Despite the sanctuary of Aethelingaig the flight from Cippanhamm was an utter humiliation, made worse by the fact that the King’s own estate had been taken by the Danes as a base. The very boldness of the Vikings’ strike was daunting, Cynewulf thought. Guthrum’s intention had clearly been to capture or kill Alfred himself. If he had done so, with only children available to occupy the last English throne, Wessex could have been thrown into a succession dispute and fratricidal turmoil - and with a single stroke Guthrum might have won England. The intelligence of the attack, its decisiveness, and the wile with which it had been carried out marked out Guthrum as a formidable leader.

And worse in Cynewulf’s mind was the vision of Egil son of Egil, the Beast from the outer dark who had rampaged through the broken sanctuary of the King’s hall.

‘Yet they failed,’ Arngrim had pointed out to Cynewulf as they discussed this. ‘There is still hope.’

But Alfred could not fight back, not for now; English farmer-armies could not be raised in the depths of winter.

By the time Arngrim and his companions got back to Aethelingaig after their spying expedition, Alfred’s men had had three days to get organised. Around the camp a ditch had been dug out and an earthen bank thrown up. Inside this perimeter turf fires burned smokily, tents had been set up, and latrines and food pits were being dug. Parties had been sent out into the countryside to demand food for the King from the soggy water-folk. Further afield rivers had been blocked with logs to keep the Danes from sailing up.

This toy fortress, scratched out of a sodden moor under a sky like a grey lid, was all that was left of the domain of the King of Wessex.

In the camp the thegns huddled in uneasy groups, poring over bits of parchment, some even scribbling maps in the mud with bits of stick. The King was nowhere to be seen. Amgrim quizzed the thegns, telling what he had learned himself and finding out what else was known.

The news was detailed, surprisingly, since even here the King’s clerks scribbled and jotted constantly. After nearly a century of the Viking catastrophe the monastic system had collapsed and England was left empty of scholars. It was a tragedy for a land that in Bede’s time had been full of books and learning. But to Alfred, the scholar-King, words on parchment were a weapon of war; he knew that it was with words, words, words, endlessly recorded, that the Roman army had mustered the deep collective wisdom that had once enabled it to conquer the world. So Alfred had searched for literate servants from the British nations of the west and north, from Ireland, even from the continent.

Today the news, however painstakingly assembled, was dismal.