Ambrosias was gaunt, perhaps seventy years old, and wore a thick, hooded woollen cloak even though the spring weather was not cold. But he wore his silver-grey hair cut short, and he was clean-shaven, though his leathery skin was stubbly. He must once have been handsome, Wuffa thought, with a proud nose and a strong chin. Now, though, his face looked sunken in on itself, and his frame was withered.

This was the ‘Last Roman’, kept alive as a sort of pet by illiterate Anglish farmers.

And when Ammanius approached him, Ambrosias ignored the bishop and turned to Ulf and Wuffa. He was avid, eager, and Wuffa recoiled from his intensity. He said in Latin, ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

IX

IX

As evening fell the comet, suspended in dark northern skies, was brighter and more startling than ever.

While the novices slept in a stable in the Anglish village, the four guests were to stay the night in the fort, Ambrosias insisted. He prepared a meal. ‘Eat, drink,’ he said. ‘A Roman is nothing if he is not hospitable.’ He shuffled around with a plate of cut meat and a pitcher of ale. ‘Of course I am grateful to my new Anglish neighbours down the hill, but I wish they could lay their hands on some good continental wine rather than this filthy German ale. Do you know, I tried to grow some vines here at one time, up against the southern wall of fort. Withered and died, the first hard winter. Ah, well! ...’

Ambrosias’s four guests, Ammanius and Sulpicia, Ulf and Wuffa, reclined on couches. This was the Roman way to take your meals, lying down. They were in a room carved out of the ruins of the old fort’s principia, its headquarters building. It was a little island of Rome, with mosaics on the floor, frescos, crockery and cutlery, amphorae leaning against the walls of a minuscule kitchen. The floor was heaped with scrolls and wood-leaf blocks, the walls crowded with cupboards. The principia’s original roof was long gone, but this one section had been roofed over by mouldering thatch.

Everything was worn and old, the pottery patched, the cutlery sharpened so often the knife blades were thin as autumn leaves, and the room was a mouth of dust and soot.

Ammanius quickly turned to the subject of Isolde. ‘Do you know of her? If she ever existed—’

‘Oh, she existed,’ said Ambrosias. ‘And I’m the living proof!’

‘You?’

‘I am a descendant of Isolde,’ Ambrosias said. ‘And therefore of Nennius, her father. I am the grandson of the grandson of the son of Isolde, in fact. And since she was born in Rome, as was her father, then I am a Roman, by descent.’ He winked at Wuffa. ‘“The Last Roman.” That’s what you Angles say of me, isn’t it?’

It would do Wuffa no good to point out the difference between Angles and Saxons, so he kept his silence.