Alcuin watches the young man curiously from his vantage of four years and a civilized birth. ....this is not what he had expected for his twenty-second birthday. Nor is it, strictly speaking, entirely polite. But he cannot turn him back and, truthfully, nor does he want to. No one should be enslaved to that idiot.

Still.... he may have to be careful with this one. "Forgive me," he says quietly, speaking as he would to a peer instead of a slave, "but I don't believe I was given your name. What ought I to call you?"