‘The men going upstairs—’ Benedetta began.

‘Yes,’ Oda said curtly.

‘They’re young men,’ I said, ‘far from home.’

A drab girl came to our table and we asked for ale, bread, and cheese. ‘Is Wulfred still alive?’ I asked her.

She peered at me, seeing nothing under the deep shadow of my hood. ‘He died, father,’ she said, evidently mistaking me for another priest.

‘Pity,’ I said.

The girl shrugged. ‘I’ll bring you a rushlight,’ she said.

I made the sign of the cross towards her. ‘Bless you, my child,’ I said, and earned a disapproving intake of breath from Oda.

The East Anglians began singing as the evening wore on. The first song was in Danish, a lament by seafarers for the women they had left behind, but then the Saxons in the alehouse drowned the Danes with an old song that was plainly intended for our ears, and Father Oda, hearing the words, frowned into his ale. Benedetta took longer to understand, then gazed at me wide-eyed. ‘It’s called the “Tanner’s Wife”,’ I said, beating my hand on the table in time with the song.

‘But the song is about a priest?’ Benedetta asked. ‘No?’

‘Yes,’ Father Oda hissed.

‘It’s about a tanner’s wife and a priest,’ I said. ‘She goes to him for confession and he says he doesn’t understand what she’s confessing so he tells her to show him.’

‘To do it with him, you mean?’

‘To do it with him,’ I said, and to my surprise she laughed.

‘I thought we were here to learn news,’ Father Oda growled at me.

‘The news will come to us,’ I said, and sure enough a moment later, when the rowdy troops had moved to a new song, a middle-aged man with a cropped grey beard brought an ale-jug and a beaker to our table. He wore a sword with a well-worn hilt and had a slight limp that suggested a spear-thrust taken in a shield wall. He looked quizzically at Father Oda, who nodded permission, and the man sat on a bench opposite me. ‘I apologise for that song, father.’

Oda smiled. ‘I have been with soldiers before, my son.’

The man, who looked old enough to be Oda’s father, raised his beaker. ‘Then your good health, father,’ he said.

‘I pray God it is good,’ Oda answered carefully, ‘and yours too.’

‘You’re Danish?’ the man asked.

‘I am Danish,’ Oda confirmed.

‘Me too. Jorund,’ he introduced himself.

‘I am Father Oda, this is my wife and my uncle.’ Oda was speaking Danish now.

‘What brings you to Lundene?’ Jorund asked. He was friendly, with no suspicion in his voice, but I did not doubt that the East Anglians had been warned to look for enemies in the city, but, just as Oda had claimed, a priest and his wife looked the most unlikely of enemies and Jorund seemed merely curious.

‘We seek a ship to carry us across the sea,’ Oda said.

‘We are going to Rome,’ I put in, telling the tale we had agreed on.