Ibn Zuhr, perhaps understandably, said little of himself. After the death of Arngrim he had escaped out of Wessex into Mercia and then, following the roads he had once travelled with Cynewulf and his master, he had made for Eoforwic-Jorvik. Cynewulf understood; this man of the cities of al-Andalus had sought the nearest to a city that Britain had to offer.

Among the Danes and English of Jorvik the Moor stood out, of course, but there were many traders from the southern lands in Jorvik. And in the bustling, open economy of the Danish town he had soon managed to scrape a living from his medicinal knowledge. ‘Perhaps my exotic appearance helps reassure my patients of my healing powers,’ he noted dryly.

He had always intended to earn enough money to get himself out of the country and back home to al-Andalus, and perhaps some day he would. ‘But I was such a young man when I was stolen from my home, and so much must have changed about it - and about me - that perhaps only disappointment would follow were I to travel back.’ And besides, as Jorvik grew and prospered, Ibn Zuhr found he rather liked his new life. He found the fusion of cultures fascinating. ‘Danish women spin all winter to make sails of English wool ...’

But he had never forgotten Arngrim, ‘the only man I ever killed’, or so he claimed. And through contacts with patients and traders he followed the fates of the leaders of the Force that had once assaulted Cippanhamm.

He learned that Egil, the Beast of Cippanhamm, nemesis of Arngrim, ‘and co-murderer with me of my master’, had come to Jorvik to end his days in the hall of his brother, a ship-owner called Ulfjlot, ‘just as brutal as his brother, though in possession of both his arms, and indeed all his teeth and an intact nose’.

Not long after Egil’s return, Ulfjlot died of ‘heathen excess’, wrote the Moor. And Egil and his family mounted a lavish funeral rite to ease the passage of Ulfjlot into the pagan otherworld. Ibn Zuhr described what occurred at this rite, as relayed to him by an eye-witness, he said, but in such detail that Cynewulf wondered if he himself had not attended the rite.

As is the custom of these people, the slaves of the dead man were asked which of them would die with his master. A young English woman who called herself Aelfflaed put herself forward. The other slaves, of course, made themselves scarce. This Aelfflaed, ageing, scarred but comely enough - for that would be important in what followed - would do.

So she was taken, and put in charge of two young women of the household, who waited on her for ten days. She ate, drank and indulged in any pleasure they could provide.