The hurt arm and the fever, the kind nursing of old Brigit, and his seeming recovery. Then the queen’s coming; the subsequent banishment of the old nurse and the maids who had attended him. The medicines, carefully mixed by the queen herself. The dreaming days of weakness that followed, explained as a reaction to the fever, dreams filled with her presence, her soft touch, swimming visions of her beauty and of the promise of love. The night, even now only remembered in feverish flashes of ecstasy, when she finally took him to her bed. And after that – yes, from that time onwards he had been her willing and lovesick slave.

It was not to be thought that he regretted it; it had been something he would not forget, nor would willingly have forgone, but now, as the chestnut stallion put the miles steadily behind him, the enchanted bonds loosened with every stride, and he found himself, without wishing to, going back over what Luned had told him.

The adultery with Accolon; well, she had been young, tied by an arranged marriage to an unhappy bed. It happened all the time. But treachery to the High King? Plotting, even in the imprisonment that followed, to damage the peace of the kingdom? The Young Celts, and this quest that she had been sending them on, Ferlas and Julian and who else, the quest for the grail of power. What kind of power? He was still young enough to think that she had all the kinds of power that a woman needs. What, then? Was he to be another Accolon, another Ferlas bribed as she had bribed him, Alexander, and then rewarded for his attempted quest? Or another Julian, who had perhaps resisted the bribe and so been sent to risk death?

The road drew clear at length of the forested valley, and stretched ahead in the open; smooth riding at last on green turf that bordered a lake. The early morning breeze had dropped, and the water lay mirror-bright and shining. There were swans in the shallows, guddling peacefully among the weeds. A sandpiper ran along the shingle with its sweet fluting call. Alexander halted his horse, and sat for a few minutes, watching the quiet scene, while his thoughts ran on.

So why was this grail worth so much to her? She would bring its power to her brother’s service, she had said, and of course he had believed her. Luned had denied it, and appealed to his loyalty to submit the quest to the High King. He remembered something else. Morgan herself had told him that Nimuë, the King’s enchantress, held what remained of Macsen’s treasure, which the King himself had handed to her for safe keeping. Surely, if that was so, then the King could have the grail brought to his hand at any time, just for the asking?

Which effectively gave Queen Morgan the lie. And so transparent a lie that only a fool too besotted to think would have failed to see it. So, Alexander, think …