“Lady,” he said, a little hoarsely, and made his bow.

Looking up through the veil, she saw a handsome young man, with blue eyes bright in a tanned face, and brown hair curling thickly to his shoulders. He bore himself proudly, and his clothes, though worn and serviceable rather than fine, were good. His sword-belt gleamed bright as horse-chestnuts, and the hilt of his sword was jewelled.

“Sir?” said the Lady Alice, and waited.

And now that the moment had come, and the end of his quest for the fabled powers of Macsen was so easily, so magically in sight, Alexander found that he had forgotten all about it. There was some enchantment here that was stronger than Queen Morgan’s, stronger than Macsen’s, an enchantment that the first apple tree of Eden might have been able to account for. He tried to speak, cleared his throat, and said, merely: “If I might see your face? Of your courtesy, if you would put aside your veil?”

“I was just going to,” said Alice. “I only ever wear it for chapel, and I think it was frightening the robin.” And, pushing the fine folds back, she looked up at him, smiling.

Without knowing even that he had moved, he was down on his knees in front of her, taking breath, but only able to stammer, half stupidly: “You – you cannot be a witch! Who are you? Who are you? You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life! Tell me who you are!”

“I’m Alice, daughter of the duke Ansirus of Castle Rose in Rheged. And I do assure you that I’m no witch, though I’ve sometimes wished to be! And you, sir? You have a name, too?”

She was laughing at him, but he did not notice. He answered, careless suddenly of all concealment, all possibility of danger. “I am called Alexander. My father was Prince Baudouin of Cornwall, brother to King March. My mother keeps Craig Arian for me, in the valley of the Wye.”

“And what brings you here, Prince, to Rheged – and expecting witches here, by the sound of it?”

“I think,” said Alexander, meaning every word of it, “that I came here only to meet you. And I think that I love you.”

In the sharp silence that followed, the robin flew down again to the rim of the bucket, and trilled a loud, indignant song that went quite unheard.

Neither of them, in later years, could ever fully remember what happened next, what was said, or even if anything was said at all for the first long moments while they looked at one another, each knowing that they had been moving steadily through their young lives towards this meeting. To Alexander it was like coming out of mist into sunlight, out of dark water into fresh and glittering air. The Dark Tower had never been. Some day, somehow, its story must be told, its stupid sins confessed, but not now, please God, not yet. Now was the moment when his life as a true prince, a knight, a man, might really begin.