was something about her voice . . . and anyway, she never called me that; she called me Merlin.”

“Why?”