The monk stayed a single night in the manse itself. It was the home of Saladin’s employer, a petty knight called Percival. The next morning, very early, Saladin found Thomas walking in the village. Thomas was showing his age, Saladin thought. His eyes were shadowed, and he looked stiff after his hours on the mead bench with Percival. But here he was, up and about. ‘It’s the relentless rhythm of a monk’s life,’ he said. ‘You can’t get it out of your blood.’

They walked around the village. It was a mean place, a street of long sod-built huts surrounded by a sprawl of plough land. The manse was a small robust house of decently cut stone, which Saladin told Thomas was made of stones robbed from Hadrian’s Wall. Thomas seemed to think that was an enchanting idea, the labours of long-dead centurions transformed into the houses of the living.

They came across a group of men setting off for the day’s work. They nodded to Saladin, not warmly, but civilly enough. They were skinny men with sallow faces. Hunched against the slight chill of the dewy air, some limping slightly, they were wood-cutters, and they bore adzes and axes and saws. They wore grimy, colourless clothes, breeches, hoses, shirts, kirtles - Saladin knew that these were the only clothes that most of them owned. As they plodded along they sang a song so filthy that Saladin hoped their strong Northumbrian accents, heavily laced with Danish words, would make it incomprehensible to Thomas.

‘Many of them are blond,’ Thomas said, surprised.

‘That’s the Viking blood in them. A lot of it about in this area.’

‘Do you get on with them?’

Saladin grinned. ‘They call me the Saracen, or the Moor, or Muhammad. Ironic, that. But they’ve never seen anybody like me before.’ He grunted. ‘In fact most of them have never seen anybody from beyond that hill over there.’

‘And all our cathedrals and all our palaces and all our wars rest on the foundation of the toil of the country people, like these.’

‘Makes you think,’ Saladin said.

‘It does indeed. And you found work here.’

‘I accompany Percival’s bailiff when there’s trouble with the tithes,’ Saladin said. ‘I’m a hired muscle. Every so often we ride to a borough, to Newcastle or Morpeth, so the lord can pay his own tithes, and for the market. I go along to put off the robbers. I enjoy the market. I can buy stuff that reminds me of home, a little. Raisins, cinnamon, figs.’

‘The fruit of sunnier lands. And are you happy, Saladin?’

Saladin shrugged. ‘Ask those wood-cutters if they’re happy. You’ve got what you’ve got and you have to put up with it. That or starve. It wasn’t easy for me when we first came here to England - how long ago?’

‘Three years already.’