Nearly two months had passed since the Isle of Man, and its more secluded villages were lit ablaze in retaliatory attacks by Christians. The "evidence" that Cnut had gathered which claimed they had been responsible for providing haven to the wanted Varangians had been dispatched with a host of envoys from London to Rome.
And after a long trek south, it had arrived in the heart of the Papal authority. Compared to the Romans, they were little more than frontier savages; brutes in courtly dress, humbled by cobbled stones older than their kingdom.
The arrogance they had back home, feeling this exact way to the people of Alba, Wales, and Ireland was now shoved right back in their faces as they walked the ancient streets, built during a better age, by better men than themselves.
