Such things did she say to him, not once but again and again, in many different ways and words. In the beginning he told her she was wrong, overweening, a woman who could not understand the doings of men. She gave him answers soft or hard, mild or icy, as she deemed best, and never pressed him too long. She merely came back to it, and back, year by year.

“I fear for us if Frodi becomes king,” she said when she was ready to. “He’s wild and wasteful. His heed is for nothing but himself. Ill will it go with Denmark. You and I may not yet be in the earth when the red cock crows here.”

“He’s your brother!” cried Gudorm.

Ulfhild smiled grimly. “Yes. Though we were raised apart, I know him well. The same blood runs in us both. But I am only a woman. I cannot do the harm he can.”

“The king has chosen him. Hadding’s other sons have goodly holdings, high standings, naught to chafe at. And I hear he’s made them swear oaths not to rise against Frodi.”

“Those men are not the only boughs on the tree of the Skjoldungs,” Ulfhild murmured.

He gaped at her. She sighed, turned her head, and said no more about that for a span.

But step by step she won him over to believing that he, even he, would be a far better king than Frodi. He was a young man, mettlesome, who often longed back to his days as a housecarle. Then he fared, feasted, and fought. They had been too few, those days. He felt as if his life were narrowing, dull little tasks among dull little folk. Ulfhild stoked the restlessness in him. Now and then they were guests at the king’s hall. Early on Gudorm brought home cheerful memories of those visits. Later he bore dreams that would not leave him in peace.

“But it would be madness to try overthrowing Frodi,” he groaned one day.

Ulfhild nodded. “Yes. However, what of forestalling him? Say he was abroad when Hadding dies. He is half the time anyway. A well-liked man with blood of Skj old in him, who won some fame as a warrior against the Jutes and Saxons, with Hadding’s own daughter to wife—if he trod boldly forward, he could make them hail him at enough Things that the rest would go along. Frodi would strike at him, but now Frodi would be the foe of the Danes, the outsider reaving our shores. Reckless as he is, he should soon fall in battle.”

“The, the new king—he who’d be the new king—he’d have to have strong backing.”