Burial Rites(87)

TóTI WOKE IN THE SHADOWED badstofa of Breidabólstadur and saw his father at the end of his bed, slumped against the wall. His grizzled head lolled on his chest. He was asleep.

‘Pabbi?’ His voice was no more than a whisper. The effort seared his throat.

He tried to move his foot to nudge his father awake, but his limbs were heavier than he had ever known them to be. ‘Pabbi?’ he tried again.

Reverend Jón stirred, and suddenly opened his eyes. ‘Son!’ He wiped his beard and leaned forward. ‘You’re awake. Thank God.’

Tóti tried to lift his arm and realised that it was bound to his side. He was swaddled in blankets.

‘You’ve been suffering yet another fever,’ his father explained. ‘I’ve had to sweat it out.’ He pressed a calloused hand against Tóti’s forehead.

‘I need to go to Kornsá,’ Tóti murmured. His tongue was dry. ‘Agnes.’

His father shook his head. ‘It’s the care of her that’s done this to you.’

Tóti looked distressed. ‘I have forgotten the month.’

‘December.’

He tried to sit up, but Reverend Jón gently pushed his head back down on the pillow. ‘You’ll pay her no heed until God restores you.’

‘She has no one,’ Tóti argued, trying again to lift himself. His muscles barely responded.

‘And for good reason,’ his father said, his voice suddenly loud in the small room. He held his son down on the bed, his face grey in the unlit badstofa. ‘She’s not worth the time you give her.’




MARGRéT WAS SILENT A MOMENT. The milk had cooled in her cup. ‘He threw you into the snow?’

Agnes nodded, watching the older woman carefully.

Margrét shook her head. ‘You could have frozen to death.’

‘He wasn’t in his right mind.’ Agnes drew her shawl more tightly about her shoulders. ‘Natan had wanted Sigga for himself. He finally understood that she preferred Fridrik.’

Margrét sniffed and nudged a burning ember back against the hearth wall with a poker. ‘As you say, then.’ She stole a glance at Agnes, who was staring into the fire. ‘Go on,’ she said quietly.

Agnes sighed and unfolded her arms. ‘I went to Fridrik’s family’s home at Katadalur. I had not been there before, but I knew where it lay beyond the mountain, and the day grew clear enough for me to walk there without falling victim to the weather. It took me hours though, and by the time I entered the mouth of the valley where Katadalur stood, I was delirious with fatigue. Fridrik’s mother found me on my knees on her doorstop.

‘Katadalur is a horrible place. All slumped and squat, with the roof threatening to fall in, and the inside of the farm as miserable as its outside. Smoke from dung fires on the walls of the kitchen and the badstofa as cheerless as they come. When I entered there was a group of children, all of them Fridrik’s siblings, huddled together on one bed, just trying to stay warm. Fridrik was sitting next to his father and uncle on another bed, sharpening knives.

‘The first thing Fridrik said to me was, “What has he done now?” He asked me if Natan had decided to marry Sigga.

‘I shook my head and explained that he’d thrown me out. I told him I’d spent the night in the cowshed. Fridrik was not sympathetic. He asked me what I’d done to cause it, and I told him I’d fought with Natan, saying I couldn’t abide him treating Sigga the way he was.

‘That’s when Fridrik’s mother interrupted. She’d been listening quietly to us, and all of a sudden she gripped Fridrik’s arm and said: “He means to deprive you of your wife.”

‘I thought I saw Fridrik glance down to the knife on the bed covers and I became fearful.

‘I suggested that Fridrik speak to the priest at Tj?rn, that maybe they could go to a District Officer. But Thórbj?rg, Fridrik’s mother, interrupted me again. She stood up and gripped Fridrik about the shoulders, and looked him in the eye. She said: “You will not have Sigga while Natan is alive.” Then they all sat down, and while I slept, they must have decided to kill him.’

Margrét was still. The fire had died. Only a thin glowing crust of live ember flickered amid the ashes. The wind had not stopped wailing. Margrét slowly exhaled. She felt weary. ‘Perhaps we ought to return to bed.’

Agnes turned to her. ‘Don’t you want to hear the rest?’





CHAPTER TWELVE





OVER AT LAUGAR, IN S?LINGSDALE, Gudrún rose early as soon as the sun was up. She went to the room where her brothers were sleeping, and shook Ospak. Ospak and his brothers woke up at once; and when he saw it was his sister he asked her what she wanted, to be up so early in the morning. Gudrún said she wanted to know what they were planning to do that day. Ospak said they would be having a quiet day – ‘for there isn’t much work to be done just now.’

Gudrún said, ‘You would have had just the right temper if you had been peasants’ daughters – you do nothing about anything, whether good or bad. Despite all the disgrace and dishonour that Kjartan has done you, you lose no sleep over it even when he rides past your door with only a single companion. It’s obviously futile to hope that you will ever dare to attack Kjartan at home if you haven’t the nerve to face him now when he is travelling with only one or two companions. You just sit at home pretending to be men, and there are always too many of you about.’