Burial Rites(63)

Tóti pulled on his gloves in the badstofa of Breidabólstadur and searched his mind for her face as he’d first seen it that day. The woman had squinted against the sun as she’d looked up at him, unsmiling. Her hair had been damp against her forehead and neck from walking. A white sack lay on the river stones beside her.

Then, the warmth of her body against his chest as they forded the foamy waters on his mare. The smell of sweat and wild grass issuing from the back of her neck. The thought of it ran through him like a fever.

‘What’s got you in such a hurry?’

Tóti looked up and saw his father regarding him from across the room.

‘They’re expecting me at Kornsá.’

Reverend Jón looked thoughtful. ‘You spend a great deal of time there,’ he mused.

‘There is a great deal of work to be done.’

‘I hear the District Officer has two daughters.’

‘Yes. Sigurlaug and Steinv?r.’

His father narrowed his eyes. ‘Beauties, are they?’

Tóti looked puzzled. ‘I’m sure some think so.’ He turned to leave the room. ‘Don’t wait into the night for me.’

‘Son!’ Reverend Jón took a few steps towards the door and gave Tóti his New Testament. ‘You forgot this.’

Tóti blushed, snatched the little book and thrust it in his coat.

Outside the Breidabólstadur croft, the cold stung Tóti’s cheeks and set his ears aching. He struggled to breathe as he saddled his sleepy mare and turned her towards Kornsá. Even as the fog gave way to snow, shaking down flakes that tangled in his cob’s mane, and Tóti felt his limbs grow sore from so long in the sharp air, he cast his mind back, again and again, to the woman he met by the G?ngusk?rd pass, and the memory warmed him to the bone.

‘After the harvest celebration, I did not see Natan again for some time. Then one day I was in an outbuilding, cutting hung meat from a rafter. I was on the ladder, the knife in my hand, and I had paused to watch the blue November light outside. Then suddenly he was there, leaning in the doorway.’

Agnes shifted her position on the bed to get the most of the lamplight. Tóti glanced over at the rest of the Kornsá family, seated at the other end of the badstofa. Tóti suspected they were listening but Agnes seemed oblivious. It was as though she could not stop talking, even if she wanted to.

‘I was so surprised to see him that I nearly fell off the ladder. The meat would have dropped in the dirt had Natan not caught it. He said he’d come to visit Worm, and that he’d been at Hvammur to heal Bl?ndal’s wife, and did not see the point of returning home when there was nothing but work and the seals to greet him. That’s what he said, anyway.

‘I think I asked him how he liked Illugastadir, and he told me he was in need of more servants to help with the work. Natan said he had a workmaid but he told me she was soft in the head. Besides, she was very young, and Karitas, his housekeeper, was leaving for the Vatnsdalur valley next Flitting Days.

‘We talked for some time then. I remember I asked him about his hollow palms, it being something we had spoken of on his first visit, and he laughed and said that they would soon be filled with money if Bl?ndal cared to see his wife alive at the end of winter.

‘Then we walked back to the homestead, and some of the other servants working in the yard saw us. María was taking the ashes out, and when she saw Natan she stopped and stared. There is my friend, I said, but Natan ignored her. He began talking, saying how it was going to snow, he could feel it in his bones, and who was that? He was pointing at Sheepkiller-Pétur.’

‘The other dead man?’ Tóti asked.

Agnes inclined her head. ‘His name was Pétur Jónsson. He’d been sent to stay at Geitaskard for the winter after being accused of the animal killings a few years ago. He was a strange sort of man. I didn’t like him much. He had a habit of laughing when there was nothing to laugh at, and he would tell us servants about his nightmares, which made a lot of us uneasy.’

‘Did he have foresight, too?’

Agnes hesitated, and glanced around at the others in the badstofa. When she spoke again it was in a hushed tone. ‘Lots of people remember one dream Pétur told about at Geitaskard. He had it more than once, and it always gave me gooseflesh. He dreamt that he was walking in a valley when three of the sheep he had killed with Jón Arnarson came running up to him. He said that the flock was led by one of the ewes he had killed, and when the sheep reached him she vomited blood, splashing him. He laughed at this dream, but afterwards there were a number of people who saw something in it.’

‘A prophecy? Did you tell Natan about Pétur’s dream?’

‘Yes. And then Natan told me about some of the strange dreams he’d had over his life. But they’re not important now.’

‘I know about Natan’s dreams,’ a breathless voice said from across the room. Agnes and Tóti looked around and saw Lauga observing them, a queer expression on her face.

‘Lauga,’ Margrét warned.

‘Róslín told me about them, Mamma. I think you’d find them of interest.’

‘We don’t want to hear such things,’ Jón said, slowly rising to his feet.

‘No. Let her tell us about Natan Ketilsson’s dreams,’ Steina protested. ‘If Lauga thinks she knows about them, I’m sure we’d all like to hear. Agnes included.’