Winchester, spring, 881 AD and East Anglia, 882 AD
Winchester, spring, 881 AD and East Anglia, 882 ADThe winter came and went, and during that season John and I almost completed our magnificent illustrated English version of Orosius—I beg you to allow my immodesty. The King, away on the East Anglian border, faced a period of Viking menace whereas we benefited from calm at Winchester to press on with our work.
Almost two years of undisturbed labour saw us finish the Pastoral Care and, surely, we would have completed the Historiarum adversum paganos libri septum except that a messenger arrived from the King. When the warrior burst into the tranquillity of the scriptorium, his tunic covered in dust clinging to dried blood, eyes wild and hair in disarray, I feared the worst. His disregard fo
