“Send in my secretaries. I will write to them all, and to my brothers of Lichfield and Worcester. What the Church has lost, the Church will win back.”

“Will they come, lord?” asked the bailiff. “Will they not fear to invade Wessex?”

“It is I who speaks for Wessex now. And there are greater forces than either Wessex or Mercia astir. All I offer Burgred and the others is the chance to join the winning side before it has won. And to punish insolence: the insolence of the heathens and the slaves. We must make an example of them.”

The bishop’s fist clenched convulsively. “I will not root out this rot, like a weed. I shall burn it out, like a canker.”

“Sibba. I think we’ve got trouble.” The whisper ran across the dark room where a dozen missionaries lay sleeping, wrapped in their blankets.

Silently Sibba jointed his companion at the tiny, glassless window. Outside, the village of Stanford-in-the-Vale, ten miles and as many preachings from Sutton, lay silent, lit by a strong moon. Clouds scudding before the wind cast shadows round the low wattle-and-daub houses that clustered round the thane’s timber one, in which the missionaries of the Way now slept.

“What did you see?”

“Something flashing.”

“A fire not dowsed?”

“I don’t think so.”

Sibba moved without speaking towards the little room that opened off the main central hall. In there the thane Elfstan, their host, a man who protested his loyalty to King Alfred, should be sleeping with his wife and family. After a few moments he drifted back.

“They’re still there. I can hear them breathing.”

“So they’re not in on it. Doesn’t mean I didn’t see anything. Look! There it is again.”

Outside, a shadow slipped from one patch of darkness to another, coming closer. In the moonlight something flashed: something metal.

Sibba turned to the men still sleeping. “On your feet, boys. Get your stuff together.”

“Run for it?” asked the watchman.

Sibba shook his head. “They must know how many of us there are. They wouldn’t attack if they weren’t confident they could deal with us. Easier to do that outside than dig us out of here. We must try to break their teeth first.”

Men were scrambling to their feet behind him, groping for their breeches, buckling belts. One man undid a pack, began to haul from it strange, metallic shapes. The others queued in front of him, clutching the long pilgrim-staves all had carried openly.

“Force them down hard,” grunted the packman, struggling to push the first halberd-head on its socket over the carefully designed shaft.

“Move fast,” said Sibba. “Then, Berti, you take two men to face the door, one either side of it. Wilfi, you at the other door. The rest, stay with me, see where we’re needed.”

The movement and the clanking of metal had brought the thane, Elfstan, from his bed. He stared, wonderingly.