Burial Rites

by Hannah Kent

  ‘Mistress Margrét of Kornsá? I have the prisoner. May we enter?’

  Margrét took a deep breath and straightened her posture. ‘This way,’ she commanded.

  The officer entered the badstofa first, smiling broadly at Margrét, who stood stiffly, her hands gripping the cloth of her apron. She glanced to where her daughters lay sleeping and felt the blood pulse in her throat.

  There was a moment of silence as the officer blinked to accustom his eyes to the low light, and then, abruptly, he pulled the woman into the room.

  Margrét was unprepared for the filth and wretchedness of the woman’s appearance. The criminal wore what seemed to be a servant’s common working dress of roughly woven wool, but one so badly stained and caked with dirt that the original blue dye was barely discernible under the brown grease that spread across the neckline and arms. A thick weight of dried mud pulled the fabric awkwardly from the woman’s body. Her faded blue stockings were soaked through, sunk about the ankles, and one was torn, exposing a slice of pale skin. Her shoes, of sealskin it seemed, had split at the seam, but were so covered in mud that it was impossible to see how damaged they were. Her hair was uncovered by a cap and matted with grease. It hung in two dark braids down her back. Several strands had come loose and fell limply about the woman’s neck. She looked as if she’d been dragged from Stóra-Borg, Margrét thought. The woman’s face was hidden; she stared at the floor.

  ‘Look at me.’

  Agnes slowly raised her head. Margrét winced at the smear of dried blood across the woman’s mouth, and the grime that lay in streaks across her forehead. There was a yellow bruise that spread from her chin down to the side of her neck. Agnes’s eyes flickered from the ground to Margrét’s own, and she felt unnerved by their intensity, their colour made lighter and sharper by the dirt on her face. Margrét turned to the officer.

  ‘This woman has been beaten.’ The officer searched Margrét’s face for amusement, and, finding none, lowered his eyes. ‘Where are her things?’

  ‘Only the clothes on her back,’ the officer said. ‘The clerks took what she had to cover her vittles.’

  Invigorated by a sudden curl of anger, Margrét pointed to the irons about the woman’s wrists.

  ‘Is it necessary to keep her bound like a lamb ripe for slaughter?’ she asked him.

  The officer shrugged and felt about him for a key. In a few deft twists he freed Agnes from the handcuffs. Her arms fell to her sides.

  ‘You may go now,’ Margrét told the officer. ‘One of you may come in when I retire to sleep, but I want some time alone with her.’

  The officer’s eyes grew wide. ‘Are you certain?’ he asked. ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘As I said, I’ll ask for you when I retire to bed. You may wait outside the doorway and I’ll call out should there be need for it.’

  The officer hesitated, then nodded and left with a salute. Margrét turned to Agnes, who stood, unmoving, in the middle of the room.

  ‘You,’ she said, ‘you follow me.’

  Margrét did not wish to touch the woman, but the lack of light indoors forced her to grip Agnes’s arm in order to steer her into the right room. She could feel the bones in her wrist, crusted blood against her fingertips. The woman smelt like stale urine.

  ‘This way.’ Margrét walked slowly down to the kitchen, ducking her head under the low doorframe.

  The kitchen was lit by the dying embers of the fire in the raised hearth of stones, and a small hole in the thatched turf ceiling that served as a chimney. It let through a weak, pink light that lay across the packed earth floor and illuminated the smoke that hung about the room. Margrét led Agnes inside, then turned and faced her.

  ‘Take off your clothes. You need to wash if you’re going to sleep in my blankets. I won’t have you infesting this house with any more lice than already plague the place.’

  Agnes’s face was impassive. ‘Where is the water?’ she croaked.

  Margrét hesitated, and then turned to a large kettle that sat upon the coals. Plunging her hand into it, she pulled out crockery that had been left to soak, and then heaved it onto the ground.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘And it’s warm. Now hurry up, it’s past midnight.’

  Agnes looked at the kettle and then suddenly fell to the ground. At first Margrét thought she had fainted, then quickly realised her mistake. She watched as Agnes bent her head over the kettle’s rim and scooped handfuls of greasy water into her mouth, gasping and drinking with the same urgency as an animal at a trough. Water ran down her chin and neck, dripping into the stiff folds of her dress. Without thinking, Margrét bent down and pushed Agnes’s forehead from the kettle.

  The woman fell back upon her elbows and let out a cry, water gurgling from her mouth. Margrét’s heart lurched at the sound. Agnes’s eyes were half-closed, her mouth open. She looked like those Margrét had seen driven out of their minds by drink, or by haunting, or by grief that sets in when deaths fall thickly in the home.

  Agnes whimpered and rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth, then upon her dress. She pushed herself up from the ground and tried to stand.

  ‘I’m thirsty.’

  Margrét nodded, her heart still hammering in her chest. She swallowed hard.

  ‘Ask for a cup, next time,’ she said.

  WHEN REVEREND TÓTI RETURNED TO his father’s croft near the Breidabólstadur church, he was damp through with sweat. He had ridden hard from Kornsá, digging his heels into his horse’s flanks as the wind buffeted his face and brought the blood to his cheeks.

  Slowing to a walk, he guided his cob, foam dripping from its mouth, to a stile near the croft’s entrance. He dismounted with trembling legs. The wind had picked up, and as it pushed through the tight weave of his clothes, he felt his sweat-soaked skin grow cool and begin to itch. His jaw was clenched. His hands shook as they wound the reins through the stile.

  Heavy clouds had blown in from the sea, and the light was fast disappearing, despite it not being long after summer solstice. Tóti pulled his damp collar up further about his neck and pushed his hat firmly down on his head. Giving his horse a pat on the rump, he started walking up the slow incline to the church. He felt like a wet rag wrung dry and left distorted upon the ground. These northern days, with their lingering fingers of light, the constant gloaming, unsettled him. He could not guess at the hour of the day as he could at the school in the south.

  Rain began to fall and the gale grew stronger. It lashed at the tall grass, flattening the stalks to the ground before whipping them skywards again. The grass seemed silver in the darkening light.

  Tóti took long strides up the hill, stretching his muscles as he walked, thinking about his meeting with the woman. The woman. The criminal. Agnes.

  He had noticed, first, how, bound to the saddle, she had splayed her legs over the horse so that she would not slip. He had smelt her, then; the sharp pungency of a neglected body, of unwashed clothes and fresh sweat, dried blood and something else from between those spread legs. A stench peculiar to women. He blushed at the thought of it.

  But it had not been her smell that had sickened him. She had looked like a new corpse, fresh dug from the grave. Wild black hair strung with grease, and the brown-grey of dirt sitting in the pores of her skin. Leprous colours.

  He had wanted to turn away, flee at the sight of her. Like a coward.

  Hunched against the smattering of rain and wind, Tóti inwardly chastised himself. What sort of man are you if you want to run at the sight of damaged flesh? What sort of priest will you be if you cannot withstand the appearance of suffering?

  It had been a particularly vivid bruise upon her chin that had disturbed him the most. A ripe, yellow colour, like dried egg yolk. Tóti wondered at the force that might have birthed it. The rough hand of a man, gripping her under the throat. A rope binding her to fetters. A fall.

  There are so many ways a person might take harm, Tóti thought. He reached the churchyard and fumbled with the gate.


  It might have been an accident. She might have hurt herself.

  The Reverend hurried down the stony path to the church, trying not to look at the shadowy graves and their wooden crosses. Drawing a crude key from his pocket, he let himself inside. He was relieved to close the wooden door behind him and shut out the low growl of the wind. Inside, it was perfectly still. The only sound was the light patter of rain on the church’s solitary window, a hole covered with fish-skin.

  Tóti pulled the hat off his head and ran a hand through his hair. The floorboards creaked as he walked to the pulpit. He stood for a moment, squinting up at the painted mural behind the altar. The Last Supper.

  The mural was ugly: a vast table with a squat Jesus. Judas, lingering in the shadows, was troll-like, comical. The artist had been the son of a local merchant who had a Danish wife and connections within the government. After service one Sunday, Tóti had overheard the merchant speak with Reverend Jón, complaining about the flaking paint of the previous mural. The merchant had mentioned his son, the artistic talent that had secured the boy a scholarship in Copenhagen. If Reverend Jón would permit him to express his singular devotion to the parish, he would happily purchase all necessary materials and donate his son’s labour without the church incurring expenses. Naturally, Tóti’s father, being a man of economic mindfulness, had allowed the old picture to be painted over.

  Tóti missed it. It had been a fine Old Testament illustration of Jacob wrestling with the angel, the man’s face buried against the angel’s shoulder, his fist full of holy feathers.

  Tóti sighed and slowly sank to his knees. Placing his hat on the floor, he clasped his hands tightly to his chest and began to pray aloud.

  ‘O Heavenly Father, forgive me my sins. Forgive me my weakness and fear. Help me to fight my cowardice. Strengthen my ability to withstand the sight of suffering, so that I might do Your work in relieving those who endure it.

  ‘Lord, I pray for the soul of this woman who has committed a terrible sin. Please give me words so that I might inspire her to repent.

  ‘I confess to fear. I do not know what to say to her. I do not feel at ease, Lord. Please guard my heart against the . . . the horror this woman inspires in me.’

  Tóti remained on his knees for some time. It was only the thought of his horse standing bridled in the rain and wind that caused him to finally rise and lock the church door behind him.

  MARGRÉT WOKE EARLY THE NEXT day. The officer who had slept in the bed opposite to protect her from the criminal was snoring. The gargled breathing had entered her dreams and roused her.

  Margrét turned in her bed to face the wall and dug the corners of her blanket into her ears, but the man’s ragged snorting filled her head. Sleep was gone from her now. She lay on her back and looked across the unlit room to where the officer lay. His rough blond hair stuck up in oily tufts, and his mouth was open upon his pillow. Margrét noticed spots along the man’s jaw.

  So this is how they protect me against a murderess, she thought. They send a boy who sleeps soundly.

  She cast an eye at the prisoner, lying in one of the servants’ beds at the end of the room. The woman was lying still, asleep. Her daughters were also sleeping. Margrét sat up on her elbows to take a better look.

  Agnes.

  Margrét silently mouthed the word.

  It seems wrong to call her by a Christian name, Margrét thought. What would they have called her in Stóra-Borg, she wondered. Prisoner? Accused? Condemned? Perhaps it was the absence of a name, the silence where a name should be, that they had summoned her by.

  Margrét shivered and drew the blanket about her. Agnes’s eyes were shut fast and her mouth was closed. The cap Margrét had given her had unfastened during the night, and had let loose her dark hair. It lay across the pillow like a stain.

  Strange to finally see the woman after a month of anticipation, Margrét thought. A month of fear, too. A tight fear, like a fishing line, hooked upon something that must, inevitably, be dragged from the depths.

  In the days and nights after Jón had returned from meeting with Blöndal, Margrét had tried to imagine how she would act towards the murderess, and what the woman might look like.

  What sort of woman kills men?

  The only murderesses Margrét had known were the women in the sagas, and even then, it was with words that they had killed men; orders given to servants to slay lovers or avenge the death of kin. Those women murdered from a distance and kept their fingers clean.

  But these times are not saga times, Margrét had thought. This woman is not a saga woman. She’s a landless workmaid raised on a porridge of moss and poverty.

  Lying back down in her bed, Margrét thought of Hjördis, her favourite servant, now dead and buried in the churchyard at Undirfell. She tried to imagine Hjördis as a murderess. Tried to imagine Hjördis stabbing her as she slept, the same way Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson had died. Those slender fingers wrapped tightly around a hilt, the silent footsteps in the night.

  It was impossible.

  Lauga had asked Margrét whether she thought there would be an outward hint of the evil that drives a person to murder. Evidence of the Devil: a harelip, a snaggle tooth, a birthmark; some small outer defect. There must be a warning, some way of knowing, so that honest people could keep their guard. Margrét had said no, she thought it all superstition, but Lauga had remained unconvinced.

  Margrét had instead wondered if the woman would be beautiful. She knew, like everyone else in the north, that the famous Natan Ketilsson had had a knack for discovering beauty. People had thought him a sorcerer.

  Margrét’s neighbour, Ingibjörg, had heard that it was Agnes who had caused Natan to break off his affair with Poet-Rósa. They had wondered if this meant the servant would be more beautiful than her. It was not so hard to believe a beautiful woman capable of murder, Margrét thought. As it says in the sagas, Opt er flagð í fögru skinni. A witch often has fair skin.

  But this woman was neither ugly nor a beauty. Striking perhaps, but not the sort to inspire hungry glances from young men. She was very slender, elf-slender as the southerners would put it, and of an ordinary height. In the kitchen last night, Margrét had thought the woman’s face rather long, had noted high cheekbones and a straight nose. Bruises aside, her skin was pale, and it seemed more so because of the darkness of her hair. Unusual hair. Rare for a woman to have hair like that in these parts, thought Margrét. So long, so dark in colour: an inky brown, almost black.

  Margrét drew the covers up to her chin as the officer’s snores continued their unceasing rumble. One would think an avalanche was approaching, she thought, annoyed. She felt tired, and her chest was heavy with mucus.

  Images of the woman crowded behind Margrét’s closed eyelids. The animal way Agnes had drunk from the kettle. Her inability to undress herself. The woman’s hands had fumbled at the ties; her fingers had been swollen and would not bend. Margrét had been forced to help her, using her fingertips to crumble the dried mud off Agnes’s dress so that the lacings could be undone. Within the confines of the small kitchen, smoky as it was, the stench from the clothes and from Agnes’s sour body had been enough to make Margrét retch. She had held her breath as she pulled the fetid wool off Agnes’s skin, and had turned her head away when the dress fell from those thin shoulders and dropped to the floor, raising motes of dried mud.

  Margrét recalled Agnes’s shoulderblades. Razor-sharp, they’d poked out from the rough cloth of her undergarment, which was yellowed around the neckline and stained a filthy brown under the armpits.

  Margrét would have to burn all the woman’s clothes before breakfast. She had left them in a corner of the kitchen last night, unwilling to bring them into the badstofa. Fleas had crawled through their weave.

  Somehow, she had managed to wash off most of the grime and dirt from the criminal’s body. Agnes had tried to wash herself, feebly running the damp rag over her limbs, but the grime had been so long upon her skin tha
t it seemed ground into her pores. Eventually, Margrét, rolling up her sleeves and clenching her teeth, had snatched the rag off her and scrubbed Agnes until the cloth was soiled through. As she washed her, Margrét had – in spite of herself – looked for the blemishes Lauga had thought would be evident, a sign of the murderess. Only the woman’s eyes had hinted at something. They seemed different, Margrét thought. Very blue and clear, but too light a shade to be considered pretty.

  The woman’s body was a terrain of abuse. Even Margrét, accustomed to wounds, to the inevitable maladies wrought by hard labour and accident, had been shocked.

  Perhaps she’d scrubbed Agnes’s skin too hard, Margrét thought, pushing her head under the pillow in an effort to shut out the gargled snores of the officer. Some of the woman’s sores had broken and wept. The sight of fresh blood had given Margrét some secret satisfaction.

  She had made Agnes soak her hair, also. The water from the kettle had been too full of silt and scum, so Margrét had requested an officer fetch more from the mountain stream. While they waited, she had dressed the woman’s wounds with an ointment of sulphur and lard.

  ‘This is Natan Ketilsson’s own medicine,’ she had said, casting an eye up to catch the woman’s reaction. Agnes had said nothing, but Margrét thought she had seen the muscles in her neck tighten. ‘God rest his soul,’ Margrét had muttered.

  With Agnes’s hair washed as good as could be in the freezing water, and most of the weeping sores plugged with lard, Margrét had given her the undergarments and bedding of Hjördis. Hjördis had been wearing the underdress Agnes now slept in when she died. Margrét suspected it did not make a difference if a mite of contagion lingered. Its new owner would be dead soon enough.

  How strange to imagine that, in a short while, the woman who slept in a bed not ten feet from her would be underground.