There's an important scene three quarters of the way through this book when the boy Arthur speaks up for a condemned man in a public trial. My social history is a little ropey - is that the way it actually worked on a manor. Everyone was the jury?

Everyone was the jury. And everyone over the age of 12 was a juror. You didn't have any choice in the matter. You had to go to the court. If people failed to turn up they got fined. You're right... Arthur is not willing to kowtow, and just go with the flow. He wants to understand what he should do. And he's brave. And that is noted by the lord who has come in to act as the judge. Which leads to him asking Arthur to be a squire. So it does lead directly to the events that unfold in the second and third volume.

You mentioned earlier that you see some of the shorter chapters as being like interludes in an opera. You've worked as a librettist. Has that experience influenced your fiction writing?

Yes. During the last ten years I've spent far more time in the writing of libretti and a play--The Wuffings, about the rise of King Raedwald, the king who was probably buried in Sutton Hoo--than in writing books, so it's certainly been an influence.