There was also a bag, containing a book, bound in soft red leather. She had never held a book before. All her knowledge was held in her head, and her hands. There were pages of dense marks which she recognised as writing – but Cwen could not read. She looked carefully at the pictures. There were four portraits, also of men. They had yellow, brown, black and greyish hair, bare feet, and were wearing robes of lush colours, green trimmed with red, blue lined with pink. Each of them was holding a book. One of them was accompanied by an animal, like a large cat. She noticed again that there were no women there. So even though the object was worth a lot of silver, many winters of grain, she put it aside. She would store it in the cairn, with the coins, for the histories to deal with.

Only then did she wash herself in the soap she made from clean ash and animal fat, in water from her spring, heated. She felt herself all over. There was blood, and many bruises. It had hurt, despite the tincture. She smoothed on ointment. Finally, she drank a purgative, and after she had been sick, cheese and bread and man, she crawled under the sheepskins in her hut, and slept. That was the first time.

The second and third times were easier because she disregarded her father’s advice and fought back. The man who entered her hut at night smelt of beer and dirt. She cut him under his chin with the long dagger the two previous men had left her. She almost killed him but he got away. She knew he wouldn’t come back. She had tipped that blade, too.

The third time, the man spoke no language she knew. He carried an axe with which he intended to break into the mound. He hadn’t come for her, he had come for the gold which he believed she kept there. But she could see that he would kill her if she stood in the way and, if not, then rape her when he found there was nothing worth stealing.

Cwen had left out some henbane wine, but he didn’t drink that. So she made a trick-knot in two loops of rope and, as he heaved at the cairn’s door, she flicked one loop over his neck and, with the other, took his axe. Then she tied him to the branch of her apple tree that had come down in the storms, poured the henbane wine over his face, so that it ran into his ears, and dragged him to his boat. She dislodged the rudder, and pushed the boat out into the stream. The tide was on the turn. Cassiopeia’s current took him.