My mother seemed a little better, and had rested well, she told me. We talked for a while; she had questions about the details of my story, and I filled them in for her. When I got up to go I asked, as casually as I could:

“The girl who opened the gate; she is young, surely, to be here? Who is she?”

“Her mother worked in the palace. Keridwen. Do you remember her?”

I shook my head. “Should I?”

“No.” But when I asked her why she smiled, she would say nothing, and in face of her amusement I dared not ask any more.

On the third day it was the old deaf portress; and I spent the whole interview with my mother wondering if she had (as women will) seen straight through my carefully casual air to what lay beneath, and passed the word that the girl must be kept out of my way. But on the fourth day she was there, and this time I knew before I got three steps inside the gate that she had been hearing the stories about Dinas Brenin. She was so eager to catch a glimpse of the magician that she let the hood fall back a little, and in my turn I saw the wide eyes, grey-blue, full of a sort of awed curiosity and wonder. When I smiled at her and said something in greeting she ducked back inside the hood again, but this time she answered. Her voice was light and small, a child’s voice, and she called me ‘my lord’ as if she meant it.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Keri, my lord.”

I hung back, to detain her. “How is my mother today, Keri?”

But she would not answer, just took me straight to the inner court, and left me there.

That night I lay awake again, but no god spoke to me, not even to tell me she was not for me. The gods do not visit you to remind you what you know already.

*   *   *

By the last day of April my mother was so much better that when I went again to see her she was in the chair by the window, wearing a woollen robe over her shift, and sitting full in the sun. A quince tree, pinioned to the wall outside, was heavy with rosy cups where bees droned, and just beside her on the sill a pair of white doves strutted and crooned.

“You have news?” she asked, as soon as she saw my face.

“A messenger came in today. Vortigern is dead and the Queen with him. They say that Hengist is coming south with a vast force, including Vortimer’s brother Pascentius and the remnant of his army. Ambrosius is already on his way to meet them.”