by Caroline Lea
As she walks, she risks a glance at Anna’s grubby face, barely inches from hers. It is smattered with bruises. The woman seems asleep; her pale eyelids flutter disturbingly, as though she is experiencing a convulsive fit. Just then, Anna doubles over and howls, clutching at her belly.
She falls to the ground. Pétur curses and tries to pull her up, but she squats in the snow and growls.
‘She is cursed!’ Rósa cries. ‘Some spirit . . . The devil!’
‘Rósa, you’re a simpleton!’ He grimaces and turns back to Anna. ‘Up!’ His voice is flint but his touch is light. Rósa draws comfort from seeing him rein in his anger.
Anna’s fit subsides. She allows her arms to be laid over their shoulders and they trudge onwards. Twice more, she convulses and nearly falls, and twice more Pétur cajoles her forward. Only his gritted teeth betray his mood. Rósa has never seen him so outwardly gentle when his thoughts are in such obvious turmoil.
Suddenly Rósa stops. ‘Surely we should go to the croft. It will be warm.’
‘The pit-house is closer.’ Pétur uses the long-suffering tone one might direct at a petulant child. ‘There is food there, ale and blankets. But no! Let us drag Anna two hundred paces to the croft. She will have a comfortable place to die and we will hang her in the storeroom with the sheep carcasses, until the thaw.’
Anna gives a throaty snarl, which Rósa realizes is a tiny chuckle.
‘Pit-house,’ she gasps.
Rósa nods. They do not say another word until they reach it.
Pétur digs the snow away from the doorway and they tumble into the darkness. He lights three tallow candles and, as Rósa’s eyes adjust, she notices that the single room is perfectly kept. It is laid out with two straw mattresses and some benches. There are flagons of ale on the table and pieces of dried meat hanging from the rafters. There is even some half-finished knitting.
‘Who lives here?’ Rósa demands.
‘No one,’ Pétur answers. ‘Jón and I use it, if we return late from fishing.’
Rósa stares at him but he says no more.
Anna crawls onto the bed, then gives a long moan. Pétur barely looks at her but pours ale into three cups, made from sheep horn.
‘We must stop these attacks,’ cries Rósa. ‘She will die!’
‘This is no attack,’ says Pétur, taking a long draught of ale. He passes a cup to Rósa. ‘And now she can rest, she will not die.’
‘But you said –’
‘There is nothing wrong with her that many women do not endure.’
Rósa puts a hand to her mouth. ‘She is . . .’
‘Yes.’ Pétur draws aside Anna’s many cloaks and tunics; the swell of her belly is tight as the skin on a ripe apple.
Rósa draws a sharp breath. ‘Oh!’
Not just his wife then. His pregnant wife. Rósa’s thoughts whirl.
And yet she is winded by pity for this fragile creature. Her body is tiny against the rise of her belly; her arms and legs are sticks of driftwood.
Rósa reaches out to Anna; the other woman pushes her away, spitting curses. Rósa keeps her hand outstretched, as if offering it to a wild animal to sniff. She looks into Anna’s eyes and sees, beneath the rage, a terrified child.
Rósa smiles, lips trembling. ‘Let me help you.’
Anna collapses forward into her arms. Rósa cradles her, then shifts her gently onto her back and peels off layer after layer of Anna’s clothing, until she lies in just a shift. Her body is bruised and mud-blackened.
‘You have lived in the hills?’ Pétur asks.
Anna stares at him. ‘Katrín . . .’ Her blue eyes light, then shine with tears. ‘I want Katrín.’
Rósa strokes her grubby cheek. ‘Katrín is . . . close. She will be here soon.’ Her lie sounds unconvincing, even to her own ears.
Pétur scowls and turns away.
Another pain shakes Anna and she cries out, then lies back against Rósa, panting. Her eyes are huge and pitiful. ‘Will I die? Don’t let me die.’
Rósa clasps her cold fingers. ‘Hush, no. You won’t die. Here, sip this ale.’
Anna mutters over and over, ‘Don’t let me die, don’t let me die – I won’t die!’
Pétur turns back to Anna. ‘And where have you lived these past two seasons?’ She recoils from him.
‘Leave her be,’ says Rósa. ‘Fetch me a cloth and some water for her face.’
Pétur does as she asks.
Rósa gently wipes her face and arms. Anna’s face is blank. ‘I was frightened. I’m so . . .’ She trembles then moans, a drawn-out, wordless cry that scours the walls of the pit-house and makes the hairs rise on the back of Rósa’s neck: for a moment, it is as though she is looking into a mirror. She sees the same torturous rift that has ripped her in two these past months.
Anna’s body shudders again and her belly tightens; she clenches her teeth and snarls. Once the pain has passed, Rósa strokes her hair and holds the ale to her mouth.
‘You told everyone she was dead,’ Rósa murmurs, glancing up at Pétur.
His eyes flash. ‘What else could we have done? She . . . escaped,’ he mutters, staring at the floor.
‘Run away,’ Anna murmurs. ‘Run far, far away.’ She sobs, then cringes as Pétur glowers at her.
Rósa stares at Pétur and he flushes, drops his gaze, then looks back at Anna. His lip curls and he takes a step forward, but Rósa puts herself between him and Anna. ‘Don’t touch her! You did this.’
‘No!’ Pétur reddens further. ‘Not mine. I wouldn’t . . .’
Rósa narrows her eyes. ‘What did you do?’
‘I . . . I have never hurt her.’
Anna sighs and murmurs, ‘Run away, run away,’ in a sing-song chant that fills the room, so it seems as if the walls themselves are whispering.
Rósa’s legs shake but she forces herself to face Pétur, to look into those predator’s eyes. ‘You made her leave!’
‘It was better. With her gone –’
‘But Jón –’
‘He knew it was better. She would have ruined him.’
Rósa shivers. They had preferred the thought of Anna’s death to the story of her flight. Jón had played the part of the respectable grief-stricken widower.
Pétur turns to Anna. Contempt twists his face. ‘And now you come to stir trouble. Perilous travel, but worth risking yourself and the babe, just to wave your belly –’
‘Pétur! Enough!’ Rósa leans forward and strokes Anna’s cheek. But Anna makes no response except to hiss.
She lies quite still between pains, panting. Her sweat-sheened face looks like a grey, river-wet stone, and Rósa can feel the shape of the other woman’s fear as if it is her own, as if it is the darkness that has swallowed her these past months.
‘We should fetch Katrín,’ she says.
Pétur shakes his head, but Anna’s eyes are suddenly sharp. ‘Katrín,’ she groans, her voice cracking. ‘Bring Katrín.’
Another spasm bends Anna double, and she howls.
‘She seems weaker,’ Rósa mutters, sponging Anna’s cheeks and forehead. Another cramp grips her and her whole body is shaking. Rósa’s legs quiver too, as Pétur watches her, but she is tired, so tired, of being afraid. She grips Anna’s hand.
‘Go! Now!’ she says to Pétur. When he doesn’t move, she adds, ‘If she dies, I will tell –’
‘Enough, woman!’ Pétur groans. ‘I will look for Katrín.’
He slams out into the cold and then the air is quiet and still, apart from Anna’s laboured breathing and the heavy thud of Rósa’s blood in her ears.
Rósa squeezes Anna’s cold hand. The tips of her fingers are laced with blue. She gazes mutely at the straggle of roots in the turf roof.
‘Did you come in here,’ Rósa murmurs, ‘when you were . . . when you lived in Stykkishólmur? I was forbidden.’
Again, Anna doesn’t answer, but she is suddenly still, her breathing quiet.
‘I saw the runes,’ Rósa whi
spers. ‘In the loft. And the . . . stain. He hurt you?’
Anna looks straight at Rósa and then she screams – an uprooting sound that makes Rósa recoil and want to cover her ears.
When the pain has passed, she wipes Anna’s forehead and whispers, ‘The blood in the loft. Did Jón harm you? Or did Pétur?’
Anna’s gaze fixes on Rósa – those eyes, like the azure in a glacier, where it is coldest and most dangerous. ‘They take everything. Men take everything.’
Rósa opens her mouth to argue, then shuts it again. She remembers what Pétur had told her: how the Vikings claimed the land by chopping down the trees and tilling the soil until it turned to dry dust and barren rock. Men desire everything. Women’s bodies are part of the land they claim. She clears her throat. ‘But they didn’t try to . . . They didn’t hurt you by –’
‘I wished for a baby,’ Anna gasps. ‘Wishing is dangerous.’ She wraps her arms about herself and laughs, a high-pitched sound, like splintering glass. Then another spasm takes her breath; the laughter becomes a moan.
Rósa feels a chill. It is as if she is looking at the snarled mess of what her own mind is becoming: a tangled skein of rage and fear and loss. She presses her lips to Anna’s forehead. ‘You are safe now,’ she whispers.
Anna’s eyes are dark caverns. ‘You are a fool.’
Rósa inspects the area under her skirt often, but there is no change. Between spasms, Anna seems to sleep, her breath puffing lightly from between her parted lips.
Rósa reaches into her tunic pocket to run her fingers over the shape of the glass woman. But her pocket is empty, the little figurine gone. Rósa imagines it lying outside in the snow. She shakes her head to rid herself of a stabbing sensation of loss. She had somehow tied her own fate to the ornament: this thing that seemed so breakable yet remained unmarked, even when she tried to crush it. Jón had thought it an apt gift because it was humble; Rósa loved it because, though it appeared no more substantial than ice, the glass woman had survived. And, in the face of Jón’s stifling expectations, survival itself had seemed an act of rebellion.
She wipes away a tear, then strokes Anna’s damp cheek and rubs her stomach. ‘Does this help or pain you?’
Anna’s eyes roll and she moans. Rósa tries to quell her rising panic.
Pétur does not return. The tallow candles burn low and gutter. Rósa manages to find two more before the light disappears completely.
Rósa opens the door to see if she can make out Pétur’s shape, but is blinded by the dizzying shatter of snowflakes reeling through the grey air. The shadows howl; she cannot even tell whether it is day or night, and she slams the door.
Anna is weaker still, her breathing shallow. She barely regains consciousness, even in the throes of the pains, but writhes on the bed, groaning.
Rósa whispers meaningless words of comfort into her ear, but Anna’s skin is as slick as wet obsidian, and her eyes are dull.
Rósa lies next to her on the bed, hoping that her own body might somehow take some of Anna’s pain. But Anna’s lips draw back in a rictus and she snarls. Rósa crushes her own fear and revulsion: this woman needs her.
Anna’s teeth are chattering, and Rósa bends to pick up the woman’s discarded dress to lay it across her. And that is when she feels it in the pocket: a stone. She reaches in and draws out a flat runestone with the sign for protection scrawled upon it. It is flatter than the one Rósa threw into the snow, and darker, but still, it offers her some comfort. She presses it into Anna’s hand and whispers the words of protection, lines from the Sagas, phrases from the Lord’s Prayer, all jumbled together.
The sound must soothe Anna, because her breathing lengthens and, between pains, she seems to doze.
Then a spasm grips her and bends her body almost in two. She screams and suddenly Rósa sees a dark pool of blood inching across the blankets beneath Anna’s shift.
‘Blood everywhere!’ The horror knocks the breath from her: she has seen this in ewes. The afterbirth is blocking the birth canal and has come away from the womb. Anna will bleed dry.
Rósa feels a crushing pressure in her chest, as if someone has bound her with ropes and is pulling them tighter. She knows what she must do. The baby might still survive . . . But it will have to be cut from Anna’s belly.
Anna will die.
Rósa’s breath is tight. For a moment she feels paralysed. Then she thinks of the baby and she draws a shaky breath. The decision is as clear as a drop of meltwater in the palm of her hand. A life may still be saved; some good can come from this. Watching Anna bleed to death would itself be an act of murder. She is growing paler; her hands, lips and nose are tinged blue, as if she is already becoming ice.
Even as panic grips her, Rósa realizes that fear is useless, like lighting a candle to melt a snowdrift. She knows what she must do, and bites her lip until she tastes metal. She picks up Pétur’s knife from the bench, turns to Anna with shaking hands and draws her shift up over her belly.
Her mind searches blankly for a prayer, a spell, a line from the Sagas. She can only whisper, ‘Forgive me,’ her voice fracturing as she presses the blade to Anna’s bulging abdomen.
A tiny bead of blood appears on her white skin. It is nothing against the puddles and spatterings of gore that cover her legs, the mattress and the blankets, but still Rósa retches and stops.
She floods with the overwhelming caged-animal terror that has plagued her for months, the knowledge that there are duties she must fulfil, orders she must obey.
Then she thinks again of that tiny baby who has never known the world, has never drawn breath to do anyone harm. Purest of beings, yet the life is draining from it, before it has had a chance to blink, and bawl at the cold misery of living.
She sets her shoulders and squares her jaw. She must do this. It is a choice, and she will grasp it with both hands. As she looks down at Anna’s body, it is as if she is seeing herself, the pain that has gripped her. And here is a chance to conquer it.
She starts to cut.
The blade is sharp. Sudden blood. Anna screams.
‘I know! I know! I’m sorry,’ Rósa sobs.
Anna groans.
‘It will be over soon. You will hold your baby. I promise.’ She presses the runestone into Anna’s hands.
Her flesh is cold as the sea, her eyes wild. Rósa clutches her icy fingers and the stone with one hand, the knife with the other.
But then she meets resistance, something hard – the womb. She jerks away and rubs her fingers reflexively to rid them of the sensation of cutting someone.
Anna moans, and Rósa thinks of the fox pup, of the trust the little animal placed in her.
She strokes Anna’s cold cheek. ‘You are safe, I promise.’ Her voice trembles but the lie is necessary. Sometimes deceit is kinder than the truth.
So much blood. Sticky and hot and stinking of metal. Rósa wipes the wound. A tear falls onto her hand.
Anna lies still now, breath barely puffing from between her slack lips.
Rósa takes a breath and cuts. Another gush of blood. She braces herself to hear an infant howl.
Silence. Rósa reaches into Anna’s body and tugs. Like a miracle, a tiny body emerges, whole and intact.
Rósa gasps. ‘Beautiful!’ But then she turns the baby around, and her breath catches in her throat. Its skin is bluish; it shows no sign of drawing breath. But more than that: it is like a little sea creature that has been ripped from the ocean too soon. Its skin is iridescent and the eyes, half open, are utterly black. There is a smooth bulge of skin, where the genitals should be.
Rósa presses her fingers against its chest, willing it to rise and fall, but the baby remains lifeless. She blows on its face, even turns it over and slaps it. She kisses its pale cheek.
‘Breathe. Breathe!’
Nothing. A gaping silence where life should be.
Rósa cradles the limp little thing and presses her lips to its cooling forehead; she caresses its webbed feet, its small
pointed chin, its delicate tipped ears, like an elf’s. She thinks of the whispers about huldufólk.
Rósa draws a shuddering sigh and wraps the blanket around the tiny creature, concealing the hands, the ears, the point of the chin. It looks like any other newborn, sleeping peacefully.
‘Anna. Your baby. It is . . . perfect, see.’
Anna’s eyelids flutter and Rósa lays the baby on her chest. There is a shadow of a smile on Anna’s lips. ‘A girl?’ she murmurs.
Rósa draws a shuddering breath. ‘Yes, a . . . girl.’
‘Give her to Katrín.’ Anna’s voice is barely more than a breath.
Rósa leans in close. ‘Anna. Whose child is it?’
‘Call her . . . Dora,’ Anna whispers, then shudders. Her face falls slack.
‘Who is the pabbi, Anna?’
‘Tell Jón I forgive . . . Oddur Thordson was –’ Anna gasps, then her breath catches.
‘Who is Oddur Thordson?’
Anna’s eyes are blank. She does not make another sound.
Rósa waits for a word, a movement, a breath – anything to show that she lives, or that she is passing the threshold into death. But there is nothing so momentous. No marker to show when she exists or when she is no more than a bloodied husk upon the bed. Death, when it comes, steals her with a whisper and silence.
Rósa feels hollow and tearless, a dried-out shell. She lifts the tiny dead child from Anna’s chest and arranges it in the crook of her arm. Then she tugs Anna’s shift down and layers the two of them in blanket after blanket, mother and child. At a glance, they could be tucked up in bed together, sleeping.
After what seems like half a day, the door bangs open and Pétur gusts in with a sweep of frozen air.
Rósa turns. ‘Katrín, I . . .’ The words die on her lips. Pétur is alone. He stares at the bed, at the bodies, at the blood that spatters the walls and has dried over Rósa’s face and arms, so she feels she is encased in a solid mask of gore.
