He was right enough about the fever, though it was brought about by some infection of the torn arm rather than by the chill of the water. For the next day or two Alexander was back in the hot and nightmare land of feverish visions, where night and day slid past in the same aching dreamland, and where faces and voices came and went unheeded and unrecognised.

Till he awoke, it seemed all of a sudden, clearheaded and with memory restored, to find that it was night again, and he was lying in a strange room, much larger than the other, and richly, even luxuriously furnished.

He was propped on silken pillows in a big bed with costly hangings, and set about the chamber were gilded chairs with brightly embroidered cushions, and carved chests, and bronze tripods holding candles of fine wax that smelled of honey. Against the wall opposite the bed’s foot stood a table furnished with a white linen cloth and various vessels such as Brigit the nurse had used, but these vessels were made of silver and silver-gilt or perhaps gold. And stooping over the table, mixing something in one of the golden goblets, was the most beautiful woman that Alexander had ever seen.

She turned her head, saw him awake and watching her, and straightened from her task, smiling.

She was tall for a woman, and slender, but with a rich fullness of breast and hips and a suppleness of waist that her amber-coloured gown did little to hide. Her hair was dark and very long, hanging in thick braids as if ready for the night, but carefully bound with amber ribbon and tiny golden knots where jewels glittered. Her eyes, too, were dark, with a charming tilt of the lids at the outer corners, a tilt followed by the narrow dark brows. Another woman would have seen straight away that brows and eyelids were carefully drawn and darkened, and that the proud curves of the mouth were expertly reddened, but Alexander, gazing up weakly from his pillows, saw only a vision of beauty that would, he thought vaguely, surely vanish in a moment, and leave him with the old nurse, or the kind but unexciting Lady Luned.

She did not vanish. She came forward into the light cast by the sweet-smelling candles, and spoke.

“So the unfortunate traveller is awake? Good evening, sir. How is it with you now? No, no –” as he struggled to lift himself – “don’t try to sit up. You’ve had a bad fever, and you must rest a while yet.” So saying she laid a hand on his brow, a cool, strong hand that pressed him gently back against the pillows. No vision, certainly, but a real woman, and a very lovely one … This, thought Alexander hazily, this was how the adventure should have started, but no matter; that blessed deer had, in the best traditions of the old tales, brought him back to the Dark Tower and the bedchamber – was it her own? – of the lovely lady of all those boyhood dreams …