We sat in silence for a time. Far off, I could hear women’s voices. I thought I could detect weeping amongst them. I focused on a group of gulls, bobbing on the water at the river’s mouth. I did not wish to be reminded of the sorrow left behind after the battle. Some time before, men had carried Wistan away, and I felt ashamed that I had not offered to help them.

I had been staring at the sky for so long in a daze that I was almost shocked to see the partially submerged wreck of the ship in the river. It was a tangle of splintered spars and sundered strakes. Several men swarmed over the wreckage and I could make out Runolf, his red hair and beard, bright in the warm sunshine. A couple of the fishermen had moored a boat against the hulk, and men were handing them coils of rope and other items that they managed to retrieve.

Beyond the ship, smoke from the minster still hazed the horizon.

“I was terrified,” said Gersine, his voice small.

I glanced at him. He stared out at the ship and the men working there. He did not meet my gaze.

“Anyone who says he is not frightened when facing armed foe-men, is a liar,” I said. “Or mad.”

“Which are you?”

I frowned.

“I never said I was not scared.”

“But I saw you. You did not hesitate. And you killed two of them in the water. I’ve never seen the like.” His tone embarrassed me. He was in awe of something that did not exist. It was true that the strange coolness I had first felt at Lindisfarnae had come over me, as it always did in battle, but that did not mean I was without emotion.

“I was as frightened as any man,” I said.

“But the way you killed those men!” He sounded much younger than his years and his tone grated on me. “It was so easy for you.”

“No!” I shouted, pushing myself to my feet. I could still see the smiling face of the dark-bearded man, and the split skull and frightened eyes of the first Norseman I had slain. Their faces would be added to the others that came to me in my dreams. “Killing is never easy.”

He stood beside me in awkward silence. Neither of us looked at the other, instead watching Runolf directing the men on the ship who were cutting away the sail for the fishermen in the boat to begin pulling in its great sodden expanse to the beach.

“You two,” called a voice, and we both turned, glad of the distraction from our conversation. It was Hereward. He was beckoning to us.

We trudged up the strand to where he waited.