Dom Boniface, the old computistor who was her tutor, said Aelfric, a mere novice with less than a year’s experience, should regard it as an honour to be working on the Menologium. It was the small library’s ‘hidden treasure’, as he put it, in among the Bible commentaries, hagiographies and histories, and books of grammar and computistics and chronologies. For this brief and enigmatic document supported the abbot’s claim for the Blessed Isolde to be confirmed as a saint by the Pope, thus adding to Northumbria’s already glittering array of celestial warriors. And the words themselves were precious. They had almost been lost, Boniface told her, committed to the memory of illiterate pagans for several generations before being transcribed once more.

But the Menologium’s terse enigmas irritated Aelfric. Take this fourth stanza, for instance: how could a shield not be a shield, an island not an island? And she knew kings; her father was the thegn of a king, and no king would bow to a hermit. It was all much too opaque for Aelfric, who was impatient with riddles, artificial obstacles to the truth.

But she could always find pleasure in the work itself.

This copy of the Menologium would be little more than a transcription of the text with some simple illumination in black ink. She longed to be able to use colour, to unleash her imagination fully, as she was promised one of these days - one of these years, such was the pace of monastic life. But around the opening ‘T’ of that first line she carefully sketched out a tree, with roots fading into unseen depths and branches reaching to the sky. The tree image was a secret joke. In this Christian manuscript she hinted at Irminsul, the World Tree of legends repeated around her father’s fire: the tree in whose mighty branches lodged the universe itself ...

Elfgar and his novices pushed their way into the scriptorium.

‘Ah, novice - Aelfric, is it? We haven’t had a chance to talk.’ Elfgar’s face was round, almost fat. He must eat far more than he was supposed to. But his eyes were deep and sharp. His companions, whose names she didn’t know, were still, watchful.

‘And you’re Elfgar.’

Elfgar bowed.

She stood warily, with her back to the desk. Elfgar and his cronies fanned out, cutting her off from the door. She saw low cunning in their overfed faces. But her head was full of words, and her first reaction wasn’t fear but irritation that they were wasting her precious time. ‘What do you want? You can see I’m working. Soon study hour will be done—’