by Caroline Lea
‘I tried . . .’ she whispers, and suddenly she cannot stop her tears.
Pétur is grim-faced as he draws back the blanket and gazes at the tiny misshapen baby. ‘She was doomed, Rósa. And see the size of the infant. It was born too soon – a mercy, perhaps.’
‘Katrín and Páll?’
Pétur shakes his head, and grief hits Rósa, like a balled fist in the guts. She weeps as Pétur rewraps the child and places it back in Anna’s arms.
‘It looks like . . .’ Rósa cannot choke out the words: that it looks like a monster.
Pétur is hard-jawed. ‘Not Jón’s child . . .’ He trails off and there is silence.
Rósa whispers, ‘She said the pabbi was . . . Oddur Thordson.’
Pétur’s head jerks up and he stands transfixed. ‘Oddur Thordson?’
Rósa nods.
‘You are certain? She said Oddur Thordson?’
‘Yes. Who is he?’
Pétur is muttering the name, like a spell.
‘Pétur! Who is Oddur Thordson?’
Pétur’s face is sharp with sorrow and something else. Dread? Revulsion?
‘Oddur Thordson,’ he rasps, ‘is Anna’s uncle.’
Jón
Thingvellir, December 1686
It is dark and Oddur will be sleeping. I imagine him, drowned in drink, lips slack, every breath a puff of stinking fumes.
The door to the croft is ajar. I slip through the gap like a shadow.
Inside, the tiny croft is almost bare: a single room with two beds. He is lying on one, insensible. Everything is grubby, with a sticky patina; the table and bench are littered with half-eaten crusts. The open fire is nearly burned out, surrounded by weeks of accumulated ash. I find a pile of sheep dung in a corner and heap a little on the embers, then blow until an orange glow fills the croft.
He stirs and moans in his sleep, but does not wake. I work around him, taking the thick rope from around my waist – Danish, strong enough to truss a bull – and bind his legs together, then his arms, placing his hands in front of his chest, so that he could be praying. He twitches, grunts, then continues to snore.
I position my bench in front of the bed, beyond the stretch of a swung fist.
Then I fill my cup with brennevín. I sit and wait.
Pétur fetched me from the loft in the middle of the night. ‘Jón! Jón!’ He shook my shoulder.
I pushed him away. ‘Let me rest. My stomach feels all fire.’
Pétur put his face very close to mine. ‘I have found Anna.’
‘Anna! How? But she’s –’
‘In the pit-house.’
‘That cannot . . .’ My thoughts reeled. ‘Take me to her.’ I tried to scramble up, then sank back, coughing, pain knifing across my side.
‘Steady.’ Pétur put an arm around me and eased me upright. ‘She is –’
‘She is what?’ I tried to stand, then fell back, clutching my belly: it felt as though my guts might spill out. Something in Pétur’s expression gave me pause. ‘What?’
‘Anna is . . . she is – dead,’ Pétur croaked.
‘Show me.’
He leaned down and lifted me, as if I were no heavier than a child, though I knew his arm hurt him from his sharp intake of breath as he bore my weight.
‘You are in pain,’ I protested. ‘Set me down.’
‘My pain is nothing,’ he said, then put me across his back while he descended the ladder. He cradled me against his chest while he struggled across the snow. Every jolting step was a blade in my side; the breath whistled through my teeth.
I leaned my head against his warmth and tried to mask my agony.
Anna was laid out on the bed, the babe wrapped up next to her. Rósa knelt on the floor beside them, holding Anna’s hand. Her shoulders were shaking.
I put my hand on the back of her neck. I could feel every one of her fragile bones. She recoiled, then scrabbled backwards.
‘I’m not a monster,’ I said, but it emerged as a growl, and she flinched again.
‘Of course not, Jón,’ she whispered, her eyes large. I could see her frantic heartbeat in the delicate hollow of her throat.
I tried to smile, but managed only a grimace.
Then I sank onto the bench, wheezing – every inhalation was a tongue of flame licking across the wound.
In death, Anna was beautiful. The mouth had lost its stubborn petulance, and her face held none of the tense anger that had shadowed her every glance in life.
Pétur murmured, ‘She was always doomed. And, look, she is all bones. The Lord knows how she dragged herself here.’
She has her baby now. I would not speak such a brutal thought aloud.
I reached out towards the tiny shrivelled thing. ‘Mine, poor child.’
Pétur shook his head. ‘Not yours.’
I frowned. ‘But –’
‘It cannot be yours, Jón. You know it cannot . . .’ He trailed off and I put my head in my hands.
Rósa and Pétur exchanged a glance; Pétur shook his head at her.
‘What is it? What did she tell you?’
‘It is of no matter,’ Pétur said.
‘Tell him.’ Rósa’s voice was stiff, as though the past week had hardened her.
Pétur groaned.
‘Tell me!’
They were both silent.
Then, ‘Her uncle,’ Rósa whispered. So quietly that I thought I must have misheard. I asked her to speak again because surely, surely not.
Pétur scrubbed his hands through his hair. ‘Oddur Thordson is the pabbi.’
‘No!’ I reeled, remembering the man Anna had lived with when I met her first, the drunken fool who had raised her half wild. I recalled how she sought to avoid him, and spent so many days wandering the hills. I remembered her eagerness to wed me: she had been so desperate to escape Thingvellir. I thought of her dissatisfaction in our marriage bed, and how, when I lay atop her, she stared at me with a contempt and hatred that made me wither.
I closed my eyes. She had been a drowning soul and I had watched her sink beneath the surface again and again. Nothing I had done had pulled her from the water.
I spoke slowly. ‘I’ll cut Oddur’s throat.’
‘Jón, you will not,’ said Pétur.
‘I can’t let this stand.’
‘And yet you must.’
‘Why would she return to him?’ I looked down and found my hands were trembling. ‘Why did she not go elsewhere?’ I demanded.
Pétur averted his eyes and, once more, I was struck by the suspicion that he had threatened her. And yet I could not ask him. To confirm my fears, I would have to confront him, to condemn him.
‘Oddur!’ I muttered. ‘I will throttle the miserable wretch.’
‘No!’ hissed Pétur. ‘You will change nothing by bringing the law upon your own head. In the spring, we will seek justice through the Althing.’
I gave a vicious bark of laughter. ‘How? How can I condemn the man who violated my wife when I have told one and all that she is in her grave?’
Silence settled between us. Outside, the snow dropped through the darkness, muffling and concealing everything. Rósa still held Anna’s hand, and was stroking the lilac fingertips. She must have sensed my gaze on her because she looked up, eyes hard. ‘I suppose you must lock me away now, to silence me?’
I stared at her. ‘Rósa, I –’
‘I will not tell a soul about the child,’ Rósa interrupted. ‘Not for your sake, but for hers. People are cruel.’ She stroked Anna’s pale cheek. ‘I would not have more whispering about her.’
Pétur was watching Rósa, his body tense; he exhaled slowly and leaned back against the wall. Even so, I knew his thoughts must be running ahead, as mine were: Anna’s body in the pit-house was a danger. The ground was too hard to bury her, but the sight of her and her poor deformed bastard child would whip up a storm in the settlement. Certainly I would be goði no longer: Egill would accuse me of murder.
Pétur squeezed
my arm. ‘We must do it tonight.’
‘The ground will be frozen for weeks,’ I muttered.
Rósa ceased her whispered prayers and turned on me. ‘You would bury her now? Hide her, unmourned?’
‘Who would mourn her?’ Pétur snapped. ‘You did not know her, Rósa. She had no friends –’
‘Katrín loved her,’ Rósa said.
‘Katrín has mourned her once.’
‘Without a proper burial.’ There was a new defiance in Rósa’s voice, a challenge in the angle of her jaw. ‘Katrín loved her like a daughter. And she lost her, like her daughter. You say you are no monster, but you deny –’
‘I would deny Katrín nothing.’ My tone must have been more ferocious than I intended, for Rósa cowered.
‘I would spare her this misery,’ I said, more quietly. ‘Will it lessen your sorrow to have Katrín share it? Will her grief raise Anna from the dead?’
Rósa’s head was bowed and a tear splashed onto her hand.
I drew a breath and spoke more calmly. ‘We must protect Katrín from this. Surely you see that telling her would be cruel.’
Rósa said nothing, but brushed the hair from Anna’s forehead.
‘We will bury her tonight,’ I said.
Rósa bit her lip. Rebellion glittered in her eyes, but she remained silent.
I rubbed my eyes. ‘A fire to soften the soil will draw too much notice.’
‘Let us hope Egill lies crushed beneath his croft,’ Pétur muttered darkly. He paused. ‘If we took her up onto the hill,’ he said, ‘nature would do its work.’
‘No!’ Rósa and I spoke together. She rose to her feet, mouth twisting in revulsion. ‘You would let the foxes feast on her? On the child? You heartless –’
Pétur held up his hands. ‘It gives me no joy, but what else?’
‘I never believed those who said you weren’t human. But now –’
‘Pétur would not do it,’ I said, putting my hand upon Rósa’s shoulder. ‘We only seek some way to bury her that will cause no more pain.’
Rósa shrugged off my hand and strode to the fire, stiff-backed. ‘I wish . . .’ She stopped, and I saw her angrily wipe her cheeks, then kick one of the hearthstones with the toe of her boot.
I suppose she wished herself unwed, that she wished herself back in Skálholt, that she longed to be anywhere but here. I could read her regrets and yearning in the shuddering of her shoulders, in the way she held herself apart and rigid, like a trapped animal. But I did not ask what she wished for. I could not trust myself.
Pétur watched her too, his body rigid. I caught his eye and shook my head.
He sighed. ‘We can’t bury her at sea.’
‘She would remain there until spring, floating under the ice.’
Rósa muttered something.
‘Speak up,’ Pétur demanded.
‘The hearthstones,’ she whispered, and the look of self-loathing on her face could have cracked my heart.
We wrapped the bodies separately in linen sheets, layering stones in the material.
I swaddled the child with a stone next to its heart. I whispered my longing for forgiveness to Anna’s cold body and pressed my lips to the crust of dried blood on her forehead.
My wound pained me as we began to carry her down to the sea ice – I struggled to hold myself upright. Pétur tried to persuade me against it. He could manage alone, he insisted. But I couldn’t allow Anna such a lonely leave-taking. She had always made me feel so small, but looking at the softness of her face in death, I could see only the terrified child who had crouched behind her fury.
As I held Anna’s body close, Rósa stepped forward to help.
‘And what if I forbid you?’ I asked sternly.
She raised her chin and gazed directly into my eyes. ‘And what if you do?’
Her face was hard, her eyes unreadable, and I was suddenly struck by how, in that moment, she reminded me of Anna.
We cradled Anna’s body between us. Pétur and I bore the brunt of the weight, carrying her legs and her shoulders. My breath whistled from between my teeth.
Pétur stopped. ‘Rest, for God’s sake.’
I shook my head. ‘Walk on.’ I clenched my jaw. Every step gave something back to Anna.
Rósa walked between us, clasping the swaddled child, no bigger than the span of my outstretched hands. Her face was pale and tense, like one of the waxwork death masks they make in foreign countries.
Lord, what have I done to these women?
The snow grew deeper as we laboured down the hill. The land was a flat white pall, spread out like rumpled wool.
Into the distance stretched the solid sea, sullen and murky beneath the ice.
The sea will trick a man, seeming frozen and steadfast on the surface, but under the white crust, the black water gulps greedily at the breathing world above.
In time, I knew, despite everything that had happened, the sun would rise and the light would glitter off the ice, like shards of glass. The world would glow.
Walking downhill jolted my wound. Every step echoed through my body, the pain as exquisite as cut crystal. My gift to the woman whom I could not save.
A chill wind blew across the frozen water. There was no marker to show where the land ended and the sea began, except for the blocks of solid sea, where the water had frosted over, shifted, then frozen again. Tiny slabs of ice squatted, stacked like tombstones.
We walked out onto the crusted water. The ice groaned under our feet, the rumble of an Arctic bear, warning as the dark water beneath shifted. We stopped. My heart beat in my throat. I waited for the crack of the ice, the roar of the water.
The world held its breath.
I turned to Rósa. ‘Stay here. Give me the child.’
‘I will come too.’ Her mouth was stubbornly set, but her lips trembled.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ I growled.
She dropped her gaze. I felt a flood of relief.
I took the little bundle and Pétur and I walked onwards, feet crunching on the ice, which whined beneath our weight. Anna’s cold head bounced on my shoulder.
I closed my eyes and imagined, for a moment, that I had been able to reach her. That my gifts of warmth and clothing and ornaments had been enough to soothe the poison that Oddur had dripped into her before we met. I wondered if Pétur felt the same grief but, as ever, his true feelings were a mystery. Had he truly chased her away – condemned her to death? I would not – could not – ask.
We reached a point ten horse-lengths from where the white ice ended in ragged circles, and the black open sea stretched beyond.
‘We go no further,’ Pétur muttered. ‘I do not trust it to hold.’
He took a stave and jabbed at the ice. It splintered, and black water bled hungrily to the surface. Wasn’t it the greatest sin of all, to hide her body? She would rot in the sea, fish-nibbled and unknown. I stared into the chasm of darkness. It seemed I was gazing at the hollow void of my own future: by burying the truth, I was stepping into the shadows, walking away from God.
It was too late: Pétur released the baby, then Anna, feet-first.
The stones in her shroud dragged her away, a fading smudge of white in the drowning darkness. The water consumed everything. Her quick, wide smile that I had seen so rarely. Her flashes of rage. The way she tensed her jaw and glared. Her longing for a child. Her capacity for love, so thwarted from the start. Everything disappeared with the speed of a breath. The sea monster gulped her down, then yawned, insatiable.
I tried to mutter a prayer, but my mind was like a blank sheet of vellum. In the end, the only words I could think of to say were ‘Forgive me.’
From behind my shoulder, Rósa’s voice: ‘Amen.’
‘When the storm abates, the waves roar,’ Pétur muttered. Beside me, Rósa shivered, and I could see why: over the grating ice and the vanished body, Pétur’s words sounded like a prophecy. We did not say Amen.
The ice moaned.
We walked back
to the croft in silence. The witnessing moon sailed above, wide-eyed and watchful.
In Oddur’s croft, memories and the brennevín have lit a fire in my belly. I am ready. My wound throbs with every thud of my heart, as if the thin layer of new skin that holds me together may tear apart at any moment. Ten breaths more, and it will not matter. This vengeance will be my last gift. Then I will crumple around my guts and sleep.
Oddur still snores before me on the bed, limp as a dead man. I draw out my knife and prick his finger, hard enough to draw blood. He grunts and starts, blinks blearily in the firelight. Then he sees me, sees the blade in my hand. ‘Christ!’ he yells, and staggers upright but, trussed as he is, falls heavily to the floor. ‘I have no coin.’ His voice is blurred with drink. ‘Take the pewter plates.’
‘I do not want your plates.’ I smile. I am not a cruel man, but he looks ridiculous, half naked, sweating and wheezing. Anna would have laughed to see him.
‘You want gold?’ His tone is wheedling now. ‘I will show you Gunnar Arnason’s croft. He has gold. And a red stone the size of a man’s fist.’
‘A red stone?’ I have no interest in such things, but I would like to know if Oddur is a liar as well as a villain.
‘Huge. We can take it together. Gunnar is a fool and will not suspect me.’
I lean forward on the bench so that my face is inches from his. His eyes are still wide and fearful, but there is a glitter of hope there too. And greedy cunning. There is no stone, I would stake my life on it. If I let Oddur go, he would knife me and steal my coin purse as soon as he could.
‘So, you are a liar and a thief, as well as a lecher?’
Oddur frowns and tries to focus his gaze on me. ‘I – I know you. Who . . .?’
‘You don’t remember me, Oddur?’
His face registers horror, which he covers with a cry. ‘Jón! My dear kinsman Jón!’ He laughs too loudly. ‘But so filthy and wild-looking. A fine trick. But these ropes pain my wrists. I cannot fetch you ale if my hands are numb.’
I lean closer. ‘I have come for Anna,’ I growl.
‘Anna? Ah. She is . . .’ His eyes dart left and right. Sweat glistens on his forehead. ‘I don’t know where she is.’ Too late, he adds, ‘There was talk she had died this last summer and you had buried her.’
