Other men have told the story of Ambrosius’ crowning and his first work as King of Britain; it has even been written down, so here I will only say that I was with him for the first two years as I have told, but then, in the spring of my twentieth year, I left him. I had had enough of councils and marching, and long legal discussions where Ambrosius tried to reimpose the laws that had fallen into disuse, and the everlasting meetings with elders and bishops droning like bees, days and weeks for every drop of honey. I was even tired of building and designing; this was the only work I had done for him in all the long months I served with the army. I knew at last that I must leave him, get out of the press of affairs that surrounded him; the god does not speak to those who have no time to listen. The mind must seek out what it needs to feed on, and it came to me at last that what work I had to do, I must do among the quiet of my own hills. So in spring, when we came to Winchester, I sent a message to Cadal, then sought Ambrosius out to tell him I must go.

He listened half absently; cares pressed heavily on him these days, and the years which had sat lightly on him before now seemed to weigh him down. I have noticed that this is often the way with men who set their lives towards the distant glow of one high beacon; when the hilltop is reached and there is nowhere further to climb, and all that is left is to pile more on the flame and keep the beacon burning, why, then, they sit down beside it and grow old. Where their leaping blood warmed them before, now the beacon fire must do it from without. So it was with Ambrosius. The King who sat in his great chair at Winchester and listened to me was not the young commander whom I had faced across the map-strewn table in Less Britain, or even the Courier of Mithras who had ridden to me across the frostbound field.

“I cannot hold you,” he said. “You are not an officer of mine, you are only my son. You will go where you wish.”

“I serve you. You know that. But I know now how best I can serve you. You spoke the other day of sending a troop towards Caerleon. Who’s going?”

He looked down at a paper. A year ago he would have known without looking “Priscus, Valens. Probably Sidonius. They go in two days’ time.”

“Then I’ll go with them.”

He looked at me. Suddenly it was the old Ambrosius back again. “An arrow out of the dark?”

“You might say so. I know I must go.”

“Then go safely. And some day, come back to me.”