A tragic event shakes the community of Collatino, an 11-year-old boy dies after falling from a window.

Here is no story of ineluctable Decline and Fall in the manner of Edward Gibbon ... deep erudition to revisit the whodunnit that is the Roman empire from Constantine to Justinian and a little after.

It refers to settlers from the German regions of Angeln and Saxony, who made their way over to Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire around AD 410. The Roman armies withdrew from Britain ...