Burial Rites(69)

‘I thank you all for your time. Perhaps I’ll see you at a service soon,’ Reverend Pétur said.

‘Won’t you stay for coffee?’ Lauga asked, curtseying prettily.

‘Thank you, my dear, but I have the rest of the valley to see, and this weather’s only going to get worse.’ He set his hat atop his head and carefully bundled the book back inside his thick coat.

‘I’ll see you out,’ Tóti said, before Lauga could offer.

In the corridor, Tóti asked the priest what he had recorded about Agnes.

‘Why do you want to know?’ the man asked, curious.

‘She’s my charge,’ he said. ‘It is my responsibility to know how she behaves. How well she reads. I am invested in her welfare.’

‘Very well.’ The priest took the ministerial book out of his coat again and flicked to the new pages. ‘You may read it for yourself.’

Tóti brought the book over to a candle bracketed into the wall of the corridor and squinted in its dim light until he made out the words: Agnes Jónsdóttir. A condemned person. Sakapersona. 34 years old.

‘She reads very well,’ the priest offered, as he waited for Tóti to finish.

‘What is this you have written about her character?’ He could hardly make out the words, his eyes swimming in the gloom.

‘Oh, that says blendin, Reverend. Mixed.’

‘And how did you arrive at that answer?’

‘It was the opinion of the District Officer. And his wife.’

‘What was your opinion of Agnes, Reverend?’

The old man tucked the book back into his coat and shrugged. ‘Very well-spoken. Educated, I should think. Surprising, considering her illegitimacy. Well brought up. But when I spoke to the District Officer, he said her behaviour was . . . Unpredictable. He mentioned hysterics.’

‘Agnes is facing a death sentence,’ Tóti said.

‘I’m aware,’ the priest retorted, opening the door. ‘Good day, Reverend Thorvardur. I wish you the best.’

‘And I you,’ Tóti mumbled, as the door slammed in his face.




AGNES JóNSDóTTIR. I NEVER THOUGHT it could be that easy to name yourself. The daughter of Jón Bjarnasson of Brekkukot, not the servant Magnús Magnússon. Let everyone know whose bastard I truly am.

Agnes Jónsdóttir. She sounds like the woman I should have been. A housekeeper in a croft that overlooks the valley, with a husband by her side, and a kip of children to help sing home the sheep at twilight. To teach and frighten with stories of ghosts. To love. She could even be the sister of Sigurlaug and Steinv?r Jónsdóttir. Margrét’s daughter. Born blessed under a marriage. Born into a family that would not be ripped apart by poverty.

Agnes Jónsdóttir would not have been so foolish as to love a man who spent his life opening veins, mouths, legs. A man who was paid to draw blood. She would have been a grandmother. She would have had a host of faces to gather round her bed as she lay dying. She would have been assured of a place in heaven. She would have believed in heaven.

It is almost impossible to believe I was happy at Illugastadir, but I must have been, once. I was happy that first day, when Natan and I stayed in his workshop all afternoon. He showed me the two fox pelts. They were drying inside, the sea air too damp that morning for them to hang with the fish.

He took my hands and ran them over the white fox fur.

‘Feel that? These will fetch a pretty penny at Reykjavík this summer.’

He told me how he caught the foxes up in the mountains. ‘The trick is to find and catch a fox kit,’ he said. ‘The kit must then be made to cry out to its parents, otherwise it’s near impossible to lure them out of their hole. They’re wily things. Cunning. They smell you coming.’

‘And how do you make a fox kit cry?’

‘I break its front legs. They cannot escape then. The parents hear it mewling and come running out of their den, and they’re easily caught. They won’t leave one of their own.’

‘What do you do with the kit after you kill its parents?’

‘Some hunters leave it there to die. They are no use for market – the skins are too small.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I stove their heads in with a rock.’

‘That is the only decent thing to do.’

‘Yes. To leave them is cruelty.’

He showed me his books. He thought I might like them. ‘Sigga does not care for words,’ he said. ‘She is a terrible reader. It’s like trying to make a cow talk.’

I ran my fingers over the sheets of paper and tried to read the new words they offered.

‘Cutaneous diseases.’ He corrected my awkward tongue. ‘Cochlearia officinalis.’

‘Say it again.’

‘Cetraria islandica. Angelica archangelica. Achilla millefolium. Rumex digynus.’

It was a language I didn’t understand, so I stopped his laughs with kisses, and felt his tongue press lightly against my own. What did all these words mean? Were they the names of the things in his workshop? In the jars and bottles and clay pots? Natan kissed my neck and my thoughts were lost in a rising swarm of lust. He lifted me onto the table, and we fumbled with our clothes before he pushed himself inside me, before I knew what we were doing, before I was ready. I gasped. I felt the papers beneath me, and imagined the words lifting from the page and sinking into my skin. My legs were tight around him, and I felt the cold sea air grasp me about the throat.