by Caroline Lea
‘No!’ Rósa gasps.
Jón shakes his head. ‘It is a great risk, Páll –’
‘No one need harm me.’
Pétur gives a shout of rough laughter. ‘Jón must harm you! He must string you up by your bollocks and leave you to rot on top of Helgafell, if you confess to killing his wife.’
Páll spreads his hands. ‘I need not confess. I will flee, which will suggest my guilt. After I am gone, you may say that you believe I . . . murdered Anna.’ His eyes, on Rósa’s, are wide and clear.
‘No!’ repeats Rósa, trembling. ‘They will hang you and –’
‘They will not find me,’ he says, his voice gentle but firm.
‘But you would never be able to settle anywhere. You would be an exile. You would live in fear, or freeze to death. You could not –’
‘I could not live, after watching you hanged.’ His voice cracks, but his gaze is fixed and steady. She knows the expression from childhood races when he had decided to win, no matter the cost. He once ran until his legs gave out and he vomited.
‘No!’ Rósa turns to Jón. ‘Tell Páll he can’t – he must not do this.’
Jón sighs, then looks at Pétur, who folds his arms across his chest, closes his eyes and briefly inclines his head. ‘It may save your life.’
‘No!’
Jón turns to her. ‘Rósa, I will not accuse him. We shall let the settlement gossip, and draw attention from you. Páll will hide for one winter. The rumours will pass. He could make a life elsewhere – in the east, perhaps.’
‘It is not right! And they wouldn’t believe it, surely.’
‘What choice have we?’ Jón takes her hand between his own.
You could tell the truth. But he will not. And her own fear silences her.
She snatches her hand away and stalks from the kitchen, out into the icy wind, into the needling rain that falls slantwise from the sullen sky.
She gasps lungful after lungful of cold air, yet still she feels she is drowning.
There is a call from the croft behind her: ‘Rósa!’
She runs down the hill, then ducks into the warmth of the barn. The horses are chewing contentedly on the hay. They raise their heads at the sight of her, then resume eating. It is comforting, their peaceful indifference to her tears. She puts her arms around Hallgerd’s neck, allowing the mare’s warmth to seep into her.
When the barn door creaks open, she doesn’t move. Páll does not say a word, but wraps himself around her and holds her, swaying gently back and forth. The movement is soothing: like the pulsing swing of water, the hushing of the waves; the rhythmic rocking of the heart in the body, counting out unravelling time.
She wishes she were braver. I thought I was doing the right thing, she would say. Perhaps he would believe her.
And yet what if he does not? What if her confession makes him see her differently? As a woman capable of violence. A woman skilled in the art of deception.
It seems the worst kind of cowardice: to abandon what she knows to be right, simply to retain the faint hope that, miles away as he will be, Páll will still love her; that, though he may leave her in body, his heart will still long for her. She should have the strength of will to confess and so salvage Páll’s good name, but she cannot risk saving him only to have him look upon her with contempt as they hang her. And perhaps, if he leaves, he will be safer, far away from this murderous place and the vicious people in it. So she says nothing, but stands in his arms as he rocks back and forth, back and forth. When she looks up, his cheeks are wet – from the rain outside, perhaps: she cannot tell.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers.
She nods against his chest.
‘I hoped . . .’
She knows. She had hoped, too. But hope has long since had its guts pulled out and scattered for scavengers to feast upon.
‘I will go to Skálholt first,’ he murmurs, into her hair. ‘I will find your mamma and tell her you are well. I don’t want her to believe . . .’
She nods again.
‘I will move on after three nights. Egill may send someone after me. But I shall stay there for three nights, Rósa. Do you understand?’
She raises her head and presses her lips to his. It is a kiss of desperation, not desire; she understands perfectly what he cannot say – what he will not ask her to do.
He will wait for her in Skálholt. He will give her three nights to decide if she will leave her husband to follow him.
Jón
Thingvellir, December 1686
I run from the croft as the flush of dawn creeps across the skies. I take the bloodied rock and one of my knives, leaving Oddur slumped on the floor, an empty sack of flesh; he will never harm anyone again. As I walk back up the hill, the sky is incandescent. I close my eyes, stretch my arms wide and draw the light deep into my lungs.
The cave is dark and cold. I set about rekindling the fire. As I kneel I notice a boot print in the ash. Large. A man’s.
Someone knows I am here.
I feel none of my earlier dread and horror when I imagine Olaf capturing me. I have twined the snarled wool of my own fate so tightly about myself that my only remaining hope is that I may still retain the power to choose my own death.
Egill needs me arrested. He wants my humiliation: a public trial, an edict from Copenhagen, the shame of a villain’s execution – a sharpened blade and a bloodied block. Perhaps, if I struggle violently enough, I can speed my own end – a quick death in a dark cave, rather than public disgrace.
I unsheath my knife. It glitters in the moonlight, pointing the way to the path of escape within myself that I could open. But no. I squat in the entrance of the cave, at the point where the light turns to shadow, and I wait.
Páll fled Stykkishólmur that night, just as he had promised.
The next morning, I watched Katrín’s face as she returned from telling the news in the settlement. She nodded grimly. It had worked: gossip had Páll as the villain: the outsider who had stalked Anna, stabbed her, then hidden her body under the sea ice.
I watched Rósa listen, pale-cheeked, then turn away.
When I asked what troubled her, she said, ‘It will not stand. Even they, who do not know Páll, must question it. He did not know her, had no reason to harm her.’
‘They have a man who behaves as if he is guilty,’ I said. ‘And they know men commit evil acts if the devil grips them.’
‘They are fools,’ Rósa snapped savagely, and stalked to the barn.
Pétur came to stand at my side. ‘She is right,’ he murmured.
I nodded. ‘I know. But we must hope that Páll’s seeming guilt will be enough. We may have some hope, if Egill has been deceived.’
But, even as I spoke, I knew they were both right. Egill would not stop until he had destroyed me. And accusing my second wife of murdering the first would fit his purposes perfectly.
We had decided to bury Anna upon the hill. I had hoped for a small private burial, where I might grieve for what had passed, without the feel of eyes on me, weighing my every expression. But every soul in the settlement plodded up to the hill, even those who had been injured when their crofts collapsed. The funerals for the poor souls who had died would take place over the coming days.
Pétur suggested that he and I should carry Anna up to her burial, but the thought of it sickened me – the memory, perhaps, of the night when we bore her bloodied body out across the ice. I could still recall the sensation of her cold cheek against mine, like some perverse lovers’ embrace.
So when Katrín argued that Anna should be borne to her resting place by women, I agreed. Pétur and I walked up the hill to wait with the rest of the settlement.
‘Let us hope this is an end to it,’ he murmured.
I gave him a tight smile, and saw, in those strange wild eyes, so like those of a hawk, the same foreboding I felt. Pétur had his knife in his belt, as had I.
The rain had stopped and the clouds lifted; a smear of unseasonal su
nlight flooded the sea. I watched the straight-edged rays showering down, as if the light itself were liquid dropped from Heaven.
A muttering from the crowd drew me back to myself. The women were bringing Anna up the hill. I didn’t know Katrín had rewrapped the body, until I saw that Anna had layers of the finest linen from my croft wound about her. For a moment, it was the expense that rankled. Then I saw the women’s faces, and the implications of what Katrín must have seen struck me.
That gaping wound, like an open mouth. Her emptied belly. Her ravaged womb. With more time to examine the body, Katrín would have seen all that grief had made her miss when Anna had first been found. What had Rósa told her? Pray God she had fabricated some story, or else feigned ignorance.
Both women had tear-stained cheeks. I cursed. Rósa had told Katrín everything.
The shame of what I had done flooded me. Katrín’s gaze was scorching and I looked away. I knew she must be imagining Anna wandering alone across the land: starving and freezing because I had spread the fiction of her death.
And Katrín would need only to say a word for the blame to fall upon Pétur and upon me also. The village would know of our lies and deceit. It would be easy enough for Egill to twist that tale into one of murder – of Anna and her child both.
Katrín stood, tight-lipped, watching as we lowered Anna into the ground. Her fisted hands were trembling. Pétur’s hand was on his knife.
After Egill had prayed over the body, I stepped forward and spoke the words of the funeral blessing; the crowd murmured the correct responses. I measured my breaths to stop my voice cracking. I must not break now.
Do not look at her body. There was a viscous silence. The waxy light made every face seem drawn and skeletal. All flesh is as grass. I closed my eyes and muttered, ‘Amen.’ Katrín wept and clenched her jaw.
Then Egill stood forward and held up his hands. ‘This is a dark day.’
‘I have said the blessing, Egill, and need no other man to add words to mine.’
‘And a darker day still when the suspicion falls on the croft of the goði.’
‘Peace, Egill,’ I growled.
The thin smile on his bloodless lips unnerved me. ‘A black day, indeed. And we shall remain in darkness, until we find justice.’
‘We will have justice,’ I snarled, ‘when we know the wrongdoer.’ I flicked my gaze to Katrín.
She stood poised, mouth open.
‘A man has fled. Is that not confession enough? You should pursue him,’ Egill said.
‘I do not think it would stand before the Althing.’
‘Then you will not hunt the villain down?’
‘I will hunt no man down when I am not certain of his guilt.’
‘Jón!’ Pétur called. But too late.
‘You do not believe him guilty, then?’ Egill crowed.
‘I do not know,’ I muttered, praying that Katrín would stay silent. Her face was hard, her eyes bright with tears, but she said nothing.
Thank you, I thought.
I started to walk back down the hill. The villagers turned to follow, muttering excitedly.
‘The boy had no motive,’ Egill called from behind me.
Pétur hissed. I knew that, like me, he had read Egill’s intentions. Páll’s guilt did not serve his purposes. He needed another villain, someone closer to me, someone people distrusted, and who had had reason to harm Anna. His gaze flickered between Rósa and Pétur. I tensed. Pétur folded his arms and raised his chin. Katrín stared at me.
Rósa stood with her fingers knitted into her woollen skirt, leaning against Katrín. I had thought her fragile when I first met her, but now I knew that, beneath her quiet curtsies and modestly lowered gaze, she was fashioned of flint and steel.
Still, her eyes widened when Egill turned to her. ‘Páll is your kinsman, Rósa?’
Rósa looked Egill in the eye. ‘And what if he is?’
Inwardly, I rejoiced at her insolence. Perhaps she might best him after all.
But then Rósa said, ‘He would not have harmed Anna.’ She paused, then finally whispered, ‘He did not harm her.’
I tensed, waiting for her to explain how Pétur and I had wronged Anna, had lied and deceived everyone.
Already I could imagine how Egill’s eyes would light when he heard the tale. I could picture the people’s excitement at the confirmation of Pétur’s barbarism and his savagery – they would believe he had corrupted me too. We would both lose our heads.
‘Páll did not harm Anna.’ Rósa’s clear voice swept over the hill with the whirling wind. ‘And I did not mean to . . . I never intended . . .’
The people drew closer to her, sharp-faced, and formed a ring around her. It was like watching a pack of circling wolves. I threw a desperate glance at Katrín, but she had been pushed to one side.
‘Speak up, girl!’ Egill said, his eyes suddenly bright.
‘I know what happened.’ Rósa drew a shuddering breath. Her voice faltered as the villagers stepped in, waiting to do Egill’s bidding.
‘I tried to save her,’ Rósa said. ‘I did not intend –’
‘Rósa, no!’ I called. But my call was lost in the excited cries of the villagers.
‘You?’ Egill said.
No! I couldn’t allow it. No matter the cost, I couldn’t let her confess for my crimes.
But it was too late. The people had surrounded Rósa. I could barely see her and, though Katrín was trying to push past, they had closed around her. I could hear whispers of ‘Murder’.
Njáll Agnarsson called, ‘She killed Anna! You heard her say it.’
Rósa cried out, her voice tight with fear.
‘No!’ I called, trying to drag them away. But they were huddled together and it was like pulling at a rockface.
Egill folded his arms and watched.
Katrín was shouting and trying to fight her way through. There was a thud and a cry as Pétur punched someone. His face was desperate.
I struck out, but before my fist could connect, I felt Olaf’s meaty hands around my throat. I scrabbled at his fingers, but his hands were like iron on my neck. I couldn’t breathe. The blood thudded in my skull.
I saw a hand reach down and fumble for a stone, then hurl it. I heard Rósa shout. Katrín shrieked – she was weeping and clawing at the backs of the villagers, crying out their names, pleading, but they ignored her. Rósa screamed as more stones flew through the air. I saw her face emerge from the huddle of bodies briefly; then she was dragged back under and engulfed in a sea of tearing hands and pummelling fists.
Pétur bellowed and hurled himself into the crowd, but was thrown backwards.
Rósa cried out again, her voice raw, then cut off, mid-scream.
I kicked back as hard as I could and threw my body forward, loosening Olaf’s grip. Then I swung around and punched him in the stomach. He doubled over.
The idea slid home with the ease of a sharpened blade. There was one thing I could do to prevent this wave from crashing over Rósa and swallowing her. I gasped a lungful of air and roared, ‘Stop!’ But they ignored me.
‘Stop! I did it!’ I bellowed. ‘It was me.’
The crowd froze, fell silent and slowly turned.
‘It was me,’ I repeated.
Every eye was upon me now. The crowd moved away from Rósa. She huddled on the ground, whimpering, her arms curled around her head and face. Katrín rushed in and cradled her. I caught a glimpse of her torn lip; one of her eyes was bloodied.
‘I did it,’ I repeated, more quietly.
Egill’s face was lit. ‘Did what?’
‘Jón, no!’ Pétur cried.
‘I killed Anna,’ I said calmly. ‘I am the guilty one.’
There was a collective gasp. Rósa moaned. Pétur cried out and cursed at me, but Egill’s voice was louder, his excitement almost palpable.
‘You killed her! How? Why?’
‘The events are between my soul and God. I’ll not name them for you. I give my confe
ssion to the Lord only. But know this: Anna died because of me. Now move away from my wife.’
And, as I said the words, I knew them to be true. That poor crosswise thing buried in her womb was my fault. Her madness, her desperation, her wanderings: all my doing. I did not wield the knife, but I killed her, as surely as if I had. And I must finally repent and pay the price of murder.
They closed around me and I let them. I allowed them to drag me away, to spit at me. Olaf punched me in the stomach twice, but I barely felt it.
They dragged me towards the pit-house, despite Rósa’s tears and Pétur’s rage. I knew I should feel a crushing terror, and yet I was strangely triumphant, as though I had stripped off layer after layer of clothing, only to find that underneath, where I had expected to see scarred and shrivelled flesh, I had discovered feathers and a rich plumage. People might mock me, but my thoughts felt winged and soared above the pit-house. Rósa would be safe now. Pétur, too. I smiled, then laughed.
Olaf punched me again and again, but the laughter bubbled from my mouth: suddenly thawed ice that had created a torrent after the years of frozen stillness.
Just before Olaf pushed me inside, Pétur grasped my arm.
‘Why?’ he demanded.
I gripped his arm, hoping that somehow the force of my hand around him might tell him everything I could not voice aloud.
Then Olaf bundled me inside and slammed the door. I heard the key scratch in the lock. Olaf’s bulk cast a great shadow between the wooden boards. There would be no escape.
Rósa
Stykkishólmur, November 1686
Rósa can barely stand and she collapses into Katrín’s arms. Her face is bleeding from a cut above one eye, and her arm is numb where someone had grabbed and twisted it. Her whole body is shaking. She had never imagined that such a thing would be possible, that people could turn into a many-clawed monster, deaf to its victim’s pain and pleading, intent only on destruction. She had thought they would rip the flesh from her bones.
Now they do not look at her, but slink past and walk back to the village in a tight-knit huddle, whispering.
