Caspian nods. "I have a son," he says. "It will not surprise you, then, to learn I had a wife. We had Rilian very late, you know; we'd almost given up the idea of having an heir at all. But have him we did, eventually, and he grew up tall and fair and bold, a true knight of Narnia. And he loved his mother."

If he tries, he can see a haze of spring-green on the trees ahead of them, can hear the gaily blowing horns and the laughter of the courtiers as they rode out. "One morning, about ten years ago or a little longer, Rilian rode out a-Maying with his mother and her courtiers."

If he's going to tell this story, he thinks, he might as well tell it as well as he can, ignoring the old, old pain that aches beneath his breastbone as he does. "But while they were out, his mother the Queen was bitten by a serpent, and perished."