“Harping,” I said blandly. “Also reading and writing—I did the man’s accounts for him. When he came back north he wanted me to stay with him, but I didn’t want to come back. Didn’t dare,” I added, disarmingly frank. “It wasn’t hard to find a place in a religious house. Oh, no, I was too young to be anything but a layman. To tell you the truth, I quite enjoyed it; it’s a very peaceful life. I’ve been busy helping them to write out copies of a history of the fall of Troy.” His expression made me want to laugh, and I looked down at my cup again. It was good ware, Samian, with a high gloss, and the potter’s mark was clear. A.M. Ambrosius made me, I thought suddenly, and smoothed the letters gently with my thumb as I finished for Dinias the account of the five harmless years spent by his bastard cousin. “I worked there until the rumours started coming in from home. I didn’t pay much heed to them at first—rumours were always flying. But when we knew that it was true about Camlach’s death, and then Vortimer’s, I began to wonder what might have happened in Maridunum. I knew I had to see my mother again.”

“You’re going to stay here?”

“I doubt it. I like Cornwall, and I have a home there of a sort.”

“Then you’ll become a priest?”

I shrugged. “I hardly know yet. It’s what they always meant me for, after all. Whatever the future is there, my place here is gone—if I ever had one. And I’m certainly no warrior.”

He grinned at that. “Well, you never were, exactly, were you? And the war here isn’t over; it’s hardly begun, let me tell you.” He leaned across the table confidentially, but the movement knocked his cup so that it rocked, and the wine washed up to the rim. He grabbed and steadied it. “Nearly spilt that, and the wine’s nearly out again. Not bad stuff, eh? What about another?”

“If you like. But you were saying—?”

“Cornwall, now. I’ve always thought I’d like to go there. What are they saying there about Ambrosius?”

The wine was already talking. He had forgotten to be confidential; his voice was loud, and I saw one or two heads turn in our direction.

He took no notice. ‘Yes, I imagine you’d hear down there, if there was any news to hear. They say that’s where he’ll land, eh?”

“Oh,” I said easily, “there’s talk all the time. There has been for years, you know how it is. He hasn’t come yet, so your guess is as good as mine.”