At length the feast began, with a burst of music from a harp. Servants brought hot meaty broth from the cauldrons hanging over the fire. Others carried in immense plates of meat. The thegns used their own knives to hack at butchered hogs. In their heavy coats and fur leggings they looked like bears, tearing at the carcasses.

The air grew thick with the smoke from the candles and lamps, and the soot from the fire, and the stink of broiling meat. Huge shadows played among the rafters of the tall ceiling. The noise increased until you had to bellow like an ox to make yourself heard.

And the drink flowed like a river. Belisarius sipped only cautiously, striving to keep a clear head. He tried the mead, which, fermented from crushed honeycombs, was very strong; and wine, which was raw and new and too strongly flavoured for his taste.

The ale, which the Germans called beor, was sweet and lumpy, with a consistency like porridge. When the ale came the purpose of the King’s wife’s silver sieve became apparent. When ale was poured for the King she used her sieve to strain out the grit, which she then dumped on the floor at her feet, where dogs lapped it up eagerly.

The gift-giving began. Belisarius watched curiously as one by one the thegns approached the throne, to be given a gift by the King - and, sometimes, to deliver a gift in turn. The gifts were precious, always jewellery or weapons; often they were bracelets to wear on the arm, a very old custom. And there was no doubt much significance for these jostling courtiers in the value of the gifts exchanged, and the precise degree of warmth of the King’s embrace.

These Germans had imported their culture from their homelands. It was a primitive society of kinship, of small communities tied together by blood, with the King bound to his companions by gift-giving and oaths of loyalty. And yet this culture had displaced the sophisticated Roman Britons in a few centuries, and grown until it had sprouted powerful kingdoms. Why, Offa had negotiated with continental emperors and corresponded with the Pope.

But perhaps these petty kings in their wooden palaces had gone as far as they could. Their politics seemed fragile and anachronistic to Belisarius, and in the future their kingdoms might prove more vulnerable than any of those present tonight imagined.

As the level of general drunkenness reached new heights, the singing began. The songs were of the relentless German type, each line split into two halves with two stressed syllables each, just like the Menologium, Belisarius thought. But in their compelling rhythm Belisarius imagined he could hear the slap of oars, the echo of a migration across a cold ocean.