Burial Rites(10)

It is too late now, he thought to himself as he walked through the rather pitiful garden within the churchyard. You have given your word to man and God, and there is no turning back.

Once, before his mother had died, the church plot had been full of small plants that threw purple blossoms over the edges of the graves in summer. His mother had said that the dead made the flowers sway, to greet the churchgoers after winter. But when she died, his father ripped out the wild flowers and the graves had lain bare ever since.

The door to the Breidabólstadur croft was ajar. As Tóti let himself in, the heavy warmth from the kitchen, and the smell of melting tallow from the candle in the corridor, made him feel nauseous.

His father was bent over the bubbling kettle, poking something with a knife.

‘I ought to leave now, I think,’ Tóti announced.

His father looked up from the boiling fish and nodded.

‘I’m expected to arrive early in the evening to acquaint myself with the family at Kornsá, and be present when . . . Well, when the criminal arrives.’

His father frowned. ‘Go then, son.’

Tóti hesitated. ‘Do you think I’m ready?’

Reverend Jón sighed and lifted the kettle off its hook over the coals. ‘You know your own heart.’

‘I’ve been praying in the church. I wonder what Mamma would have thought about it all.’

Tóti’s father blinked slowly and looked away.

‘What do you think, father?’

‘A man must be true to his word.’

‘Is it the right decision, though? I . . . I don’t want to displease you.’

‘You should seek to please the Lord,’ Reverend Jón muttered, trying to scoop his fish from the hot water with his knife.

‘Will you pray for me, father?’

Tóti waited for a response, but none came. Perhaps he thinks he is better suited to meet murderesses, Tóti thought. Perhaps he is jealous she chose me. He watched his father lick a fragment of fish from where it had stuck to the blade. She chose me, he repeated to himself.

‘Don’t wake me when you return,’ Reverend Jón called out as his son turned and left the room.

Tóti slipped a saddle over his horse and mounted. ‘This is it, then,’ he whispered quietly. He gently squeezed his knees to urge his horse forward, and looked back at the croft. Its thin wreath of kitchen smoke dissipated into the soft drizzle of the afternoon.

Travelling through the long grasses of the valley surrounding the church, the Assistant Reverend tried to think of what he should say. Should he be kind and welcoming, or stern and impenetrable, like Bl?ndal? As he rode, he rehearsed various tones of voice, different greetings. Perhaps he should wait until he saw the woman. Unexpectedly, a small thrill flickered through his body. She was only a workmaid, but she was a murderess. She had killed two men. Slaughtered them like animals. He silently mouthed the word to himself. Murderess. Moreingi. It slipped through his mouth like milk.

As he travelled over the north peninsula with its thin lip of ocean on the horizon, the clouds began to clear and the soft red light of the late June sun flooded the pass. Drops of water glittered brightly upon the ground, and the hills appeared pink and muted, shadows moving slowly across them as clouds drifted overhead. Small insects wound their way through the air, lit up like flecks of dust as they passed through the sunshine, and the sweet, damp smell of grass, almost ready to be harvested, lingered in the cool air of the valleys. The dread that Tóti had felt so firmly lining his stomach dissipated as he fell into a quiet appreciation of the countryside before him.

We are all God’s children, he thought to himself. This woman is my sister in Jesus, and I, as her spiritual brother, must guide her home. He smiled and brought his horse to a t?lt. ‘I will save her,’ he whispered.





CHAPTER TWO





3rd of May 1828

Undirfell, Vatnsdalur


The convict Agnes Magnúsdóttir was born at Flaga in the parish of Undirfell in 1795. She was confirmed in 1809, at which age she was written as having ‘an excellent intellect, and strong knowledge and understanding of Christianity’.


This is what is listed in the Undirfell Ministerial Book.


P. Bjarnason





THEY HAVE TAKEN ME FROM the room and put me in irons again. This time they sent an officer of the court, a young man with pocked skin and a nervous smile. He’s a servant from Hvammur, I recognised his face. When his lips broke apart I could see that his teeth were rotting in his mouth. His breath was awful, but no worse than my own; I know I am rank. I am scabbed with dirt and the accumulated weeping of my body: blood, sweat, oil. I cannot think of when I last washed. My hair feels like a greased rope; I have tried to keep it plaited, but they have not allowed me ribbons, and I imagine that to the officer I looked like a monstrous creature. Perhaps that was why he smiled.

He took me from that awful room, and other men joined us as he led me through the unlit corridor. They were silent, but I felt them behind me; I felt their stares as though they were cold handgrips upon my neck. Then, after months in a room filled only with my own fetid breath and the stench from the chamber pot, I was taken through the corridors of Stóra-Borg into the muddy yard. And it was raining.

How can I say what it was like to breathe again? I felt newborn. I staggered in the light of the world and took deep gulps of fresh sea air. It was late in the day: the wet mouth of the afternoon was full on my face. My soul blossomed in that brief moment as they led me out of doors. I fell, my skirts in the mud, and I turned my face upwards as if in prayer. I could have wept from the relief of light.