I asked the spearman concerning Cadwallon, the king, and learned still more. He, it seemed, was not the king in straight descent, but because King Lud, who had reigned before him, had left only children as heirs, he had come into power as regent, seemingly, but really as king in fact. Cadwallon, as the Britons called him, and as I also shall, though he was called Cassivelaunus by the Romans, was not altogether a bad king, but was held somewhat weak at times and he had, besides, certain enemies among the more envious and ambitious of the chiefs beneath him. Fortunately, the invasion of Cæsar had not reached his capital on the river called the Thames, and he was still secure in power. This capital was a place called London by its people and by all other Britons, though the Romans had named it Trinovantum, and was the town of chief importance in the land, having existed long and, being a port, reached from the sea and drawing the trade of the Veneti as well as, sometimes, of the far-trading Phœnicians who came to the southwest, the Cassiterides, for tin, and who sometimes extended their bartering voyages up the coast. Much pride had the Britons in their town of London, of which the legend ran among their Druid priests--some of whom were learned--that it was founded in the dim past by a Trojan chieftain who, fleeing after the fall of ancient Troy, had sailed with his people even to distant Britain and, after overcoming a race of giants living there, had builded this town beside the Thames and named it Troy Novant. This tale, however, I hold to be a fable. The Druids were ever liars. From this man, too, I learned much concerning the stately lady of whom I was the captive, and who had given order as to my disposal. She was the great Lady Goneril, he said, a princess of the Iceni and kinswoman of King Cadwallon. There had been trouble among the Iceni as to the succession, and at this time the family opposed to that of Goneril was somewhat in the ascendancy and it were better in many ways that the princess should seek refuge, for the time at least, at the court of her kinsman. An aunt she had also, wife of a chieftain of Kent with whom she was but now a guest. Only brave words had the man of Kent for the fair princess, and, even now, my heart went out to him because of it. Most imperious of mood she sometimes was, he said, and of great influence with both the king and her uncle in Kent, but ever generous and just, and much beloved of all, from chieftain down to churl, Iceni though she might be. All of this much delighted me and gave pride. Most curious, yet just and due it is, that a man should cherish, even as his own, the honour and fame of the one woman to him.