The guard waved them through. Aelfric seemed proud of this place that had been built in part by her father and his ancestors. ‘There is the hall of the King, where we will meet my father. There is a separate apartment for the King, and a bower for the women of the court - you can see it over there. We have a well, cut through the rock by the thegns of King Ida who first landed here more than two centuries ago. It gives clean spring water. And in the church,’ a compact stone building, rather grander than Lindisfarena’s wooden cathedral, ‘is a shrine to King Oswald, now a saint, where his incorruptible right hand is stored.’

Macson, of a practical frame of mind, was more interested in the stockade. ‘Look here, Belisarius. I wondered how they had managed to plant foundations in rock as hard as this. See what they’ve done.’ The stockade was actually a kind of box, with two timber walls set on the rock and the space between them filled with rubble. It wasn’t anchored to the rock at all, Belisarius saw, but was so heavy as to be immovable.

Aelfric led her party to the central hall. It was impressive enough, though like most German buildings it was built entirely of wood, solidly constructed of huge oak beams. Belisarius was intrigued to see a hefty bone key sticking out of the big oak door; evidently this wooden hall was secured by a wooden lock.

Inside, the hall was already crowded. Brightly lit by mutton-fat lamps, the hall’s hefty wooden frame was imposing, with uprights along its walls as regular as the pillars of a Greek temple, and mighty crossbeams supporting the roof overhead. The floor was lined by polished planks, and strewn with straw and some sweet-smelling herb. At the centre of the floor a fire burned smokily in a long hearth, over which huge blackened cauldrons were suspended by chains hung from the roof timbers. The walls were painted brightly, decorated with gold leaf, and hung with flags, standards and tapestries. The mournful faces of animals slain in the hunt, mighty buck deer, wolves, even the brooding snout of a bear, protruded from the glitter.

Though the Christian cross was apparent in the decoration, the tapestries’ designs were angular abstractions, or showed figures thrusting boldly through elaborate tangles of forest and vine. Once again it struck Belisarius how shallow the veneer of Christianity was among these Germans.

Around the central hearth wooden benches were set out. These were the mead benches, Macson dryly explained to Belisarius. Men already sat at these benches, talking gruffly, laughing, taking draughts of ale from horn drinking cups. They wore cloaks fixed with huge thorns. The rows of benches radiated out from a central point, near the head of the hall; and at this focus sat an immense throne, carved of stone, covered with elaborate decorations. The Butcher was not yet in residence.