Burial Rites(46)

‘When did they bury her?’ Tóti asked. He suddenly felt claustrophobic sitting in the badstofa, surrounded by the muffled clicks of knitting needles and the rasp and squeak of wool.

‘Oh, not for a long time,’ Agnes said. ‘Inga and the baby were in the storehouse until the end of winter. Every time I had to fetch more lamp oil, or help Jón roll a barrel out to the pantry, I saw their bodies lying in the corner, bundled upon the sacks of dried fish.

‘Kjartan didn’t understand what had happened to his mamma. I suppose he forgot about the baby, but he always cried for Inga, sitting on the floor in the badstofa and howling like a dog. His pabbi ignored him, but when Uncle Ragnar visited, Kjartan received a cuff about the ears. He soon stopped crying.

‘Uncle Ragnar always seemed to be at Kornsá – talking with Bj?rn in the badstofa, or bringing him brandy. Bj?rn had grown more silent since the blizzard. When I served him his dinner he no longer thanked me, just picked up his spoon and began to eat.

‘And then one day I was told Bj?rn didn’t want me any more. It must have been early spring, I was in a bad temper, and had refused to eat any dinner. My foster-father hadn’t said anything, not even a sharp word to tell me off for wasting food. He was spending all his time with the animals, which had begun to die from the cold, and I was frustrated that he loved them and Kjartan more than me.

‘Winter had turned and on this day there was a little light, so when I left the table I decided to go outside. No one stopped me. I stormed down the corridor and picked up the shovel that stood within the doorway, and began to dig out a path from the croft, relishing the feel of snow flecks upon my hot cheeks. Once I had cleared a way out, I threw the shovel aside and began to dig in the snow with my hands, taking huge armfuls and throwing them as far as I could. I worked until I had dug quite a large hole. When I paused to catch my breath, I looked up and noticed a black smudge in the distance: it was Uncle Ragnar on another of his visits. He greeted me and asked what I was doing covered in snow. I explained that I had begun to dig a grave for Mamma. Uncle Ragnar frowned and told me I shouldn’t call her Mamma, and wasn’t I ashamed of myself, thinking to bury her near the doorstep where everyone would tread on her, and not in the holy ground of a churchyard.

‘“Wouldn’t it be better to keep her warm in the storeroom until she can sleep in peace in consecrated ground?” he asked me.

‘I shook my head. “The storeroom is as cold as a witch’s tit,” I told him.

‘Uncle Ragnar said: “Watch your mouth, Agnes. Ugly words show an ugly mind.”

‘That night he told me that Bj?rn was going to give up the lease for Kornsá and go to Reykjavík to work at the fishing stations. The winter had killed my foster-mother and her baby, as well as over half of Bj?rn’s flock, and without a wife, and with nothing to pay the wages of another farmhand, Bj?rn couldn’t afford to keep me. Kjartan went to live with his aunt and uncle, and when the weather warmed I was thrown on the mercy of the parish.’

‘And that is how you came to be an urchin,’ Tóti said.

Agnes nodded, pausing in her knitting to stretch her fingers. She rested the sock on her lap and looked up at him through the darkness. ‘That is how I came to be a pauper. Left to the mercy of others, whether they had any or no.’




I HAVE WOKEN EARLY, AND the badstofa is still heavy with shadows. I thought someone was bent low to my ear and whispering, Agnes, Agnes. The whisper severed me from my dreams, but there is no one here, and a cold dread suddenly drips through my heart.

I could have sworn someone was calling me.

I lie still and try to listen to the others breathe, so as to discern whether another is awake. Reverend Tóti is in the bed closest to me, having decided to sleep at Kornsá because of the lateness of the hour. But I know it wasn’t him who woke me. A priest would not wake a prisoner by whispering in her ear like a lover.

Minutes pass. Why is there so much darkness in the room? I can’t see my hands, although I hold them above my eyes. The gloom encroaches upon my mind, and my heart flutters like a bird held fast in a fist. Even when I force my eyes shut, the darkness is still there, and now, too, there are awful tremors of flickering light. Are my eyes open or shut? Perhaps it was a ghost who woke me – how can I explain these lights appearing in the murk before me? They’re like flames peeling off a wall, and Natan’s face is before me, his mouth wide in screaming, and his teeth bloody and shining, and his burning body dropping flakes of charred skin on my blankets. Everything smells of whale fat and Fridrik’s knife is deep in Natan’s belly, and a scream jerks from my chest as if it had been pulled from my gut by a rope.

The lights vanish. Was I dreaming? It seems as if no time has passed.

‘Reverend Tóti?’ I whisper.

He turns over in his sleep.

‘Reverend? May I light a lamp?’

The Reverend does not wake easily – he lolls like a man addicted to drink. I shove him harder than I’d like. He’s embarrassed, I think, to wake and see me in my underthings.

‘What is it?’

‘I had another dream.’

‘What?’

‘May I light a lamp?’

‘The light of Jesus is enough for any true Christian.’ His voice is sluggish with sleep.

‘Please, Reverend.’