Epilogue
Exhumation 17 October AD 693The pavilion flapped in the stiff breeze, tugging at the wooden pegs that held it to the earth. Saxberga, Abbess of Ely, had herself made sure that it was firmly tied before the ceremony began, testing the ropes with her own hands, knowing that autumn could be changeable and that although they might start the work in calm sunshine they might have to finish it in storm.
She stood now before the entrance, an old woman but still holding herself as regally as when she was Queen of Kent. It was to be her command that would set the two monks digging at the grave of her sister.
When Etheldreda had died fourteen years before she had been insistent that she was to lie in a plain wooden coffin amongst her brothers and sisters of the monastery, and that there w
