Credo. Melvyn Bragg. 1996.

Britain during the Dark Ages is the setting for Credo by Melvyn Bragg: a country of warring kings, of Christians and pagans, and of tribes divided by a gauge and culture. Into this fractured land in 657 comes Bega, a young Irish princess banished by her father following the murder of her intended husband. Her sole companion is her tutor Padric, prince of the British kingdom of Rheged, who has begun to hope that he and Bega will marry. But Bega, despite her growing love for Padric, cannot break her vow to serve God.

So begins a life-long struggle to overcome her emotions, as Bega enters the Abbey of Whitby as a novice and goes on to found a nunnery on Britain’s western coast. Padric throws himself into the fight to rid Rheged of its Teutonic Northumbrian overlords which, after the momentous Synod of Whitby in 664, becomes part of a bloody conflict between the Roman and Irish factions of the Church. Through harsh years of the plague, war and famine, as Bega’s renown for working miracles spreads, she and Padric separately purse their Common Celtic cause. But the bond between the is never broken and in the aftermath of victory it draws the, once more, together.