Burial Rites(25)

‘Then you are from the Skagafj?rdur District?’

‘No. I’m from this valley. Vatnsdalur. The Húnavatn District’

‘And I helped you over a river?’

‘Yes. The pass was flooded and you came by on your horse just as I was about to cross the water by foot.’

Tóti wondered. He had gone through G?ngusk?rd many times, but couldn’t remember meeting a young woman. ‘When was this?’

‘Six or seven years ago. You were young.’

‘Yes. I would have been,’ Tóti said. There was a moment of silence. ‘Was it because of that kindness that you ask for me now?’ He looked closely at her face. She doesn’t look like a criminal, he thought. Not since she’s had a bath.

Agnes squinted and looked out over the valley. Her expression was inscrutable.

‘Agnes . . .’ Tóti sighed. ‘I’m only an Assistant Reverend. My training is incomplete. Perhaps you need a qualified clergyman, or one from your own district who knows you? Surely someone else has shown you kindness? Who was your Reverend here?’

Agnes tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. ‘I haven’t met many churchmen I care for, and certainly none that I would claim know me,’ she said.

A few ravens swept through the valley, landing on the stone fence, and both Tóti and Agnes saw Margrét’s head bob up from behind it. ‘Nuisances!’ she cried. A clod of dirt flew over the wall and the birds took off, cawing indignantly. Tóti looked at Agnes and smiled, but Agnes was stony-faced.

‘They won’t like that,’ she murmured to herself.

‘Well,’ Tóti said, taking a deep breath. ‘If you require a spiritual advisor, then I will consider it my duty to visit you. As District Commissioner Bl?ndal so desires, I will come to guide you in your prayers, so that you may walk towards what lies ahead of you with faith and dignity. I will take it as my responsibility to supply you with spiritual comfort and hope.’

Tóti fell silent. He had rehearsed this speech as he rode to the farm, and he was pleased that he’d managed to remember to say ‘spiritual comfort’. It sounded paternalistic, and self-assured, as though he was in a lofty state of spiritual certainty: a state he felt he should be in, but had a vague, discomfiting sense that he was not.

Still, he wasn’t used to talking so formally, and his hands sweated against the tissue-thin paper of the Testament. He carefully closed the book, making sure not to crease any pages, and wiped his palms on his thighs. Now would be a good time to quote scripture, as his father was wont to do, but all he could think of was his sudden yearning for his snuff horn.

‘Perhaps I have made a mistake, Reverend.’ Agnes’s voice was measured, calm.

Tóti didn’t know what to say. He looked at the bruises on her face and bit his lip.

‘Perhaps it will be better if you stay at Breidabólstadur. I thank you but . . . Do you really think . . . ?’ She covered her mouth with her hands and shook her head.

‘My dear child, don’t cry!’ he exclaimed, rising from the turf.

Agnes took her hands away. ‘I’m not crying,’ she said, flatly. ‘I have made a mistake. You call me a child, Reverend Thorvardur, but you’re little more than a child yourself. I’d forgotten how young you are.’

Tóti had no response for this. He regarded her for a moment, then nodded grimly and swiftly replaced his hat on his head. He bid her a good day.

Agnes watched him walk past the stone fence to farewell Margrét and the girls. The pastor and women stood together for a few minutes, chatting and looking over at her. Agnes tried to hear what they were saying, but the wind had picked up and it was blowing their words away from her. Only when Tóti raised his hat to Margrét and began to walk to the hitching post to retrieve his cob did Agnes hear Margrét call out: ‘Easier to squeeze blood from a stone, I should think!’




THE REST OF THE DAY passes in work – in weeding and tending the pitiable herbs. I listen to the far-off bleats of sheep. The poor things look thin and patchy with the winter wool newly pulled from their backs. After the priest left, the daughters, Margrét and I ate a dinner of dried fish and butter. I made sure I chewed each morsel twenty times. Then we returned to the garden, and now I start to try and mend the wall, pulling away the rocks that have shifted, sorting them on the ground, then rebuilding it, locking the stones into place and relishing the heavy mass of them in my hands.

I so often feel that I am barely here, that to feel weight is to be reminded of my own existence.

Margrét and I work in silence; she speaks to me only when giving me an order. It seems our minds are fixed on other things, and I think of how strange it is that fortune has led me back to Kornsá, where I lived as a child. Where I first learnt what it was to grieve. I think about the paths that I have taken, and I think about the Reverend.

Thorvardur Jónsson who asks to be called Tóti like a farmer’s son. He seems too callow for his station. There is a softness about his voice, and about his hands. They are not long and stained by tinctures as Natan’s were, or meaty like the hands of farm help, but small, and thin and clean. He rested them upon his Bible as he spoke to me.

I have made a mistake. They condemn me to death and I ask for a boy to coach me for it. A red-headed boy, who gobbles his buttered bread and toddles to his horse with the seat of his pants wet, this is the young man they hope will get me on my knees, full of prayer. This is the young man I hope will be able to help me, although with what and how I cannot think.