Captivated, I clambered aboard the ship, making my way from its broad belly to the sleek rearing prow where Runolf stood. The ship was redolent of sap and the dark pine tar used to caulk every join. At the sound of my step, Runolf spun around. Seeing my eyes flick down to the flask in his hand, he hesitated, then held it out to me.

“Mead?” he said. “I was drinking to the ship.” He took a deep breath through his nose and sighed. “Smell that? I love the smell of a new ship.”

I accepted the leather bottle. Tugging out the stopper, I took a swig. It was good and sweet. Mancas’ steward only supplied us with the best.

“What were you saying?” I asked.

“Just now?”

I nodded.

“I was naming the ship,” he said, taking the flask back from me and drinking deeply.

“You already named it. A good name.”

He looked into the distance, at the line where the sea met the sky.

“Yes, a good name,” he said, “but an Englisc name all the same. It is good that it has been blessed by your Christ god.”

“Your God too,” I said, without thinking.

He smiled.

“I wanted it to be named according to the ways of my people, as my father and his father before him named all of their ships.”

I noted the sadness in him then, and imagined how lonely he must have been. I missed Leofstan and the brethren who had been my family for years, but I was still in the kingdom where I had been born, surrounded by men and women who spoke and thought like me. And though I had left the monastery, I could still pray as I wished.

I placed my hand on Runolf’s shoulder. I felt closer to him in that moment, than ever before.

“How did your father name his ships?” I asked. “What words are said?”

“They are not Christian words,” he said, his voice low. “Not words from your god.”

I did not correct him this time.

“Still, I would hear them, if you would speak them to me.”

He nodded.

“It is well. We have both drunk of the mead and I have offered some to the ship.” He extended his arm and poured a trickle of the liquid into the river. “And now I have offered some to the god of the ocean.”

I held my breath. I felt that if I should breathe, somehow I would be giving part of my life to whatever pagan ritual was about to follow.

Runolf held my gaze for a time, and then spoke in his deep voice, not whispering now, but glad to be sharing these words with another.

“May Njörðr always fill the sail of Brymsteda,” he intoned. “May its sails always grace the horizon and may its keel always kiss the sea.”