With a sigh, she ploughs on, scrolling through document after document, frustrated by wrong turns and details that seem to duplicate themselves. She reads on, her eyes watering a little at the unfamiliar brightness of the screen. Half an hour passes. An hour. She makes a second cup of tea and works on, encouraged by the fact that the power has remained stable, but daunted by the size of the task she has undertaken. She returns to her seat and continues. She learns more and more about the people who lived around the lake in the early years of the tenth century. About how hard their lives were. About how they lived, and what dangers they faced from warring armies, harsh winters, and disease. She reads about how they dressed, what manner of music they made, and their beliefs. She has just reached a file containing information regarding the final attack on the prince’s dwelling on the little island when the lights flicker ominously.

No, not now! Not yet.

She reads on. She finds the extract from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles that the professor had marked for her, telling of the prisoners taken from the crannog.

‘Thirty-four, plus the princess,’ she reads out to a slumbering Thistle. ‘Yes, I know, I know, but who were those prisoners? Were any of them children?’ She reads on, but can find nothing. The same dead end she came up against at the museum. Nothing more. She leans back in her chair, the hard wood beginning to make her back ache. Setting her mind to the problem, she pictures the small group of villagers as they were taken away from their homes. She knows they would have been a pathetic collection of people. People who had just lost everything. Many would have seen their loved ones slaughtered. Some might have been injured. Their lives were in chaos. They were being dragged away. But how long did they spend at the court of the Mercian queen?

Basically, they were slaves, and slaves get sold. So where did they go next? Who was trading with Aethelflaed? Where would she have got a good price for them? I just need to look in the right place.

She tries a different search, using the words slave, Cymru, Aethelflaed and trading. Reams more of irrelevant data unscrolls in front of her. A page detailing the queen’s origins catches her eye. Aethelflaed was the daughter of Alfred the Great, and originated in the south of England. She lived there until she entered her arranged marriage into the Mercian dynasty.

Which means she would have had strong connections with the area. Probably relations still living down there too.