“The ladies? Then Queen Morgan will be there?”

“Oh, no!” The boy’s amused surprise was wasted on Alexander. “She doesn’t sit with the ladies! I’m on my way to find her now. They came in from riding an hour ago, and I think they’ll be in the east tower.”

“‘They’?”

“My mistress the queen and her knights.”

“Indeed,” said Alexander, conscious of an urgent wish to detach the lovely queen from such company, but still held back by courtesy, and also by another sudden thought. “No, wait a moment, please. Can you tell me – am I right in thinking – I must have heard someone say it – that there are men from Cornwall among the queen’s knights?”

He knew now that Queen Morgan had not found out his name by any sort of magic art; all she had heard was some muttering in a brief bout of delirium, when some instinct had kept him discreet. To her and Brigit – and so presumably to all the castle – he was “Alexander the Fatherless”, noble, apparently, but probably base-born. The thought had at first irked him, but then he saw it as another romantic touch in this adventure he had stumbled into: no doubt at some later stage there would be the discovery scene beloved of the poets when he would be revealed as a prince in his own right, and a fitting lover for a queen. Farther than this his imagination had not taken him. But he knew that now he must not risk confronting men from March’s court, who might see the resemblance to his dead father, and so place his family in danger, along with Sadok and Erbin, who had shielded their escape all those years ago. So he waited anxiously for the boy’s answer.

It was reassuring. “There were, sir. Two of King March’s men, and two from some duchy in Dumnonia, in the south, but I forget the name. They’re not here now. They weren’t the queen’s knights, they just came with messages, and they left last week.”

“I see. Well … The east tower, you said?”

“Yes, sir, but –” The boy stopped, biting his lip.

“But?”

“Forgive me, but I serve the queen, and I know what the orders are. It’s no use your going now to the east tower. We all, her servants, that is, have orders to let no one in while she and her knights are in council. But later, at dinner-time, I am sure you’ll be welcome.”

“‘In council’? What do you mean, in council?”

He spoke sharply, and the boy, confused, began to stammer. “I only meant – they have meetings … I don’t know what about, how should I? But she is a queen, and even if her state is small, and she is called a prisoner, she keeps her court. I’m sorry, my lord –”

“I see. It’s all right. Anyway, it’s the Lady Luned I’m looking for, not the queen. Thank you, you’d better go now. I’ll find my own way.”