Burial Rites(68)

‘I was surprised to hear her call herself a housekeeper. I said: “Oh, you are the mistress here? Did you take Karitas’s position?” And she nodded and said yes, she’d been working as a simple maidservant before, but when Karitas gave her notice Natan had asked her to be his housekeeper. She thanked me then for coming to be her servant, and she took me by the arm and said that we must get along well, for Natan was often away, and she grew lonely.

‘I thought there must have been a mistake. I thought that perhaps Natan had only asked her to be his housemistress until I arrived, or perhaps she was a liar. I didn’t think that Natan would lie to me.

‘We had some coffee then, and I told Sigga a little of where I’d worked before. I was careful to mention the number of farms I had lived in and Sigga seemed quite impressed, and kept saying how pleased she was to have me at Illugastadir to help her, and would I teach her how to make such a patterned shawl as I was wearing, so that all in all, I grew more easy.

‘Soon our conversation turned to Natan again, and Sigga said that she expected him after dinner. But he didn’t come home until it was late.’

‘Did you ask him about your position then?’ Tóti asked.

Agnes shook her head. ‘I was asleep when he came in.’




PERHAPS IT WAS THAT FIRST morning at Illugastadir when I understood the nature of things. Perhaps not.

I woke late to the plaintive shrieks of the gulls and stepped outside to see Natan walking down to the stream. Down by the shore, his bedclothes still flapped in the breeze. I thought, then, he had only returned that morning.

Even when Sigga later told me he had returned at midnight with two fox pelts slung over his shoulder, I did not think to ask what bed he had passed the rest of the night in.




‘I WAS SO PLEASED TO see Natan that morning that I forgot to ask him why Sigga thought herself the mistress of Illugastadir. It wasn’t until later that day, when I was following Natan across the rocks to his workshop, that I raised the matter with him.

‘I didn’t want to seem rude, so I only asked, very casually, how he liked having Sigga as a housekeeper. But Natan, as always, saw through my questioning. He stopped and raised his eyebrows.

‘“She’s not my housekeeper,” he said.

‘I was relieved to hear him say so, but explained that when I arrived Sigga had told me she’d taken Karitas’s position.

‘Natan laughed and shook his head, and reminded me that he’d warned of how young and simple she was. And then he opened the lock to his workshop, and we stepped inside. I’d never seen a room like it. There was the usual anvil, bellows and so on, but also big bunches of dried flowers and herbs along the walls, and jars filled with liquids, some cloudy, some light. There was a large pail of what looked like fat, and needles and scalpels and a glass jar that held a small animal, all pale and puckered like a boiled stomach.’

‘How horrible,’ Steina murmured from the other side of the badstofa. Agnes looked up from the mitten, as though she had forgotten the family was there.

A sudden knocking could be heard from the farm entrance.

‘Lauga,’ Margrét said. ‘Will you go and see who that is?’ Her daughter went to answer the door. She soon returned with an old man brushing snow off his shoulders. It was the Reverend Pétur Bjarnason from Undirfell.

‘Greetings to all in God’s name,’ the man grumbled, wiping his glasses on his inner shirt. He was breathing heavily from his walk in the ice and wind. ‘I’ve come to enter you all into the soul register of Undirfell’s parish,’ the man intoned. ‘Oh, hello, Assistant Reverend Thorvardur. Still in the valley, I see. Oh, of course. Bl?ndal’s got you . . .’

‘This is Agnes,’ Tóti interrupted. Agnes stepped forward.

‘I am Agnes Jónsdóttir,’ she said. ‘And I am a prisoner.’

Margrét immediately stood up in surprise, looking over to Jón, who sat on their bed, his mouth open in horror.

‘What?! She isn’t our –’ Lauga began, but Tóti cut her off.

‘Agnes Jónsdóttir is my spiritual charge. As I told you before.’ He was aware of the family gaping at him, stunned that he would agree to such a name. There was a long moment of awkward silence.

‘Duly noted.’ Reverend Pétur sat down on a stool under the flickering lamp, and took a heavy book out from under his coat. ‘And how is the family of Kornsá? Slaughter finished?’

Margrét stared at Tóti strangely, then slowly sat back down. ‘Uh, yes. Just the manure to spread over the tún, and then we’ll be making woollen goods for trade.’

The old priest nodded. ‘An industrious family. District Officer Jón, if you could please speak with me first?’

The priest conversed with each family member, one by one, examining their reading skills and ability to recite catechisms. He also asked them questions to ascertain the characters of those they lived with. After all the servants had had their time with the priest, Agnes was summoned. Tóti tried to listen to their conversation, but Kristín, relieved her reading test was over, had collapsed into giggles with Bjarni, and he couldn’t hear anything over their laughter. The priest did not take long with Agnes, but soon gave her a nod.