'No. It's a church. They call it a cathedral.' The cathedral was younger than the city. It was built of reused stone; in places where the facing stone had fallen way you could see bits of pillars and statues broken up and used as core. But the reused roof tiles were cracked, the glass in the windows smashed. Nothing was new here, Wuffa thought; there were only degrees of age.
Ulf asked, 'Was this big church built by your great king?'
'No, Aethelberht's church is over there.' Wuffa pointed north.
'Why do you need two churches?'
'The King follows Roman Christianity. He was converted by Augustine's bishops. This church was built by British Christians.'
Ulf thought that over. 'I'm more confused.'
'The walkers are all British Christians. I think. The man leading them is a Roman, a bishop.'
'So why are they following him, if he's not one of theirs?'
'I-' Wuffa spread his hands. He knew next to nothing about Christians. He only observed their behaviour from outside, as if they were exotic birds. 'They are leaving for good. You see it all the time. Look.' Wuffa pointed. 'See the jewellery? They are wearing their wealth. These are the people who bury your coin hoards. Their church is organising the flight.'
'Where are they going?'
'To the west, perhaps, or over the sea to Gaul.'
'Away from you Saxons.'
Wuffa grinned. 'Away from us, yes.'
'Carrying all that wealth makes them easy to rob.'
They shared another glance. But then they turned away, the thought unfinished. Evidently, Wuffa thought, neither of them was an instinctive thief.
A bonfire burned on the road, and the hymn-singers had to divert to pass it by. An abandoned house was being looted by a pair of Saxons, a rougher sort than the mercenary warriors who accompanied the refugees. The looters evidently weren't having much luck. They hurled old clothes and broken furniture out of the house and onto the fire – and books, rolled-up scrolls of parchment and scraped leather and heaps of wooden leaves that curled and popped as they blackened. Most of the pilgrims passed by this scene with eyes averted.
But one old man, his toga flapping about his skinny frame, broke from the column and tried to get the books off the Saxons. His cries were a broken mixture of British and Latin: 'Oh, you pagan brutes, you illiterate barbarians, must you even destroy our books?' A young woman called him back, but friends held her.
The two looters watched the old man's ranting, bemused. Then they decided to have a little fun. They pushed the old man to the dusty ground, picked him up by his scrawny legs and arms, and stretched him out like a pig on a spit. The filthy toga fell away from the old man's body in loops of cloth, revealing a grubby tunic and a kind of loincloth.
The young woman yelled at the hired warriors to do something about it, but they just shrugged. The old man had provoked the looters; it was his own affair. Even the bishop marched on, singing his hymns lustily, as if nothing was happening.
Now the looters lifted the old man up and held him over the fire. The flames from the burning books licked at the loose toga cloth, and the old man's yells turned to pained whimpers.
Wuffa glanced at Ulf. 'They will kill him.'
'It's not our affair,' Ulf said.
'No, it isn't.'
'I'll take the one on the left. If you can get the old man-'
'Let's go.'
The two of them sprinted at the looters. Ulf lowered his massive shoulders and clattered into the man on the left. The old man would have fallen into the flames, but Wuffa leapt over the bonfire, scooped up the old man in his arms, and dropped him to the ground. Wuffa knew the second looter would be on him in a flash, so he bunched his fist and swung it even as he turned. Knuckles smashed into skull with a thud that made Wuffa's whole arm ache, and the man was knocked sprawling.
Wuffa sat on the man, snatched a knife from his belt and pressed it to the Saxon's neck. The looter, dazed and enraged, was heavier and stronger than Wuffa. But when Wuffa nicked his throat with the blade he submitted and fell back, panting.
Wuffa glanced across at Ulf. The big Norse had his man pinned face-down on the ground, and was slamming his fist into the back of the looter's head, over and over.
'I think you've made your point,' Wuffa called.
Ulf paused, breathing hard, his fist held up in the air. 'Fair enough.'
In a lithe movement Wuffa rolled off his man's torso and got to his feet. The man, evidently dazed, got up, crossed to his companion, and dragged him away. Wuffa wiped his knife clean of the Saxon's blood and slipped it back into his belt. His heart pumped; he never felt more alive than at such moments.
It was in that surge of blood and triumph that he first met Sulpicia.
III
'Oh, Father, you could have got yourself killed!'
The old man was breathing hard but was not seriously hurt. He tried to sit up, as his daughter adjusted the folds of his toga about his thin legs.
Now that the action was safely over, the bishop in his tall hat and bright robes came over. 'Orosius! Are you all right?'
'Yes, Ammanius. But I feel a fool, such a fool.'
The bishop, Ammanius, set down his crook and helped the old man to sit up. 'I would never call you a fool, brave Orosius. But there are many books in Armorica, and there is only one of you, old fellow.'
'But I could not bear to see those pagan brutes abuse the library so.'
'They will never know what they were destroying,' Ammanius said. 'They are to be pitied, not despised.'
Ammanius glanced now at Wuffa and Ulf. Wuffa saw how the bishop's gaze roamed over Ulf's muscular legs. Ammanius was perhaps forty. Clean-shaven like his British charges, he had a full, well-fed face, skin so smooth it looked oiled, and eyebrows that might have been plucked. His Latin was heavily accented. Perhaps he was a continental, then.
'And it seems,' Ammanius said to Orosius, 'that you have another pair of 'pagan brutes' to thank for your life.'
'Yes, thank you both,' said the daughter breathlessly.
Her eyes wide, she might have been twenty; she seemed careworn, but she was pretty in a dark British way, Wuffa thought.
Ammanius said, 'Do you have Latin?'
'We speak it,' Ulf said warily.
'Then you understand what is being said to you. Old Orosius is grateful for your intervention-'
The old man coughed and spoke. 'Don't put words in my mouth, Bishop.' He looked the young men up and down. 'You don't carry weapons within the walls. It's a city law.'
Wuffa frowned. 'Not under King Aethelberht.'
'I don't recognise any pagan king's authority.'
The daughter sighed.
'Don't take offence,' Ammanius said emolliently to Wuffa. 'It is a hard day for Orosius. These people are leaving their homes – the city their ancestors built centuries ago. But you care little for history, you Saxons, do you?'
'I am a Saxon,' Wuffa said. 'He is Norse, a Dane. His name is Ulf. I am Wuffa.'
The girl looked at him, her brown eyes clear. 'And I am Sulpicia.'
'In my tongue, my name means 'wolf'.' Wuffa grinned, showing his teeth.
