There is silence as I pray for his soul, as I ask for him to be honored in the Otherworld. Tanwen is sensitive to the mood of the gathering and to my own disposition. She, too, stands quietly, peering down at the figure she knows so well, her expression questioning his lack of movement. At last she squeezes my hand a little tighter and whispers, ‘Sleeping!’ Together we kneel on the gritty rim of the grave. Tanwen drops in a single white bloom, lily of the valley, for its purity and its sweet scent. I lean down and carefully put into Hywel’s hand a small stone jar with a wooden stopper. This is no ordinary pot. It contains a potion heavy with magic. I have worked a spell into it, fixed with poison from the deadly nightshade, and drops of juice from the roots of the oak, and water from the very bottom of the sacred lake, and magic words older than any of these things. Magic to keep him safe in his slumbers. For to gain his justice, his vengeance, he must withstand such evil company that he cannot be left unprotected. Tanwen and I return to stand at our place close to the royal party. Wenna does not meet my eye. How could she? She and I both know who sent Nesta with her cursed serpent. Still Brynach does not wish to hear ill of his wife, and chooses to believe that the maid acted on her own, out of ambition, and out of jealousy of me. I have no proof, of course. He is deaf to this particular truth, and I fear this is in part due to the guilt that gnaws at him every time he looks at the barren wife he does not love. Every time he turns from her to me. But I have seen the truth of it now. Rhodri’s success in negotiating a pact with the Queen Aethelfaed was to further his own ends, for he knows his wife’s marriage is no longer sufficient to secure his family’s position of power. Nesta came to me at Wenna’s behest; and Wenna was acting on her brother’s urging. The peace Prince Brynach is so content with is built on ground less firm, less stable than the sucking marshes on the north side of the lake. If Rhodri cannot be rid of me, and rid of Tanwen, the Queen of Mercia will act. I know it. I have seen it. I understand my vision clearly now. This truce has served only to allow time to pass. Time that has no doubt served the Mercian ruler’s own needs as she builds her army. Rhodri has betrayed his brother-in-law, I am certain of it. The man stinks of betrayal.