tobacco smoke, disinfectant and sweat.
Through an open door marked Operations, I glimpsed a wall-sized map of Allminstershire. The city looked as though it were a giant ink-splash, centred on the snaking River Moore, studded with numbered pins that I supposed marked scenes of interest to the police. There were few pins in the outer suburbs of the city, and fewer in its quiet hinterlands. The pins stopped altogether at the boundaries of the shire, as though my city were a cell of ugly crime, and our quarantining neighbours - Hampshire, Sussex and Surrey - were utopias of law-abiding men and women.
The interview room was bare except for a broad table and two hard-looking chairs. Nielsen peered out of the bank of windows that faced onto the corridor, as if ensuring we had not been followed, then drew some heavy blinds down across them. Above me a high wattage bulb burned fiercely.
“Is this bright enough for your work, Mr Haye?”
My eyes closed against the intense light.
“It’s bright enough for surgery, thank you, Mr Nielsen,” I replied, sitting down. Nielsen put paper, pencils and the oilskin in front of me and sat down opposite. “You know, I can easily work on this alone, Mr Nielsen, if you’ve got other work to do.”
“I would prefer to remain here and see to it that you are not disturbed, sir.”
Despite his perfect politeness, I felt annoyed with him again. If these documents were so important that he had to stand guard, why wouldn’t they warrant my being allowed a good dictionary? But I said nothing and opened the oilskin.
There were eight vellum sheets. Clearly, there were two distinct hands, which probably meant two separate documents. The first document - the neater of the two -comprised five sheets of smooth, cream-coloured calf-skin, once heavily folded into eighths, but now spread flat, one on top of the other. Most of the sheets’ edges were dark and brittle, flaking in some parts, but they were generally very well preserved, and I could tell from the undamaged sections of the documents that the vellum was of good quality.
The script had faded somewhat, but was still definitely legible, even along the folds. This was half-uncial calligraphy, where the “g”s resemble modern 5s, and the “b”s and “d”s are identical to those we use today. I perked up. An English half-uncial manuscript would probably date to no later than about 800 AD, smack-bang in the middle of my field.
I straightened the documents on the table, and started reading.
3
To his friend and lord, bishop Ecgwulf; Ohthere, priest, sends love and greetings.
My lord, I thought it best to relate to you the details of my escape from Barking. You need the truth from me, and not some liar such as Sigeheard. I will start at the beginning.
Before I joined the monastery, and was a warrior in the service of our king Sigeric, I had trouble with Sigeheard. He was lazy, and, despite his frequent boasting, he often shirked his vows of bravery in battle. It was my duty as a captain in the army to reprimand him, and I did so. Usually he would retort spitefully, citing my youth and less distinguished birth as reasons for his attitude to my commands. He would also cast aspersions on the name of my Norwegian father, and my own Norwegian name also.
As I grew older, and won recognition from the king for my prowess with the sword, his hostility began to manifest itself more overtly. He would spread lies about me. He would play meanly on my long-standing friendship with his cousin Eulalia, suggesting that our affection for each other had become improper, and contrary to the wishes of her father, who had arranged for her to marry a man of higher birth than me.
Even after joining the monastery at age twenty-one, and making vows to respect the dignity of all God’s creatures, I have found it difficult to deal with Sigeheard.
Abbess Eulalia often informed me of his desire for our monastery. It is not a simple matter of acquiring the fishing boats, fields, mills, and kilns, which, after expert care from the selfless brothers and sisters, have seen the monastery prosper. It is, I fear, as much a matter of his spite for me as it is his avarice.
Perhaps, Ecgwulf, you remember the day that he pressed Eulalia’s father, Swithbert, for control of the abbey. He claimed entitlement on the grounds that he is the king’s son. Fortunately Swithbert, a sound Christian man, denied him this particular request.
Sigeheard then threatened Eulalia directly. She informed her father, who had him restrained. But Sigeheard’s greed and spite were so boundless that he sent some of his armed companions to the monastery to take me hostage. His plan, despicable though it was, was well-crafted, for Eulalia, being the sweet, loving soul she is, would certainly have agreed to his terms to see to my safe release.
Fortunately, she heard in time of Sigeheard’s conspiracy from another of her cousins. As his men entered our monastery from the road to London, she summoned me to the window in the door between the men’s and women’s cloisters, and told me of Sigeheard’s plan to hold her to ransom with my life. She urged me to leave in all haste.
At first I was reluctant. My fighting blood rose, and I had visions of dealing blows upon the men. The years of heavy labouring here have kept me very strong, and I must confess to you, my lord, that my first instinct was to use my strength in the violent manner that I had been familiar with before joining the monastery.
I argued with her, indicating that I thought it unwise for her to let Sigeheard’s greed affect proceedings in the abbey. But Eulalia begged me to escape. She made me swear to leave England altogether for a short while; and send word of my successful escape to her as soon as I was able. To this I agreed, for her sake, and with respect for the vows that I have taken as a servant of God.
Sigeheard had sent more than a dozen men to seize me. He may have suspected that I would be warned in time to make good an escape, for he had enough men to post as guards on the gates on each end on the monastery and still conduct a search of the building. Some of these men had the nerve to search the women’s quarters.
Faithful to the word I gave to Eulalia, I plotted an escape. I propped a plank up against the high timber wall on the east side of the priory cloister so that it inclined gently enough for me to scramble up to the top. I pulled up the plank, and, as quietly as possible, rested its end in the treetops so that I had a gangway to the nearby forest. I climbed across into the trees, and, after quickly hiding my lucky plank, crept through the dark woods down to our jetties on the Thames, where I hoped to find a fishing boat to escape in.
Sigeheard had evidently anticipated this, for he had posted guards there. Turning back, with the intention of leaving the woods to the north, I heard a party of Sigeheard’s companions, who had deduced that I had left the monastery over the eastern wall, and were beating and shouting their way through the forest in their search for me. They found the plank that I had used for my escape, and their voices grew louder.
I prayed for help from the Almighty. I asked for the grace to make good my escape without violence, for I was afraid of hurting the men. I feared the harm my strength might do now that my fighting blood was up, and was afraid of the consequences this might have for Eulalia.
But God, ever listening to those with genuine faith in Him, soon sent me help. Lambswool clouds smothered the moon, and made it dark enough for me to sneak out of the woods across a field towards the river. I arrived at a beach, where
