Burial Rites(9)

‘Plenty of authorities at Stóra-Borg.’ Margrét’s tone was sour.

‘She’s to be moved nevertheless. There was an incident.’

‘What happened?’ Lauga asked.

Jón looked down at the fair face of his youngest child. ‘I am sure it was nothing to worry about,’ he said eventually.

Margrét gave a short laugh. ‘Are we just going to yield to this? Like a dog rolling over?’ Her voice dropped to a hiss. ‘This Agnes is a murderess, Jón! We have our girls, our workmen. Even Kristín! We are responsible for others!’

Jón gave his wife a meaningful look. ‘Bl?ndal means to compensate us, Margrét. There is remuneration for her custody.’

Margrét paused. When she spoke her voice was subdued. ‘Perhaps we should send the girls away.’

‘No, Mamma! I don’t want to leave,’ cried Steina.

‘It would be for your own safety.’

Jón cleared his throat. ‘The girls will be safe enough with you, Margrét.’ He sighed. ‘There is another thing. Bj?rn Bl?ndal has requested my presence at Hvammur on the night the woman arrives here.’

Margrét opened her mouth in dismay. ‘You mean to make me meet her?’

‘Pabbi, you can’t leave Mamma alone with her,’ Lauga cried.

‘She won’t be alone. You will all be here. There will be officers from Stóra-Borg. And a Reverend. Bl?ndal has organised it.’

‘And what is so important at Hvammur that Bl?ndal requires you there the very night he ushers a criminal into our home?’

‘Margrét . . .’

‘No, I insist. This is unfair.’

‘We are to discuss who shall be executioner.’

‘Executioner!’

‘All the District Officers will be present, including those from Vatnsnes who will travel with the Stóra-Borg riders. We will sleep there that night and return the next day.’

‘And in the meantime I am left alone with the woman who killed Natan Ketilsson.’

Jón looked at his wife calmly. ‘You will have your daughters.’

Margrét began to say something further, but then thought better of it. She gave her husband a hard look, took up her knitting and began working the needles furiously.

Steina watched her mother and father from under lowered brows, and picked up her dinner, feeling sick to her stomach. She held the wooden bowl in her hands and examined the gobbets of mutton swimming in the greasy broth. Slowly taking her spoon, she lifted a piece to her lips and began to chew, her tongue locating a lump of gristle within the flesh. She fought the instinct to spit it out and ground it under her teeth, swallowing in silence.




AFTER THEY DECIDE I MUST leave, the Stóra-Borg men sometimes tie my legs together in the evening, as they do with the forelegs of horses, to ensure I will not run away. It seems that with each passing day I become more like an animal to them, another dull-eyed beast to feed with what can be scraped together and to be kept out of the weather. They leave me in the dark, deny me light and air, and when I must be moved, they bind and lead me where they will.

They never speak to me here. In winter, in the badstofa, I could always hear myself breathing, and I’d get scared to swallow for fear the whole room might hear it. The only sounds to keep a body company then were the rustling of Bible pages and whisperings. I’d catch my name on the lips of others, and I knew it wasn’t in blessing. Now, when they are forced by law to read out the words of a letter or proclamation, they talk as if addressing someone behind my shoulder. They refuse to meet my eyes.

You, Agnes Magnúsdóttir, have been found guilty of accessory to murder. You, Agnes Magnúsdóttir have been found guilty of arson, and conspiracy to murder. You, Agnes Magnúsdóttir, have been sentenced to death. You, Agnes. Agnes.

They don’t know me.

I remain quiet. I am determined to close myself to the world, to tighten my heart and hold on to what has not yet been stolen from me. I cannot let myself slip away. I will hold what I am inside, and keep my hands tight around all the things I have seen and heard, and felt. The poems composed as I washed and scythed and cooked until my hands were raw. The sagas I know by heart. I am sinking all I have left and going underwater. If I speak, it will be in bubbles of air. They will not be able to keep my words for themselves. They will see the whore, the madwoman, the murderess, the female dripping blood into the grass and laughing with her mouth choked with dirt. They will say ‘Agnes’ and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.




REVEREND THORVARDUR JóNSSON SIGHED AS he left the church and entered the cool, damp air of the afternoon. Just over one month had passed since he had accepted Bl?ndal’s offer to visit the condemned woman, and he had questioned his decision every day since. Each morning he had felt troubled, as though newly woken from a nightmare. Even as he had made his daily walk to the small church of Breidabólstadur to pray and sit awhile in the silence, his stomach had crowded with nerves, and his body had trembled as if exhausted by his mind’s ambivalence. It had been no different today. As he had sat on the hard pew, gazing into his hands, he caught himself wishing that he were ill, gravely ill, so that he might be excused for not riding to Kornsá. His reluctance, and his willingness to sacrifice his own blessed health, horrified him.