'Would it help to talk about something else now?' Guinevere asked. 'Might it help you wind down enough to get to sleep?'

'I don't know. I hope so.'

'You still hadn't answered the second half of my question about Lancelot – about whether you find him attractive, whether he's your type. Who is your type, anyway?'

Arthur laughed awkwardly. 'I can't imagine many men get asked that by their wives.'

'I knew this was a political marriage when I married you. And you knew I was French. It's not my fault if British wives don't normally ask their husbands this sort of question, but I'm just trying to be helpful. You were Lancelot's first crush. But who was yours? A man or a woman?'

'Not exactly.'

'Oh? That sounds even more intriguing.'

'Most of my most formative experiences between the ages of nine and sixteen didn't involve being human,' Arthur reminded her. 'Whenever Merlin turned me from a human boy into a mature animal, I might still have a human's thoughts and emotions, but I had that animal's instincts and sexual feelings – or lack of them, for that matter. When he turned me into an ant, I suppose I was a female ant – the males don't do much – but I still thought of myself as "he", because inside I was still Arthur. And because I was a sterile worker ant, it didn't occur to me to think about sex. But if he'd turned me into the queen ant, I suppose I'd have been fantasising about a brood of handsome, week-old, big-eyed drones to compete for my favour, and how they would all die but at least the lucky winner would have the chance to have sex with me and father my next brood of eggs before dying.

'But geese – geese are a different matter. When they fall in love, it's for life. So, when I became a young gander of the white-fronted geese, and met an intelligent young female goose, a first-year like myself, called Lyo-Lyok, and we became friends, I wondered whether we might be more than friends. It was – there was an odd sort of double vision. My mind as a ten-year-old boy thought, "She's quite all right, even though she's a girl." But my body as a young adult gander noticed that she was the most beautiful goose in the whole migration, as well as the most intelligent and kindest and most interesting. If I could have stayed a gander, I think I'd have married her, and forgotten that I was ever a human, and happily spent the rest of my life migrating from England to Iceland and back.'

'Or Merlin could have turned her into a human, maybe.'

'No! That would have been horribly cruel. To a wild goose, that would be as bad as being pinioned and sentenced to spend the rest of her life on some farmer's pond. No, I couldn't not be a human, and she couldn't not be a goose. So it couldn't have worked. But she was my first love, nonetheless.'

'What about when you were human, though? You didn't – find yourself still fancying geese after you'd turned back into a human, did you?'

'No!' Arthur laughed, but he still sounded slightly shocked. 'Humans – I don't know, really. I remember, when I used to daydream about being a knight when I was a boy, I thought the only part of being a knight that didn't sound fun was being expected to have a girlfriend so that I could do brave deeds in her honour. There was an outlaw lady I liked, who could creep through the forest as stealthily as a cat or wriggle like a snake, and was a crack shot and could imitate any bird's call. I thought that if I ever had to get married, I'd want to marry an outlaw like her. But, again – even if she'd been nearer my age, and if she didn't have a lover, she'd still never have wanted to leave the forest for court life.'

'So you ended up with me,' said Guinevere apologetically.

'Yes. You were like nothing I'd dreamed of. But I don't need the dream, when I've got the reality. And apart from your hair and eye colour, you're nothing like Morgause, if that's what you're worried about.'

'What colour was the outlaw's hair?'

'Light brown, and her skin was tanned golden. She was the only female outlaw there to have long hair, so she kept it braided to make sure it didn't snag on branches. But that doesn't matter. You're the right person for me, even if you weren't what I expected. And Lancelot – well, when I met him as a child, what I thought I might get in about six years' time, if he hadn't changed his mind by then, was a young man with a strong body, agile reflexes, and a dedication to justice. What I've actually got – is so much more interesting than that.'

'So – do you think you're likely to be attracted to him, or not?'

'I don't know. I know that I love the way he moves – he's the most graceful knight I've ever seen. I know that jousting with him is exciting. I know that I like him and I'd like to get to know him better. I also know that having a knight who is also my lover could be very bad for discipline.'

'Worse than having a knight who is also your foster-brother, or a knight who is also your nephew?'

'I don't know. I need more time to think about it.'

'Fair enough. Let's see what happens.'