In mid-June, 918, a woman's corpse was carried a hundred kilometres across the West Midlands, from her death-bed in Tamworth to her grave in Gloucester. The body was that of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians (c. 870–918), eldest child of Alfred the Great, but there is little more to be said with certainty about this funeral. We do not know exactly how old she was, how she died or what kind of medical treatment she may have had, whether her body went by ox-cart or barge, whether she was embalmed or shrouded, carried in a coffin or on a bier. Nor can we say who attended her body on its last journey, who presided at her funeral, how elaborate that funeral was, what kind of grave awaited her or what monument stood over it. We do not know how those who mourned expressed their emotions, or how they commemorated her. Nonetheless, Æthelflæd is a good case study with which to begin this book. There are other questions which can be answered about her encounters throughout life with the dying, dead and buried, and we can make many more informed guesses. Also, paradoxically, the very fact that so many areas of ignorance can be pinpointed in this particular case demonstrates how much can be known, more generally, about high-status funerals in the last two centuries of Anglo-Saxon England. An analysis of Æthelflæd's experiences introduces many sources, questions and ideas, while never letting us forget how much has vanished and how, as Wormald puts it, ‘as Anglo-Saxonists, we cultivate the borders of prehistory’.