In the weeks Cynewulf had been away, Alfred had managed to organise his burh a little better. He had added to the natural protection of the flooded landscape with a ditch, an earthen bank and a palisade. Even before they got to the ditch they passed pits filled with sharpened stakes, and others stuffed with dried reeds which could be set alight in case of attack.

Inside the camp there seemed to have been some effort to drain the land, for the ground was firmer underfoot. Leather tents sat in rows, and there were even a few permanent buildings, posts stuck in the ground with walls of mud and reed thatches. There were some women and children around, including, presumably, the family of the King himself. But most of the men wore mail shirts and carried swords and axes, and more weapons and shields were stacked up near the fence. This was a place ready for combat; no matter how devious the Danes were, they would not find Alfred unprepared again.

Cynewulf felt his spirits rise a bit. This was scarcely Eoforwic, as Arngrim remarked dryly. But in this burh, this fortified place, there was no sense of the panic of that night of flight.

But Ibn Zuhr sniffed at air that stank of pond rot. 'So this petty island is all that is left of England.'

'It is enough,' Arngrim snapped. 'I'll hear no more from you, Moor. Fetch us food, fresh clothes, find us somewhere to rest. And then we would talk with the King. Organise it.'

The Moor, his eyes downcast, obeyed.

Alfred, King of Wessex, sat on his giving-throne, priests and clerks at his elbow. He was reading a book. As always his clerks recorded everything that came to pass, and the priests murmured prayers.

Cynewulf, with Arngrim, Aebbe and Ibn Zuhr, sat on a mead bench and waited for the King's attention. Cynewulf saw how Alfred picked out the letters in his book with a moving finger, and mouthed the words. Orphaned young, his education neglected by the older brothers who raised him, this most scholarly of kings had been almost grown before he learned to read English or Latin.

This 'hall' was a hovel constructed of the skinny trunks and limp branches of willow trees, plastered with marsh-bottom mud. But the King put on an impressive show. The walls were draped with hangings that glittered with golden thread. The King's giving-throne had been loaned to him by his sound supporter Aethelnoth. Alfred himself was dressed in leather and a mail shirt, but he glistened with jewellery, shoulder-brooches and pendants and rings and arm bands.

For a king, image was all. And so he wore his jewels and said his prayers, here in the middle of the bog, even while the Danes skulked through the thickets to assassinate him.

Cynewulf, whispering, remarked on this to Arngrim.

Arngrim bluffly murmured, 'Oh, I believe in Alfred. He may babble on about God, but he is the descendant of Woden after all, and he has a deeper wisdom than any priest. Think about his name.'

Alfred – Aelf-red – the wisdom of the elves.

Cynewulf was startled. He hissed, 'Arngrim, the Menologium. There is a line in the ninth stanza that talks of elf-wisdom-'

'Not now,' Arngrim said.

Despite the finery the foetid stink of the swamp penetrated even this royal cabin. Alfred looked shrivelled, and as he tired he coughed into a handkerchief, which Cynewulf saw was spotted with blood.

Ibn Zuhr murmured to his master, 'The King is ill.'

'Is there anything you can do for him, Moor?'

Ibn Zuhr shook his head. 'It is the foul air,' he said softly. 'If he could get away from that, perhaps his condition would improve.'

The King looked up, disturbed by their talk. He closed his book with a sigh. 'I'm sorry for keeping you waiting, Arngrim. It's just that I get lost in words.' He held up the book. 'We are short of parchment, you know. Some of my thegns would have me tear up my books to keep the orders flowing out of here. Books, sacrificed to the needs of war – a terrible thing. But not this one; next to the Bible it is the one book I could not live without, I think. De Consolatione Philosophiae – The Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius. Have you heard of it?'

'I'm not what you would call a book-reader, lord,' Arngrim growled.

Ibn Zuhr coughed. 'Master, if I may?'

Cynewulf was astonished at the gall of a slave daring to speak before a king. But Alfred waved for the Moor to speak.

Ibn Zuhr said clearly, 'Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius. A Roman scholar who died some four centuries ago. He was a senator, indeed a consul. But he lived through the expulsion of the last western emperor, and served under Theodoric the Ostrogoth, King of Italy. He translated Aristotle. He wrote extensively on the Arian heresy…'

Arngrim rumbled like a wolf. 'Lord, I am not sure if the frozen thoughts of a long-dead Roman are much help to us now.'

'That is the fallacy of the illiterate,' Alfred snapped. 'And it is why, dear Arngrim, I hold you no closer.'

Cynewulf could sense Arngrim's irritation.

'How did Boethius die, slave?'

Ibn Zuhr said, 'He was executed. I believe he was suspected of intriguing with the East Roman Emperor against King Theodoric.'

'Yes, yes. And while he was in prison, even while he waited for death, he wrote this, his masterwork. What a consolation Boethius's philosophy is to me now, with his talk of grades of being beyond the human, and his dream of a summum bonum, a highest good that controls and orders the universe. Even in an age of catastrophe – even while waiting for his own unjust execution at the hands of a barbarian king – he kept working. Perhaps this is the course I should take, do you think? Perhaps I should go into exile, like the wretched King Burghred of Mercia. Or I should lock myself away in a monastery, and write like Bede. For I sometimes think it is books I love above all else, save my children.'

This talk of giving up, delivered in a feeble voice by an ill man, alarmed Cynewulf. Perhaps they hadn't come a moment too soon.

Arngrim apparently felt the same way. He said carefully, 'You speak of Rome's catastrophe in Boethius's time. If you were to turn away from your duty now, lord, it would be an English catastrophe of no less magnitude.'

Alfred snorted. 'I would think you were flattering me, Arngrim, if I did not respect you too much.'

'It is sincere, lord.'

'And, lord,' Cynewulf said, rising nervously, 'the reason we have asked to speak to you today is that we have proof – proof that you must fight on. Proof that you must win.'

Alfred glared at him. 'Cynewulf, is it? You bring me a prophecy, I hear. You should know me better, if you believe you can deflect me with hints of the wyrd. I have plenty of half-converted pagans in my court muttering auguries in my ear.'

'I am a priest,' Cynewulf said defiantly. 'What I bring you is, I believe, a revelation of God's providence.'

The King snapped, 'Show me, then.'

Cynewulf sighed. 'I cannot show you, lord. But I can tell you.' He turned to Aebbe.

Here was another moment of high tension. Aebbe had not spoken a word since Eoforwic. If she refused to speak now, all would be lost.

But to his immense relief she stood, faced the King, and, in a clear but harsh voice, began to recite the Menologium of Isolde:

These the Great Years/of the Comet of God

Whose awe and beauty/in the roof of the world

Lights step by step/the road to empire

An Aryan realm/THE GLORY OF CHRIST…

Alfred listened for a few lines. Then he ordered the girl to begin again, so he could be sure his clerks wrote down the words accurately. He always had two clerks working together, who took down alternate sentences and then compiled a composite account later.