Conqueror

II

They travelled across the city, heading towards the ruined fortress built into the south-eastern comer of the circuit of the city walls. The singing came from a massive stone-walled building with a roof of red tiles that stood not far from the walls. Its huge wooden doors were flung open, and the setting sun cast low light into long aisles.

A group of people had gathered before the open doors. Men, women and children, there must have been four, five hundred of them, Wuffa thought. Drawn up in a loose column they had begun walking slowly along the road down towards the docks. A man in colourful vestments led them; he wore a pointed hat and carried what looked like a shepherd's crook. The column was flanked by parties of Saxons – warriors, evidently hired to protect the pilgrims. The Saxons talked amongst themselves, chewed on bits of root, and eyed up the prettier women.

The pilgrims were Britons; Wuffa could tell from their clothes and hair. The men all wore their hair short and clean-shaven. The women mostly had their hair in neat plaits and buns. Men and women alike wore sleeveless tunics under cloaks, and were adorned with bracelets and armlets and necklaces. One or two of the men even wore togas, long swathes of cloth that scraped across the dusty ground. But they were mostly dressed for travel, and laden with baggage. Even infants old enough to walk bore bundles on their backs and heads. They looked strained, unhappy, fearful and uncertain.

They were all Christians, most likely. In among them were clergy wearing tonsures cut in the British style, with the front of the head shaved from ear to ear and the hair worn long down the back. That man who led them, though, wore a Roman tonsure, with the crown of his head shaved in a disc.

And as they walked the pilgrims sang, creating a chilling, unearthly music that rose up to the sky, where the hairy star shone ever brighter.

Ulf gaped at all this. 'So what's the big building? A warehouse?'

'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.