Of course! I’m looking in the wrong place! The prisoners aren’t written about by people who documented the life of Queen Aethelflaed because they weren’t with Queen Aethelflaed.
She peers across the gloom of the kitchen. Her laptop is still sitting on the worktop where it has been for weeks.
Could I get that thing to work? I haven’t tried for a while. Could I keep it working? Of course I could. Just an hour or so. Piece of cake.
Before she has a chance to change her mind, Tilda snatches up the laptop, sets it down on the table, opens it and presses the ON button. There is a pause, then a hopeful whirring, and the computer begins to fire up. She backs away, making the tea quietly, as if the slightest sudden sound or movement on her part might shut the laptop down again. By the time she has stirred milk into her drink, the screen is cheerfully displaying her chosen wallpaper; a photograph of the sun setting over the frozen lake.
And now I need Wi-Fi. Which means I have to get the electricity running again.
She goes into the hallway and stands under the fuse box. She has grown accustomed to living in the house without power, and the main switch is still in the off position where she left it weeks ago. She bites her lip, willing herself to stay calm. Stay focused. Holding her breath, she takes hold of the lever and pulls it down. The lights come on. The long-forgotten fridge hums. Next to the telephone socket on the hall table, the Internet router blinks into life. And then there is a sharp snap, and everything goes dark once more.
Dammit!
She stands there in the darkness, quelling the urge to scream.
How can I be so useless? Why can’t I control this thing? The power stayed on at the professor’s house. And I stopped that floodlight falling. This should be easy.
The realization comes to her. She is not wearing the torc. She hurries into the kitchen and fetches it from her bedside table.
‘Right, Thistle,’ she says as she passes the dog on her way back to the hall, ‘hold on to yourself.’ With a determined step, she goes straight to the fuse box, clutching the torc tightly in one hand, and throws the switch a second time. The power is restored. She nods.
Good. That’s good. Okay.
Back at her computer she is uncertain as to how best to hold the piece of jewelry and type at the same time. She is reluctant to put it down, feeling the need for direct contact with it, but at the same time she doesn’t want to put it on again. She can’t imagine trying to search the Internet in the midst of the magic released by the torc. She settles for resting the thing in her lap as she works. Within minutes, she has found a plethora of historical Web sites dealing with early ninth-century Britain.
So much information! Getting through this lot could take forever.
With a sigh, she ploughs on, scrolling through document after document, frustrated by wrong turns and details that seem to duplicate themselves. She reads on, her eyes watering a little at the unfamiliar brightness of the screen. Half an hour passes. An hour. She makes a second cup of tea and works on, encouraged by the fact that the power has remained stable, but daunted by the size of the task she has undertaken. She returns to her seat and continues. She learns more and more about the people who lived around the lake in the early years of the tenth century. About how hard their lives were. About how they lived, and what dangers they faced from warring armies, harsh winters, and disease. She reads about how they dressed, what manner of music they made, and their beliefs. She has just reached a file containing information regarding the final attack on the prince’s dwelling on the little island when the lights flicker ominously.
No, not now! Not yet.
She reads on. She finds the extract from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles that the professor had marked for her, telling of the prisoners taken from the crannog.
‘Thirty-four, plus the princess,’ she reads out to a slumbering Thistle. ‘Yes, I know, I know, but who were those prisoners? Were any of them children?’ She reads on, but can find nothing. The same dead end she came up against at the museum. Nothing more. She leans back in her chair, the hard wood beginning to make her back ache. Setting her mind to the problem, she pictures the small group of villagers as they were taken away from their homes. She knows they would have been a pathetic collection of people. People who had just lost everything. Many would have seen their loved ones slaughtered. Some might have been injured. Their lives were in chaos. They were being dragged away. But how long did they spend at the court of the Mercian queen?
Basically, they were slaves, and slaves get sold. So where did they go next? Who was trading with Aethelflaed? Where would she have got a good price for them? I just need to look in the right place.