Burial Rites (11 page)

We are weeding, finding the tufts of grass creeping about the healthier plants and pulling them from the soil. I relish the give of the roots and the gum on my fingers as the stalks burst, although my lungs ache. I have weakened. But I don’t give myself away.

There is a pleasure to be had in squatting with my skirt bunched about me, and the smell of the smoke from the dung fire in my hair. Margrét works furiously and breathes heavily. What is she thinking? Her nails are black with soil, and she scrabbles in the dirt urgently. Her eyes are red-rimmed from the smoke in the kitchen. When she clears her throat I hear the rattle of phlegm.

‘Go back to the croft and tell my daughters to come out to me,’ she says suddenly. ‘Then shovel ashes from the hearth and dig them into the dirt.’

The officers are saddling their horses in the yard when I return unaccompanied to the homestead. They’re silent. ‘Are you all right?’ one of them calls to Margrét, and she reassures them with a wave of a soiled hand.

The door to the croft is open, probably to let the foul smoke out. I pick my feet up over the door ledge.

I find the daughters in the pantry, skimming yesterday’s milk. The youngest sees me first and nudges her sister. They both take a few steps back.

‘Your mother would like you to join her.’ I give a small nod and step aside to let them past me. The younger slips out of the room immediately, her eyes never leaving mine.

The elder girl hesitates. What is her nickname? Steina.
Stone
. She gives me a peculiar look, and slowly sets down her paddle.

‘I think I know you,’ she says.

I say nothing.

‘You were a servant here in this valley before, weren’t you?’

I nod.

‘I know you. I mean, we met once. You were leaving Gudrúnarstadir just as we were moving there to take up the lease. We met on the road.’

When would that have been? May, 1819. How old could she have been then? No more than ten.

‘We had a dog with us. A tan and white one. I remember you because he started barking and jumping up, and Pabbi pulled him off you, and then we shared our dinner.’

The girl looks at my face searchingly.

‘You were the woman we met on the way to Gudrúnarstadir. Do you remember me? You plaited my sister’s hair and gave us an egg each.’

Two small girls sucking eggs by the road, hems damp through with mud. The blur of a thin dog chasing his reflection in the water and the sky broken grey and wide. Three ravens flying in a line. A good omen.

‘Steina!’

The walk from Gudrúnarstadir to Gilsstadir in a freezing spring. 1819. One hundred small whales come ashore near Thingeyrar. A bad omen.

‘Steina!’

‘Coming, Mamma!’ Steina turns to me. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? That was you.’

I take a step towards her.

The farm mistress bursts in. ‘Steina!’ She looks at me, then her daughter. ‘Out.’ She grabs the girl’s arm and yanks her from the room. ‘The ashes. Now.’

Outside, the breeze picks up a handful of my dress’s ashes from the pail and flings them against the blue of the sky. The grey flakes flutter and dip, and dissolve into the air. Is this happiness, this warmth against my chest? Like another’s hand placed there?

I may be able to pretend I am my old self here.

‘
SHALL WE BEGIN WITH A
prayer?’ the Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson asked.

He and Agnes were sitting outside the entranceway to the croft, on a small heap of cut turf that had been prepared and stacked for reparations. The Reverend held his New Testament in one hand and a rather limp slice of buttered rye bread in the other, given to him by Margrét. Horsehair had settled on it from his clothes.

Agnes did not reply to the Reverend’s question. She sat with her fingers in her lap, slightly hunched, gazing out at the line of departing officers. There were ashes in her hair. The wind had dropped and occasionally a shout or burst of laughter could be heard from the men, interrupting the soft tearing sounds of Margrét and
her daughters ripping weeds from the plot. The elder kept raising her head to peer at the pastor and the criminal.

Tóti looked at the book he held in his hands, and cleared his throat.

‘Do you think we ought to begin with a prayer?’ he asked again, louder, thinking Agnes had not heard him.

‘Begin what with a prayer?’ she responded quietly.

‘W-well,’ Tóti stammered, caught off-guard. ‘Your absolution.’

‘My absolution?’ Agnes repeated. She shook her head slightly.

Tóti quickly pushed the bread into his mouth, and chewed rapidly before swallowing in a loud gulp. He wiped his hands on his shirt, then thumbed the pages of his New Testament, rearranging himself on the turf. It was still wet from the night’s rain and he could feel the moisture seeping into his trousers. A stupid place to sit, he thought. He should have remained inside.

‘I received a letter from District Commissioner Blöndal just over a month ago, Agnes,’ he said, pausing. ‘Is it all right if I call you Agnes?’

‘It’s my name.’

‘He informed me that you were unhappy with the Reverend at Stóra-Borg and wished for another churchman to spend time with you, before . . . Before, well, before . . .’ Tóti’s voice trailed off.

‘Before I die?’ Agnes suggested.

Tóti gave a little nod. ‘He said you asked for me.’

Agnes took a deep breath. ‘Reverend Thorvardur –’

‘Call me Tóti. Everyone does,’ he interrupted. He blushed, immediately regretting his familiarity.

Agnes paused, uncertain. ‘Reverend Tóti, then. Why do you think the District Commissioner wants me to spend time with a churchman?’

‘Well . . . I suppose because, I mean, we want, Blöndal and the clergy, and I . . . We want you to return to God.’

Agnes hardened her expression. ‘I think I’ll be returning to Him soon enough. By way of an axe-swing.’

‘That’s not what I . . . I didn’t mean it in that sense . . .’ Tóti sighed. It was going as badly as he had feared. ‘You did ask for me though? Only I took the time to have a look in the ministerial book at Breidabólstadur, and you’re not listed there.’

‘No,’ Agnes replied. ‘I wouldn’t be.’

‘You’ve never been a parishioner of mine or my father’s?’

‘No.’

‘Then why ask for me if we’ve never even met before?’

Agnes stared at him. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

Tóti was taken aback. There was certainly something familiar about the woman, but as his mind leafed through the images of women he had known or met – servants, mothers, wives, children – he couldn’t place Agnes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Agnes shrugged her shoulders. ‘You helped me once before.’

‘Did I?’

‘Over a river. On your horse.’

‘Where was this?’

‘Near Gönguskörd. I had been working at Fannlaugarstadir, and was leaving my work there.’

‘Then you are from the Skagafjördur District?’

‘No. I’m from this valley. Vatnsdalur. The Húnavatn District’

‘And I helped you over a river?’

‘Yes. The pass was flooded and you came by on your horse just as I was about to cross the water by foot.’

Tóti wondered. He had gone through Gönguskörd many times, but couldn’t remember meeting a young woman. ‘When was this?’

‘Six or seven years ago. You were young.’

‘Yes. I would have been,’ Tóti said. There was a moment of silence. ‘Was it because of that kindness that you ask for me now?’ He looked closely at her face. She doesn’t
look
like a criminal, he thought. Not since she’s had a bath.

Agnes squinted and looked out over the valley. Her expression was inscrutable.

‘Agnes . . .’ Tóti sighed. ‘I’m only an Assistant Reverend. My training is incomplete. Perhaps you need a qualified clergyman, or one from your own district who knows you? Surely someone else has shown you kindness? Who was your Reverend here?’

Agnes tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. ‘I haven’t met many churchmen I care for, and certainly none that I would claim know me,’ she said.

A few ravens swept through the valley, landing on the stone fence, and both Tóti and Agnes saw Margrét’s head bob up from behind it. ‘Nuisances!’ she cried. A clod of dirt flew over the wall and the birds took off, cawing indignantly. Tóti looked at Agnes and smiled, but Agnes was stony-faced.

‘They won’t like that,’ she murmured to herself.

‘Well,’ Tóti said, taking a deep breath. ‘If you require a spiritual advisor, then I will consider it my duty to visit you. As District Commissioner Blöndal so desires, I will come to guide you in your prayers, so that you may walk towards what lies ahead of you with faith and dignity. I will take it as my responsibility to supply you with spiritual comfort and hope.’

Tóti fell silent. He had rehearsed this speech as he rode to the farm, and he was pleased that he’d managed to remember to say ‘spiritual comfort’. It sounded paternalistic, and self-assured, as though he was in a lofty state of spiritual certainty: a state he felt he should be in, but had a vague, discomfiting sense that he was not.

Still, he wasn’t used to talking so formally, and his hands sweated against the tissue-thin paper of the Testament. He carefully closed the book, making sure not to crease any pages, and wiped his palms on his thighs. Now would be a good time to quote scripture, as his father was wont to do, but all he could think of was his sudden yearning for his snuff horn.

‘Perhaps I have made a mistake, Reverend.’ Agnes’s voice was measured, calm.

Tóti didn’t know what to say. He looked at the bruises on her face and bit his lip.

‘Perhaps it will be better if you stay at Breidabólstadur. I thank you but . . . Do you really think . . . ?’ She covered her mouth with her hands and shook her head.

‘My dear child, don’t cry!’ he exclaimed, rising from the turf.

Agnes took her hands away. ‘I’m not crying,’ she said, flatly. ‘I have made a mistake. You call me a child, Reverend Thorvardur, but you’re little more than a child yourself. I’d forgotten how young you are.’

Tóti had no response for this. He regarded her for a moment, then nodded grimly and swiftly replaced his hat on his head. He bid her a good day.

Agnes watched him walk past the stone fence to farewell Margrét and the girls. The pastor and women stood together for a few minutes, chatting and looking over at her. Agnes tried to hear what they were saying, but the wind had picked up and it was blowing their words away from her. Only when Tóti raised his hat to Margrét and began to walk to the hitching post to retrieve his cob did Agnes hear Margrét call out: ‘Easier to squeeze blood from a stone, I should think!’

THE REST OF THE DAY
passes in work – in weeding and tending the pitiable herbs. I listen to the far-off bleats of sheep. The poor things look thin and patchy with the winter wool newly pulled from their backs. After the priest left, the daughters, Margrét and I ate a dinner of dried fish and butter. I made sure I chewed each morsel twenty times. Then we returned to the garden, and now I start to try and mend the wall, pulling away the rocks that have shifted, sorting them on the ground, then rebuilding it, locking the stones into place and relishing the heavy mass of them in my hands.

I so often feel that I am barely here, that to feel weight is to be reminded of my own existence.

Margrét and I work in silence; she speaks to me only when giving me an order. It seems our minds are fixed on other things, and I think of how strange it is that fortune has led me back to Kornsá, where I lived as a child. Where I first learnt what it was to grieve. I think about the paths that I have taken, and I think about the Reverend.

Thorvardur Jónsson who asks to be called Tóti like a farmer’s son. He seems too callow for his station. There is a softness about his voice, and about his hands. They are not long and stained by tinctures as Natan’s were, or meaty like the hands of farm help, but small, and thin and clean. He rested them upon his Bible as he spoke to me.

I have made a mistake. They condemn me to death and I ask for a boy to coach me for it. A red-headed boy, who gobbles his buttered bread and toddles to his horse with the seat of his pants wet, this is the young man they hope will get me on my knees, full of prayer. This is the young man I hope will be able to help me, although with what and how I cannot think.