by Caroline Lea
From the corner of her eye, she sees Páll’s shoulders slump. Then he walks from the room. She tries not to let the hurt on his face pain her.
‘I feel as though I’ve been trampled by a herd of horses,’ Jón says.
‘You should rest, elskan. Sleep.’ Her legs itch with the need to run after Páll. To take his hand, pull him in close and say that . . . What can she say?
‘I have slept enough. Come here.’ Jón takes her hand and kisses it. Her skin itches at his touch.
In the depths of the darkness, the gyrfalcon stretches its wings. He starts at the whisper of feathers, then turns to Rósa, squeezing her fingers harder . . . too hard.
‘You will not tell anyone of the bird?’
She shakes her head mutely.
His dry claw tightens around her hand. ‘Gyrfalcons are worth more than gold, Rósa. If someone in the settlement discovers I am keeping one to trade, it will cause envy and bring trouble . . .’
She swallows. ‘The settlement is buried. No one has been here, except –’
‘Rósa!’ Pétur hisses, an urgent warning in his voice.
She starts at his tone. He is pacing the room and chewing his thumbnail. He keeps pausing, then drawing breath, as if to speak, but continues to pace.
‘Stand still, Pétur,’ Jón croaks. ‘You will wear away the floorboards.’
Rósa says, ‘I must tell Katrín you have woken, Jón. She will be so happy.’
Pétur stops pacing and glowers at her.
Jón heaves himself upright, gasping at the pain. ‘Katrín?’ he growls.
Rósa looks at Pétur. ‘You have not told him.’
‘Katrín was here?’ Jón demands.
Pétur’s voice is low. ‘Her care has –’
‘Was Katrín here? In the loft?’ Jón spits. ‘Answer me, damn you!’ His face is pale, and his breath batters from his chest – he collapses forward, panting.
Rósa kneels beside him. ‘She wanted to help you.’ She reaches out to Jón’s face but cannot bring herself to touch him. ‘She will not tell anyone anything.’ She thinks of the bird, the crib, the scratches on the floor. She has no idea what Katrín has seen.
‘You don’t know,’ gasps Jón. ‘You don’t –’
‘I know she will not spread rumours, Jón.’ Rósa takes a steadying breath and looks him in the eye. ‘You must trust her – you must try –’
‘Silence, Rósa.’
Rósa presses her legs together to stop them shaking. She forces her words out. ‘Katrín will not say a word to Egill, Jón. You have nothing to fear.’
Jón makes a noise that is somewhere between a cough and a laugh.
‘Try to understand,’ Rósa continues. ‘You were fading so fast. And Katrín has saved you. Hasn’t she, Pétur?’
Pétur is gazing at the light from the window, which glows the colour of skyr in the reflected brightness from the snow outside. ‘I was against her staying,’ he whispers, ‘but you were dying.’ Rósa hadn’t known Pétur could feel fear. She hears the almost-boy he must have been when Jón rescued him. Pétur’s face is pale, lost. There is a click in his throat when he swallows.
Rósa forces herself to take Jón’s dry hand. The bones are parched twigs with a thin vellum of skin stretched over them; blue ropes of veins bulge underneath. ‘Pétur is not to blame.’
Jón is silent for three laboured breaths. ‘Bring her to me,’ he says savagely.
Rósa stands up. ‘You will not harm her.’ She looks from Jón to Pétur. ‘Neither of you would harm her?’
The silence stretches.
Eventually, Pétur murmurs, ‘Of course not. Fetch her.’ But neither man will meet her gaze and there is some unspoken conversation in the way they look at one another.
‘Very well.’ She struggles to draw air. Perhaps she can tell Katrín to flee.
Outside, the sky is metallic grey-black, like a fresh bruise. The cold air slices her insides. Rósa trudges the hundred paces to the barn, each breath a cloud that freezes, fades, then is gone for ever.
Are souls like that? she wonders. Will I disappear one day, dissolve like melting ice into rushing water?
It is an unChristian thought, so she banishes it and pushes hard against the solidity of the barn door.
It is bolted. Everything is closed or locked in her husband’s world. She pulls her mittens off; her fingers are slick with melted ice and numb with cold. She fiddles with the latch and eventually manages to lever open the door. Then she falls forward into the dank shadows and fuggy quiet of the barn.
She can hear the jostling of the animals in the darkness, their uneasy bleats and snorts.
A single candle glows on a ledge at the end of the barn, and Katrín is hunched underneath it.
Rósa starts to speak, but Katrín holds up a hand.
‘Hush, listen. There! You heard it?’ There is a strange glitter in Katrín’s eyes, and she grips Rósa’s arm too tightly.
Rósa listens to the groans of the landscape, the moan of the wind, the creaking of the snow outside. ‘Just the wind. Don’t be afraid –’
‘I am not afraid. You’ve heard it before?’ Katrín’s voice is too bright. She smiles, then says, too quickly, ‘Yes, it must be the wind. And yet it does sound like . . .’ She stares into the distance again, head cocked to one side.
To cover her growing unease, Rósa blurts, ‘Jón is awake.’
‘Páll told me. Good news!’ Then Katrín’s face falls. ‘But what is wrong? He’s worsened? Or he’s refusing to drink my potions?’ She gives a wicked grin. ‘The witch’s brew.’
‘He wishes to . . . speak with you.’
Katrín raises her eyebrows. ‘Ah!’
‘He is agitated.’ Rósa picks a stray tuft of wool from where it has caught on the barn wall, and presses it between her fingers. It is coarse and greasy. She looks directly at Katrín. ‘He wants to know what you’ve seen – in the loft.’
‘He does?’ Katrín looks more amused than scared.
Rósa draws a deep breath. ‘The loft was . . . locked before. And now he thinks you will gossip and . . . an accusation of seidr would see him burned.’
‘He thinks I’ll try to set a fire under his feet?’ Katrín laughs softly.
‘How can you laugh? He is in a foul temper!’
‘Oh, Rósa, I have been married and know how to soothe a man’s rage. I shall be as meek and mild as the Blessed Virgin herself.’ Her eyes glint and Rósa returns her smile uncertainly.
Katrín takes Rósa’s hand and they walk into the blizzard, then battle through the mountainous drifts. The world is reduced – they cannot see the hills, the sky or the endless ocean, only a tiny circle of life and warmth as far as their arms can reach.
Beyond that, an unknown wilderness lies, snaggle-toothed and snarling.
When they reach the croft, Pétur is sitting tensely in the baðstofa, using his knife to whittle a piece of driftwood to a sharp point. He looks uncanny and threatening, like a piece of the land uprooted and set down in the warmth of the croft, but still carrying the barely cooled menace of volcanic rock.
He glances up, his gaze flicking past Rósa to Katrín. ‘Jón wants you hurled out into the snow.’
‘Ah, then he is a fool. You must throw a witch into water, or burn her.’ Katrín says, ‘Snow will be no good, especially now you have warned me, so I can steal your blankets. Besides, the fires of Hell keep me warm.’
Pétur’s mouth twitches. ‘I told him you are too wise to be loose-lipped.’
‘I could have destroyed him a hundred times, years ago. I chose to stay quiet.’
‘As I thought. Be . . . gentle with him. He is frail.’
She nods and some frisson of understanding passes between them. Then Katrín climbs the ladder into the loft.
Rósa makes as if to follow, but Pétur shakes his head.
Rósa pushes past him. ‘This is my croft.’
Pétur encircles her wrist with strong fingers and, though his touch
is light, she can feel the suppressed strength in his grip.
‘I only stop you to spare your energy,’ Pétur says. ‘Climb, if you wish, but he will send you down again.’
She pulls her wrist free and rubs the skin where he touched her.
‘I am not contagious.’ He laughs. ‘You will not turn into a monster.’
Suddenly, from over their heads comes the sound of raised voices, the creaking of boards, then a single cry and a crash.
Rósa and Pétur scramble for the ladder. Rósa reaches the loft first.
Jón is on the floor, Katrín standing over him. At first, Rósa thinks she has struck him, but then she sees that he is struggling to stand, and that Katrín is trying to push him back down. Both are staring towards the darkened area of the croft, towards the bird and the crib and the runic scrawlings. Their faces are pinched and hard.
‘Tried to stand and fell,’ says Katrín, her voice falsely bright. ‘But he seems all in one piece. Come, Jón.’ She leans down and, as she puts her arms about him, she hisses something into his ear. Her face is savage, and Rósa expects him to bawl at her, but he nods.
‘Why did you stand?’ demands Pétur. ‘You might have burst your wound.’
Katrín speaks over Jón’s gasps as she helps him to lie back on the mattress. ‘He said he would test his strength. I warned him, but he knew best, as ever.’
There is something both aggressive and anxious in her voice – she speaks as she might growl at a wild animal, perhaps to conceal the quaking of her knees.
But Jón does not look hostile, his face tallow-pale. A sheen of sweat slicks his neck and chest as he sucks in air effortfully and with obvious pain. With a start, Rósa sees that he looks terrified.
In the darkness beyond them, the gyrfalcon is bating again and again, flapping from its perch, then being dragged back by its jesses.
‘Calm it, Pétur,’ Jón gasps. ‘Before it tangles itself and snaps a wing.’
Katrín shows no surprise as Pétur’s candle reveals the shape of the bird and, below it, the crib.
Pétur approaches the bird cautiously, clutching it before it flaps away. Then he places it on its perch, where it sits, beak open and panting, its wings held a little aloft from its body. Distress is scrawled across every angle of its frame.
Rósa has heard men say that falcons hunt by sound as well as sight: that the frantic thrumming of a rabbit’s heartbeat will carry to their ear. The bird must be overwhelmed by the chorus of drumming hearts in the loft.
Once Jón is settled and his breathing has slowed, they return to the baðstofa.
Katrín clutches at Rósa’s arm and pulls her close, so Pétur cannot hear. ‘Those runes,’ she hisses. ‘Can you read them?’
Rósa shakes her head.
‘They are deep enchantments.’ Katrín’s eyes are wide. ‘Deception and cutting off the heart –’
‘You mean –’
‘Murder. Those signs were intended to bring on sickness and death.’
Rósa feels suddenly cold. ‘But who . . .?’
‘The signs were not there before . . .’
‘Before Anna?’
‘Before, when the loft was open.’
‘But who would have . . .?’
Katrín’s eyes are flint. ‘The runes are those of sickness and death. And Anna . . . I can’t help but think –’
‘Surely Jón wouldn’t –’
‘No. I don’t believe . . . But he seems a stranger to me now.’
‘Perhaps Pétur?’
‘Perhaps. But whoever made those marks, this croft is cursed and these men are dangerous. Rósa, there is more. Under the linens in the corner,’ Katrín’s grip on her arm tightens, ‘there is a bloodstain in the wood. Someone has tried to scrub it away, but my husband was a fisherman and I know bloodstains when I see them.’
Rósa thinks of the knife, the dried blood, the matted tangle of blonde hair. Everything suddenly fits together, like a key in a lock. ‘Jón! He must have –’ She claps her hands over her mouth.
Katrín’s eyes darken. ‘There must be some other reason.’
‘You say Anna feared him?’
Katrín nods silently, chewing her lip.
Rósa’s mind reels. ‘I must leave. I will go as soon as the thaw permits.’
Katrín jumps away as Pétur descends the ladder. ‘Why do you two whisper?’
‘Women’s matters,’ says Katrín, smoothly.
Pétur raises his eyebrows and Rósa squirms. ‘There is mutton in the storeroom, which I must prepare,’ she mutters.
‘I’ll help,’ says Katrín, rising.
‘No,’ says Pétur. ‘Katrín, tell me how to speed Jón’s recovery. Come,’ he pats the seat next to him, ‘sit alongside me.’
He knows what she saw, Rósa thinks, with a jolt.
‘I will stay here too,’ she says. ‘The mutton will not spoil in the cold.’
‘No, Rósa,’ says Pétur. ‘You mustn’t neglect your duties. Katrín will stay.’
Katrín inclines her head and gestures that Rósa should go. She has no choice, and leaves Pétur with Katrín.
The storeroom seems even colder than outside the croft: the door is rimed with white; plumes of frost have crept between the tiny gaps in the turf walls.
To Rósa’s surprise, Páll is sitting at the table, sectioning mutton. She smiles in relief, but his gaze is icy. She remembers how he had watched her with Jón, then turned from the loft, iron-jawed.
Now he says, without looking up, ‘How is your husband?’
‘He is . . .’ He is what? A liar? A murderer? A man who imprisoned his wife, then said it was for her own protection? Rósa draws a breath and sits. Almost imperceptibly, Páll shifts his body away from hers.
‘He is better.’
‘Good. I will leave knowing you are happy.’
‘Leave?’
‘As soon as the thaw comes.’
‘Take me with you!’ The words spill out before she can stop them.
Páll’s eyes widen. ‘Why would you –’
‘I want to return to Skálholt.’ She places her hand on his, trembling.
His face softens. ‘Rósa, it is unthinkable.’
‘I am so miserable.’
He clasps her hand. ‘You can’t leave.’
‘I won’t stay.’
‘Only moments ago you were all concern for your husband.’ He strokes her cheek.
She is so wearied by the pressure that stretches between them, like brittle ice that will shatter with one false move. She could almost wish for that ice to crack, for the black water underneath to swallow her, rather than this agonizing waiting and restraint that freezes her every movement.
She draws a shaky breath. ‘We will go home, Páll. After the thaw.’
Páll’s eyes are dark with grief. ‘I want . . . But the risk to you . . .’
As soon as she spoke the words, she knew she was naming an impossible dream. She might as well have said she longed to walk across the ocean to Denmark, or to sprout wings and fly to her mamma this very night.
Páll brushes his fingers across her lips, then releases her hand and turns away. She feels the chill when he lets her go.
‘I will see you again soon,’ he says softly. ‘I will visit next summer.’
‘Yes, you must,’ she says dully. When she tries to imagine the days ahead, she can see only a cavernous blackness. Next summer is a bottomless abyss.
He puts his arms around her and rests his forehead against hers. His eyes, so close to hers, are blue and clear. Looking into them is like staring into her own soul. She puts her hand on his chest and can feel every clutch of his heart; the push and tug of his breath and hers. Which is which?
There is a sudden sharp cry from outside the door. ‘Rósa!’
She and Páll jump apart, as if stung. Rósa turns away as Katrín bursts into the storeroom. Her gaze flicks from Rósa to Páll. ‘The sheep are gone. The cows too.’
‘Gone?’ Ró
sa says.
‘How?’ demands Páll.
Katrín explains as they stride through the croft and out into the snow, pulling on shawls and mittens as they walk.
She and Pétur had heard a noise from outside and had rushed into the snow. ‘It sounded like a voice calling, crying out for help, or in pain.’
They had thought it might belong to someone from the settlement, one of those poor men who had ventured onto the hills only to be engulfed by the snow. They followed the cries to the barn and found the doors open and the animals gone.
‘But how?’ Rósa gasps, battling the frozen wind. ‘We shut the door, Katrín.’
‘That is what I told Pétur, though he is calling me a brainless old witch. The snow is churned up all around, but the tracks are fading fast.’
‘They’ll be buried in this before long,’ puffs Páll.
‘That cry,’ says Katrín, wistfully. ‘It was so like . . . a child shouting.’
‘You think someone is out in the snow?’ Rósa asks uncertainly.
Katrín’s eyes are bright as she avoids the question. ‘Look,’ she points at a dark shape ahead, ‘here is Pétur. And this is how we found the barn. Door wide open.’
Pétur’s face is grim. Rósa feels her cheeks flush, even though she knows they had shut the door.
‘We search in pairs,’ Pétur says. ‘Katrín with Páll. Rósa with me.’ When she shakes her head, he growls. ‘I won’t tell Jón I have lost his wife as well as his sheep.’
Rósa opens her mouth to argue, but Katrín and Páll have already started treading a path through the snow, following one of the gashes into the blanket of white that the animals have trampled.
Pétur sets off in the opposite direction, where there is a single path, as though one of the animals has broken from the rest and charged away by itself, in a blind panic. They wade through the thick-falling snow, the ice stinging their faces, but they hear nothing, see nothing, except the never-ending white. The snow is so thick that it coats Rósa’s eyelashes, and when she wipes it away more flakes quickly settle. She has the lurching sensation that she is going blind, but she must continue walking. Pétur is so close, yet she can’t see him. She stops and cries out in alarm.
Pétur is next to her in an instant, and, as much as she fears him, she clings to him as though he is a rock and she is battered by a stormy sea.
