Abbey of Rhuys, Brittany, 571 AD No father should have to bear the loss of his son. Of all the cruelties and hardships God saw fit to heap upon my head, this was the worst. Abbot Gildas, who knows something of my history, sometimes asks to join me in praying for the soul of Arthur. He does not know I pray for my son’s wellbeing, not his soul. I last set eyes on him almost twenty years ago, near the banks of the Po in northern Italy. If I shut my eyes, I can picture him clearly: a tall, proud, soldierly figure, with his mother’s wiry frame and the flaming red hair of his royal British ancestors. He rode as well as any Scythian or Hunnish horse-archer, and Caledfwlch gleamed in his hand. “Go!” I screamed, pointing my spear west, towards the distant border of Liguria, “go now, or bear a father’s curse!” Arthur might have disobeyed, for he was ever a strong-willed brute, but he carried a sacred charge.
