by Caroline Lea
She runs to the Hvítá, because he must be there, surely, at the place they used to sit, when she used to read to him, and where he first looked at her as though she were the only thing in the world.
And then, as if the heat of her desire has created him, there he is, staring into the swirling river. She is struck by the slump of dejection in his shoulders. He is as easily read as a well-known parable. Her heart thuds in her chest. She stops running, smooths her hair, gathers her breath.
‘It would be a cold drowning today,’ she calls.
‘Rósa!’ His eyes light. He holds out his arms and she reaches for him. All her worries are suspended: her fears of his judgement, her own guilt. Thoughts of her husband and all that happened in Stykkishólmur are distant and ice-covered. They belong to another life. For now, this closeness, this comfort, is all that exists.
‘I was afraid you had left,’ she mumbles into his chest.
‘I would have waited for ever here, for the hope of you.’ His words rumble through her, like the first stirring of the current under the frozen ice.
And he holds her to his chest and kisses her hair, her cheeks, her forehead. And she meets him, kiss for kiss, messy, mismatched kisses, until they are both giggling and she is inhaling his laughter deep into her lungs.
The next day, Snorri Skúmsson hobbles up to her and takes her by the arm.
‘Your husband knows you’re here, then, Rósa?’
Once, she would have flushed, jabbered an excuse and scurried away. Now, she looks the old man straight in the eye. ‘That is not your concern.’
Snorri’s bushy grey eyebrows waggle. ‘Oh, but it is. Your husband sends food here. And if you’re seen wandering about, fluttering your eyelashes and flicking your skirts, then it puts all of us in danger.’
Her stomach lurches but she manages to say, ‘Gossip is a sin, Snorri. You want to stay in the bishop’s good graces.’
He spits, ‘There are other sins, worse than gossip, and worth gossiping about.’
Rósa strides away, but she can hear him shouting after her about modesty and adultery.
She wonders where Jón is, if he is safe. Out from under his shadow, she is able to see her husband for what he is: a terrified man, fighting to survive in a world that would rip him to pieces. She hopes he has found peace.
Rósa runs her fingers over the little glass woman in her pocket. It is all she has left of Jón. The glass is sharp where the arm has shattered. She presses her thumb against it, hard enough to draw blood. She wonders at the fragility of the body, and the fierce resolution needed to survive.
When Sigridúr isn’t looking, Rósa rubs her hand over the skin of her stomach, which aches more every day. She has not had a monthly cycle since she shared Jón’s bed in September. One day soon her secret will be written on the swell of her belly. For now, the knowledge is hers and hers alone, safe from the world of gossip and sly glances.
One cold morning, just after they have celebrated a sober Christmas, eating skyr and dried fish, on a day when the sun barely seems to stir behind the crypt of the clouds, a merchant rides down over the hills.
His saddle is weighted with bags of linen, knives and plates fashioned of metal and soapstone, wooden spoons and other luxuries. The villagers crowd around, either pressing cut-off pieces of silver coins and ells of cloth into the man’s palm, or bartering: this chicken for that plate; this wool for that tiny pot of salt.
As coin and goods change hands, pieces of news are traded also. Rósa discovers that the coastal ice floes have grown larger; the Althing will meet early; harvests have been poor across the land, so people are starving and dying.
The villagers sigh, shake their heads and turn away, clutching their trinkets.
Rósa hangs back until everyone has gone and the trader seems about to move on. In her pocket lies a single silver coin, whole and heavy.
‘What is in that bag?’ she asks. Perhaps, while he lingers, she can discover news from Stykkishólmur.
The trader grins, winks and unties the cord, then tips something gleaming into Rósa’s palm. At first, it is so cold she thinks it must be water. But it is solid and she sees a dark, ovular shape squatting in the centre of it.
It is a piece of glass, roughly shaped into the form of a woman – Rósa can make out the streaks that represent her long hair. But it is the dark object within the glass that makes Rósa catch her breath.
A tiny piece of wood, lovingly carved into the shape of a baby. It has perfect little legs, pulled in close to its chest, and it has one hand against its face, sucking the thumb. Its miniature eyes are closed. The glassmaker must have squeezed the glass woman at the neck and the legs, so that the tiny baby sways around inside her hollow belly.
‘It is beautiful,’ Rósa breathes. ‘How came the wood to be inside the glass?’
‘Couldn’t say,’ grunts the trader. ‘Picked it up off a fellow further north and he didn’t know either. Doesn’t seem possible.’
‘No,’ she whispers.
Glass and wood: one hard and easily shattered, the other pliant, but stronger. It shouldn’t be possible to fit one inside the other. Yet here they are, the hollow glass shielding the wood from the damp and rot of the world. If the figurine shatters, the wood inside will decay, but as long as the glass woman remains intact, she will keep the wooden baby safe.
Rósa pulls her coin from her pocket. The man blinks at the large piece of silver, but accepts it with a nod. From his broad smile, he thinks he has done well.
‘You said you travelled from the north,’ she says lightly. ‘Did you go towards Stykkishólmur?’
He shakes his head and her heart sinks. ‘I avoid those paths. Superstitious people, strange ways. They keep separate and are wary of traders they don’t recognize.’
She sighs and is about to walk away, the little glass woman clasped in her hand, but then the merchant calls, ‘I heard something, though, from another merchant. Just gossip, I suppose.’
She turns. ‘Yes?’
‘They found a man on the beach. A great man in those parts – I forget his name. Had one of the huldufólk for an apprentice, they say. There was some story that he had murdered two wives, and was fleeing.’
Rósa feels a chill, imagining Jón captured and awaiting trial, or Egill commanding Olaf to mete out a brutal justice. ‘Where did they take him? Where is he now?’
The merchant squints. ‘Why, he’s dead. Was found so – I thought I’d said as much. They think he’d drowned. He was just lying on the beach, and his boat was gone. Stolen, probably. He was laid out under a blanket, not a mark on him. Sounded odd to me. Jésu, are you well? Here, take my hand.’
He holds her arm, while she tries to catch her breath, squeezing the glass figurine until she is sure it must shatter.
‘I didn’t mean to shock you. Sometimes I forget women are fragile.’
She shakes her head. ‘I am . . . well. I . . . I must go.’
And she turns from the merchant and runs, her breath coming in ragged gasps, until she reaches the Hvítá. The water thunders past; the cold spray settles on her cheeks and insinuates into her lungs, creeping into her bones, until she feels she is slowly freezing from the inside.
Rósa bends double and howls. She clutches her belly to bring some warmth to the fatherless child within her. But she feels like stone, like ice – like the glass woman clutched in her numb fingers. She clasps it tightly, this ageless fragment from the heart of the earth, which time has crumbled and fire has transformed into something beautiful and impossible, and nothing like the crumbled stone it once was.
Later, when Páll finds her, it is dark. Her whole body judders with cold.
The river thunders past, promising a moment of violence, followed by icy silence.
She turns away from the water. Her husband is dead now. For the first time ever, she belongs to herself. She stretches her arms wide, feeling the sudden reach and weight of her limbs. She draws a shuddering breath, then wraps her arms arou
nd herself.
Páll brushes the tears from her face. ‘Your skin will freeze,’ he says, with a small smile. ‘Don’t weep yourself to death, Rósa.’ Then he lays his warm hand upon her cheek, leans forward and kisses the tip of her nose.
At that touch, something inside her shatters.
She finally looks at him. And the swooping, dizzying jolt of staring into his eyes leaves her dry-mouthed and silent. She winds her arms around his neck, his hands go about her waist and her whole body lifts itself to meet him – her blood, her bones, her heart, her breath. Her muscles, like sudden water.
He leads her further down the path, to a tiny cave near the river, where no one from the village ever goes. He spreads out his cloak on the ground; she lies down and he lies next to her, cradling her head. And she thinks she might be weeping, or perhaps they are his tears, or drops from the river cooling on their bodies. And then there is only the blur of sweat and heat, and the weight and shape of him over her, and his open-mouthed gasp as he moves inside her.
He pauses, presses his forehead against hers; his eyes, staring deep into hers, are smiling. And that wordless moment of being truly seen, of being known, runs through her. She gasps and kisses him again and again, absorbing his shout at the last, against her open mouth, so that it echoes through their bodies.
Afterwards, shaking, Páll lays his hand on the slight swell of her belly; she lays her cheek on his chest. Every plane of his body is as familiar and grounding as the land beneath them.
He kisses her again, strokes her hair, then lies on the ground so he can wrap the cloak around her. ‘Don’t want you to freeze.’
‘I’m not cold,’ she whispers.
‘You’re trembling,’ he says, and pulls her close.
It has taken her so long, but now she knows it: they are interwoven threads from the same cloth – she would unravel without him.
As she presses against him, something sharp digs into her skin. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the broken glass woman Jón gave to her. The crack within it has grown; the face is chipped. It is impossible to discern the passive, downcast eyes and humble expression.
‘What is that?’ Páll asks.
‘Nothing.’ And Rósa tucks it back into her pocket; it clinks against the rounded glass figure she bought from the trader.
Rósa breathes in the fresh mist of the gathering night and winds her arms around Páll again; his body fits against hers, like the runestone fits the contours of her hand.
The body remembers love, as rock remembers the heat and compression that formed it. It waits, buried under the earth, cold and longing, until it is freed. Then that same rock can skim across a river, travel an ocean, be carried across strange lands until it finds its way home.
Rósa closes her eyes. When she opens them again, it will be morning, and the thick-breathing air that has surrounded her – the weight of the ocean that has crushed her – will have lifted.
Her swelling body will be her own, at last.
And on another morning, not too far away, the ice will melt. The land will stir, and new life will quicken and flourish under the rising arc of the sun.
One Week Earlier
Fear not death, for the hour of your doom is set and none may escape it.
Icelandic proverb, from Volsunga Saga
Jón
Near Stykkishólmur, December 1686
We are fools for returning this way, I tell him, but Pétur will not listen. His plan, I admit, is a good one: we will find a boat and row out to one of the islands in the bay, far enough away that no fisherman will ever find us. There we will live, he and I, on fish and rainwater.
Both of us could navigate those thousands of islets as well as we might trace the map of the vicious scars and livid lines that mark the other’s skin. Yet even I agree that we could become lost among the islands, if we wish, so we may still hope to find peace and silence there.
The thaw continues; the rain patters down daily, making the land as slick as a seal. I half wish for the snow to return and coat the earth in its harsh shroud. Everything – even death – glistens with beauty.
But the thaw is the breaking of the earth’s waters: everything smells of salt, of the sea, of new birth. We travel to the coast, where we will find my boat. I can almost taste our new life – fresh and clean as melted ice. When I catch Pétur’s eye, he smiles.
Our journey here was treacherous: we travelled for nearly a week, following the rivers north from Thingvellir. Pétur had a fishing cord with him, and his usual charmed luck meant he could pull three fish from the water within the space of a hundred breaths.
‘I could have you burned as a witch,’ I called.
He grinned. ‘Who would conjure fish from the water for you then?’
After dark – once we had eaten and Pétur had quenched the fire, kicking turf over it so that it wouldn’t reveal us to any pursuers – we walked and found a shelter. Sometimes this was a clearing in some bushes, at others a cave. Once, it was no more than a hollow in the ground.
There, Pétur pulled my tunic over my head, washed my wound and rebound it. I tried not to wince, though it was agony, searing to the touch.
He tore strips from his own shirt to bandage me, and helped me to dress again, as tenderly as if I were a child. As he worked, I saw the clench in his jaw from the pain in his arm, but when I asked if it hurt him, he shook his head.
‘It is nothing,’ he growled. ‘Now keep still.’
The thought of living without him was endless nightfall. My heart. My soul.
Once I was dressed, we would lie, face to face, almost touching in the darkness. Pétur, exhausted from carrying me, fell asleep quickly, but I lay still, sensing his breath on my cheek, watching the movements of his eyes under their lids. I felt, always, a wonderful stillness and anxiety in watching his restless dreams.
Take me with you.
My whole life was in those moments. I felt able to breathe, at last. My devotion, when I watched him sleep, was stronger than my own breath, my own skin.
Sometimes we woke in the night, huddled against the cold. Then, in the darkness, the world and everything in it became as skinless as water, no boundaries to show where one wave ended and the next began, our bodies like paired oars, each movement driving us further into the unknown. Time and sensation blurred. Tiny moments of golden brilliance, gossamer-thin and stretched to breaking, in a life otherwise steeped in grim shadow.
I did not simply hold Pétur in my arms; I embraced him with blood and bone, clasped him with muscle and spirit, everything that I was and hoped to be.
God might strike me down, but I felt saved and whole.
Afterwards, we fell asleep intertwined. In those last moments of wakefulness, blinking up at the stars, as I sensed Pétur’s sweat cooling on my skin, I felt utterly human and fallen, and utterly content. And in those heat-soaked rags of time, I wished for every mountain in Iceland to shudder down rocks upon us, concealing us for ever from the gaze of the world. If we were ever found, our bodies would be dragged from the rubble together: tangled, knotted – inseparable.
But such moments of savage contentment are as fleeting as the reflection of the swelling moon blinking upon the surface of the sea. Only ever minutes old, they dissolve with a passing cloud, or a gust of wind.
In every human heart glows a tiny flame of hope that tomorrow will bring a love that might satisfy the smouldering yearning to be known. In some hearts, that fire is greedy and becomes a devouring inferno. It leaves only dead ash and dry dust behind. The wind whirls it into emptiness.
But there is such heat while it burns . . . And the light is infinite.
We have followed the arterial seam of the river to its destination: freedom and the sea. We will wait on the beach until nightfall; then I hope we will find my boat and we will row. Pétur has washed my wound and rebound it and, despite the shiverings of the growing fever in my blood, I feel peaceful.
The darkness is smothering, but I can hear the in
halations of the waves and smell the salt. The sea has been present all of my days, like lifeblood.
Suddenly in the black sky, beneath the stars, there is a whispering, muscular swathe of light. I nudge Pétur. We watch the rippling ribbons of colour unfurling across the horizon. It is like a sign from God. I grip Pétur’s hand; it is as solid as the earth. We watch until our eyes sting, until the lights fade and the sun pushes a sulphuric glow over the horizon.
And then, as if one miracle was not enough, a tiny bird flits overhead, in defiance of the black-winged ravens that croak and swoop around it. It is a delicate thing, the sort that should have migrated south months ago or perished. But here it is, alive and winging a frail flight across the restless waters. It will never survive in this savage climate but, still, it labours onwards.
Out of the corner of my eye, from the sea, I see a flash of white. Even though I have not imagined it in days, I could swear that a pale hand is waving. I shake my head, and the vision fades.
We begin to scramble over the stones that lead down to the beach and, I hope, to my boat – if it is still there. Pétur grips my hand when my stomach pains me. I pull him upright when his arm cannot take his weight. Neither of us will let the other fall.
I look back at the land. The hills of Stykkishólmur are so close. I can see, through the gloom, the outline of the croft I fought for. And it seems, for a moment, that I see a shadow moving, or perhaps two, something flapping among the rocks. The tail of a long black cloak? But, although I blink and squint, it disappears. Perhaps it was the wing of a raven, after all.
I turn back to the sea and continue to heave myself painfully onwards, following Pétur over the rocks. Every step is a stab into my side. My breath whistles from between my teeth. Pétur holds out a hand; I force myself to smile, to wave him on. I move more and more slowly, stumbling often. My limbs feel all fire, though my skin is as dry as bone. Finally, I collapse onto a rock, panting.
