He raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re Bjarni’s daughter? Which one - Gudrid, was it? He mentioned you.’

‘You aren’t telling me he talked to the likes of you.’

‘It’s a small boat. And I have big ears, even if I am just a slave.’

She was growing angry at his easy insolence. ‘It’s a shame he didn’t teach you how to work.’

‘I am working,’ Rhodri interrupted, his voice now querulous. ‘Can’t you see?’ He rubbed his belly. ‘My gut’s still a knot from that boat. By Jesus’s wounds I puked myself half up.’

She snorted. ‘You’ll recover.’

He glanced at her, calculating now. ‘You’re the reason he went to Lindisfarena in the first place. You’ve got some kind of interest in it.’ Rhodri smirked. ‘A woman, interested in things. Your husband said it’s a shame your womb isn’t as fertile as your mind.’

She clenched down on her anger, at her father and husband for talking about her this way in front of a slave, at the slave himself for repeating it. ‘You watch your mouth,’ she snapped. ‘I want to know about Lindisfarena. Tell me about it.’

He considered. ‘What’s it worth?’

She was astonished. ‘Do you think I’m going to bargain with a slave? It’s worth not having the skin flogged off your back!’

‘All right, all right. What do you want to know?’

‘How did you come to be there? Were you always a slave?’

‘No,’ he said, absurdly indignant at the charge. ‘I was born free, in Gwynedd. That’s a British kingdom. I am the son of a noble. I am a Christian, and I was taught to read. I was taken prisoner when a German army came invading.’

‘Was your army defeated?’

‘I don’t know.’ He poked languidly at the pig swill. ‘They probably fought better without me. Maybe that’s why they wouldn’t pay the ransom for me.’

He was taken by a Mercian thegn, a companion of King Offa. But he was always an unsatisfactory slave, judging by an aggrieved list of beatings and other punishments. After a complicated series of sellingson he found himself on the east coast of Britain, and was shipped to Lindisfarena, where he worked for the villagers. ‘Cockle-pickers,’ Rhodri moaned. ‘By God’s wounds I hate cockle-pickers. And cockles.’

‘Were you as lazy cockle-picking as you are pig-feeding?’

‘I was,’ he said with a dash of honesty. ‘I hung back one day to avoid carrying the baskets and almost got drowned by the tide. After that, I tried to be lazy somewhere safe. And then, when they found out I could read, the monks took me in. They bought me off the head cockle-picker. He took a reduced price.’

‘Do monks have slaves?’

‘Oh, no. They freed me. They took me in as a novice.’

It was a word she didn’t recognise. ‘Why would they do that?’