I’ll say this for The Saxon Experience: they tried their hardest to make things interesting.

The problem was the kind of thing they thought a bunch of kids from Percy Ack would find interesting. Everything was aimed at six-year-olds, with signs in bright colors featuring cartoon figures and speech balloons saying things like:

Can you spot the biggest house?

How many animals are in this picture?

That sort of thing.

Alfie, Roxy, and I ended up together in one group. There was a visitor center, a café, and the education room, where a man dressed in Saxon clothes gave us a welcome talk. Mr. Springham only had to shout at us once to QUIET DOWN!

“Greetings and salutations, children of the twenty-first century!” said the man in the old-fashioned clothes. “My name is Eckfrith, and I own a small farm on the banks of the Tyne…,” and so on.

All the way through, Alfie kept quietly tutting and shaking his head slightly. I thought nobody had noticed apart from me, but the man who was giving the talk had obviously seen it as well, and suddenly stopped.

“Aha! I see we have a disbeliever among us!” he said sort of good-naturedly. “Tell me, young man—what is wrong? What makes you think I am not a genuine Anglo-Saxon farmer?”

Without missing a beat, Alfie said, “You are too clean,” and the class erupted in laughter. The man didn’t seem to mind.

“Well, young man, you’re probably right. Soap was very expensive in those days!”

“Practically nonexistent, you mean? And no one said ‘salutations’—that is a French word that was not common until long after 1066,” said Alfie.

“Well, erm…” The man was floundering.

“Also your tunic would not be red.”

The man looked down at his simple cotton overshirt. He was clearly a little surprised.

“Ah, really?”

“No. Unless you were a very wealthy farmer, you would not be able to afford a red tunic. Red was a very expensive dye.”

“Ah, well,” said the man, grinning. “Then I am an exceedingly wealthy farmer!”

“So why are you wearing a poor man’s boots?”

More laughter from the class until Mr. Springham shouted, “ENOUGH!” and gave the evil eye to Alfie, who shut up.

Behind us, I heard Inigo Delombra mutter, “Think you’re clever, don’t you?”

The nudges and giggles continued, though much quieter. Alfie had got himself noticed, that’s for sure. Whether that was a good thing or not, I couldn’t tell.

But it was nothing to what came next.