My mother looked at the wall above the King’s head. “I thought it had been a dream, or a girl’s fancy bred of moonlight. I went to bed and told no one. But he came again. Not always at night; not always when I was alone. So I realised it was no dream, but a familiar spirit who desired something from me. I prayed, but still he came. While I was sitting with my girls, spinning, or when I walked on dry days in my father’s orchard. I would feel his touch on my arm, and his voice in my ear. But at these times I did not see him, and nobody heard him but I.”

She groped for the cross on her breast and held it. The gesture looked so unforced and natural that I was surprised, until I saw that it was indeed natural, that she did not hold the cross for protection, but for forgiveness. I thought to myself, it is not the Christian God she should fear when she lies; she should be afraid of lying like this about the things of power. The King’s eyes, bent on her, were fierce and, I thought, exultant. The priests were watching her as if they would eat her spirit alive.

“So all through that winter he came to me. And he came at night. I was never alone in my chamber, but he came through doors and windows and walls, and lay with me. I never saw him again, but heard his voice and felt his body. Then, in the summer, when I was heavy with child, he left me.” She paused. “They will tell you how my father beat me and shut me up, and how when the child was born he would not give him a name fit for a Christian prince, but, because he was born in September, named him for the sky-god, the wanderer, who has no house but the woven air. But I called him Merlin always, because on the day of his birth a wild falcon flew in through the window and perched above the bed, and looked at me with my lover’s eyes.”

Her glance crossed mine then, a brief flash. This, then, was true. And the Emrys, too, she had given me that in spite of them; she had kept that much of him for me after all.

She had looked away. “I think, my lord King, that what I have told you will not altogether surprise you. You must have heard the rumours that my son was not as ordinary boys—it is not possible always to be silent, and I know there have been whispers, but now I have told you the truth, openly; and so I pray you, my lord Vortigern, to let my son and me go back in peace to our respective houses of religion.”