‘I will go,’ Belisarius snapped. Nobody spoke. Macson looked away. Aelfric’s eyes, adapted to the dark, were huge and fearful. ‘Aelfric, keep them here. And block the door after me.’ He turned away, not looking back, ignoring Boniface’s cries of protest.

Trying to spy out the raiders, he crept to a scrap of high ground, ducking behind buildings and walls to keep out of sight.

They were already all over the monastery, he saw, tall, muscular men in leather tunics, like vicious, destroying angels. He was too late to warn the monks, even supposing they might have listened to him any more than Boniface had.

And as he watched, helpless, the raiders broke open the library and the scriptorium. They didn’t bother with the doors; they just smashed in the flimsy walls of wood and daub with their axes. There was little to interest them in the scriptorium, and the workbenches and vellum frames, the pots of ink, the jars of quills were thrown into the dirt.

In the library they pulled down shelves piled high with books, scattering their loads on the ground. With an aching heart Belisarius saw his own trunk broken open by a barbarian’s blade, his precious stock dumped out and filleted. The raiders stripped out the more obviously precious items, like the glorious gospels with their leather bindings crusted with jewels. But there were books in there, Belisarius knew, of far greater value than such baubles: ancient literature, some of it dating back to the days of Britannia, and more recent literature from the British provincial states - some of it the only copies in existence. But the raiders simply kicked the books they didn’t want on to a rough bonfire, and black smoke rose as skin pages crisped and curled. It was the end of the work of centuries. How fragile were the products of civilisation, before these men with their iron and their fire and their dark ignorance.

Now the raiders closed in on the church. Again they simply bludgeoned down the walls. The monks, shocked, came swarming out like black-robed termites, and the raiders waded among them, their shining axe blades swinging like scythes. As blood splashed, a brilliant, terrible red, the monks’ squeals of terror turned to pain. Many of the monks died in their church, unwilling to leave the sacred ground. Others fled the closing circle of axes, only to be pursued and cut down in turn.