Burial Rites(23)

‘Lauga,’ Margrét warns, ‘take Steina and go into the kitchen.’ They leave. Margrét grabs my sleeve. ‘Follow,’ she says, dragging me out of the room. ‘You can prove your penitence by working like a dog.’




REVEREND TóTI WOKE IN THE early hours of the morning and could not return to sleep. Today he was expected at Kornsá again. Reluctantly rising and dressing, he walked out into the crisp clean air of the morning and started to complete chores about the farm and church. He rounded up the small flock of sheep belonging to his father and milked them with exaggerated care, whispering to them by name and running his fingers over their furred ears.

Mid-morning came and went, and the sun bled into the sky. Tóti fed and watered their cow, Ysa, and then started to take the laundry off the stone church wall where his father had laid it out to dry.

‘You don’t need to do that,’ Reverend Jón said, walking towards him from the croft.

‘I don’t mind,’ Tóti said, smiling. He picked a grass seed out of a sock.

His father shrugged. ‘Thought you’d be over Vatnsdalur way.’

Tóti grimaced.

‘Why are you fussing with the laundry when you’ve her to see?’

Tóti paused, and looked at Reverend Jón, who was flapping a pair of trousers in the wind.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said, then paused. ‘What would you say to her?’

His father smacked his shoulder with his rough hand and glared at him. ‘Get on,’ he said. ‘Who says you’ll need to say anything? Go.’




MARGRéT TAKES ME ACROSS THE yard to show me the small plot of lovage and angelica, and then I assist her with the milking of the sheep. I suppose she does not trust me to be alone again. The small boy who arrived earlier has already rounded up the animals. Margrét points him out to me as Páll, but does not introduce us, and he does not come near me, although he stares, open-mouthed.

Then we burn my dress.

I made it two years ago. Sigga and I made one each, a working dress, blue and simple from the cloth Natan gave us.

If I had known that the dress I laboured over would be my only warmth in a room that reeked of sour skin. If I had known that the dress would one day be put on in the night, in a hurry, to be soaked with sweat as I ran through the witching hours to Stapar, screaming fit to raise the dead.

Margrét gives me a little warm milk from the pail, and then we go into the kitchen where her daughters are building up the fire with dung. They shrink back against the wall when I enter.

‘Take the kettle off the hook, Steina,’ Margrét says to the plain girl. Then she gathers my soiled clothes from the corner and throws them on the fire without ceremony.

‘There.’ She sounds satisfied.

We watch the woollen dress smoulder until our eyes water from the smoke and Margrét coughs, and we are forced to go and work elsewhere while my clothes burn. The daughters go into the pantry.

That dress was my last possession. There is nothing in the world I now own; even the heat my body gives out is taken away by the summer breeze.

The herb plot of Kornsá is overgrown and wild, surrounded by a rough stone wall that has toppled to the ground at one end. Most of the plants have gone to seed, frostbitten roots rotting in the warmer weather, but there are tansies, and little bitter herbs I remember from Natan’s workshop at Illugastadir, and the angelica smells sweetly.

We are weeding, finding the tufts of grass creeping about the healthier plants and pulling them from the soil. I relish the give of the roots and the gum on my fingers as the stalks burst, although my lungs ache. I have weakened. But I don’t give myself away.

There is a pleasure to be had in squatting with my skirt bunched about me, and the smell of the smoke from the dung fire in my hair. Margrét works furiously and breathes heavily. What is she thinking? Her nails are black with soil, and she scrabbles in the dirt urgently. Her eyes are red-rimmed from the smoke in the kitchen. When she clears her throat I hear the rattle of phlegm.

‘Go back to the croft and tell my daughters to come out to me,’ she says suddenly. ‘Then shovel ashes from the hearth and dig them into the dirt.’

The officers are saddling their horses in the yard when I return unaccompanied to the homestead. They’re silent. ‘Are you all right?’ one of them calls to Margrét, and she reassures them with a wave of a soiled hand.

The door to the croft is open, probably to let the foul smoke out. I pick my feet up over the door ledge.

I find the daughters in the pantry, skimming yesterday’s milk. The youngest sees me first and nudges her sister. They both take a few steps back.

‘Your mother would like you to join her.’ I give a small nod and step aside to let them past me. The younger slips out of the room immediately, her eyes never leaving mine.

The elder girl hesitates. What is her nickname? Steina. Stone. She gives me a peculiar look, and slowly sets down her paddle.

‘I think I know you,’ she says.

I say nothing.

‘You were a servant here in this valley before, weren’t you?’

I nod.

‘I know you. I mean, we met once. You were leaving Gudrúnarstadir just as we were moving there to take up the lease. We met on the road.’