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and a child, Modred, resulted.’
    Artor wondered at the depth of his spymaster’s knowledge of his sister.
    ‘Morgause was none too pleased to be pregnant late in life, and King Lot wasn’t amused either, so Modred was sent back to his father as soon as she whelped him. The boy survived Simnel’s rebellion and was raised by Luka’s last living heir, in case he begot no sons. So now you have another unpleasant kinsman, one who intends to use his bloodlines to further his own ends.’
    ‘All women are much the same in the darkness, whatever their age,’ Odin remarked, causing Percivale to blush scarlet, to the amusement of the older men.
    ‘Still chaste?’ Gruffydd stared at Percivale, amazed.
    ‘Still!’ The High King laughed with genuine mirth.
    ‘You’re being unfair, my lord,’ Percivale pleaded. ‘I’ve only ever loved one lady . . . and she’s long gone. I’m determined to wait until I meet the right woman.’
    Artor knew that his servant dreamed of Nimue, his childhood friend. Percivale had never moved beyond a young man’s first infatuation and his lack of experience blinded him to his hopeless idealization of Nimue. The High King would have laughed at the childish delusions of men if he had not recognized that Gallia had become his own idealized, perfect woman.
    ‘What has marriage to do with rutting?’ Odin asked with bland interest. ‘Celibacy is a very strange solution to an unsuccessful search for a true woman.’
    ‘One I doubt you ever practised, my large friend,’ Percivale retorted, his face still flaming in embarrassment.
    Odin simply grinned through his grey beard in his snaggletoothed way. Only his brown and broken teeth showed the weakness of old age.
    ‘So,’ Artor mused, ‘Gawayne and this Galahad approach Cadbury, as do Bedwyr and his nameless wife, and Modred, who is Morgause’s youngest son and the illegitimate king of the Brigante. We already have Anna’s twins with us. The next generation is gathering to pick my bones clean while I’m still alive.’
    Among the warriors in the room, only Gruffydd remembered Uther Pendragon as another High King who had clutched at immortality. Gruffydd shivered, fearing the sins he might have to commit in his master’s service. Whenever he remembered the king’s foster-brother, Caius, as he lay writhing on a bloody pallet, Gruffydd thanked the Tuatha de Danaan that he hadn’t been required to carry out Artor’s orders. Another hand had stopped Caius, so Gruffydd was clean of the assassin’s taint Of course, he would obey his beloved lord for as long as his hands could hold a blade. Long years of proximity had taught the spymaster that Artor never acted maliciously unless he was pushed into a blind rage, a condition that rarely troubled the king in his old age. But would Artor order an assassination if such a cowardly act would save the west? Of course he would. And could Artor live with the consequences of such shame? For the sake of the Union of Kings, and for the preservation of the people, Artor would learn to endure.
    ‘If he can do it, then I can,’ Gruffydd whispered, and Artor’s eyes swivelled towards his sword bearer as if he could read his old retainer’s mind.
    ‘This turmoil you feel is the way of old age,’ Gareth said lightly. ‘You are still hale and vigorous, but you approach sixty years, the same age as your father when he succumbed to death. The young wolves will always gather as the leader of the old pack greys with time, so you must beware of jealousy and rage. That foolishness was Uther’s way.’ He smiled at his king. ‘My grandmother and your old friend, Frith, would have told you that what comes will come.’
    Artor nodded and stared down at the pearl ring on his thumb. Many years had passed since his hand had been so slick with blood that the pearl had glowed from within encrusted gore. In Artor’s jaded imagination, the pearl had resembled a blinded eye.
    ‘Aye, our Frith was a wise woman, as was