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months of the second Year ...
    ‘And so on.’ Ambrosias said reverently, ‘This prophecy says that the comet will come again - and it has come before.’
    ‘How can that be?’ Ulf asked reasonably. ‘Comets are like clouds. Aren’t they? How can it come back?’
    Ambrosias snorted. ‘How could I possibly know? Ask Aristotle or Archimedes or Pythagoras - not me! All that matters is that it does so. And that is the basis of what the prophecy describes. My family, scholars all, refer to this as Isolde’s Menologium, a calendar. For it is a calendar of a sort - but not of the seasons but of the comet’s Great Years, each of them many of our earthly years long, marking out the events of man. Do you see?
    ‘For example, the second stanza talks of the comet’s appearance in the year of the Saxon revolt against the Vortigern. And then nine hundred and fifty-one months pass, marking the first Great Year, before the comet returns again, and then thirty-five months after that—’
    ‘Nine hundred and fifty-one months,’ Ulf mused. ‘That’s seventy years? Eighty?’
    Ambrosias looked at him. ‘You people are traders, aren’t you? Illiterate or not, you can figure well enough.’
    Wuffa said, ‘You’re going too fast. Why do you speak of the Vortigem?’
    ‘Because that’s what the prophecy says, in the first stanza. Look, here - ah, but you can’t read it! “Each man of gold/spurns loyalty of silver. /In life a great king/in death a small man” ...’
    “‘Man of gold?”’
    Ambrosias reached out and tugged a lock of Wuffa’s blond hair. ‘Don’t you people use mirrors? And as for “great king”—’
    ‘That is what “Vortigern” means.’
    ‘Yes! The reference is clearly to the revolt against him. So, you see, knowing that enabled my family to fix the start of the first Great Year at the date of the revolt. And then we were able to look ahead to the events foretold in the second stanza, to calculate its date. By then Isolde was already long dead, and I was not yet born. Yet the events the verse foretold came to pass, thirty-five months into the Great Year. “See the Bear laid low / by the Wolf of the north.”’
    Wuffa glanced at Ulf. ‘Ammanius told us that “Artorius” may have been a nickname—’
    ‘The Bear,’ said Ambrosias. ‘And what is the Wolf but you Germans? Why - that is your own name, Wuffa.’ His watery eyes gleamed. ‘And if you count up the months, the forecast date of Artorius’s death was correct. Thus my prophecy holds truth. History is the proof of it - the proof!’
    Wuffa felt uncommonly afraid. A practical man, he was not accustomed to thinking deeply on such mystical issues. It was only chance that he had run into the bishop in Lunden, chance that had brought the two of them here - but chance that seemed to have been predicted centuries ago. And yet, he saw, if he could take all this in, there could be advantage to be gained.
    But surely the same thought had occurred to Ulf, his rival.
    Ulf got to the point. ‘And what next? What does the prophecy say of the future?’
     
    Trembling now, Ambrosias raised his document, but it seemed he knew the words by heart:
     
    The Comet comes/in the month of March.
The blood of the holy one/thins and dries.
Empire dreams pour/into golden heads ...
     
    Again Wuffa was baffled. ‘What does it mean?’
    ‘Why, don’t you see? The blood of the holy one thins and dries ... Dreams pour into golden heads ... Isolde’s blood is drying in my old veins; I am the last of her line. But you are here, with your golden heads, to be filled with the dream and to carry it forward. I knew this night would come. Even when my family abandoned me here, I knew all I had to do was to stay and wait for the Second Great Year to elapse, for those nine hundred and eighteen months to wear away, wait for the comet to reappear. For these words, uttered by an ignorant young woman in labour two centuries ago, are describing our meeting - right now,