At last she stole forward to the trapdoor and called down:
“Little lamb, don’t be afraid.”
But her heart jumped when she heard her voice in the emptiness of the dark croft. She did not know her own voice; she knew no voice that was so fantastic. And there she stood motionless by the trapdoor, and in an instant all her forebodings of the dark and inevitable calamity that waited in the night had become a frightful certainty. Down the length of her spine there struck a paralysing shudder, like a furious, excruciating pain: there was someone downstairs, someone who was attacking the sheep, seizing it evilly by the throat, someone who throttled its bleat and threw it against the wall—someone, something—till it gave vent to another bleat, more terror-stricken, more despairing than ever before.
No, she did not faint; she fumbled instinctively for more brushwood to add to the fire. The brushwood was her one hope, its blue crackling flame, its glowing embers; the fire in the range must not die out. “No, perhaps it was nothing.’ she said, sticking the twigs in with numb fingers.
Someone, something; perhaps nothing. She was determined to calm herself by gazing into the little glow, the fire of her own home, the fire that burns for the idea of independence, the idea of freedom. No one walked after death, Kolumkilli least of all; there was only the good God of freedom on the moors, the God who exalts man above the dog (perhaps). Who knew but that she herself might be Bailiff’s wife, like the Mistress of Myri in twenty-three years’ time? Life is a sort of lottery, as the Fell King had said to her father—poor old man, what if he should catch pneumonia in this lottery, lying out in a mountain hut tonight, and seventy years old. No, she would not think about it, she must not think of anything evil, only of the good and the beautiful.
“Meh-eh-eh.”
Into the bleating of the ewe there had crept a note as of madness, a hoarse, almost expiring rattle. Rosa even began to wonder whether it could really be the sheep. It was a bleat no longer, it was an agonized wail. Was the evil presence throttling the life out of it? The plunging and scrambling continued with occasional pauses, something collided with the ladder and bumped into the door, the croft trembled in every timber, then there was a respite and silence except for the squalls beating on the window and the pounding of her heart—she was hoping that the turmoil was over, that the sheep would be quiet, but no sooner had the heaving of her breast subsided than a sudden blow buffeted the door, reechoing throughout the house, and the attack had started again with a rushing and a trampling, a rumbling and a clatter as if everything was falling down. At first the woman thought the drumming and the rumbling came from the mountain, or that the front of the house had caved in; then there rang out a screaming bellow and she knew that the sheep was being strangled. Shaking with terror, she clung to the bedpost and called upon God and Jesus, repeating the names unwillingly like someone praying on his deathbed. At long last, and with infinite caution, she started to undo her outer garments, slipping them off and standing in her underclothes, but these she did not dare to remove, for with every movement she risked calling up the furtive powers of the darkness. Inch by inch she slipped under the bedclothes and, drawing them above her head, felt some relief only when she had gathered them so closely to her that no air could get inside. She lay like this for a long time, still quivering and still with a pain in her heart; no memories could comfort her any longer, terror is stronger than the total sum of anyone’s happiness. She tried to think with hope of the far-off dawn, for human beings always seek some source of consolation; it is this search for consolation, even when every retreat is obviously cut off, that proves that one is still alive.
Long, long she lay trembling in terror before she sank into a dazed confusion, a tense stupor that was neither sleep nor waking rest, but a difficult, reluctant journey through a world landless and without time, where she lived over again the most incredible events of the past and met people she had once known, in visions most unnatural in their clarity, most horrible in the minuteness of their detail. She heard anew the drawl in a long-forgotten voice, a voice that had never mattered, saw again the long-forgotten wrinkle in a face that had never concerned her. Every face that materialized before her distraught fancy sought hke a canker to eat its way into her brain. She saw, for example, the faces of her visitors of the morning before with a detail that was almost nauseating. These visions, which terrified her in proportion to their clarity and their detail, sought stubbornly to burn themselves into her brain, so that they could never be effaced; they sat there in the sleepy greyness of the dawn with their rigid faces, like dead men we know in dreams—they come to us and pretend to be alive, and yet we know in the dream that they are dead because once upon a time we went to their funerals. Their melancholy grin was the grin of dead men. Their conversation, fantastically dreary, was the conversation of dead men; the faces they showed each other were masks, films half-frozen over the horror of the ruin that had engulfed them—no one in his right mind believed that they would ever be landed farmers. Bjartur had once reckoned up that he would be bailiff in twenty-three years’ time, “but where will I be then?” wondered Rosa. Her father had dreamed of being a landed farmer too, perhaps bailiff. He had built a corn-mill over the brook, but where was he lying tonight? Tonight he lay in the desert, seventy years old, rheumatic and weak-chested, and the mill stood moss-grown in the brook. Where were the shank-bones and the jaw-bones, the playthings of the children of Nithurkot? In childhood her hopes had been imaginary flocks, dewlapped cows with heavy udders, frisky mares at stud with graceful stallions, all on her own mountain pastures; and she had dreamed, too, of being as clever and as poetical as the Bailiff’s wife and of living in a famous mansion. Where was she living now? Where were her flocks, where her genius? She owned one sheep and could hardly write. As a child by her father’s mill-cot she had been rich; in those days her hopes had been cows, her dreams the horses of poetry. The brook at home had had its own song. The mill-cot that had never been a mill had had its own soul, a soul such that nothing in life had compared with it since. She saw still the jawbones and the leg-bones lying on the bank beside the cot, saw the mussel-shell her father had found by the sea. She had been so fond of her mussel-shell, it had been a treasure beyond earthly price, not one of her brothers or sisters had been allowed to play with her mussel-shell—“what can have happened to my mussel-shell?”
“Ma-a-a-a.”
The shrill cry startled her immediately from her coma. In her dozing ears it took on an incredible note: the sheep had been lolled, but had risen now after three hours by the aid of the Devil. That hoarse, subterranean cry could not come from any animal born; it was the scream of the tortured souls spoken of in the Scriptures; all the devils and ghouls of the moor had congregated to bellow in this one sheep: the spectres of those who cannot rest in their graves, of children left under a rock in the boulder-wastes to die, peasants with throats cut for the marrow in their bones, popish people who hate God and Jesus, whose one desire is to drag everyone else down into their own eternal hell. In such a fashion did this night drag on.
At long last she summoned sufficient courage to peep from under the blankets, and lo, a faint gleam was lighting the room. To her inexpressible relief she discovered that night was almost over; however long, however grievous the night, dawn always comes in the end. The wind had dropped, but the rain continued, encompassing everything near and far in its heavy interminable beat. And the ewe was still bleating. Slowly the light in the room strengthened and slowly the woman’s temper changed; the disordered exhaustion of night was gradually overcome by the courage of rising day. At last it was so light that she no longer felt any fear of the animal. She hated it. It was an enemy. Every fresh bleat was like oil that is poured on flames. Whatever it cost, she would stop its evil mouth—she waited only for more light, more courage, then nothing would stop her from attacking the animal and destroying it somehow, anyhow. At length she could resist no longer and sprang out of bed. She did not even bother to put on he
r clothes, but ranged the room with bare arms and half-naked breasts, her face pale and sleepless, eyes glittering, wild. She fumbled about under the roof-tree in the grey light of dawn and drew out Bjartur’s scythe-blade, unwound its covering of sacking, looked at the edge and tested it on her hair. Then she went down the stairs. The sheep began racing from wall to wall in terror, and she gave chase, stumbling over hay-rakes and tangled ropes that had fallen in the turmoil of the night. But she was no longer afraid, no fanciful fears could prevent her carrying out her intention, and after some pursuit she succeeded in capturing the sheep. Then she uncoiled a rope’s end and dragged the sheep out over the doorstep. The sheep resisted stubbornly, blowing through distended nostrils. She dragged it down the home-field to where the brook ran out into the marsh. There she threw it on its back with its head towards the stream. She wound the rope round its feet It was now light enough to see what one was doing.
Very deliberately she set about the task. Like an experienced slaughterer she parted the wool about the sheep’s throat, but now the creature had sensed its death and quivered convulsively under the woman’s hand, gaping with open mouth and gaping nostrils, and writhing frantically in its bonds. But any sentimental qualm of compassion was far from the woman at this moment. Sitting down astride of the sheep, she gripped the leaping body between her legs until she had steadied it sufficiently to apply the blade to its throat. The scythe-blade was not much good as a slaughterer’s knife, for although it was reasonably sharp, it was so unwieldy that great care was needed not to cut oneself. She had to take both hands to it and lose all control over the sheep’s head in its death-throes. But she did not allow this difficulty to impede her and hacked and sawed away at the throat while hot jets of blood played on her hands and spurted into her face. Gradually, as the loss of blood affected it, the creature’s struggles grew feebler, and finally it even ceased lifting its head and lay still with gurgling mouth. At last she found the vertebrae of the neck. Deeper and deeper she thrust the blade; a voluptuous spasm shook the animal where it lay gripped between her legs, and nothing moved now but the tail. The vertebrae gaped, showing the whiteness of the spinal cord. She cut straight across it, there was one slight tremor, and the sheep was dead. She severed the head and left the carcass to bleed into the stream; there was a little blood on the grass. The woman sat down by the stream, and after washing her hands and face, carefully wiped the scythe-blade with moss. A shiver struck through her and she was exhausted, almost comatose, and thought no more of what she had done, but reeled home to the croft and put on her clothes. She sat down on the bed. Her passion was spent, her impulse satisfied, and with the fulfilment a comfortable drowsiness flowed through her limbs in the drab light of the dawn. Letting herself sink back, she pulled the coverlet over her bare shoulders and was asleep.
It was bright day when she woke again. What had she been dreaming of? She passed a hand over her eyes and forehead to break the threads between sleeping and waking, to separate dream from reality. She had been dreaming of the Mistress of Myri, it seemed she had done something that would affect the whole parish, she had cut the Mistress of Myri’s throat. But when she looked out of the window she remembered that it was only a sheep that she had killed, a sheep guilty of nothing more than having been at least as frightened as she herself in the loneliness of the night. Yet she felt no prick of conscience for what she had done. All she felt was surprise. She could not understand the woman who had risen that morning from her bed, sleepless, armed like Death with a scythe. She put on her clothes, pinned a shawl round her head and shoulders, and was the same woman as yesterday; but the sheep had stopped bleating. She realized immediately that everything depended on hiding from Bjartur the traces of this deed. She went down to the brook, to where the sheep lay headless on the bank, and kicked it with her toe, a butchered sheep. A butchered sheep? Every fibre in her body woke thrilling to the fact in anticipation, in greedy exultation—it was not only a sheep’s carcass, it was meat. Fresh meat. Now at last she understood what she had done: she had killed a sheep for fresh meat. The summer-long dream, summer’s loftiest and most hallowed dream, was at last to be fulfilled.
Her mouth filled with water, her body with blissful hunger, her soul with the rapturous prescience of satiety. All that she had to do was to prepare the sheep and put the pot on the fire. She found her clasp-knife and sharpened it on two whetstones, then she began to cut the sheep up. Though she had never taken an active part in the autumn slaughter, she had often watched and therefore knew the process in outline, so she took out the entrails to the best of her ability, scraped off the suet, taking care not to pierce the gall, then washed the stomach in the brook. When she had finished most of the work, she wasted no time in running home and putting the pan on. She stuffed the gullet with suet, made the pouch into sausage-skins, and put them all into the pan along with the heart and the kidneys. Soon the croft was filled with the fragrance of boiling offals. And while they were simmering she finished cutting up the sheep and hid the signs of slaughter so that not even the ravens would find anything. She tied the larger bowel to the door and scraped it, then chopped up the carcass with an old axe and salted it in a case.
Presently the meal was ready.
Perhaps there was never served on the high table of any manor house a meal as appetizing as that to which the woman of the moors now sat down in her own croft. It is at least certain that never since the days of Gudmundur the Rich and the old chieftains has any delicacy called forth such ineffably wholehearted joy in the body and soul of the eater as that which was produced in this woman by the fat-salty tang of sueted gullet, the luscious meaty heart of the young animal, the tender, delicately fibred flesh of the kidneys with their peculiar flavour, and the thick slices of liver sausage dripping with fat from the pot. She drank the gravy along with it, thick and wholesome. She ate and ate as if she would never be sated. This was the first happy day of her married life. Afterwards she made some coffee from her mother’s gift and ate much sugar. After the meal she lapsed again into a comfortable drowsiness. She sat at first by the range with her hands in her lap, her head nodding forward, but finding at length that she could no longer hold herself up, she lay down and went to sleep. And slept for hours.
MEDICAL OPINION
BJARTUR brought his sheep home late on the fourth day and was off again next morning in the company of a number of crofters from up-country on the drive to town. The results of the round-up had been satisfactory, and he was able to take with him a flock of twenty lambs. Of these, twelve went in part payment of his debt to the Bailiff for the land, while for the remainder the dealer allowed him a sack of rye flour, some salted codfish, a few pounds each of wheat, coffee, sugar, and oatmeal, and also a little snuff. Besides these provisions he brought home the lambs’ offals, and after this had to make three more journeys to town for the horse’s fodder. He slept little, travelling night and day, preferring to make three journeys to the prosperous farmer’s one rather than incur any debt for transport. When he came home, worn out with travel by night, soaked to the skin in the downpour of autumn, muddy up to the knees from the slippery paths, he could hardly help admiring his wife’s appearance, so fresh and healthy did she look; she was like the turnip, which thrives best in autumn, and she must have forgotten all about her ghosts, for she had freed the ewe he had left her for company.
But Bjartur was aware that “the nerves” is a stubborn disease that can flare up in a variety of forms, and he was also aware that a stitch in time saves nine, so he did not forget her at the doctor’s. He took from his pocket a little phial of pills that he had obtained from Dr. Finsen and handed it to his wife.
‘There’s supposed to be some real strength in these,” he said. They haven’t spared their science on these, I reckon, like they have on the medicine for the dogs. These pills are supposed to keep everything inside you in such good condition that you needn’t be afraid of any disease. There’s a sort of liquid in them that destroys all humours, they p
revent griping pains in your insides, and they give your blood tremendous power.
His wife took his gift and weighed it in her hand.
“And what do you think I gave for them?” he asked.
Independent People Page 11
