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 towards 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 around, 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 frightens 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 tell-tale 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 centre 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.
She lost her first baby up beside the charcoal burn. She had not even known she was pregnant, but one night she was assailed with cramps and spear-like pains, and I wanted to go and fetch Sigrid, but Brida would not let me. She told me she knew what was happening, but I was scared helpless by her agony and I shuddered in fear throughout the dark until, just before dawn, she gave birth to a tiny dead baby boy. We buried it with its afterbirth, and Brida stumbled back to the homestead where Sigrid was alarmed by her appearance and gave her a broth of leeks and sheep brains and made her stay at home. Sigrid must have suspected what had happened for she was sharp with me for a few days and she told Ragnar it was time Brida was married. Brida was certainly of age, being thirteen, and there were a dozen young Danish warriors in Synningthwait who were in need of wives, but Ragnar declared that Brida brought his men luck and he wanted her to ride with us when we attacked Wessex.
‘And when will that be?’ Sigrid asked.
‘Next year,’ Ragnar suggested, ‘or the year after. No longer.’
‘And then?’
‘Then England is no more,’ Ragnar said. ‘It will all be ours.’ The last of the four kingdoms would have fallen and England would be Daneland and we would all be Danes or slaves or dead.
We celebrated the Yule feast and Ragnar the Younger won every competition in Synningthwait, he hurled rocks farther than anyone, wrestled men to the ground and even drank his father into insensibility. Then followed the dark months, the long winter, and in spring, when the gales had subsided, Ragnar the Younger had to leave and we had a melancholy feast on the eve of his going, and next morning he led his men away from the hall, going down the track in a grey drizzle. Ragnar watched his son all the way down into the valley and when he turned back to his newly-built hall he had tears in his eyes. ‘He’s a good man,’ he told me.
‘I liked him,’ I said truthfully, and I did, and many years later, when I met him again, I still liked him.
There was an empty feeling after Ragnar the Younger had left, but I remember that spring and summer fondly for it was in those long days that Ealdwulf made me a sword. ‘I hope it’s better than my last one,’ I said ungraciously.
‘Your last one?’
‘The one I carried when we attacked Eoferwic,’ I said.
‘That thing! That wasn’t mine. Your father bought it in Berewic, and I told him it was crap, but it was only a short sword. Good for killing ducks, maybe, but not for fighting. What happened to it?’
‘It bent,’ I said, remembering Ragnar laughing at the feeble weapon.
‘Soft iron, boy, soft iron.’
There were two sorts of iron, he told me, the soft and the hard. The hard made the best cutting edge, but it was brittle and a sword made of such iron would snap at the first brutal stroke, while a sword made of the softer metal would bend as my short sword had done. ‘So what we do is use both,’ he told me, and I watched as he made seven iron rods. Three were of the hard iron, and he was not really sure how he made
