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By Root 3635 0

realized that even though Cerdic had so deeply hurt her, she must deny her pain. “If your husband strays,” the older women had told her long ago, “there is only one thing to do.” It was a fact of married life, for better or worse, that the only way to keep a straying husband was to entice him to bed as quickly and as often as possible. All other approaches that reason or morality might suggest were, unfortunately, futile. She had acted accordingly. She had not sulked, or argued, or been cold towards him, but each night after the evening meal set out to seduce and satisfy him. More than once they had awoken at sunrise in each other’s arms and she had lain quietly listening to the birds at dawn, thinking that perhaps, after all, he was contented, that the simple operation of inertia, that greatest of all friends to the married state, might keep him at her side. Even now, at this late hour, she still found herself secretly praying to the gods of her ancestors: “Let me have another child.” Or if not that: “Give me time. Do not let this bishop come just yet.” And so the next month passed.

Blodmonath, the month of blood, the Saxons called November. Blodmonath, when the oxen were slain before the winter snows and the last of the leaves, crisp with hoarfrost, fell to the ground hardening after the autumn rains.

Early in Blodmonath, a ship had come to the trading post. It had crossed the sea from the Frankish lands beside the River Rhine, and Offa had been told to help unload it.

It was the first time he had seen a proper seagoing vessel, and the boat fascinated him. Although the Saxons had well-constructed rafts and even broad rowing boats upon the Thames, this ship was in another class entirely.

The most immediately striking feature was the keel. Starting as a great wooden ridge high above the stern, it descended in a graceful, curving line to the water, made its long way down the centre of the vessel and then rose once more in a magnificent prow that arched proudly above the water. Wistan, as it happened, was standing just by Offa as he gazed with admiration at this lovely sight. “It’s just like the line you drew for the Lady Elfgiva’s embroidery,” the young slave cried out in a flash of inspiration, and Wistan agreed.

Across the spine of the keel the vessel’s wooden ribs were fitted, and on to them were laid overlapping planks fastened with nails. Long though the vessel’s lines were, Offa realized that with the broadening allowed for at the centre, the ship had a considerable capacity. It had only two small decks, fore and aft; otherwise it was open. It had a single mast on which a sail could be raised on a crossbar. But its real power lay in the half-dozen long oars projecting from each side.

This was the longship of the northern world. Similar vessels had brought the Saxons to the island. Elfgiva’s father lay buried on the East Anglian coast under such a one.

The cargo also intrigued Offa: fine, wheel-turned grey pottery; fifty huge jars of wine; and, for the king’s household, six crates of a strange, clear material he had never seen before. “It’s glass,” a sailor told him. In the northern lands by the Rhine they had been making wine and glass since Roman times.

In this way, for the first time, Offa received a hint of that great heritage from across the seas – the heritage his own ancestors had known, and which had once filled the empty, walled city where he liked to roam.

A few days later, however, he received a far more significant visit from the Roman world.

He had sneaked off again into the empty city and spent an hour or two on the western hill. Since he had time – perhaps a lifetime, he ruefully realized – to investigate the place, he had decided to proceed methodically, concentrating on one small site at a time, searching it thoroughly until he was sure it had yielded all its secrets, before proceeding to the next.

That afternoon, halfway up the hill on the river side he had found a promising little house with a cellar. Using an improvised shovel, he was on his hands and knees picking away at the debris when