The Last Kingdom

by Bernard Cornwell

  Ragnar was often absent for much of the Danish army spent that summer riding the length and breadth of Northumbria to quell the last shreds of resistance, but I heard little news, and no news of Bebbanburg. It seemed the Danes were winning, for every few days another English thegn would come to Eoferwic and kneel to Egbert, who now lived in the palace of Northumbria’s king, though it was a palace that had been stripped of anything useful by the victors. The gap in the city wall had been repaired in a day, the same day that a score of us dug a great hole in the field where our army had fled in panic. We filled the hole with the rotting corpses of the Northumbrian dead. I knew some of them. I suppose my father was among them, but I did not see him. Nor, looking back, did I miss him. He had always been a morose man, expecting the worst, and not fond of children.

  The worst job I was given was painting shields. We first had to boil down some cattle hides to make size, a thick glue, that we stirred into a powder we had made from crushing copper ore with big stone pestles, and the result was a viscous blue paste that had to be smeared on the newly made shields. For days afterward I had blue hands and arms, but our shields were hung on a ship and looked splendid. Every Danish ship had a strake running down each side from which the shields could hang, overlapping as though they were being held in the shield wall, and these shields were for Ubba’s craft, the same ship I had burned and scraped clean. Ubba, it seemed, planned to leave, and wanted his ship to be beautiful. She had a beast on her prow, a prow that curved like a swan’s breast from the waterline, then jutted forward. The beast, half dragon and half worm, was the topmost part, and the whole beast head could be lifted off its stem and stowed in the bilge. “We lift the beast heads off,” Ragnar explained to me, “so they don’t frighten the spirits.” I had learned some of the Danish language by then.

  “The spirits?”

  Ragnar sighed at my ignorance. “Every land has its spirits,” he said, “its own little gods, and when we approach our own lands we take off the beast heads so that the spirits aren’t scared away. How many fights have you had today?”

  “None.”

  “They’re getting frightened of you. What’s that thing around your neck?”

  I showed him. It was a crude iron hammer, a miniature hammer the size of a man’s thumb, and the sight of it made him laugh and cuff me around the head. “We’ll make a Dane of you yet,” he said, plainly pleased. The hammer was the sign of Thor, who was a Danish god almost as important as Odin, as they called Woden, and sometimes I wondered if Thor was the more important god, but no one seemed to know or even care very much. There were no priests among the Danes, which I liked, because priests were forever telling us not to do things or trying to teach us to read or demanding that we pray, and life without them was much more pleasant. The Danes, indeed, seemed very casual about their gods, yet almost every one wore Thor’s hammer. I had torn mine from the neck of a boy who had fought me, and I have it to this day.

  The stern of Ubba’s ship, which curved and reared as high as the prow, was decorated with a carved eagle’s head, while at her mast-head was a wind vane in the shape of a dragon. The shields were hung on her flanks, though I later learned they were only displayed there for decoration and that once the ship was under way the shields were stored inboard. Just underneath the shields were the oar holes, each rimmed with leather, fifteen holes on each side. The holes could be stopped with wooden plugs when the ship was under sail so that the craft could lean with the wind and not be swamped. I helped scrub the whole boat clean, but before we scrubbed her she was sunk in the river, just to drown the rats and discourage the fleas, and then we boys scraped every inch of wood and hammered wax-soaked wool into every seam, and at last the ship was ready and that was the day my uncle Ælfric arrived in Eoferwic.

  The first I knew of Ælfric’s coming was when Ragnar brought me my own helmet, the one with the gilt-bronze circlet, and a tunic edged with red embroidery, and a pair of shoes. It felt strange to walk in shoes again. “Tidy your hair, boy,” he said, then remembered he had the helmet that he pushed onto my tousled head. “Don’t tidy your hair,” he said, grinning.

  “Where are we going?” I asked him.

  “To hear a lot of words, boy. To waste our time. You look like a Frankish whore in that robe.”

  “That bad?”

  “That’s good, lad! They have great whores in Frankia: plump, pretty, and cheap. Come on.” He led me from the river. The city was busy, the shops full, the streets crowded with pack mules. A herd of small, dark-fleeced sheep was being driven to slaughter, and they were the only obstruction that did not part to make way for Ragnar whose reputation ensured respect, but that reputation was not grim for I saw how the Danes grinned when he greeted them. He might be called Jarl Ragnar, Earl Ragnar, but he was hugely popular, a jester and fighter who blew through fear as though it were a cobweb. He took me to the palace, which was only a large house, part built by the Romans in stone and part made more recently in wood and thatch. It was in the Roman part, in a vast room with stone pillars and lime-washed walls, that my uncle waited and with him was Father Beocca and a dozen warriors, all of whom I knew, and all of whom had stayed to defend Bebbanburg while my father rode to war.

  Beocca’s crossed eyes widened when he saw me. I must have looked very different for I was long haired, sun darkened, skinny, taller, and wilder. Then there was the hammer amulet about my neck, which he saw for he pointed to his own crucifix, then at my hammer and looked very disapproving. Ælfric and his men scowled at me as though I had let them down, but no one spoke, partly because Ivar’s own guards, all of them tall men, and all of them in mail and helmets and armed with long-shafted war axes, stood across the head of the room where a simple chair, which now counted as Northumbria’s throne, stood on a wooden platform.

  King Egbert arrived, and with him was Ivar the Boneless and a dozen men, including Ravn who, I had learned, was a counselor to Ivar and his brother. With Ravn was a tall man, white haired and with a long white beard. He was wearing long robes embroidered with crosses and winged angels and I later discovered this was Wulfhere, the Archbishop of Eoferwic who, like Egbert, had given his allegiance to the Danes. The king sat, looking uncomfortable, and then the discussion began.

  They were not there just to discuss me. They talked about which Northumbrian lords were to be trusted, which were to be attacked, what lands were to be granted to Ivar and Ubba, what tribute the Northumbrians must pay, how many horses were to be brought to Eoferwic, how much food was to be given to the army, which ealdormen were to yield hostages, and I sat, bored, until my name was mentioned. I perked up then and heard my uncle propose that I should be ransomed. That was the gist of it, but nothing is ever simple when a score of men decide to argue. For a long time they wrangled over my price, the Danes demanding an impossible payment of three hundred pieces of silver, and Ælfric not wanting to budge from a grudging offer of fifty. I said nothing, but just sat on the broken Roman tiles at the edge of the hall and listened. Three hundred became two hundred and seventy-five, fifty became sixty, and so it went on, the numbers edging closer, but still wide apart, and then Ravn, who had been silent, spoke for the first time. “The earl Uhtred,” he said in Danish, and that was the first time I heard myself described as an earl, which was a Danish rank, “has given his allegiance to King Egbert. In that he has an advantage over you, Ælfric.”

  The words were translated and I saw Ælfric’s anger when he was given no title. But nor did he have a title, except the one he had granted to himself, and I learned about that when he spoke softly to Beocca who then spoke up for him. “The ealdorman Ælfric,” the young priest said, “does not believe that a child’s oath is of any significance.”

  Had I made an oath? I could not remember doing so, though I had asked for Egbert’s protection, and I was young enough to confuse the two things. Still, it did not much matter. What mattered was that my uncle had usurped Bebbanburg. He was calling himself ealdorman. I stared at him, shocked, and h
e looked back at me with pure loathing in his face.

  “It is our belief,” Ravn said, his blind eyes looking at the roof of the hall that was missing some tiles so that a light rain was spitting through the rafters, “that we would be better served by having our own sworn earl in Bebbanburg, loyal to us, than endure a man whose loyalty we do not know.”

  Ælfric could feel the wind changing and he did the obvious thing. He walked to the dais, knelt to Egbert, kissed the king’s outstretched hand, and, as a reward, received a blessing from the archbishop. “I will offer a hundred pieces of silver,” Ælfric said, his allegiance given.

  “Two hundred,” Ravn said, “and a force of thirty Danes to garrison Bebbanburg.”

  “With my allegiance given,” Ælfric said angrily, “you will have no need of Danes in Bebbanburg.”

  So Bebbanburg had not fallen and I doubted it could fall. There was no stronger fortress in all Northumbria, and perhaps in all England.

  Egbert had not spoken at all, nor did he, but nor had Ivar and it was plain that the tall, thin, ghost-faced Dane was bored with the whole proceedings for he jerked his head at Ragnar who left my side and went to talk privately with his lord. The rest of us waited awkwardly. Ivar and Ragnar were friends, an unlikely friendship for they were very different men, Ivar all savage silence and grim threat, and Ragnar open and loud, yet Ragnar’s eldest son served Ivar and was even now, at eighteen years old, entrusted with the leadership of some of the Danes left in Ireland who were holding on to Ivar’s lands in that island. It was not unusual for eldest sons to serve another lord, Ragnar had two earl’s sons in his ships’ crews, and both might one day expect to inherit wealth and position if they learned how to fight. So Ragnar and Ivar now talked and Ælfric shuffled his feet and kept looking at me, Beocca prayed, and King Egbert, having nothing else to do, just tried to look regal.

  Ivar finally spoke “The boy is not for sale,” he announced.

  “Ransom,” Ravn corrected him gently.

  Ælfric looked furious. “I came here…” he began, but Ivar interrupted him.

  “The boy is not for ransom,” he snarled, then turned and walked from the big chamber. Egbert looked awkward, half rose from his throne, sat again, and Ragnar came and stood beside me.

  “You’re mine,” he said softly, “I just bought you.”

  “Bought me?”

  “My sword’s weight in silver,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps I want to sacrifice you to Odin?” he suggested, then tousled my hair. “We like you, boy,” he said, “we like you enough to keep you. And besides, your uncle didn’t offer enough silver. For five hundred pieces? I’d have sold you for that.” He laughed.

  Beocca hurried across the room. “Are you well?” he asked me.

  “I’m well,” I said.

  “That thing you’re wearing,” he said, meaning Thor’s hammer, and he reached as though to pull it from its thong.

  “Touch the boy, priest,” Ragnar said harshly, “and I’ll straighten your crooked eyes before opening you from your gutless belly to your skinny throat.”

  Beocca, of course, could not understand what the Dane had said, but he could not mistake the tone and his hand stopped an inch from the hammer. He looked nervous. He lowered his voice so only I could hear him. “Your uncle will kill you,” he whispered.

  “Kill me?”

  “He wants to be ealdorman. That’s why he wished to ransom you. So he could kill you.”

  “But,” I began to protest.

  “Shh,” Beocca said. He was curious about my blue hands, but did not ask what had caused them. “I know you are the ealdorman,” he said instead, “and we will meet again.” He smiled at me, glanced warily at Ragnar, and backed away.

  Ælfric left. I learned later that he had been given safe passage to and from Eoferwic, which promise had been kept, but after that meeting he retreated to Bebbanburg and stayed there. Ostensibly he was loyal to Egbert, which meant he accepted the overlordship of the Danes, but they had not yet learned to trust him. That, Ragnar explained to me, was why he had kept me alive. “I like Bebbanburg,” he told me. “I want it.”

  “It’s mine,” I said stubbornly.

  “And you’re mine,” he said, “which means Bebbanburg is mine. You’re mine, Uhtred, because I just bought you, so I can do whatever I like with you. I can cook you, if I want, except there’s not enough meat on you to feed a weasel. Now, take off that whore’s tunic, give me the shoes and helmet, and go back to work.”

  So I was a slave again, and happy. Sometimes, when I tell folk my story, they ask why I did not run away from the pagans, why I did not escape southward into the lands where the Danes did not yet rule, but it never occurred to me to try. I was happy, I was alive, I was with Ragnar, and it was enough.

  More Danes arrived before winter. Thirty-six ships came, each with its contingent of warriors, and the ships were pulled onto the riverbank for the winter while the crews, laden with shields and weapons, marched to wherever they would spend the next few months. The Danes were casting a net over eastern Northumbria, a light one, but still a net of scattered garrisons. Yet they could not have stayed if we had not let them, but those ealdormen and thegns who had not died at Eoferwic had bent the knee and so we were a Danish kingdom now, despite the leashed Egbert on his pathetic throne. It was only in the west, in the wilder parts of Northumbria, that no Danes ruled, but nor were there any strong forces in those wild parts to challenge them.

  Ragnar took land west of Eoferwic, up in the hills. His wife and family joined him there, and Ravn and Gudrun came, plus all Ragnar’s ships’ crews who took over homesteads in the nearby valleys. Our first job was to make Ragnar’s house larger. It had belonged to an English thegn who had died at Eoferwic, but it was no grand hall, merely a low wooden building thatched with rye straw and bracken on which grass grew so thickly that, from a distance, the house looked like a long hummock. We built a new part, not for us, but for the few cattle, sheep, and goats who would survive the winter and give birth in the new year. The rest were slaughtered. Ragnar and the men did most of the killing, but as the last few beasts came to the pen, he handed an ax to Rorik, his younger son. “One clean, quick stroke,” he ordered, and Rorik tried, but he was not strong enough and his aim was not true and the animal bellowed and bled and it took six men to restrain it while Ragnar did the job properly. The skinners moved on to the carcass and Ragnar held the ax to me. “See if you can do better.”

  A cow was pushed toward me, a man lifted her tail, she obediently lowered her head, and I swung the ax, remembering exactly where Ragnar had hit each time, and the heavy blade swung true, straight into the spine just behind the skull and she went down with a crash. “We’ll make a Danish warrior of you yet,” Ragnar said, pleased.

  The work lessened after the cattle slaughter. The English who still lived in the valley brought Ragnar their tribute of carcasses and grain, just as they would have delivered the supplies to their English lord. It was impossible to read from their faces what they thought of Ragnar and his Danes, but they gave no trouble, and Ragnar took care not to disturb their lives. The local priest was allowed to live and give services in his church that was a wooden shed decorated with a cross, and Ragnar sat in judgment on disputes, but always made certain he was advised by an Englishman who was knowledgeable in the local customs. “You can’t live somewhere,” he told me, “if the people don’t want you to be there. They can kill our cattle or poison our streams, and we would never know who did it. You either slaughter them all or learn to live with them.”

  The sky grew paler and the wind colder. Dead leaves blew in drifts. Our main work now was to feed the surviving cattle and to keep the log pile high. A dozen of us would go up into the woods and I became proficient with an ax, learning how to bring a tree down with an economy of strokes. We would harness an ox to the bigger trunks to drag them down to the shieling, and the best trees were put aside for building, while the others were spli
t and chopped for burning. There was also time for play and so we children made our own hall high up in the woods, a hall of unsplit logs with a thatch of bracken and a badger’s skull nailed to the gable in imitation of the boar’s skull that crowned Ragnar’s home, and in our pretend hall Rorik and I fought over who would be king, though Thyra, his sister, who was eight years old, was always the lady of the house. She would spin wool there, because if she did not spin enough thread by winter’s end she would be punished, and she would watch while we boys fought our mock battles with toy wooden swords. Most of the boys were servants’ sons, or slave children, and they always insisted I was the English chief while Rorik was the Danish leader, and my warband only received the smallest, weakest boys and so we nearly always lost, and Thyra, who had her mother’s pale gold hair, would watch and spin, ever spinning, the distaff in her left hand while her right teased the thread out of the sheared fleece.

  Every woman had to spin and weave. Ragnar reckoned it took five women or a dozen girls a whole winter to spin enough thread to make a new sail for a boat, and boats were always needing new sails, and so the women worked every hour the gods sent. They also cooked, boiled walnut shells to dye the new thread, picked mushrooms, tanned the skins of the slaughtered cattle, collected the moss we used for wiping our arses, rolled beeswax into candles, malted the barley, and placated the gods. There were so many gods and goddesses, and some were peculiar to our own house and those the women celebrated in their own rites, while others, like Odin and Thor, were mighty and ubiquitous, but they were rarely treated in the same way that the Christians worshipped their god. A man would appeal to Thor, or to Loki, or to Odin, or to Vikr, or to any of the other great beings who lived in Asgard, which seemed to be the heaven of the gods, but the Danes did not gather in a church as we had gathered every Sunday and every saint’s day in Bebbanburg, and just as there were no priests among the Danes, nor were there any relics or sacred books. I missed none of it.