Conqueror by Stephen Baxter Page B

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