Arngrim said dryly, ‘It’s not its poetic qualities that the priest thinks are worth your attention, lord, but its scrying.’

‘It does sound oddly precise,’ Alfred said. ‘All those lists of months! Can these “Great Years” be translated into Bede’s system, Cynewulf, into Years of Our Lord?’

‘They can,’ said Cynewulf firmly, and he explained how the chronology of the Menologium had been established by scholars in the past. ‘It is a matter of simple adding-up to work out the dates - simple, but laborious, it takes a computistor to do it. And the coming of the comet, whose irregular returns mark the passage of the Great Years, has appeared in the sky exactly as predicted in the stanzas of the Menologium.’

‘Then this Menologium does not speak of the whole future. It is founded in the past.’

‘Yes. If you follow the list of Great Years through, we are currently in the middle of the sixth - and it refers to your reign, lord.’

‘Really?’ Alfred asked sceptically.

‘And for the earlier Years, some of the events it has predicted have already come to pass.’

But to his chagrin the King didn’t seem impressed. ‘That proves nothing. This poem could have been knocked up this morning for all I know. Believe me, as a buyer of books I have been presented with enough forgeries in my time. All the “lost works of Aristotle” for instance, which you may pick up for a clipped penny in the markets of Rome—’

Ibn Zuhr, to everybody’s surprise, spoke up again. ‘Lord, it is unlikely the priest will be able to convince you of the prophecy’s authenticity. What is “proof” after all? But perhaps, for now, faith might suffice. As the priest said it is the sixth stanza, describing the sixth Great Year, which refers to your own past, and future. Aren’t you curious about that?’

Alfred stared at him. ‘I’m amazed how much latitude you allow this slave, Arngrim.’

Arngrim was embarrassed, and furious. ‘Only because what he says has proven useful, lord. So far.’

Alfred smiled. ‘Very well. Shall we grant you a little faith, priest, as this soulless Moor suggests?’ He turned to his clerks. ‘Read me the sixth stanza.’

The two inky clerks read their own scribbled handwriting, haltingly, in turn:

The Comet comes/in the month of February.
Deny five hundred months five./Blood spilled, blood mixed.
Even the dragon must lie/at the foot of the Cross.
Nine hundred and five/the months of the sixth Year ...

Alfred seemed irritated. ‘Enigmatic hokum, like all auguries.’

Now Cynewulf prepared to deliver what he believed his clinching argument. ‘But, lord, there is nothing enigmatic about the numbers of the months.’ He described how converting the Great Year months to calendar years had delivered a date of February, 837 AD, for the beginning of the sixth Great Year.

Alfred frowned. ‘And five hundred months denied five, that is four hundred and ninety-five-’