Aelfric managed to arrange a meeting with her father, Bertgils the thegn, at the King’s coastal citadel of Bebbanburh. Perhaps an audience with the King would follow.

But Belisarius was aware that as they waited for this meeting the days slipped by, and May gave way to June, the month specified in the Menologium stanza, when disaster was due to strike.

At Aelfric’s suggestion Belisarius took along a gift for the King. He chose one of his most precious books, the comedies of the Greek Aristophanes, centuries old, said to be only a few copy-generations younger than the playwright’s own manuscript.

Aelfric/Aelfflaed discarded her habit before travelling. Dressed in leggings and a long tunic, her hair tied back under a cap to hide her tonsure, she looked more womanly than Belisarius had expected. He noticed that Macson, who seemed to have got over the ‘lies’ Aelfric had told him, looked at her with renewed interest. She instructed them they must all call her ‘Aelfflaed’ during the visit, for her monkish career was supposed to be a secret from all at the Butcher’s court. Belisarius would try, but he could only think of her by her brave pseudonym.

Bebbanburh was half a day’s ride north along the coast from the causeway to Lindisfarena. The citadel was a massive misshapen lump of hard black rock, right at the edge of the ocean, with tidal wrack and barnacles crowded at its foot. Looking up, shielding his eyes against a bright sky, Belisarius saw a bristling line of fortifications around the summit plateau. They ascended a flight of steps cut into the rock. The climb was lung-straining for them all, but poor old Boniface had to be practically carried up.

Belisarius wondered how this mighty rock had come to be here at all, what immense chthonic force, divine or natural, had thrust it up through the fabric of a gentler landscape of dunes and sea grass. Belisarius liked to think his mind was roomy enough for a glimmer of wonder at the marvels of the physical world, which served as a stage for humanity’s petty dramas.

At the top of the steps, before an imposing gateway, they were stopped by a guard wielding a wooden-hilted sword. Aelfric spoke to him in her own tongue.

Belisarius, catching his breath, looked around. The summit was a narrow slope, which rose to a plateau where buildings clustered. Some of the slope was given over to grass, where sheep grazed. The view from this hilltop was remarkable, with the sea lapping right up to the promontory’s cliff walls to his right, and to his left a view over the farms of the coastal plain to the rounded mountains beyond. Mountains and ocean in a single glance.