Conqueror

'What do you mean?'

'You need a reason to persuade your father to go there on one of these raids he's pla

'What?'

His smile broadened. He was enjoying his petty bit of power over her. 'Gold,' he said.

She gazed at him. 'If there's gold there, why didn't you tell my father?'

'He never asked. And besides,' he tapped his head, 'my only wealth is my bit of knowledge. Why give it away?'

She stood up. 'I need to talk to my father.'

'Come back soon, lady. Maybe if I tup you I could lodge a baby in that dry womb of yours. Your husband would never know!…'

She dared not reply. She turned her back and walked away.

VIII

Dom Boniface had always been kind to Aelfric, yet she found him intimidating. Even in this famous monastery Boniface's piety stood out. It was said that he would keep himself awake for three or four days at a time, praying intensely. Even his illness only spurred him on to thank God even more. But after the incident with Elfgar the computistor spent more time with her. Perhaps he felt guilty for what had been done to her, even if it wasn't his fault.

And, he said mysteriously, he wanted to help her understand the true purpose of the monastery.

'Saint Benedict taught us that idleness is the enemy of the soul,' he said. 'All work is good work. Your copying shows promise in its artistry, Aelfric, though how that promise may be fulfilled, only Heaven knows yet. Here in the monastery we are never short of time, and with the slow sifting of one generation's judgement after another, only that which has true deep value persists. It is not me who will assess your work, but the centuries.

'But you must always remember that you are here to serve, not your own art, but the words you preserve. The copies you make of these words may be transmitted all over the world -'

Sold on for a tidy profit, she thought a little sourly.

' – or, more importantly still,' Boniface went on, 'transmitted to the future. And that is our contribution to the ages, the preservation of such treasure for better times than this. Since the fall of Rome, Britain has been overrun by barbarians. We ourselves are the spawn of illiterate pagans! Like dogs learning to talk, we Angles have taught ourselves to read. But sometimes our veneer of civilisation seems awfully thin.' He sounded tired, his voice a whisper. He was thinking of Elfgar, she supposed.

She felt an impulse to cheer him up. 'We Angles might be barbarians. But we produced Bede.'

'Ah, Bede! He died before I was born, but I met a man who knew him as a boy… Historian, theologian, computistor, Bede had it all. I think Bede would be horrified to see the corruption that has come upon the Church since his day. But perhaps every generation says the same. He was more Roman than the Romans, you know, but Bede had it wrong about them. We are the purer sort, we of northern blood. In the end the future is ours, not the Romans or the Greeks or the Moors.'

This baffled Aelfric. 'What do you mean, Domnus? How can we be better than the Romans?'

'Never mind, never mind. I digress,' said Boniface. 'We were talking about you. The abbot consulted with me, you know. When your father asked for permission to lodge you here.'

'My father thought it was best for me. I am too restless. Too interested in books. I wouldn't be a good wife.' Her sisters had been married off by the age of twelve and thirteen. And, she suspected, in an increasingly literate age her father thought that a daughter who could read would be a boon to him. 'He said that if I must learn, it should be here.'

'I disapproved, if it matters to you,' he said sternly. 'This is a male house. There are mixed houses you could have been sent to.'

'My father wanted me close by him.'

'Why?'

'Because he loves me,' she blurted.

'Ah, a father's love. I suppose I didn't think of that. I have no children of my own, and never will. In this place one sacrifices family for a greater good.'

'If you disapproved why am I here?'

'The decision was the abbot's.' And the neutral way he said that implied that less than holy considerations, such as her father's 'dowry', would have swayed the abbot's decision. 'Now that you are here, however,' Boniface said, 'and have been put into my care – one of the better jokes the abbot has played on me over the years – it is my duty to care for your soul. And I have seen that small soul blossom, I believe. Your father was right. Once the Romans had schools, you know, where you could learn anything you liked. The law. The sciences. History, art, philosophy. Now the only schools in Britain are in the monasteries-'

'And all I am allowed to learn about is Christ.' Her hands flew to her mouth in horror. 'I didn't mean that.'

'Yes, you did,' he said mildly. 'You have the virtue of truth, at least. But you must repeat it to your Father Confessor.'

'I will.'

'It is obvious you are curious about far more than the Bible.' He gestured at the vellum on the desk. 'You would not adorn your work with pagan symbols otherwise. And don't try to deny it. I am not one who believes curiosity is sinful, child. But I fear your questions may never be answered – not until your death, when you give yourself up to the light of Christ, and all answers will be revealed. And now your curiosity is engaged by the Menologium, isn't it?'

'How could it not be?' she said politely. 'But the Menologium – I know how important it is-'

'Oh, speak freely, child, I can't stand waffling.'

'I don't like riddles! When can a shield not be a shield, an island not an island? And I can tell you that a king would never bow to a hermit.'

'I am disappointed in you. One reason I let you work on the Menologium is because I expected you to work it out. Think again – pick out the simplest element. Can you not think of an example of an island which is not an island? Are you really so obtuse? Child, you live on one.'

And, in her mind's eye, she immediately saw the causeway. 'Lindisfarena? Here?'

'An island not an island, an island like a shield… As for rest of the stanza – the king and the hermit – have you not read Bede's history? Have you never heard of Saint Cuthbert?'

A hundred and fifty years before, in the days of King Oswald who had summoned Aidan to found Lindisfarena, the other German kings, of the Mercians, the East Angles, the Kentish, and the West, East and South Saxons, recognised the Northumbrian ruler as their bretwalda; a great hall was built inland at ad-Gefrin, and Bebbanburh, not distant Lunden, was the capital of German Britain. But the times were turbulent. Northumbria was repeatedly invaded by British and Germans, Christians and pagans. And Oswald himself was killed by a scion of a rival dynasty, Oswiu.

To cement his position Oswiu, a British Christian, took as his wife a queen who followed the teachings of Rome, and called a synod. After much intense debate the Roman way was chosen over the British. Britain was left with a unified Church, though the country itself remained disunited.

Oswiu's son Ecgfrith was a warrior king. Ecgfrith needed a strong bishop at Hagustaldasea, a town on the Roman Wall, and he turned to Lindisfarena, where a priest called Cuthbert lived in exemplary eremitic austerity in the British tradition, in contrast to the Roman bishops in their extravagant pomp.

Ecgfrith, ambitious and expansionist, launched assaults on the Irish and the Picts; he was defeated and killed, and Northumbria was never so strong again. But in the century since Ecgfrith Northumbrian scholarship had become the envy of Europe: Bede had been famous, it was said, throughout the known world.

'So,' Aelfric said with mounting interest, 'when Ecgfrith came to Cuthbert, a king really did come to a hermit, on an island which is not an island…'