Burial Rites(79)

‘It’s the seaweed. Or a dead seal. Let go of my hair.’

‘Shh!’

I was sick of his temper. ‘No one is out to get you, Natan. You’re not so important as that.’

I wrenched my hair out of his grasp and turned to walk back up to the croft, but Natan grabbed me by the sleeve of my blouse, twisted me and struck me full on the face.

I gasped and immediately brought my hand to my cheek, but Natan seized my fingers and held them tightly in his own, forcing me to crouch close to him. Even against the chill of the wind I could feel the blood rush to where he had hit me.

‘Never speak to me like that again.’ Natan’s mouth pressed against my ear. His voice was low and hard. ‘I shouldn’t have asked you here.’

He held me for a moment longer, twisting my fingers until I cried out from the pain, and then he released his grip and shoved me away from him.

I stumbled along the outcrop and up the hill to the croft in the low light, tripping over my skirts, the wind aching in my ears. I was crying, yet even over the sound of the wind, and my own ragged breathing, I heard Natan shout to me from where he stood on the knoll by the sea.

‘Remember your place, Agnes!’

I waited for Natan to return to the croft that night, and kept a lamp burning in the hope that when he returned we could make up our quarrel. But the hours crept past like the guilty and midnight came and went, and still he did not come inside. Sigga and Daníel had long undressed and fallen asleep in their beds, but I remained awake and watched the flame of the lamp dance upon its wick. My head pounded. I understood that I was waiting for something bad to happen.

Several times I thought I heard footsteps outside the croft, but when I opened the door it was only to the darkness and the sound of the waves breaking against the shore. A thick fog had come down and I could not tell if Natan had a light burning in his workshop. I returned to my cooling bed and continued to wait.

I must have fallen asleep. I woke in shadows; the lamp had extinguished itself, but I knew that Natan had not yet come to bed. Then I recognised his footfall sounding in the corridor – the rattle of the door latch must have woken me. I held my breath and hoped I would feel his warm hands drawing back the blankets of my bed. I would feel his body as he eased it in next to mine, and in my ear his soft voice would murmur, full of apology.

But Natan did not come to my bed. Out of slitted eyes I saw him sit upon a stool and take off his boots. He pulled down his trousers and slowly lifted his shirt above his head. His clothes lay scattered on the floor. He stood up again, and for a moment I thought I saw him move in my direction. But then he took two soft steps towards the window, and in the poor light I saw him draw back the covers of Sigga’s bed.

I knew then what Rósa meant when she had called us his whores. My body was stiff with the effort of not calling out, of not giving myself away, when I heard his whispered words and Sigga’s muffled response. I bit down on the flesh of my hand as a gauze of nausea wrapped about my stomach. My heart stopped. I choked on its missed beats.

I could hear him grunt as he thrust inside her. I closed my eyes and held my breath because I knew that if I exhaled it would come in a wail, and I screwed my fingernails into the flesh of my arm until I felt a slipperiness and knew there was blood.

I waited until Natan climbed out of Sigga’s bed and turned into his own. I waited until Sigga’s breath grew calm and even, and Natan began to snore. I waited until I knew they were asleep before I sat up and gazed at the blankets before me. My throat closed up with pain, and something else, something hard and inciting and as black as tar. I did not let myself cry. Rage flooded through me until my hands and back grew stiff with it. I could have quietly gathered my belongings and left before it grew light, but where would I have gone? I knew only the valley of Vatnsdalur; knew where it was scabbed with rock, knew the white-headed mountains and the lake alive with swans, and the wrinkled skins of turf by the river. And the ravens, the constant, circling ravens. But Illugastadir was different. I had no friends. I didn’t understand the landscape. Only the outlying tongues of rock scarred the perfect kiss of sea and sky – there was no one and nothing else. There was nowhere else to go.





CHAPTER ELEVEN





THERE, STANDING IN FRONT OF THE court on the 19th of April, was Bjarni Sigurdsson again, Fridrik’s brother from Katadalur, a ten-year-old boy who looked to be clever and intelligent. After a long time of questioning he still gave no information, until at last he said that Fridrik had slit the throats of two milk-giving sheep and one lamb last autumn, when his father was not home. Bjarni Sigurdsson remembered that these sheep were Natan’s. His mother, he said, had, for a long time, told him he should say he didn’t know about this, and told him not talk about it when it came to the trial. However we tried then, both with toughness and gentleness, we could not get any more information out of him.

Anonymous clerk, 1828.





MARGRéT WOKE TO THE SOUND of whimpering. She peered through the darkness to where her daughters lay. They were asleep.

Agnes.

Margrét put her head down on the pillow next to her husband’s and listened. Yes, the criminal was crying; a thin, tight wail that made Margrét’s throat close up. Should she go to her? Perhaps it was a trick. Margrét wished she could see better in the gloom. The cries stopped, and then broke out anew. She sounded like a child.