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As the musicians’ music dies away I step up from my place below the salt. Sweeping back my cloak, I draw out my flute and play a few notes. I stop, and bending forwards say, ‘Listen.’ For a moment everyone shuffles on their haunches. The hall falls silent. They all love a story.

‘Listen well,’ I say, ‘for this is a true tale of elopement and a princess’s romance.’ The men and women seated behind the white cloth raise eyebrows. I now have their complete attention. ‘My lords and ladies, this story is about a great scandal, one that happened to Gunnhild, the youngest daughter of King Harold of England and his hand-fasted wife, Edith the fair, she of a swan’s neck white as the feathers on an angel’s wing. Ah, so you have heard of her beauty I see. Then fill your drinking horns, my friends. I shall be some time. For this tale we cast back to the year ten hundred and seventy-five when Gunnhild, a maid of eighteen, lived in Wilton Abbey, her hair hidden under a postulant’s cap – though she had no desire to take the veil, nor did she wish to live out her life amongst those who had fled into abbeys for care of their hymens after the great battle. No, once her aunt, the Dowager Queen Edith had died, this young lady wanted her freedom and she was determined to have it.’ I pause. The Yule log crackles and sparks in the hearth. ‘Perhaps this was a mistake, perhaps not. You can decide for yourselves.’

Candles splutter and flicker in the recesses along the wall as I begin to recount my tale in a voice as clear as reliquary crystal.