“I’ll be there,” I said, but the grille was already shut.

There was a mist rising again from the river. This would help, I thought. We went quietly down the lane which skirted the nunnery walls. It led away from the streets, down towards the towpath.

“What now?” asked Cadal. “It’s two hours yet till moonrise, and by the look of the night we’ll be lucky if we ever see a moon at all. You’ll not risk going into the town?”

“No. But there’s no sense in waiting about in this drizzle. We’ll find a place out of the wet where we can hear the bell. This way.”

The stableyard gate was locked. I wasted no time on it, but led the way to the orchard wall. No lights showed in the palace. We scrambled over where the wall was broken, and walked up through the damp grass of the orchard and into grandfather’s garden. The air was heavy with the smell of damp earth and growing things, mint and sweetbriar and moss and young leaves heavy with wet. Last year’s ungathered fruit squelched under our feet. Behind us the gate creaked, emptily.

The colonnades were empty, the doors shut, the shutters fastened close over the windows. The place was all darkness and echoes and the scuttle of rats. But there was no damage that I could see. I suppose that, when Vortigern took the town, he had meant to keep the house for himself, and had somehow persuaded or forced his Saxons to bypass it in their looting as—from fear of the bishops—he had forced them to bypass St. Peter’s. So much the better for us. We should at least have a dry and comfortable wait. My time with Tremorinus had been wasted indeed if I could not have picked every lock in the place.

I was just saying as much to Cadal when suddenly, round the corner of the house, treading softly as a cat on the mossy flagstones, came a young man walking fast. He stopped dead at the sight of us, and I saw his hand flash down to his hip. But even while Cadal’s weapon hissed free of its sheath in reply the young man peered, stared, and then exclaimed: “Myrddin, by the holy oak!”

For a moment I genuinely didn’t recognise him, which was understandable, since he was not much older than myself, and had changed as much in five years. Then, unmistakably, I saw who it was; broad shoulders, thrusting jaw, hair that even in the twilight showed red. Dinias, who had been prince and king’s son when I was a nameless bastard; Dinias, my ‘cousin’, who would not even recognise that much of a tie with me, but who had claimed the title of Prince for himself, and been allowed to get away with it.