“Surely no man would be so base!” I cried.

“Such things have been and may be again.  Long have I known Beorn, and I would not have him for enemy.  His ways are not open.”

Then I said that if Beorn was ever near Lodbrok, I would be nearer, and so we left the matter.

There was one other thing, which was more pleasant, which we spoke about at that time.  And it was about the betrothal of my sister Eadgyth.  For it had come to pass that Egfrid, my friend, had sought her hand, and the match pleased us all.  So before the king and my father went to Winchester there was high feasting, and those two were pledged one to the other.  Then was a new house to be built for them at Hoxne, where the wedding itself should take place.

“Maybe Halfden will be here by that time,” said Lodbrok to me.  “I wish, friend Wulfric, that honest Egfrid had not been so forward, or that you had another fair sister.”

Now though that saying pleased me, I could not wish for the wild viking as husband to our gentle Eadgyth, though I loved him well as my own friend.  So I said that I thought Halfden’s ship was his only love.

“Maybe,” answered the jarl; “but one may never know, and I think it would be well for English folk and Danish to be knit together more closely.”

But when I asked him why this should be so, he only smiled, and talked of friendliness between the two peoples, which seemed a little matter to me at that time.

Now when the time came, my father having gone, we two, Lodbrok and I, went back to Reedham, while my mother and Eadgyth stayed yet at Thetford for the sake of Egfrid’s new house building, for he would have it built to suit her who should rule it.

Strange and grievous it was to me to see our shipyard empty, and sad to have to tell the story of the good ship’s loss to those whose mourning was not yet over.  Yet they were sailors’ wives and children, and to them death at sea was honourable, as is to a warrior’s wife that her husband should fall in a ring of foes with all his wounds in front.  And they blamed me not; but rather rejoiced that I was safe returned.

Now without thought of any foe, or near or far, Lodbrok and I hunted and hawked over our manors, finding good sport, and in a little while I forgot all about Beorn, for I had seen him go in the king’s train as they rode out to Winchester.

Out of that carelessness of mine came trouble, the end of which is hard to see, and heavily, if there is blame to me, have I paid for it.  And I think that I should have better remembered my father’s words, though I had no thought but that danger was far away for the time.

We hunted one day alone together, and had ridden far across our nearer lands to find fresh ground, so that we were in the wide forest country that stretches towards Norwich, on the south of the Yare.  Maybe we were five miles from the old castle at Caistor.  There we beat the woods for roebuck, having greyhounds and hawks with us, but no attendants, as it happened, and for a time we found nothing, not being far from the road that leads to the great city from the south.