Burial Rites (27 page)

Lauga scoffed. ‘What’s wrong? Am I the only person who sees her for who she is?’ Her voice dropped to a hissed whisper. ‘You talk about her as if she’s nothing. As if she’s a servant.’

‘Oh, Lauga. I wish you’d –’

‘You wish I’d do what? What!
Make friends
like the rest of you?’

Steina gaped at her sister, open-mouthed. Lauga suddenly walked to the back of the kitchen and pressed her hands, clenched in two fists, against her forehead.

‘Lauga?’

Her sister didn’t turn around, but slowly picked up the soiled buckets. ‘I’m going to go wash these.’ Her voice was unsteady. ‘You should go to bed, Steina.’

‘Lauga?’ Steina rose and took a few steps towards her. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing. Just go to bed, Steina. Leave me alone.’

‘Not until you tell me what I’ve done to upset you.’

Lauga shook her head, her face contorting. ‘I thought it would be different,’ she said finally. ‘When Blöndal came, I thought we might not suffer her too much because there’d be officers. I thought we would keep her locked up! I didn’t think she’d always be with us, talking to the Reverend in our badstofa. Now I see that even
Mamma
is talking to her in a familiar way! No one seems to care that everyone in the valley gives us strange looks now.’

‘They don’t. No one minds us.’

Lauga narrowed her eyes and dropped the buckets by her feet. ‘Oh, they do, Steina. You don’t see it, but we’re all marked now. And it does us no favours that they see us talking to her, giving her plenty to eat. We’ll never be married.’

‘You don’t know that.’ Steina eased herself down on the stool by the hearth. ‘It’s not forever,’ she said finally.

‘I can’t wait till she’s gone.’

‘How can you say such a thing?’

Lauga gave a shuddering breath. ‘Everyone sees the Reverend gadding about Agnes like some besotted boy, and even Pabbi nods and says good morning to her now, ever since she witched Róslín’s baby from her. And you, Steina!’ Lauga turned to her sister, her face incredulous. ‘You treat her like a sister more than you do me!’

‘That’s not true.’

‘It is. You follow her around. You help her. You want her to
like
you.’

Steina took a deep breath. ‘I . . . It’s only that I remember her from years ago. And I can’t stop thinking that she wasn’t always like this. She was our age, once. She has a mother and father, like us.’

‘No,’ hissed Lauga. ‘Not like us. She’s nothing like us. She’s come here and no one even sees how everything has changed. And not for the better, either.’ She bent down and picked up the bloody pails and stalked out of the room.

IT HAD BEGUN TO SNOW
most days in the north. Breidabólstadur was clouded in a thick fog and a cold that refused to lift, even as the October sun brought what little light it could into the world. Despite the weather, Tóti was reluctant to stay at home with his father. He felt that some invisible membrane between Agnes and him had been broken. She had begun, finally, to speak of Natan, and the thought that she might draw him closer still, might trust him enough to speak of what had happened at Illugastadir, set something quickening in him.

As he carefully wrapped his shivering body in as many layers of woollen clothing as could be found in his trunk, Tóti thought again of their first meeting. He could vaguely recall the rushing water of Gönguskörd, the roar it made as the melting spring waters plunged
across the pass. Could see the wet gravel shining under the sun. And ahead of him, bending by the edge of the water and unrolling her stockings, a dark-haired woman preparing to cross the current.

Tóti pulled on his gloves in the badstofa of Breidabólstadur and searched his mind for her face as he’d first seen it that day. The woman had squinted against the sun as she’d looked up at him, unsmiling. Her hair had been damp against her forehead and neck from walking. A white sack lay on the river stones beside her.

Then, the warmth of her body against his chest as they forded the foamy waters on his mare. The smell of sweat and wild grass issuing from the back of her neck. The thought of it ran through him like a fever.

‘What’s got you in such a hurry?’

Tóti looked up and saw his father regarding him from across the room.

‘They’re expecting me at Kornsá.’

Reverend Jón looked thoughtful. ‘You spend a great deal of time there,’ he mused.

‘There is a great deal of work to be done.’

‘I hear the District Officer has two daughters.’

‘Yes. Sigurlaug and Steinvör.’

His father narrowed his eyes. ‘Beauties, are they?’

Tóti looked puzzled. ‘I’m sure some think so.’ He turned to leave the room. ‘Don’t wait into the night for me.’

‘Son!’ Reverend Jón took a few steps towards the door and gave Tóti his New Testament. ‘You forgot this.’

Tóti blushed, snatched the little book and thrust it in his coat.

Outside the Breidabólstadur croft, the cold stung Tóti’s cheeks and set his ears aching. He struggled to breathe as he saddled his sleepy mare and turned her towards Kornsá. Even as the fog gave way to snow, shaking down flakes that tangled in his cob’s mane,
and Tóti felt his limbs grow sore from so long in the sharp air, he cast his mind back, again and again, to the woman he met by the Gönguskörd pass, and the memory warmed him to the bone.

‘After the harvest celebration, I did not see Natan again for some time. Then one day I was in an outbuilding, cutting hung meat from a rafter. I was on the ladder, the knife in my hand, and I had paused to watch the blue November light outside. Then suddenly he was there, leaning in the doorway.’

Agnes shifted her position on the bed to get the most of the lamplight. Tóti glanced over at the rest of the Kornsá family, seated at the other end of the badstofa. Tóti suspected they were listening but Agnes seemed oblivious. It was as though she could not stop talking, even if she wanted to.

‘I was so surprised to see him that I nearly fell off the ladder. The meat would have dropped in the dirt had Natan not caught it. He said he’d come to visit Worm, and that he’d been at Hvammur to heal Blöndal’s wife, and did not see the point of returning home when there was nothing but work and the seals to greet him. That’s what he said, anyway.

‘I think I asked him how he liked Illugastadir, and he told me he was in need of more servants to help with the work. Natan said he had a workmaid but he told me she was soft in the head. Besides, she was very young, and Karitas, his housekeeper, was leaving for the Vatnsdalur valley next Flitting Days.

‘We talked for some time then. I remember I asked him about his hollow palms, it being something we had spoken of on his first visit, and he laughed and said that they would soon be filled with money if Blöndal cared to see his wife alive at the end of winter.

‘Then we walked back to the homestead, and some of the other
servants working in the yard saw us. María was taking the ashes out, and when she saw Natan she stopped and stared. There is my friend, I said, but Natan ignored her. He began talking, saying how it was going to snow, he could feel it in his bones, and who was that? He was pointing at Sheepkiller-Pétur.’

‘The other dead man?’ Tóti asked.

Agnes inclined her head. ‘His name was Pétur Jónsson. He’d been sent to stay at Geitaskard for the winter after being accused of the animal killings a few years ago. He was a strange sort of man. I didn’t like him much. He had a habit of laughing when there was nothing to laugh at, and he would tell us servants about his nightmares, which made a lot of us uneasy.’

‘Did he have foresight, too?’

Agnes hesitated, and glanced around at the others in the badstofa. When she spoke again it was in a hushed tone. ‘Lots of people remember one dream Pétur told about at Geitaskard. He had it more than once, and it always gave me gooseflesh. He dreamt that he was walking in a valley when three of the sheep he had killed with Jón Arnarson came running up to him. He said that the flock was led by one of the ewes he had killed, and when the sheep reached him she vomited blood, splashing him. He laughed at this dream, but afterwards there were a number of people who saw something in it.’

‘A prophecy? Did you tell Natan about Pétur’s dream?’

‘Yes. And then Natan told me about some of the strange dreams he’d had over his life. But they’re not important now.’

‘I know about Natan’s dreams,’ a breathless voice said from across the room. Agnes and Tóti looked around and saw Lauga observing them, a queer expression on her face.

‘Lauga,’ Margrét warned.

‘Róslín told me about them, Mamma. I think you’d find them of interest.’

‘We don’t want to hear such things,’ Jón said, slowly rising to his feet.

‘No. Let her tell us about Natan Ketilsson’s dreams,’ Steina protested. ‘If Lauga thinks she knows about them, I’m sure we’d all like to hear. Agnes included.’

Jón was thoughtful. ‘Let Reverend Thorvardur speak with his charge without your interference.’

‘My interference!’ Lauga laughed and threw her knitting on her bed. ‘How about
her
interference! She’s in
our
home! Always breathing over my shoulder in the kitchen! Speaking lies in our badstofa!’ Lauga turned to her parents. ‘Mamma, Pabbi, forgive me, but you told Steina and I to close our ears to this woman. And now you let her spin stories not five feet away from us? “Oh, pity me, I’m a pauper!”’

‘We can hardly send her and Reverend Tóti out into the snow,’ Steina reasoned.

‘Well then, Pabbi, if one of us may tell fairy stories at night, why not all of us?’

Margrét was stony-faced. ‘Pick up your knitting, Lauga.’

‘Yes, pick up your knitting, Lauga,’ Steina scoffed.

‘Enough of the both of you,’ Margrét barked. ‘Reverend Tóti, you should know that we cannot help but hear –’

‘What did Róslín tell you about Natan’s dreams, Lauga?’ Agnes interrupted. She had stopped knitting and was looking at the sisters intently.

Everyone fell silent.

‘Well,’ Lauga murmured, clearing her throat. She threw a glance of uncertainty at Agnes, then looked over to her father, who lowered his eyes. ‘Róslín said that Natan told lots of people about a dream he had where an evil spirit was stabbing him in the belly. And he had another where he dreamt he was in a graveyard. She told me that, in this dream, he saw a body, or a corpse or something in an open grave,
and three lizards were eating it. Then a man appeared at his side, and when Natan asked him whose corpse it was, the man replied: “Do you not know your own body?”’

‘Sweet Jesus,’ Kristín murmured.

‘What happened then?’ Bjarni asked, from his bed.

Lauga shrugged. ‘I suppose he woke up. But Róslín said that he told a lot of people about that dream, and they all agree that’s what happened. She heard it from Ósk, who heard it from her brother, who heard it from Natan himself.’

Eyes shifted to Agnes. The woman looked thoughtful, and then swung her legs over the side of the bed to better face them all.

‘He told me that he’d dreamt he saw his body in an open grave, and he saw his soul standing at the other end. Then his body called out to his soul, and sang the psalm from Bishop Stein.’ Her voice cracked in the silence.

No one said anything. Tóti eventually cleared his throat.

‘Agnes. Would you like to go on with your story? You were talking about Pétur.’

‘Can I come closer to the lamplight?’

Jón glanced at Margrét, then at the rest of his family, and shook his head.

Margrét winced. ‘Jón,’ she whispered in a low voice. ‘What harm can it do now?’

Tóti noticed him dart his eyes towards his daughters.

Margrét sighed. ‘It’s best if we all keep our place,’ she said to Agnes. ‘You’ve light enough for storytelling.’

A brief flicker of anger passed over Agnes’s face, but when she resumed speaking it was in a soft voice.

‘Pétur was infamous in Langidalur, and also in Vatnsdalur, as you’d know. No one trusts a man who has killed so many animals. I was surprised that Natan didn’t recognise Pétur, back then at
Geitaskard, because I’d guessed that Natan knew all manner of men, and so I told him that Pétur was a criminal in custody, and that he had slit the throats of more than thirty sheep, and for the fun of it too, and that he might be sent to Copenhagen. Natan gave the man a long look, but said nothing more of it.’

‘Perhaps he wanted to recruit him to steal some sheep,’ Lauga said sharply.

‘Perhaps,’ Agnes returned, from her dark corner. She turned back to Tóti. ‘That day I took Natan to Worm, and then joined María in the home field. When I told her that Natan had surprised me in the storeroom she asked me what he had wanted. I told her that he had come to Geitaskard to visit Worm. María took me by the hand then, and told me to be careful.’

‘Why?’ Kristín asked. Gudmundur guffawed from the shadows.

Agnes ignored them. ‘I told her that I was a grown woman, with a head of my own. María said that that was what worried her.’

‘Reverend,’ Jón said suddenly. ‘Perhaps it is best you speak together away from the family.’

‘What’s wrong with it, Pabbi? I want to hear
what happened,’ Steina said.