One long evening the four of them sat in a firelit room deep within a windswept monastery-villa. They were alone save for a novice who brought them food and drink. Tapestries hung on the walls and there was a thick carpet on the floor. This had been the triclinium of the Roman villa, the bishop said, a word that meant nothing to Wuffa; evidently it meant some kind of living room. The monks said that the carpets and tapestries were there to keep the pagan symbols on the walls and floor from pious gazes, and also to warm a room whose system of under-floor heating had long since broken down.

Ulf and Sulpicia played a complicated game of dice and counters, worn with use, left behind by the villa’s original owners and now popular with the novices. Sulpicia sat on her couch close to Wuffa, her loose tunic falling around the soft flesh of her neck. Wuffa was aware of every soft laugh she and Ulf shared, the way Ulf’s tousled golden hair touched her dark British brow, the way their fingers touched over the grimy surface of the wooden game board.

Since that pivotal day in Lunden when they had met, Wuffa had believed he had had an agreement with Ulf, that Sulpicia was, if not Wuffa’s, at least his to try for first. But was Ulf to be trusted? Was he more subtle than Wuffa, was he quietly working to take the advantage? Wuffa felt baffled, out-thought.

And if Wuffa watched Sulpicia, so Ammanius watched Ulf.

Ammanius leaned close to Wuffa, and the Saxon could smell the stale wine on his breath. ‘You Germans fascinate me,’ he said. ‘You don’t build empires. You have no values save loyalty to your chieftain’s hall, where your warlords sit around and get drunk. You have no laws, save the most brutal. You actually put a cost on a man’s life, don’t you? A penalty to be paid if one takes it?’

‘We call it the wergild.’

‘Nothing but a rationalisation of a barbarian’s blood-feud. And you enforce your laws by maiming, by mutilating eyes and tongues and limbs. I’ve seen the results! Your society is riddled with violence; it is run by it. You have no medicine to speak of; the sick, the handicapped, the old, you put to death.’

‘Don’t believe all you hear about us from our enemies,’ Wuffa said evenly.