Tadhg did not reply at once. He stood quietly as she hit him with her two fists; he watched as she stepped away, clutching her arms around herself in an attempt to contain her fury. At last he said, “God is love, Nessa. He gathers your sisters to his heart, and heals all their suffering. They look down on you smiling. God loves all his children.”

“It’s not true! Everyone died, little babies, old men, hard-working folk, all kinds of people. How can you say everything’s all right when it’s so wrong? My sisters died before they could grow up and be married and have children, before they could do anything. There’s no reason at all for that. Why were my people taken, and the strangers spared? We have not deserved this, it is cruel and unjust. I spit on your god and his false words of love. I despise him.”

“Now, Nessa,” said Tadhg, “you do not believe me, I know, but this will become easier to bear in time.”

“How can it?” Nessa snapped, furious with his patience.

“It will,” he said. “You will never forget them, but you will put them away in your memory, and move on. We all do.”

There was a silence.

“Tell me,” said Tadhg, “do you think if I were not here, and you had never heard of Jesus Christ and his teachings, this plague would not have come?”

“No,” she conceded.

“Who would you have blamed then?” asked Tadhg softly. “This is not his doing, and it is not the fault of Ulf’s people. They have shown their strength and their kindness during this dark time; my opinion of them is changing. Now come, shall we walk back together? I find prayers helpful. Why not seek answers in your own faith? We must heal our wounds in whatever way we can.”

After that, Nessa made time to walk on the shore and look at the patterns on the stones. She went south down the coast to the high cliffs and sat in a hollow looking out to the west, hearing the seabirds squabbling on the ledges below, not so many at this time of year but still enough to set the air alive around her. She stood on the rocks where she had seen the silent warrior, and watched the sea. These journeys were indeed a kind of prayer, her own kind. The hurt did not seem to lessen, not when little things kept reminding her: a bone comb carved with seals, which had been her sister’s, left behind in a corner of a shelf; a pair of green felt slippers, which had been her other sister’s, and that she had always wanted for herself. Now the slippers sat by her bed, and she could not bear to put them on.