Burial Rites (7 page)

There was a moment of silence as the officer blinked to accustom his eyes to the low light, and then, abruptly, he pulled the woman into the room.

Margrét was unprepared for the filth and wretchedness of the woman’s appearance. The criminal wore what seemed to be a servant’s common working dress of roughly woven wool, but one so badly stained and caked with dirt that the original blue dye was barely discernible under the brown grease that spread across the neckline and arms. A thick weight of dried mud pulled the fabric awkwardly from the woman’s body. Her faded blue stockings were soaked through, sunk about the ankles, and one was torn, exposing a slice of pale skin. Her shoes, of sealskin it seemed, had split at the seam, but were so covered in mud that it was impossible to see how damaged they were. Her hair was uncovered by a cap and matted with grease. It hung in two dark braids down her back. Several strands had come loose and fell limply about the woman’s neck. She looked as if she’d been dragged from Stóra-Borg, Margrét thought. The woman’s face was hidden; she stared at the floor.

‘Look at me.’

Agnes slowly raised her head. Margrét winced at the smear of dried blood across the woman’s mouth, and the grime that lay in streaks across her forehead. There was a yellow bruise that spread from her chin down to the side of her neck. Agnes’s eyes flickered from the ground to Margrét’s own, and she felt unnerved by their intensity, their colour made lighter and sharper by the dirt on her face. Margrét turned to the officer.

‘This woman has been beaten.’ The officer searched Margrét’s face for amusement, and, finding none, lowered his eyes. ‘Where are her things?’

‘Only the clothes on her back,’ the officer said. ‘The clerks took what she had to cover her vittles.’

Invigorated by a sudden curl of anger, Margrét pointed to the irons about the woman’s wrists.

‘Is it necessary to keep her bound like a lamb ripe for slaughter?’ she asked him.

The officer shrugged and felt about him for a key. In a few deft twists he freed Agnes from the handcuffs. Her arms fell to her sides.

‘You may go now,’ Margrét told the officer. ‘One of you may come in when I retire to sleep, but I want some time alone with her.’

The officer’s eyes grew wide. ‘Are you certain?’ he asked. ‘It’s not safe.’

‘As I said, I’ll ask for you when I retire to bed. You may wait outside the doorway and I’ll call out should there be need for it.’

The officer hesitated, then nodded and left with a salute. Margrét turned to Agnes, who stood, unmoving, in the middle of the room.

‘You,’ she said, ‘you follow me.’

Margrét did not wish to touch the woman, but the lack of light indoors forced her to grip Agnes’s arm in order to steer her into the right room. She could feel the bones in her wrist, crusted blood against her fingertips. The woman smelt like stale urine.

‘This way.’ Margrét walked slowly down to the kitchen, ducking her head under the low doorframe.

The kitchen was lit by the dying embers of the fire in the raised hearth of stones, and a small hole in the thatched turf ceiling that served as a chimney. It let through a weak, pink light that lay across the packed earth floor and illuminated the smoke that hung about the room. Margrét led Agnes inside, then turned and faced her.

‘Take off your clothes. You need to wash if you’re going to sleep in my blankets. I won’t have you infesting this house with any more lice than already plague the place.’

Agnes’s face was impassive. ‘Where is the water?’ she croaked.

Margrét hesitated, and then turned to a large kettle that sat upon the coals. Plunging her hand into it, she pulled out crockery that had been left to soak, and then heaved it onto the ground.

‘There,’ she said. ‘And it’s warm. Now hurry up, it’s past midnight.’

Agnes looked at the kettle and then suddenly fell to the ground. At first Margrét thought she had fainted, then quickly realised her mistake. She watched as Agnes bent her head over the kettle’s rim and scooped handfuls of greasy water into her mouth, gasping and drinking with the same urgency as an animal at a trough. Water ran down her chin and neck, dripping into the stiff folds of her dress. Without thinking, Margrét bent down and pushed Agnes’s forehead from the kettle.

The woman fell back upon her elbows and let out a cry, water gurgling from her mouth. Margrét’s heart lurched at the sound. Agnes’s eyes were half-closed, her mouth open. She looked like those Margrét had seen driven out of their minds by drink, or by haunting, or by grief that sets in when deaths fall thickly in the home.

Agnes whimpered and rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth, then upon her dress. She pushed herself up from the ground and tried to stand.

‘I’m thirsty.’

Margrét nodded, her heart still hammering in her chest. She swallowed hard.

‘Ask for a cup, next time,’ she said.

WHEN REVEREND TÓTI RETURNED TO
his father’s croft near the Breidabólstadur church, he was damp through with sweat.
He had ridden hard from Kornsá, digging his heels into his horse’s flanks as the wind buffeted his face and brought the blood to his cheeks.

Slowing to a walk, he guided his cob, foam dripping from its mouth, to a stile near the croft’s entrance. He dismounted with trembling legs. The wind had picked up, and as it pushed through the tight weave of his clothes, he felt his sweat-soaked skin grow cool and begin to itch. His jaw was clenched. His hands shook as they wound the reins through the stile.

Heavy clouds had blown in from the sea, and the light was fast disappearing, despite it not being long after summer solstice. Tóti pulled his damp collar up further about his neck and pushed his hat firmly down on his head. Giving his horse a pat on the rump, he started walking up the slow incline to the church. He felt like a wet rag wrung dry and left distorted upon the ground. These northern days, with their lingering fingers of light, the constant gloaming, unsettled him. He could not guess at the hour of the day as he could at the school in the south.

Rain began to fall and the gale grew stronger. It lashed at the tall grass, flattening the stalks to the ground before whipping them skywards again. The grass seemed silver in the darkening light.

Tóti took long strides up the hill, stretching his muscles as he walked, thinking about his meeting with the woman.
The
woman. The criminal.
Agnes
.

He had noticed, first, how, bound to the saddle, she had splayed her legs over the horse so that she would not slip. He had smelt her, then; the sharp pungency of a neglected body, of unwashed clothes and fresh sweat, dried blood and something else from between those spread legs. A stench peculiar to women. He blushed at the thought of it.

But it had not been her smell that had sickened him. She had looked like a new corpse, fresh dug from the grave. Wild black hair
strung with grease, and the brown-grey of dirt sitting in the pores of her skin. Leprous colours.

He had wanted to turn away, flee at the sight of her. Like a coward.

Hunched against the smattering of rain and wind, Tóti inwardly chastised himself. What sort of man are you if you want to run at the sight of damaged flesh? What sort of priest will you be if you cannot withstand the appearance of suffering?

It had been a particularly vivid bruise upon her chin that had disturbed him the most. A ripe, yellow colour, like dried egg yolk. Tóti wondered at the force that might have birthed it. The rough hand of a man, gripping her under the throat. A rope binding her to fetters. A fall.

There are so many ways a person might take harm, Tóti thought. He reached the churchyard and fumbled with the gate.

It might have been an accident. She might have hurt herself.

The Reverend hurried down the stony path to the church, trying not to look at the shadowy graves and their wooden crosses. Drawing a crude key from his pocket, he let himself inside. He was relieved to close the wooden door behind him and shut out the low growl of the wind. Inside, it was perfectly still. The only sound was the light patter of rain on the church’s solitary window, a hole covered with fish-skin.

Tóti pulled the hat off his head and ran a hand through his hair. The floorboards creaked as he walked to the pulpit. He stood for a moment, squinting up at the painted mural behind the altar. The Last Supper.

The mural was ugly: a vast table with a squat Jesus. Judas, lingering in the shadows, was troll-like, comical. The artist had been the son of a local merchant who had a Danish wife and connections within the government. After service one Sunday, Tóti had overheard the
merchant speak with Reverend Jón, complaining about the flaking paint of the previous mural. The merchant had mentioned his son, the artistic talent that had secured the boy a scholarship in Copenhagen. If Reverend Jón would permit him to express his singular devotion to the parish, he would happily purchase all necessary materials and donate his son’s labour without the church incurring expenses. Naturally, Tóti’s father, being a man of economic mindfulness, had allowed the old picture to be painted over.

Tóti missed it. It had been a fine Old Testament illustration of Jacob wrestling with the angel, the man’s face buried against the angel’s shoulder, his fist full of holy feathers.

Tóti sighed and slowly sank to his knees. Placing his hat on the floor, he clasped his hands tightly to his chest and began to pray aloud.

‘O Heavenly Father, forgive me my sins. Forgive me my weakness and fear. Help me to fight my cowardice. Strengthen my ability to withstand the sight of suffering, so that I might do Your work in relieving those who endure it.

‘Lord, I pray for the soul of this woman who has committed a terrible sin. Please give me words so that I might inspire her to repent.

‘I confess to fear. I do not know what to say to her. I do not feel at ease, Lord. Please guard my heart against the . . . the
horror
this woman inspires in me.’

Tóti remained on his knees for some time. It was only the thought of his horse standing bridled in the rain and wind that caused him to finally rise and lock the church door behind him.

MARGRÉT WOKE EARLY THE NEXT
day. The officer who had slept in the bed opposite to protect her from the criminal was snoring. The gargled breathing had entered her dreams and roused her.

Margrét turned in her bed to face the wall and dug the corners of her blanket into her ears, but the man’s ragged snorting filled her head. Sleep was gone from her now. She lay on her back and looked across the unlit room to where the officer lay. His rough blond hair stuck up in oily tufts, and his mouth was open upon his pillow. Margrét noticed spots along the man’s jaw.

So this is how they protect me against a murderess, she thought. They send a boy who sleeps soundly.

She cast an eye at the prisoner, lying in one of the servants’ beds at the end of the room. The woman was lying still, asleep. Her daughters were also sleeping. Margrét sat up on her elbows to take a better look.

Agnes
.

Margrét silently mouthed the word.

It seems wrong to call her by a Christian name, Margrét thought. What would they have called her in Stóra-Borg, she wondered. Prisoner? Accused? Condemned? Perhaps it was the absence of a name, the silence where a name should be, that they had summoned her by.

Margrét shivered and drew the blanket about her. Agnes’s eyes were shut fast and her mouth was closed. The cap Margrét had given her had unfastened during the night, and had let loose her dark hair. It lay across the pillow like a stain.

Strange to finally see the woman after a month of anticipation, Margrét thought. A month of fear, too. A tight fear, like a fishing line, hooked upon something that must, inevitably, be dragged from the depths.

In the days and nights after Jón had returned from meeting with Blöndal, Margrét had tried to imagine how she would act towards the murderess, and what the woman might look like.

What sort of woman kills men?

The only murderesses Margrét had known were the women in the sagas, and even then, it was with words that they had killed men; orders given to servants to slay lovers or avenge the death of kin. Those women murdered from a distance and kept their fingers clean.