Burial Rites(97)

‘Agnes! Here, take my hand.’

Agnes looked up at Tóti with tears in her eyes. ‘I can’t move my legs,’ she croaked. ‘I can’t move my legs.’

Tóti bent down and put her arm around his shoulders. As he tried to lift her up his knees buckled and they fell into the snow drifts again.

‘Reverend!’ Jón darted forward to help them.

‘No!’ The word came out as a scream. Tóti stared up at the circle of men standing over them. Agnes clutched at his arm. ‘No,’ he said again. ‘Please let me lift her. I need to lift her.’

The men stood back as he crawled onto his knees, then slowly pushed himself upwards. He stumbled, then righted himself, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath until he wasn’t so light-headed. Do not falter, he told himself. He bent down and offered his hand to Agnes. ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘Take my hand.’

Agnes opened her eyes and grasped it, her nails gripping his skin. ‘Don’t let go,’ she whimpered. ‘Don’t let go of me.’

‘I won’t let go of you, Agnes. I’m right here.’

Clenching his teeth, he hauled her out of the snow, wrapping her arm about his neck to lift her higher. ‘There you go,’ he said gently, holding her fast about the waist. He ignored the smell of shit. ‘I’ve got you.’

Around them the farmers of the District started walking towards the three hills that stood together in a clump. Already over forty men stood around the middle hill, all dressed in black. They look like birds of prey surrounding their kill, Tóti thought.

‘Do we have to go with them?’ Agnes asked, her voice cracking.

‘No, Agnes.’ Tóti reached over and brushed her hair out of her eyes with his free hand. ‘No, we have to walk just a little way, and then wait. Fridrik is walking out first.’

Agnes nodded, and clung to Tóti as he slowly stumbled through the drifts to a tussock, lifting her as best as he could. Breathing heavily, he gently lowered her onto the snowy ground and sank down next to her. Jón squatted beside them and picked up the flask that had slipped from his gloved hand. Tóti watched as the older man took a quick sip and winced.

The minutes staggered past. Tóti tried to ignore the deadening needles of cold that wormed into his bones. He held Agnes’s hands in his own, her head was on his shoulder.

‘Why don’t we pray, Agnes?’

The woman opened her eyes and stared into the distance. ‘I can hear singing.’

Tóti turned his face to where the sound was coming from. He recognised the burial hymn, ‘Just like the flower’. Agnes was listening intently, shivering on the ground.

‘Let’s listen together then,’ he whispered. He put his arm about her as the verses lifted over the snowy field and fell about them like a mist.

On Tóti’s left, Jón was bent on his knees, his hands clasped before him, his lips muttering the Lord’s Prayer. ‘Dear Lord, forgive us all our trespasses.’ Tóti gripped Agnes’s hand more tightly, and she gave a small gasp.

‘Tóti,’ she said in a panicked voice. ‘Tóti, I don’t think I’m ready. I don’t think they can do it. Can you make them wait? They have to wait.’

Tóti pulled Agnes closer to him and squeezed her hand.

‘I won’t let go of you. God is all around us, Agnes. I won’t ever let go.’

The woman looked up into the blank sky. The sudden sound of the first axe fall echoed throughout the valley.





EPILOGUE





The criminals Fridrik Sigurdsson and Agnes Magnúsdóttir were today moved out of custody to the place of execution, and following them to the execution site were the priests Reverend Magnús árnason, Reverend Gísli Gíslason, Reverend Jóhann Tómasson and Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson, an assistant priest. The criminals had wished that the latter two help them prepare for their deaths. After the priest Jóhann Tómasson completed a speech of admonition to the convict Fridrik Sigurdsson, Fridrik’s head was taken off with one blow of the axe. The farmer Gudmundur Ketilsson, who had been ordered to be executioner, committed the work that he had been asked to do with dexterity and fearlessness. The criminal Agnes Magnúsdóttir, who, while this was taking place, had been kept at a remote station where she could not see the site of execution, was then fetched. After the Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson had appropriately prepared her for death, the same executioner cut off her head, and with the same craftsmanship as before. The lifeless heads were then set upon two stakes at the site of execution, and their bodies put in two coffins of untreated boards, and buried before the men were dismissed. While the deed took place, and there until it was finished, everything was appropriately quiet and well-ordered, and it was concluded by a short address by Reverend Magnús árnason to those that were there.

Actum ut supra.

B. Bl?ndal, R. Olsen, A. árnason From the Magistrate’s Book of Húnavatn District, 1830





AUTHOR’S NOTE

WHILE THIS NOVEL IS A work of fiction, it is based on real events. Agnes Magnúsdóttir was the last person to be executed in Iceland, convicted for her role in the murders of Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson on the night between the 13th and 14th of March 1828, at Illugastadir (Illugastaeir), on the Vatnsnes Peninsula, North Iceland. In 1934, Agnes and Fridrik Sigurdsson’s (Frierik Siguresson’s) remains were removed from Thrístapar (Trístapar) to the churchyard at Tj?rn, where they share a grave. Natan Ketilsson’s grave in the same churchyard is no longer marked. Sigrídur Gudmundsdóttir (Sigríeur Guemundsdóttir) was sent to a Copenhagen textile prison, where she is believed to have died after a few years. There was, for some time, a popular local myth that claimed she was rescued from the prison by a wealthy man and went on to live a long life. While this is untrue, it is indicative of public sympathy towards her in the years after these events.