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“Well, there’s nothing we can do,” Offa said.

“No,” his wife agreed. “But I wish there was.”

A further bond developed between Ricola and her mistress when Elfgiva permitted her to join in an activity the girl had never seen before.

Even at this early date, the Anglo-Saxon ladies of England were famous for their needlework, but embroidery was practised only by women of the upper class, for the simple reason that the materials used were rare and expensive. With fascination, therefore, when the afternoon drew in Ricola would sit at Elfgiva’s feet as, holding her work close to a lamp, the noblewoman went about her task.

“First you must take a length of fine linen,” she explained. “Some people in the king’s court even use silk. On this you trace the whole design.” To Ricola’s surprise, Elfgiva did not take the marker herself, but instead sent for Wistan. “He draws a better line than I,” she said.

And what designs, indeed, the young man drew. First, down the centre of the cloth, he made a single, long, curving line. “This is the stalk,” he announced. Then, branching off from this stalk, he made smaller stalks, always with the simplest curves, and upon these he made the outline, still with the purest simplicity, of several kinds of leaves and flowers, so that when he had finished, in the centre of the bare linen was a design that was so organic you could almost feel the nature of the plants, and yet so entirely abstract it might have been Oriental.

Next he indicated some stars and crosshatching as modest decoration within these forms. Finally, leaving a bare, echoing space around this plant form, he began to design a border. This, too, was masterly. Tightly controlled, geometric flowers, birds, animals, all manner of pagan and magic symbols appeared, as precise and neat as if they were links in a bracelet. From the inside of the border, like crocuses pushing rudely through the unbroken ground in spring, strange plants with elegantly curling, scroll-like leaves, and blunt little trees, insistent and sexual, broke into the edge of the central space as though to say: Art is order, but nature is always greater. Which was, perhaps still is, the essence of the Anglo-Saxon spirit.

Only then did Elfgiva put the linen on to a frame to begin the slow work of embroidery. She began with the centre.

Working with bronze needles, she would cross-stitch the details of the leaves. For these she used a variety of coloured silk threads. “When the Frisians come for slaves,” she explained, “they always bring me silk from the south.” Not content with this, however, she also used threads of gold and, to make the embroidery even richer, in one or two places she added seed pearls as well. At last, when this process was completed, she took a heavy cord of green silk and laid it down along the curving line of the stalk. Then she couched it in place, passing a silk thread over it from the back of the linen. To finish, she stitched extra lines of coloured silk along all the main outlines.

“Next we start to tackle the border.” She smiled. “That will take many months.”

Finding the girl’s fingers were nimble, Elfgiva would often let her put in a stitch or two, amused to see the slave girl’s delight in the process. She even let the girl bring Offa in, to show him what they were doing.

And all the while Ricola studied the older woman, admired her stately ways, and, each day, asked some questions about her dress, or the life of the court, or the estate at Bocton, adding a little to her stock of knowledge. At the same time, she studied ways to make herself useful. “You want us to be free,” she reminded her husband, “and if she likes us enough, one day she could give us our freedom, you know.” She smiled. “We just have to be patient. It’s a waiting game.”

As for Elfgiva, she, too, was playing a waiting game of a kind. She had quickly realized that even though Cerdic had so deeply hurt her, she must deny her pain. “If your husband strays,” the older women had told her long ago, “there is only one thing to do.” It was a fact of married life, for better or worse, that the only way to keep a straying husband was to entice him to bed as quickly and as often as possible. All other approaches that reason or morality might suggest were, unfortunately, futile. She had acted accordingly. She had not sulked, or argued, or been cold towards him, but each night after the evening meal set out to seduce and satisfy him. More than once they had awoken at sunrise in each other’s arms and she had lain quietly listening to the birds at dawn, thinking that perhaps, after all, he was contented, that the simple operation of inertia, that greatest of all friends to the married state, might keep him at her side. Even now, at this late hour, she still found herself secretly praying to the gods of her ancestors: “Let me have another child.” Or if not that: “Give me time. Do not let this bishop come just yet.” And so the next month passed.

Blodmonath
, the month of blood, the Saxons called November.
Blodmonath
, when the oxen were slain before the winter snows and the last of the leaves, crisp with hoarfrost, fell to the ground hardening after the autumn rains.

Early in
Blodmonath
, a ship had come to the trading post. It had crossed the sea from the Frankish lands beside the River Rhine, and Offa had been told to help unload it.

It was the first time he had seen a proper seagoing vessel, and the boat fascinated him. Although the Saxons had well-constructed rafts and even broad rowing boats upon the Thames, this ship was in another class entirely.

The most immediately striking feature was the keel. Starting as a great wooden ridge high above the stern, it descended in a graceful, curving line to the water, made its long way down the centre of the vessel and then rose once more in a magnificent prow that arched proudly above the water. Wistan, as it happened, was standing just by Offa as he gazed with admiration at this lovely sight. “It’s just like the line you drew for the Lady Elfgiva’s embroidery,” the young slave cried out in a flash of inspiration, and Wistan agreed.

Across the spine of the keel the vessel’s wooden ribs were fitted, and on to them were laid overlapping planks fastened with nails. Long though the vessel’s lines were, Offa realized that with the broadening allowed for at the centre, the ship had a considerable capacity. It had only two small decks, fore and aft; otherwise it was open. It had a single mast on which a sail could be raised on a crossbar. But its real power lay in the half-dozen long oars projecting from each side.

This was the longship of the northern world. Similar vessels had brought the Saxons to the island. Elfgiva’s father lay buried on the East Anglian coast under such a one.

The cargo also intrigued Offa: fine, wheel-turned grey pottery; fifty huge jars of wine; and, for the king’s household, six crates of a strange, clear material he had never seen before. “It’s glass,” a sailor told him. In the northern lands by the Rhine they had been making wine and glass since Roman times.

In this way, for the first time, Offa received a hint of that great heritage from across the seas – the heritage his own ancestors had known, and which had once filled the empty, walled city where he liked to roam.

A few days later, however, he received a far more significant visit from the Roman world.

He had sneaked off again into the empty city and spent an hour or two on the western hill. Since he had time – perhaps a lifetime, he ruefully realized – to investigate the place, he had decided to proceed methodically, concentrating on one small site at a time, searching it thoroughly until he was sure it had yielded all its secrets, before proceeding to the next.

That afternoon, halfway up the hill on the river side he had found a promising little house with a cellar. Using an improvised shovel, he was on his hands and knees picking away at the debris when it seemed to him that, some way distant, he might have heard voices calling. Emerging, therefore, he looked up the hill.

The brow of the western hill on the river side was much barer than the rest. The tile kilns had long ago crumbled away, though there were still plenty of tile fragments sticking through the soil to attest their former presence. The little temples were only a few stumps of stone now, marking the bases of their columns. The area around formed a sort of grassy platform with a view over the river.

On this plot of ground he now saw two men, one of whom, presumably a groom, was holding their horses. The other, a shortish figure in an ankle-length black robe, was pacing about, apparently looking for something. At once, his heart filled with misgiving, Offa thought: They must have come to look for the treasure. He wondered how they had found out. He was just about to duck out of sight when the black-robed figure looked up, saw him, and pointed.

Offa cursed inwardly. What should he do now? The man was still pointing at him, and since they had horses he did not think he would be able to escape them. “Better act stupid,” he muttered, and slowly advanced.

The figure in black was the most curious man Offa had ever seen. He was not tall, and had a large, clean-shaven oval face and grey hair that, being tonsured, left the top of his head bald. He looks like an egg, thought Offa.

Indeed, as he came close, the man’s small features and tiny ears reinforced that impression. Offa could not help staring, but the man seemed unconcerned and smiled slightly.

“What is your name?” he enquired. He spoke English, as the Anglo-Saxons called their language, but with a strange accent Offa could not place.

“Offa, sir. What’s yours?” the slave boldly asked.

“Mellitus.”

Offa frowned at the curious name, then looked about.

“You are wondering what I am doing here?” the strange man enquired.

“Yes, sir.”

In answer Mellitus showed him the beginnings of an outline he was making with stones on the ground a few yards away. It looked like the foundation line for a small rectangular building of some kind. “This is where I am going to build,” he declared.

It was certainly a pleasant site, with a good view down the hill in three directions.

“Build?”

The strange man smiled again.

“
Cathedralis
,” he replied, using the Latin word. Seeing Offa’s look of bafflement, he explained: “A temple to the true God.”

“To Woden?” Offa asked, but the man shook his head.

“To Christ,” he answered simply.

And then Offa understood who the stranger was.

He had known, of course, everyone had been told, that a man from Canterbury was going to come there. A bishop, whatever that was. At any rate a man of great importance. Offa stared at the monk in his black habit with surprise and doubt. He’s nothing much to look at, he considered. All the same, he’d better be careful.

“What’ll you build with, sir?” he asked. He supposed he might be forced to cart a lot of timber up the hill.

“These stones,” Mellitus said, and indicated the Roman masonry and broken tiles that lay all around.

Why here? Offa wondered, but remembering that the stockmen had told him they used to sacrifice bulls in the big round space nearby, he assumed it was a religious precinct, so merely nodded politely.

“And what are you doing here?” the stranger suddenly asked.

Immediately Offa was on his guard.

“Nothing much, sir. Just looking.”

“Looking for something?” The man smiled. Offa noticed that his brown eyes, though rather soft, had a curious, perceptive light in them. “Perhaps I can help you find it,” Mellitus said gently.

What did this stranger know? Was he just, as he said, designing a building as he paced, eyes on the ground? Or did he have some other intention? Was it possible that somehow he knew about the buried gold? Was he really offering to help Offa find it, or was he trying to find out what Offa knew? Evidently, this bishop was a cunning fellow, to be treated cautiously.

“I must go to my master, sir,” Offa muttered, and started to move away, conscious that Mellitus was still watching him.

Why should the bishop have chosen this deserted citadel near an isolated trading post to build his cathedral?

The reason was simple and it lay in Rome.

When the Pope had sent the missionary Augustine to the island of Britain, he had never meant him to tarry more than briefly in Canterbury. After all, why, except for the opportunity offered by the Frankish princess, should the pontiff have more than a passing interest in the peninsula of Kent? He desired to convert the whole island. And what did he know of Britain? That it had been, until unfortunately cut off, a Roman province.

“The records are clear,” the archivists told him. “It is divided into provinces, each with a capital: York in the north, Londinium in the south. Londinium is the senior.” Consequently, when Augustine and his colleagues, reporting upon the kindness of the Kentish king and on Londinium, protested that the place was empty, the response from Rome was unequivocal: “Let the king have a bishop in Canterbury. But set up York and Londinium at once.” Roman tradition must be maintained.

This was why Bishop Mellitus now stood in the deserted ruins of Londinium. In a way, it occurred to the monk, there were advantages in the situation. It was by a growing trading post, yet set apart in this ancient and majestic place that surrounded it like a vast cloister. The site, by the old temples, was impressive. The little church to be built there would be his cathedral; its patron saint had already been chosen.