C4 Bayard's Mercia
Eluned took nothing from the village, nothing from Haf and Owain and had walked further on her first day than she had ever walked before in her life.
The cold, crisp day had turned out to be an even colder night and Eluned decided that, since she was Sais, she needed to begin trading.
A farmer, who was incapacitated, paid her a penny to shin up his two apple trees and throw down any apples that were ripe.
This bought her a bed and supper in an alehouse on the banks of the Hafren and a farthing change, which doubled when, instead of spending it on the little coracle ferry from the Briton western bank to the Sais eastern, she took the place of the oarsman, who had been called away back to his wife, who was in labour.
Invest, work hard for a short time, pocket the reward, move east.
Though, why she was moving east, Eluned told herself, she didn't know. It wasn't as if she knew the name of her father.
But she heard she was in the region of the palace belonging to the king of Mercia and, because autumn was giving way to winter, Eluned did not want to try living out of doors in that season's cruelties.
So her buying and selling, which had afforded Eluned a little of the Sais tongue, won her a place beside a farrier, Aldred, who worked just beyond the gates of Bayard's city and was in prime position to receive the incoming and outgoing trade.
"Nails, lad," Aldred had told her, as Eluned had warmed her fingers near the forge's welcome flames one morning, "Scour the streets for any that have been dropped, for these can be reforged. Ten, and you can eat and sleep here the rest of the week."
Eluned had got through to the next spring because she brought back more than ten in a day.
And this brought her to the attention of the blacksmith, who made her a better offer, and then, in the summer, when, in the village, the crops would be ready to harvest, her forged cooking pots for the palace kitchen brought her to the attention of King Bayard's house.
By harvest, Aled was a kitchen servant. And there it might have ended, with daily abuse for speaking Sais with a Briton accent, and with logs brought in and warm fires in the winter, with regular food and within the bounds of a palace of the race of her unknown father.
"The king wants to see you," Saxred, the kitchens' cook told her one morning. It was still twilight; dawn was on the way and she had risen at cockcrow, washed and had set off to the wood store.
Saxred, who seemed to chide her less for being a Briton than the other servants did, snorted when Eluned asked, "Why? What for?"
"To send your hide back to Wales, for all I know - go and find out!"
So Eluned climbed the steps that led to the hall floor and walked towards the fire and bustle.
"The Briton boy, sire!" came the voice of one of Bayard's advisors, a portly man with the same long hair and helmet as Saxon nobles.
Others were gathered in the centre and, at once, Eluned's senses were heightened.
She wouldn't have been asked to appear before the king of something untoward was about to happen - untoward would have already happened in the night.
Eluned noticed that the other dozen people standing before the king, beside whom she was being ushered, all seemed to be people - men and women, young and old, who she had heard, at one time or another, speak Cymric. There wasn't need to panic, not yet.
But Bayard had been at war with Uther Pendragon for many years; this Saxon king might be about to send a message to his neighbour-enemy: Eluned told herself she must remain watchful.
She turned to look at the king, tall, with long, dark brown hair and beard, a circlet of metal across his brow. He stood when he began to address them, and he began, unexpectedly, in the Briton tongue.
There was to be a peace treaty, agreed in Camelot. That was the first thing Eluned gleaned. The king's voice, alert, canny, looking at each Briton in turn, appealed to Eluned, though he had trouble pronouncing several of the words.
"I want each one of you to accompany my household. Not only will you work for my family and I, but you will have the freedom to leave and return to Waeleas. Some of you - " Bayard scanned the people before him, "Were brought as indentured servants, and you have, each and every one of you, worked faithfully for me, for Mercia.
"So, I ask that you do one more task - listen in Camelot, report to me - and me alone. I wish to honour King Uhtred as equals, and for there to be no sleight of hand. Will you do this?"
At first, silence, Eluned amongst them. But her thoughts were not of freedom back into the Briton lands, but of one thing, namely her failure to forget the name she had just heard.
"Camelot."
Camelot, where, a year ago, her brother - her cousin - had headed to become a night.
Sickness in her stomach overwhelmed Eluned, sickness borne of nervous anxiety that Lancelot might even be in Camelot right now.
And so, when the King of Mercia raised the question once more to his diasporia of non-Sais servants, along with them, she replied: YES!.