I had whipped round, startled, before I realised that he, and the man he was speaking to, were on the other side of the rock that sheltered me.

“Five miles, they tell me, in either direction . . .” The High King’s voice dwindled as he turned away. I heard footsteps on the frosty ground, dead leaves crackling, and the jar of nailed boots on stone. They were moving off. I stood up, taking it carefully, and peered over the rock. Vortigern and my grandfather were walking up through the wood together, deep in talk.

I remember that I hesitated. What, after all, could they have to say that could not already have been said in the privacy of Macsen’s Tower? I could not believe that Galapas had sent me merely as a spy on their conference. But why else? Perhaps the god in whose way I had put myself had sent me here alone, today, for this. Reluctantly, I turned to follow them.

As I took the first step after them a hand caught my arm, not gently. “And where do you think you’re going?” demanded Cerdic under his breath.

I shook him off violently. “Damn you, Cerdic, you nearly made me jump out of my skin! What does it matter to you where I’m going?”

“I’m here to look after you, remember?”

“Only because I brought you. No one tells you to look after me, these days. Or do they?” I looked at him sharply. “Have you followed me before?”

He grinned. “To tell you the truth, I never troubled, Should I have?”

But I persisted. “Did anyone tell you to watch me today?”

“No. But didn’t you see who went this way? It was Vortigern and your grandfather. If you’d any idea of wandering after them, I’d think again if I was you.”

“I wasn’t going ‘after them’,” I lied. “I was merely taking a look round.”

“Then I’d do it elsewhere. They said special that the escort had to wait down here. I came to make sure you knew it, that’s all. Very special about it, they was.”

I sat down again. “All right, you’ve made sure. Now leave me again, please. You can come and tell me when we’re due to move off.”

“And have you belting off the minute my back’s turned?”

I felt the blood rise to my cheeks. “Cerdic, I told you to go.”

He said doggedly: “Look, I know you, and I know when you look like that. I don’t know what’s in your mind, but when you get that look in your eye there’s trouble for somebody, and it’s usually for you. What’s to do?”

I said furiously: “The trouble’s for you this time, if you don’t do as I say.”

“Don’t go all royal on me,” he said. “I was only trying to save you a beating.”