‘Perhaps. Our friends in the village would think differently altogether. To them we humans are woven into the tapestry of all things, the tapestry of time. Every event that is to come grows out of all that went before. You have free will, to some extent, but only within the greater embedding of the universe. In our German tongues, the word for “weave” has the same root as that for “fortune”. Gewaef and gewif. Only the Sisters of the Wyrd, who endlessly weave their tapestry, have greater power.’ He winked at Belisarius. ‘In such a world prophecy is possible, of a sort, but only in that one may dimly guess at the continuation of the pattern in the tapestry from the lines of its threads. No god could see the future, not even Woden, for the future does not exist. The future is a process of becoming from the present, as a tapestry emerges from the loom.’

‘But you do not believe in the Sisters of the Wyrd.’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then who made your prophecy? I don’t mean Isolde - who poured these words into her head?’

Boniface closed his eyes and smiled. ‘The author of this document - man or angel or demon - is said by legend to inhabit not the root of the tree of destiny but its topmost branches - not the past but the future. He is known as the Weaver. And he has a plan ...’

Belisarius was not impressed by this vague mysticism. But his attention was drawn to the next stanza, the fifth. For if Boniface was right, this was the first of the remaining stanzas which described the future. He read it aloud:

The Comet comes/in the month of May.
Great Year’s midsummer/less nine of seven.
Old claw of dragon/pierces silence, steals words.
Nine hundred and twenty-one/the months of the fifth Year ...

‘This sounds gloomy, Dom Boniface. What can it mean? A dragon is a pagan symbol, hardly appropriate in a Christian poem. And what is this silence?’

Macson’s eyes widened. ‘There is a Great Silence here in this holy house. You’ve spoken of it yourself, Domnus, the Great Silence of your monkish lives. Is it possible this dragon, whatever it is, will disrupt your lives?’

Boniface did not respond. But the three of them, Belisarius, Aelfric and Macson, shared glances.

Belisarius said, ‘If this is true, the question is when.’ He looked again at the Menologium with its lists of numbers of months. ‘We have that specific date, when your Cuthbert was called by his King. From that we should be able to work out the date of your fifth stanza.’ He stared at the words. ‘Nine hundred and twenty-one months: how many years is that?’

‘Don’t try,’ Aelfric warned. ‘You can’t work out sums that big. That’s what the Domnus says.’