*Ella*
We reach the bottom of the steps and are greeted by Theodon. “You are fortunate to have arrived so promptly; you needn’t watch from the shore but can actually join the entertainment,” he says. “If you would follow me.” He takes us a short way around the lake and stop before a gilded boat whose elaborately carved prow arched high in the air. The seats are padded luxuriously and set at an angle; presumably we will all recline.
“That looks like a very, very small Viking ship,” Leopold says.
“I’m fairly sure the Vikings were an industrious lot,” I say, basing that on a book I’ve read from my father’s library. “This looks more like Roman decadence to me.”
“The Vikings?” Henry asks. “Who on earth were they?”
“Your ancestors,” Leopold says. He whispers something in her ear and she giv
