The tale grows darker now and harder to tell. Sometimes, when I think of my beloved Arthur, I see his noontime as a sun-bright day, yet how quickly the clouds came! Later, as we shall see, the clouds parted and the sun mellowed his landscape once more, but then came the night and we have not seen the sun since.

It was Guinevere who darkened the noonday sun. It happened during the rebellion when Lancelot, whom Arthur had thought a friend, tried to usurp the throne of Dumnonia. He was helped in this by the Christians who had been deceived by their leaders, Bishop Sansum among them, into believing that it was their holy duty to scour the country of pagans and so prepare the island of Britain for the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the year 500. Lancelot was also helped by the Saxon King Cerdic who launched a terrifying attack along the valley of the Thames in an attempt to divide Britain. If the Saxons had reached the Severn Sea then the British kingdoms of the north would have been cut off from those of the south, yet, by the grace of the Gods, we defeated not only Lancelot and his Christian rabble, but Cerdic also. But in the defeat Arthur discovered Guinevere’s treachery. He found her naked in another man’s arms, and it was as though the sun had vanished from his sky.

‘I don’t really understand,’ Igraine said to me one day in late summer.

‘What, dear Lady, do you not understand?’ I asked.

‘Arthur loved Guinevere, yes?’

‘He did.’

‘So why could he not forgive her? I forgave Brochvael over Nwylle.’ Nwylle had been Brochvael’s lover, but she had contracted a disease of the skin which had disfigured her beauty.