Perhaps that same misery was what had turned Thorgunna’s heart. Women are a kittle breed, priest, and you who leave them alone belike understand them as well as I who have slept with half a hundred in six different lands. I do not think they even understand themselves. Birth and life and death, those are the great mysteries, which none will ever fathom, and a woman is closer to them than a man.

The ill wind stiffened, the sea grew iron gray and choppy under low leaden clouds, and our headway was poor. At sunset we could row no more, but must pull in to a small unpeopled bay and make camp as well as could be on the strand.

We had brought firewood along, and tinder. Gerald, though staggering with weariness, made himself useful, his little sticks kindling the blaze more easily than flint and steel. Thorgunna set herself to cook our supper. We were not warded by the boat from a lean, whining wind; her cloak fluttered like wings and her hair blew wild above the streaming flames. It was the time of light nights, the sky a dim dusky blue, the sea a wrinkled metal sheet and the land like something risen out of dream-mists. We men huddled in our cloaks, holding numbed hands to the fire and saying little.

I felt some cheer was needed, and ordered a cask of my best and strongest ale broached. An evil Norn made me do that, but no man escapes his weird. Our bellies seemed all the emptier now when our noses drank in the sputter of a spitted joint, and the ale went swiftly to our heads. I remember declaiming the death song of Ragnar Hairybreeks for no other reason than that I felt like declaiming it.

Thorgunna came to stand over Gerald where he slumped. I saw how her fingers brushed his hair, ever so lightly, and Ketill Hjalmarsson did too. “Have they no verses in your land?” she asked.

“Not like yours,” he said, looking up. Neither of them looked away again. “We sing rather than chant. I wish I had my guitar here—that’s a kind of harp.”

“Ah, an Irish bard!” said Hjalmar Broadnose.

I remember strangely well how Gerald smiled and what he said in his own tongue, though I know not the meaning: “Only on me mither’s side, begorra.” I suppose it was magic.

“Well, sing for us,” asked Thorgunna.

“Let me think,” he said. “I shall have to put it in Norse words for you.” After a little while, staring up at her through the windy night, he began a song. It had a tune I liked, thus:

From this valley they tell me you’re leaving,
I shall miss your bright eyes and sweet smile
You will carry the sunshine with you,
That has brightened my life all the while…

I don’t remember the rest, except that it was not quite decent.

When he had finished, Hjalmar and Grim went over to see if the meat was done. I saw a glimmering of tears in my daughter’s eyes. “That was a lovely thing,” she said.