“But are there not many interpretations, including conflicting ones? Could not one say, for instance, that the most significant element in this divination is the link or joining? Gyfu can be interpreted as the union of two disparate elements. Ken, the torch, does not only bring light. The torch sees wood destroyed, but heat and light created. Perhaps this divination deals with change. With transmutation, not simply on the physical level but on the spiritual one as well.”

“That’s all very well, Ardal.” Sibeal is starting to relax now. She is far more comfortable with a philosophical debate than with a discussion of her own feelings. “But to perform this divination fully, you should relate your general interpretation to the question I asked when we cast the rods. Or, more aptly, to one of your own, one you do not share with me. It was incorrect for us to attempt ritual practice together. We should not do so again.”

“Why is it incorrect?”

She flushes slightly. “You are untrained. And . . . No, I can’t explain. It feels wrong. My instincts tell me it is unwise.”

“I am not untrained,” I say quietly. “I may not have your level of skill, but I have received good guidance in this, as in other learning. There was a . . . there was a Norseman in my own family, a scholar who taught me runic lore.”

“So you’ve remembered more,” Sibeal says. “Tell me.”

“Of the wreck, the voyage, of recent times I remember nothing. What is in my mind is a clatter of old bones, a shred or two of a distant past.” I hesitate. This is not quite true; and I have just challenged Sibeal to be more truthful. “I left home because my presence endangered others,” I tell her. “Paul came to watch over me, and he died. I bring misfortune, Sibeal. I bring ill luck. I will not draw you into that circle of shadow.”

Sibeal reaches out her hands and gathers the rods in. The clattering sound wakes Deiz, who jumps down from my knee. Sibeal begins to pack the rods away. “I never want to hear you say that again, about bringing ill luck.” Her voice is stern. “I will not believe that to be true of any man.”

“That is what Paul said.” I see him beside me on the deck of a ship, a trading boat, the crew not Norsemen but Gauls. That’s rubbish, Felix. It’s just circumstances, that’s all. You do have a tendency to speak out when another man might find it prudent to hold his tongue, that’s true enough. But that doesn’t mean you carry some kind of cloak of doom with you.

“Then Paul was a wise man as well as a kind one.”

“And I killed him.”

I hear her draw a breath. “The sea killed him,” she says.