The Last Kingdom

by Bernard Cornwell

  “That is my house.”

  “He called you lord.”

  “I am a lord.”

  She leaned against me. “You think the Christian god is watching us.”

  “No,” I said, wondering how she knew that I had been thinking about that very question.

  “He was never our god,” she said fiercely. “We worshipped Woden and Thor and Eostre and all the other gods and goddesses, and then the Christians came and we forgot our gods, and now the Danes have come to lead us back to them.” She stopped abruptly.

  “Did Ravn tell you that?”

  “He told me some,” she said, “but the rest I worked out. There’s war between the gods, Uhtred, war between the Christian god and our gods, and when there is war in Asgard the gods make us fight for them on earth.”

  “And we’re winning?” I asked.

  Her answer was to point to the dead monks, scattered on the wet grass, their robes bloodied, and now that their killing was done Ragnar dragged Weland out of his sickbed. The man was plainly dying, for he was shivering and his wound stank, but he was conscious of what was happening to him. His reward for killing me had been a heavy bag of good silver coins that weighed as much as a newborn babe, and that we found beneath his bed and we added it to the monastery’s small hoard to be divided among our men.

  Weland himself lay on the bloodied grass, looking from me to Ragnar. “You want to kill him?” Ragnar asked me.

  “Yes,” I said, for no other response was expected. Then I remembered the beginning of my tale, the day when I had seen Ragnar oar-dancing just off this coast and how, next morning, Ragnar had brought my brother’s head to Bebbanburg. “I want to cut off his head,” I said.

  Weland tried to speak, but could only manage a guttural groan. His eyes were on Ragnar’s sword.

  Ragnar offered the blade to me. “It’s sharp enough,” he said, “but you’ll be surprised by how much force is needed. An ax would be better.”

  Weland looked at me now. His teeth chattered and he twitched. I hated him. I had disliked him from the first, but now I hated him, yet I was still oddly anxious about killing him even though he was already half dead. I have learned that it is one thing to kill in battle, to send a brave man’s soul to the corpse hall of the gods, but quite another to take a helpless man’s life, and he must have sensed my hesitation for he managed a pitiful plea for his life. “I will serve you,” he said.

  “Make the bastard suffer,” Ragnar answered for me. “Send him to the corpse goddess, but let her know he’s coming by making him suffer.”

  I do not think he suffered much. He was already so feeble that even my puny blows drove him to swift unconsciousness, but even so it took a long time to kill him. I hacked away. I have always been surprised by how much effort is needed to kill a man. The skalds make it sound easy, but it rarely is. We are stubborn creatures, we cling to life and are very hard to kill, but Weland’s soul finally went to its fate as I chopped and sawed and stabbed and at last succeeded in severing his bloody head. His mouth was twisted into a rictus of agony, and that was some consolation.

  Now I asked more favors of Ragnar, knowing he would give them to me. I took some of the poorer coins from the hoard, then went to one of the larger monastery buildings and found the writing place where the monks copied books. They used to paint beautiful letters on the books and, before my life was changed at Eoferwic, I used to go there with Beocca and sometimes the monks would let me daub scraps of parchment with their wonderful colors.

  I wanted the colors now. They were in bowls, mostly as powder, a few mixed with gum, and I needed a piece of cloth, which I found in the church, a square of white linen that had been used to cover the sacraments. Back in the writing place I drew a wolf’s head in charcoal on the white cloth and then I found some ink and began to fill in the outline. Brida helped me and she proved to be much better at making pictures than I was, and she gave the wolf a red eye and a red tongue, and flecked the black ink with white and blue that somehow suggested fur, and once the banner was made we tied it to the staff of the dead abbot’s cross. Ragnar was rummaging through the monastery’s small collection of sacred books, tearing off the jewel-studded metal plates that decorated their front covers, and once he had all the plates, and once my banner was made, we burned all the timber buildings.

  The rain stopped as we left. We trotted across the causeway, turned south, and Ragnar, at my request, went down the coastal track until we reached the place where the road crossed the sands to Bebbanburg.

  We stopped there and I untied my hair so that it hung loose. I gave the banner to Brida, who would ride Ravn’s horse while the old man waited with his son. And then, a borrowed sword at my side, I rode home.

  Brida came with me as standard-bearer and the two of us cantered along the track. The sea broke white to my right and slithered across the sands to my left. I could see men on the walls and up on the Low Gate, watching, and I kicked the horse, making it gallop, and Brida kept pace, her banner flying above, and I curbed the horse where the track turned north to the gate and now I could see my uncle. He was there, Ælfric the Treacherous, thin faced, dark haired, gazing at me from the Low Gate, and I stared up at him so he would know who I was, and then I threw Weland’s severed head onto the ground where my brother’s head had once been thrown. I followed it with the silver coins.

  I threw thirty coins. The Judas price. I remembered that church tale. It was one of the few that I had liked.

  There were archers on the wall, but none drew. They just watched. I gave my uncle the evil sign, the devil’s horns made with the two outer fingers, and then I spat at him, turned, and trotted away. He knew I was alive now, knew I was his enemy, and knew I would kill him like a dog if ever I had the chance.

  “Uhtred!” Brida called. She had been looking behind and I twisted in the saddle to see that one warrior had jumped over the wall, had fallen heavily, but was now running toward us. He was a big man, heavily bearded, and I thought I could never fight such a man, and then I saw the archers loose their arrows and they flecked the ground about the man who I now saw was Ealdwulf, the smith.

  “Lord Uhtred!” Ealdwulf called. “Lord Uhtred!” I turned the horse and went to him, shielding him from the arrows with my horse’s bulk, but none of the arrows came close and I suspect, looking back on that distant day, that the bowmen were deliberately missing. “You live, lord!” Ealdwulf beamed up at me.

  “I live.”

  “Then I come with you,” he said firmly.

  “But your wife, your son?” I asked.

  “My wife died, lord, last year, and my son was drowned while fishing.”

  “I am sorry,” I said. An arrow skidded through the dune grass, but it was yards away.

  “Woden gives, and Woden takes away,” Ealdwulf said, “and he has given me back my lord.” He saw Thor’s hammer about my neck and, because he was a pagan, he smiled.

  And I had my first follower. Ealdwulf the smith.

  “He’s a gloomy man, your uncle,” Ealdwulf told me as we journeyed south, “miserable as shit, he is. Even his new son don’t cheer him up.”

  “He has a son?”

  “Ælfric the Younger, he’s called, and he’s a bonny wee thing. Healthy as you like. Gytha’s sick though. She won’t last long. And you, lord? You look well.”

  “I am well.”

  “You’d be twelve now?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “A man, then. Is that your woman?” He nodded at Brida.

  “My friend.”

  “No meat on her,” Ealdwulf said, “so better as a friend.” The smith was a big man, almost forty years old, with hands, forearms, and face black-scarred from countless small burns from his forge. He walked beside my horse, his pace apparently effortless despite his advanced years. “So tell me about these Danes,” he said, casting a dubious look at Ragnar’s warriors.

  “They’re led by Earl Ragnar,” I said, “who is the man who killed my brother. He’s a good m
an.”

  “He’s the one who killed your brother?” Ealdwulf seemed shocked.

  “Destiny is everything,” I said, which might have been true but also avoided having to make a longer answer.

  “You like him?”

  “He’s like a father to me. You’ll like him.”

  “He’s still a Dane, though, isn’t he, lord? They might worship the right gods,” Ealdwulf said grudgingly, “but I’d still like to see them gone.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Ealdwulf seemed shocked that I had asked. “Because this isn’t their land, lord, that’s why. I want to walk without being afraid. I don’t want to touch my forelock to a man just because he has a sword. There’s one law for them and another for us.”

  “There’s no law for them,” I said.

  “If a Dane kills a Northumbrian,” Ealdwulf said indignantly, “what can a man do? There’s no wergild, no reeve to see, no lord to seek justice.”

  That was true. Wergild was the blood price of a man’s life, and every person had a wergild. A man’s was more than a woman’s, unless she was a great woman, and a warrior’s was greater than a farmer’s, but the price was always there, and a murderer could escape being put to death if the family of the murdered man would accept the wergild. The reeve was the man who enforced the law, reporting to his ealdorman, but that whole careful system of justice had vanished since the Danes had come. There was no law now except what the Danes said it was, and that was what they wanted it to be, and I knew that I reveled in that chaos, but then I was privileged. I was Ragnar’s man, and Ragnar protected me, but without Ragnar I would be no better than an outlaw or a slave.

  “Your uncle doesn’t protest,” Ealdwulf went on, “but Beocca did. You remember him? Red-haired priest with a shriveled hand and crossed eyes?”

  “I met him last year,” I said.

  “You did? Where?”

  “He was with Alfred of Wessex.”

  “Wessex!” Ealdwulf said, surprised. “Long way to go. But he was a good man, Beocca, despite being a priest. He ran off because he couldn’t stand the Danes. Your uncle was furious. Said Beocca deserved to be killed.”

  Doubtless, I thought, because Beocca had taken the parchments that proved me to be the rightful ealdorman. “My uncle wanted me killed, too,” I said, “and I never thanked you for attacking Weland.”

  “Your uncle was going to give me to the Danes for that,” he said, “only no Dane complained, so he did nothing.”

  “You’re with the Danes now,” I said, “and you’d better get used to it.”

  Ealdwulf thought about that for a moment. “Why not go to Wessex?” he asked.

  “Because the West Saxons want to turn me into a priest,” I said, “and I want to be a warrior.”

  “Go to Mercia then,” Ealdwulf suggested.

  “That’s ruled by the Danes.”

  “But your uncle lives there.”

  “My uncle?”

  “Your mother’s brother!” He was astonished that I did not know my own family. “He’s Ealdorman Æthelwulf, if he still lives.”

  “My father never talked about my mother,” I said.

  “Because he loved her. She was a beauty, your mother, a piece of gold, and she died giving birth to you.”

  “Æthelwulf,” I said.

  “If he lives.”

  But why go to Æthelwulf when I had Ragnar? Æthelwulf was family, of course, but I had never met him and I doubted he even remembered my existence, and I had no desire to find him, and even less desire to learn my letters in Wessex, so I would stay with Ragnar. I said as much to Ealdwulf. “He’s teaching me to fight,” I said.

  “Learn from the best, eh?” Ealdwulf said grudgingly. “That’s how you become a good smith. Learn from the best.”

  Ealdwulf was a good smith and, despite himself, he came to like Ragnar for Ragnar was generous and he appreciated good workmanship. A smithy was added onto our home near Synningthwait and Ragnar paid good silver for a forge, an anvil, and the great hammers, tongs, and files that Ealdwulf needed. It was late winter before all was ready, and then ore was purchased from Eoferwic and our valley echoed to the clang of iron on iron, and even on the coldest days the smithy was warm and men gathered there to exchange stories or to tell riddles. Ealdwulf was a great man for riddles and I would translate for him as he baffled Ragnar’s Danes. Most of his riddles were about men and women and what they did together and those were easy enough to guess, but I liked the complicated ones. My father and mother gave me up for dead, one riddle began, then a loyal kinswoman wrapped and protected me, and I killed all her children, but she still loved me and fed me until I rose above the dwelling houses of men and so left her. I could not guess that one, nor could any of the Danes, and Ealdwulf refused to give me the answer even when I begged him and it was only when I told the riddle to Brida that I learned the solution. “A cuckoo, of course,” she said instantly. She was right, of course.

  By spring the forge needed to be larger, and all that summer Ealdwulf made metal for swords, spears, axes, and spades. I asked him once if he minded working for the Danes and he just shrugged. “I worked for them in Bebbanburg,” he said, “because your uncle does their bidding.”

  “But there are no Danes in Bebbanburg?”

  “None,” he admitted, “but they visit and are made welcome. Your uncle pays them tribute.” He stopped suddenly, interrupted by a shout of what I thought was pure rage.

  I ran out of the smithy to see Ragnar standing in front of the house while, approaching up the track, was a crowd of men led by a mounted warrior. And such a warrior. He had a mail coat, a fine helmet hanging from the saddle, a bright-painted shield, a long sword, and arms thick with rings. He was a young man with long fair hair and a thick gold beard, and he roared back at Ragnar like a rutting stag. Then Ragnar ran toward him and I half thought the young man would draw the sword and kick at his horse, but instead he dismounted and ran uphill and, when the two met, they embraced and thumped each other’s backs and Ragnar, when he turned toward us, had a smile that would have lit the darkest crypt of hell. “My son!” he shouted up at me. “My son!”

  It was Ragnar the Younger, come from Ireland with a ship’s crew and, though he did not know me, he embraced me, lifting me off the ground, whirled his sister round, thumped Rorik, kissed his mother, shouted at the servants, scattered gifts of silver chain links, and petted the hounds. A feast was ordered, and that night he gave us his news, saying he now commanded his own ship, that he had come for a few months only, and that Ivar wanted him back in Ireland by the spring. He was so like his father, and I liked him immediately, and the house was always happy when Ragnar the Younger was there. Some of his men lodged with us, and that autumn they cut trees and added a proper hall to the house, a hall fit for an earl with big beams and a high gable on which a boar’s skull was nailed.

  “You were lucky,” he told me one day. We were thatching the new roof, laying down the thick rye straw and combing it flat.

  “Lucky?”

  “That my father didn’t kill you at Eoferwic.”

  “I was lucky,” I agreed.

  “But he was always a good judge of men,” he said, passing me a pot of ale. He perched on the roof ridge and gazed across the valley. “He likes it here.”

  “It’s a good place. What about Ireland?”

  He grinned. “Bog and rock, Uhtred, and the skraelings are vicious.” The skraelings were the natives. “But they fight well! And there’s silver there, and the more they fight the more silver we get. Are you going to drink all that ale, or do I get some?”

  I handed him back the pot and watched as the ale ran down his beard as he drained it. “I like Ireland well enough,” he said when he had finished, “but I won’t stay there. I’ll come back here. Find land in Wessex. Raise a family. Get fat.”

  “Why don’t you come back now?”

  “Because Ivar wants me there, and Ivar’s a good lord.”

  “He frighte
ns me.”

  “A good lord should be frightening.”

  “Your father isn’t.”

  “Not to you, but what about the men he kills? Would you want to face Earl Ragnar the Fearless in a shield wall?”

  “No.”

  “So he is frightening,” he said, grinning. “Go and take Wessex,” he said, “and find the land that will make me fat.”

  We finished the thatch, and then I had to go up into the woods because Ealdwulf had an insatiable appetite for charcoal, which is the only substance that burns hot enough to melt iron. He had shown a dozen of Ragnar’s men how to produce it, but Brida and I were his best workers and we spent much time among the trees. The charcoal heaps needed constant attention and, as each would burn for at least three days, Brida and I would often spend all night beside such a pile, watching for a telltale wisp of smoke coming from the bracken and turf covering the burn. Such smoke betrayed that the fire inside was too hot and we would have to scramble over the warm heap to stuff the crack with earth and so cool the fire deep inside the pile.

  We burned alder when we could get it, for that was the wood Ealdwulf preferred, and the art of it was to char the alder logs, but not let them burst into flame. For every four logs we put into a pile we would get one back, while the rest vanished to leave the lightweight, deep black, dirty charcoal. It could take a week to make the pile. The alder was carefully stacked in a shallow pit, and a hole was left in the stack’s center which we filled with charcoal from the previous burn. Then we would put a layer of bracken over the whole thing, cover that with thick turves, and, when all was done, put fire down the central hole and, when we were sure the charcoal was alight, stuff the hole tight. Now the silent, dark fire had to be controlled. We would open gaps at the base of the pit to let a little air in, but if the wind changed then the air holes had to be stuffed and others made. It was tedious work, and Ealdwulf’s appetite for charcoal seemed unlimited, but I enjoyed it. To be all night in the dark, beside the warm burn, was to be a sceadugengan, and besides, I was with Brida and we had become more than friends.