by Caroline Lea
Rósa waits.
Katrín digs her knuckles deep into the dough, then brushes a strand of hair from her face. A dusting of flour smears her cheek: she couldn’t look more harmless. ‘I could drag Jón down into the dirt, if I chose.’
Rósa holds her breath and waits again.
Katrín shrugs. ‘And he thinks I poisoned Anna.’
Rósa gapes and Katrín grins. ‘I made her a witch, apparently.’
Rósa chooses her next words carefully. ‘I had heard that she became preoccupied with . . . delusions.’
‘My fault, of course. Jón likes to find others to blame and won’t accept that gossip is part of being goði.’
Rósa presses a piece of dough beneath her fingers. ‘What truly happened?’
Katrín rubs her hand over her eyes. ‘Anna wanted a child. Desperately. She collected stones, started circling the croft at midnight, chanting. People began whispering and, well, Jón was frightened.’
Rósa thinks of the letter she found, which spoke of mortal danger.
Katrín’s face is pale. ‘Then Pétur came to tell me that Anna was ill.’
‘After the gossip had started,’ Rósa murmurs. She feels suddenly cold.
‘Exactly so. Jón said it was a fever. Within days she was dead and Jón had buried her. I never saw her.’ Katrín wipes her eyes on her sleeve.
Rósa reaches for her fingers. ‘You don’t think . . .’
‘I was half mad with grief and I accused Jón of . . . many things. He called me a witch and warned me not to speak to anyone about Anna.’
‘He threatened you?’ Rósa hisses.
Katrín leans forward. ‘He reminded me that he provides food. And that witches are burned. Anna used to say he frightened her. I had never understood why, but suddenly –’
‘You think –’
‘No. He wouldn’t have . . . No, I don’t think . . .’ Her smile is thin and unconvincing. ‘But the villagers talked to visiting merchants and, well, you understand how stories grow with every telling. Between the northern mountains and the southern islands, a man could turn from an angel to a monster.’
Rósa nods. Her hands are trembling.
‘You’ve a face like milk. Let’s speak of other things,’ Katrín says briskly.
‘Are you –’ Rósa’s voice sounds strained. She coughs. ‘You aren’t frightened of the snow?’
Katrín stares off into the distance, a faint smile on her lips. ‘I told you of my daughter, Dora. She was a dreamer. Precious girl. Blonde hair, like the finest spun wool. Who knows where that curl came from? I used to wind it around my fingers.’ She holds out her hand, then lets it drop.
The stillness of Katrín’s face fills Rósa with dread. She knows how this story must end.
Katrín continues: ‘When her pabbi – the boat – just broken wood, no bodies. Ægir is a greedy god. He gives little back, except fish. Grief made Dora cold. She was at that age, I think. But I didn’t want to cling to her, smothering her with love, the way parents can, pawing at their children, as though they are dogs.’
Rósa nods.
Katrín turns back to the dough and sprinkles some flour on it. ‘Dora walked day and night. I didn’t stop her. One day, it snowed – she didn’t return. The whole settlement went on the mountain, calling for her until our lungs burst. But it was as if she’d melted into the air. I think,’ Katrín’s eyes shine, ‘perhaps the huldufólk kept her. I like to imagine her, tucked up warm in some hole in Helgafell.’
Rósa touches her arm.
Katrín sniffs. ‘I find it goes hard with me now, to see a young girl wandering into the wilderness, stepping through a strange land that could swallow her whole.’
Jón
Near Thingvellir, December 1686
My cave is cold without a fire, but I have learned that it is wise to wait for the perfect moment before striking. I test my blades again and again. They prick bright beads of blood from my thumb.
I must stay out of sight: if the merchants have brought their tales south, then anyone who recognizes my face will try to capture me, or worse. Those who give me shelter will be exiled. Banishment is a death sentence.
The winter snows will soon cover my bones.
I sit and I watch and I wait.
I have imagined the deed a hundred times, but I find I lack the necessary courage. This may be my last act of rage, my last act of love, and I dread God’s judgement. Villains and murderers are damned to burn for all eternity. And yet, after that meeting with Pétur, I knew it was my fate.
After we had left the bodies of Bolli and Thorolf for the ravens and foxes, I persuaded Pétur to come aboard the boat. At first, he spoke very little. When we stopped in an inlet, I offered him dried fish, mutton and ale. He ate and drank as though he was starving.
Between mouthfuls, he gave me scraps of his past. Of Egill, he would say only, ‘He is a small man who makes himself larger by crushing others beneath his boots. He claims compassion, but his love is a weed that strangles.’
He told me that, although he had never known his true pabbi, his mamma had cared for him greatly. They had travelled about the country, mother and son. Nowhere allowed them to settle, perhaps because of their dark eyes and hair, or simply because they were outsiders. I have seen it happen myself: travellers are shunned as strangers, so they must journey on to the next settlement. And so it continues, until they become another set of bones, rotting by the wayside.
‘Your mamma died of sickness?’ I asked.
‘They burned her for witchcraft,’ he said flatly. ‘In Ísafjördur. I was twelve.’
‘Oh. I . . .’ I shook my head.
Pétur’s mouth twisted. ‘They laughed when she screamed. Offered to quench the fire by pissing on it.’
The image hung in the silence. I almost reached out a hand to steady Pétur, but stopped myself, not wanting to tug at the fragile thread of understanding between us.
I busied myself building a fire with sheep dung and scraps of wool to catch the spark from my flint and iron. ‘You are shivering and will need to wash your wounds. Lift your tunic.’
His eyes flashed to my face, and I saw my mistake. ‘I mean no harm.’ I held up my hands. ‘I’ll stand here, and you can clean them. Here, water and wool.’
Pétur didn’t move, so I walked down towards the sea and stood with my back to him. The water looked iron in the grey evening light. I closed my eyes, inhaling the fresh cut of salt air. Live but once by the sea, and it will never leave your soul.
The night was sharp with the coming cold. If I held my breath, I imagined I could hear the hum of forming ice, the first syllables slow, then becoming a full-throated roar. In Iceland, winter kills without hesitation.
A cry broke through my reverie. I spun around. Pétur was clutching his side, a thin trail of crimson creeping from under his fingers. ‘Bolli’s knife,’ he gasped.
I reached out, then stopped. He nodded. Gently, I wiped the blood from the wound. He flinched, but stood still.
‘I have nothing to bind it,’ I murmured. ‘Here.’ I hacked a strip from my cloak and wrapped it around his torso.
As I worked, my eyes traced the raised marks and stippled scars covering his skin. A map of his childhood: the unknown years before he came to Egill’s croft. Or perhaps Egill had made the wounds.
Pétur cringed, as if my gaze were an unwelcome touch, then pulled away.
Later, he allowed me to wash his hurts daily, to bandage the ruined left arm, where the scar broke open time and again – he never told me what had happened to it. But he stared at the scar as if he despised the limb. And watching his eyes darken with loathing was like seeing my own reflection on the surface of the sea.
It was a three-day journey back to Stykkishólmur. Every night, we moored the boat in some desolate cove; every morning I waited for Pétur to leave. I braced myself to let him go. Egill would never support me before the Althing if I returned alone.
The days passed and Pétur shrank int
o himself. I pulled on the oars, trying not to imagine his pain. Pétur was a means to an end, nothing more.
And yet, each morning when he did not leave me, I felt a lightening of my spirits; each night when I imagined him going, the thought was like darkness.
Perhaps his scars spoke to me. Or perhaps it was simply that he was the first true companion I had ever had. He seemed part of the hard land I loved, with its belly of fire and the cold wind and ice that swept across it.
Every morning, he unmoored the boat and helped me push it into the cold water. I climbed in, then gripped his hand and pulled him to join me. There was an easy silence between us, even in those early days.
He seemed to know me instantly, too, in a way that needed no words. Once, when I was looking at him, thinking of Thorolf and Bolli, and the bargain they hinted Pétur had made with them, he said, ‘I have sinned, I know.’
The sea hushed around us. I gazed down at his scarred hands.
‘Your face.’ He smiled. ‘You looked suddenly . . . disgusted.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I am puzzled. Why you would let them –’
‘It is only a body.’ He shrugged. ‘It must earn food somehow.’
He saw that I was shocked and smiled. ‘It is not worth much to me. You wouldn’t understand.’
But I did. I recognized the feeling of revulsion at one’s own skin. I thought of the scars on my own body that sickened me. To me, Pétur’s scars were different: they told a tale, however painful, of survival and strength.
I sometimes wish I had left him in one of those frozen bays, for Pétur was the blade that butchered the heart of my old life, and I destroyed him too. I long to return to that moment on the beach. I will watch him run past, terrified. I will watch the men chasing him, laughing. And I will turn back to my boat, back to the sea. I will tell Egill that I couldn’t find Pétur. And my future will stretch before me, bright and clean as an unbroken wave.
As it was, on the morning of that third day, I found myself begging Pétur to return to Stykkishólmur as my apprentice. To live in my croft, rather than Egill’s. He said yes, without hesitation.
But Pétur’s return to Stykkishólmur caused more dismay than I could have imagined. People saw only that he had survived alone on the land, like one of the huldufólk, and once again, as when he was a young child, they whispered that he was not quite human. They laughed that I kept a monster in my home.
Egill raged outside my croft, demanding that I return his son.
‘He is not a cloak I have borrowed that I may give him back to you, Egill.’
‘You have no honour, Jón.’ Egill’s mouth was a thin line. ‘You must make him return to me.’
I spread my hands. ‘How can I? He is his own man, and he chooses to stay.’
‘Do you imagine I will support you before the Althing when you steal my own child from me?’
Suddenly Pétur was at my shoulder. ‘I am no child, Egill, and I am not yours. Take your threats elsewhere. They cannot touch me now.’
Egill’s expression softened and he reached out his hand, tenderly, towards Pétur’s cheek. But Pétur flinched and stepped backwards. Egill’s face became a mask of fury; he turned and strode away, black cloak flapping.
Pétur sighed. I felt the tension drain from his body.
‘You fear him?’
Mouth hard, he nodded.
I thought of the scars that spanned his skin and felt my heart clamp.
‘He will take revenge on you,’ Pétur murmured.
‘Let him try.’
‘I should leave. Go elsewhere.’
I remembered Thorolf and Bolli. ‘You’ll stay.’
In time, people grew to accept Pétur living with me; they believed I had tamed him. Pétur was a hard worker and doubled the grain and fish I gave to the village. They still told stories about him, no doubt, but he filled their bellies, so they whispered discreetly.
Sometimes I caught Egill staring at Pétur, slack-mouthed with grief. But the next moment, he would threaten both of us with Hell and damnation, and I saw why Pétur despised him: for all Egill claimed to be appointed by God, he was a small man, petty and greedy by nature.
When I first married Anna, I thought it would quell the gossip that I was too strange and aloof from every soul, except Pétur. And, for a time, it worked, but once her wanderings started, people were talking again. Chatter of a different sort: his wife is unhappy; she is bewitched. They looked at me through narrowed eyes and I knew they were questioning why she was so sullen and dissatisfied with me.
She started to wander by the sea. When people called greetings, she stared blankly, then returned to scrabbling at the stones, ripping off her fingernails, numb to any pain.
Katrín clucked over her and bound her bleeding hands, but there was something in her expression – a lack of surprise.
‘You persuaded Anna to do this,’ I growled.
‘I did not.’ Katrín’s face was tight as she bound Anna’s wounds.
‘Scratching about for moss, and you claim no part in it? You must think me a fool. She was muttering spells. They’ll claim witchcraft. You know Egill –’
‘It is not spells,’ snapped Katrín. ‘Stop your yammering and listen.’
I leaned in close to Anna’s lips, which were moving, as if she were whispering an incantation. Her eyes were clouded. It chilled me to the marrow. Her voice was like the faint crackle of the fire in the hloðir, but I could just discern the words: ‘A child. Please, God, a child. Please. Please.’
I recoiled.
Katrín’s gaze was sharp. ‘She can pray as hard as she likes, but she asks for a miracle, and she is no Mary to be visited by the Holy Ghost.’
‘Hold your tongue! I should have you tried for blasphemy.’
‘Perhaps.’ Katrín nodded. ‘Or perhaps you should give your wife a child.’
I tried. Many times I tried. But her face, her eyes and her body made me wilt at every attempt. And then she would weep and say that I was no true man. She was right, and I hated her for it.
I gathered driftwood from the beach and fashioned a crib, praying that the hope it offered might soothe her. But she thought the crib a cruel joke and tried to smash it.
Seven nights later, she was discovered late at night trying to climb Helgafell to recite her three wishes to the grave of Gudrun Ósvifrsdóttir. Then she began to visit Egill. He had shunned her since Birgit’s death, some months before, but after Anna went to his croft, he began looking at me with gimlet-eyed glee. I knew what I must do: I sent Katrín away, accusing her of corrupting Anna’s mind with sorcery. I found a lock for the loft room and said that Anna had a fever.
I did not intend to do her violence. But every time I think of our last fierce struggle, I feel sickened. When I close my eyes, all I see is her screaming face and blood. So much blood.
Afterwards, in the half-light of a summer midnight, I dug my wife’s grave.
Part Five
Love flares the hottest in secret.
Icelandic proverb
Rósa
Stykkishólmur, November 1686
Katrín is as good as her word: she sleeps in the barn and comes to the croft early in the morning and late in the evening, battling through the blizzard to bathe Jón’s wound. After it has drained for a day, she packs it with linen, which she then tugs out at each cleaning. As the infection fades, the film dulling his consciousness dissolves; he whimpers. By the second day, every dressing change is conducted to the staccato chorus of Jón’s howls.
Rósa can’t watch; she sits in the baðstofa, knitting, wishing for deafness. Pétur crouches on the bed opposite, iron-jawed, fisted hands trembling. It is Páll who holds Jón down, passing Katrín the water, kelp, and the other herbs she packs into the wound: chickweed, angelica and moss.
After a particularly torturous change, Katrín kneels next to Rósa, who tried to help but then huddled in the corner, watching in horror.
Katrín puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘His
screams are a good sign, Rósa.’
‘But that smell. Like rotten meat.’
Katrín nods. ‘It is terrible to see a loved one in pain.’
Love? Rósa has never considered it. He is her husband and she is bound to honour and obey him: the Bible commands it. She wants to be a good wife: her survival and her mamma’s depend on that. But love? She studies his face; she knows every outline, every expression. She reaches out and touches his cheek, then runs her thumb over his lips: they curl at the edges and his face is creased from laughter past. He’d been happy, once.
When she looks up, Páll is standing in the doorway, eating a piece of dried fish and staring. She blushes. He turns away, his eyes dark caves.
And she lets him leave.
Adulterous men are hanged or beheaded; women are stuffed into a sack and pushed out into the drowning pool at Thingvellir. And the Bible says that one who lusts with his heart has already committed adultery. This is for the best.
The next day, while she is cooking, Pétur shouts from the loft: ‘Rósa!’
Then Pétur and Páll together, voices raw and frantic, ‘Rósa! Rósa!’
Her spoon clatters to the floor. She races up the ladder, knowing she will find Jón dead. Her heart plummets, then lifts. She can return to Skálholt with Páll after all. This will feel like a nightmare. And yet what sort of monster has she become, to wish her husband dead?
She takes a breath and walks into the loft, bracing herself.
Jón is sitting upright, sipping a cup of moss tea that Pétur holds against his lips. Páll and he are staring at him, as if they have witnessed the raising of Lazarus.
‘He is thirsty,’ Pétur says, with wonder.
‘Praise God!’ She runs to Jón, pauses, then flings her arms around him. ‘Jón elskan,’ she breathes, ‘I’m so . . . happy.’ Her knees are trembling. She dares not look at Páll.
Jón gives a weak smile. ‘It seems me nearly dying has made you into the perfect wife.’
If she had Katrín’s courage, Rósa would reply that, when he was near death, he was an easy husband. She forces her mouth into a smile. ‘I have made a stew.’
