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straight body, fine bones, and the look of eager yet contained intelligence in the eyes under their wing-tipped brows. She studied him, stiff but far from awkward in his "best" tunic, the only one he had, apart from the rags of every day.
    She remembered the stuff she had sent for it, years ago, a length of homespun patchily dyed, that not even the palace slaves would have worn. Anything better, missed from the coffers, might have caused curiosity. Round his neck hung a string of shells, unevenly threaded, with some sort of wooden charm obviously carved by the boy himself from a piece of sea-wrack. His feet, though dusty from the moorland road, were finely shaped.
    Morgause saw all this with satisfaction, but she saw more besides: the dark eyes, an inheritance from the Spanish blood of the Ambrosii, were Arthur's; the fine bones, the folded subtle mouth, came from Morgause herself.

    At length she spoke. "Your name is Mordred, they tell me?"
    "Yes." The boy's voice was hoarse with nervousness. He cleared his throat. "Yes, madam."
    "Mordred," she said, consideringly. Her accent, even after her years in the north, was still that of the southern mainland kingdoms, but she spoke clearly and slowly in her pretty voice, and he understood her very well. She gave his name the island pronunciation. "Medraut, the sea-boy. So you are a fisherman like your father?"
    "Yes, madam."
    "Is that why they gave you your name?"
    He hesitated. He could not see where this was leading. "I suppose so, madam."
    "You suppose so." She spoke lightly, her attention apparently on smoothing a fold of her gown. Only her chief counsellor, and Gabran her current lover, knowing her well, guessed that the next question mattered. "You never asked them?"
    "No, madam. But I can do other things besides fish. I dig the peats, and I can turf a roof, and build a wall, and mend the boat, and — and milk the goat, even—" He paused uncertainly. A faint ripple of amusement had gone round the hall, and the queen herself was smiling.
    "And climb cliffs as if you were a goat yourself. For which," she added, "we should all be grateful."
    "That was nothing," said Mordred. His confidence returned. There was really no need to be afraid. The queen was a lovely lady, as Sula had told him, not at all as he had imagined a witch to be, and surprisingly easy to talk to. He smiled up at her. "Is Gawain's ankle badly sprained?" he asked.
    A new rustle went round the hall. "Gawain," indeed! And a fisher-boy did not hold conversation with the queen, standing as straight as one of the young princes, and looking her in the eye. But Morgause apparently noticed nothing unusual. She ignored the murmurs. She had not ceased to watch the boy closely.
    "Not very. Now that it has been bathed and bound up he can walk well enough. He will be back."…at the exercise of arms tomorrow. And for this he has you to thank, Mordred, and so have I. I repeat, we are grateful."
    "The men would have found him very soon, and I could have lent them the rope."
    "But they did not, and you climbed down twice yourself. Gawain tells me that it is a dangerous place. He should be whipped for climbing there, even though he did bring me two such splendid birds. But you…"
    The pretty teeth nibbled at the red underlip as she considered him. "You must have some proof of my gratitude. What would you like?"
    Really taken aback now, he stared, swallowed, and began to stammer something about his parents, their poverty, the coming winter and the nets that had been patched twice too often, but she interrupted him.
    "No, no. That is for your parents, not for you. I have already found gifts for them. Show him, Gabran."
    A young man, blond and handsome, who stood near her, stooped and lifted a box from behind her chair. He opened it. In it Mordred glimpsed coloured wools, woven cloth, a net purse glinting with silver, a stoppered wine flask. He went scarlet, then pale. Suddenly, the scene had become somehow unreal, like a dream.