Burial Rites

by Hannah Kent

  ‘Margrét?’ Tóti called. ‘Have you any work for Agnes?’

  Margrét paused, and then reached over and plucked Steina’s knitting from her hands. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘It’s full of holes. It wants unravelling.’ She ignored the look of embarrassment on Steina’s face.

  ‘I feel sorry for her,’ Agnes said, slowly pulling out lines of crimped wool.

  ‘Steina?’

  ‘She said she wants to get up a petition for me.’

  Tóti was hesitant. He watched Agnes nimbly wind the loose wool into a ball, and said nothing.

  ‘Do you think it possible, Reverend Tóti? To organise an appeal to the King?’

  ‘I don’t know, Agnes.’

  ‘Would you ask Blöndal? He would listen to you, and Steina might speak to District Officer Jón.’

  Tóti cleared his throat thinking of Blöndal’s patronising tones. ‘I promise to do what I can. Now, why don’t you talk to me.’

  ‘About my childhood again?’

  ‘If you will.’

  ‘Well,’ Agnes said, wriggling up higher on the bed so that she could knit more freely. ‘What shall I tell you?’

  ‘Tell me what you remember.’

  ‘You won’t find it of interest.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘You’re a priest,’ Agnes said firmly.

  ‘I’d like to hear of your life,’ Tóti gently replied.

  Agnes turned around to see if the women were listening. ‘I have told you that I have lived in most of the farms of this valley.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tóti agreed, nodding.

  ‘At first as a foster-child, then as a pauper.’

  ‘That’s a horrible pity.’

  Agnes set her mouth in a hard line. ‘It’s common enough.’

  ‘To whom were you fostered?’

  ‘To a family that lived where we sit now. My foster-parents were called Inga and Björn, and they rented the Kornsá cottage back then. Until Inga died.’

  ‘And you were left to the parish?’

  ‘Yes,’ Agnes nodded. ‘It’s the way of things. Most good people are soon enough underground.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sorry, Reverend, unless of course you killed her.’ Agnes glanced at him, and Tóti noticed a brief smile flicker across her face. ‘I was eight when Inga died. Her body never took to the manufacture of children. Five babes died without drawing breath before my foster-brother was born. The seventh carried her to heaven.’

  Agnes sniffed, and began to carefully thread back through the loose stitches. Tóti listened to the light clicking of the bone needles and cast a surreptitious look at Agnes’s hands, moving quickly about the wool. Her fingers were long and thin, and he was astounded at the speed with which they worked. He fought off an irrational desire to touch them.

  ‘Eight winters old,’ he repeated. ‘And do you remember her death very well?’

  Agnes stopped knitting and looked around at the women again. They had fallen silent and were listening. ‘Do I remember?’ she repeated, a little louder. ‘I wish I could forget it.’ She unhooked her index finger from the thread of wool and brought it to her forehead. ‘In here,’ she said, ‘I can turn to that day as though it were a page in a book. It’s written so deeply upon my mind I can almost taste the ink.’

  Agnes gazed straight at Tóti, her finger still against her forehead. He was unnerved by the glitter in her eyes, her bloody lip, and wondered if the news of Sigga’s appeal had, in fact, made her a little mad.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IN THIS YEAR 1828, ON the 29th of March, we, the clerks stationed at Stapar at Vatnsnes – transcribing District Commissioner Blöndal’s oral description – write up the value of the possessions of prisoners Agnes Magnúsdóttir and Sigrídur Gudmundsdóttir, both workmaids at Illugastadir. The following assets, ascertained as belonging to the aforementioned individuals, have the following value:

  We stamp and certify that the above assets comprise the total belongings of the aforementioned prisoners.

  WITNESSED BY:

  J. Sigurdsson, G. Gudmundsson

  THIS IS WHAT I TELL the Reverend.

  Death happened, and in the usual way that it happens, and yet, not like anything else at all.

  It started with the northern lights. That winter was so cold that I woke every morning with a fine dust of ice on my blanket, from my breath freezing and falling as I slept. I was living at Kornsá then and had been for two or three years. Kjartan, my foster-brother, was three. I was only five years older.

  One night the two of us were working in the badstofa with Inga. Back then I called her Mamma, because she was as much to me. She saw I had an aptitude for learning, and taught me as best she could. Her husband, Björn, I tried to call Pabbi also, but he didn’t like it. He didn’t like me reading or writing either, and was not averse to whipping the learning out of me if he caught me at it. Vulgar for a girl, he said. Inga was sly; she waited until he was asleep and then woke me, and then we would read the psalms together. She taught me the sagas. During kvöldvaka she’d tell them by heart, and when Björn fell asleep she’d make me recite the stories back to her. Björn never knew that his wife betrayed his orders for my sake, and I doubt he ever understood why his wife loved the sagas as she did. He humoured her saga stories with the air of a man humouring the unfathomable whim of a child. Who knows how they had come to foster me. Perhaps they were kin of Mamma’s. More likely they needed an extra pair of hands.

  This night Björn had gone outside to feed the cattle, and when he returned from tending them, he was in a good mood.

  ‘Look at you all, squinting by the lamp, when outside the sky is on fire.’ He was laughing. ‘Come see the lights,’ he said.

  So I put my spinning aside and took Kjartan’s hand and led him outside. Mamma-Inga was in the family way, so she didn’t follow us, but waved us out and continued her embroidering. She was making me a new coverlet for my bed, but she never got to finish it, and to this day I don’t know what happened to it. I think perhaps Björn burnt it. He burnt a lot of her things, later.

  But on this night, Kjartan and I stepped out into the chill air, our feet crunching the snow upon the ground, and we soon understood why Björn had summoned us. The whole sky was overrun with colour as I’d never seen it before. Great curtains of light moved as if blown by a wind, billowing above us. Björn was right – it looked as though the night sky was slowly burning. There were smears of violet that swelled against the darkness of the night and the stars that were littered across it. The lights ebbed, like waves, then were suddenly interrupted by new streaks of violent green that plunged through the sky as if falling from a great height.

  ‘Look, Agnes,’ my foster-father said, and he turned me by the shoulders so that I might see how the brilliance of the northern lights threw the mountain ridge into sharp relief. Despite the lateness of the hour I could see the familiar, crooked horizon.

  ‘See if you can’t touch them,’ Björn said then, and I dropped my shawl on the snow so that I could raise my arms to the sky.

  ‘You know what this means,’ Björn said. ‘This means there will be a storm. The northern lights always herald bad weather.’

  At noon the following day the wind began to whip around the croft, stirring up the snow that had fallen overnight, and dashing it against the dried skins we’d stretched across the windows to keep out the cold. It was a sinister sound – the wind hurling ice at our home.

  Inga wasn’t feeling well that morning and had remained in bed, so I prepared our meal. I was in the kitchen, setting the kettle upon the hearth, when Björn came in from the storehouse.

  ‘Where is Inga?’ he asked me.

  ‘In the badstofa,’ I told him. I watched Björn take off his cap and shake the ice into the hearth. The water spat on the hot stones.

  ‘The fire’s too smoky,’ Björn said, frowning, then left me to m
y chore.

  When I’d boiled some moss into porridge, I took it into the badstofa. It was quite dark in the room and, once I’d served Björn his meal, I ran to the storehouse to fetch some more oil for the lamp. The storehouse was near the door to the croft and as I approached it I could hear the wind howling, louder and louder, and I knew that a storm was fast approaching.

  I’m not sure why I opened the door to look outside. I suppose I was curious. But some strange compulsion took me and I unlocked the latch to peek out at the weather.

  It was an evil sight. Dark clouds bore down upon the mountain range and under their smoky-blackness, a grey swarm of snow swirled as far as you could see. The wind was fierce, and a great, icy gust of it suddenly blew against the door so hard that it knocked me off my feet. The candle on the corridor wall went out in an instant, and from within the croft Björn shouted what the Devil I thought I was doing, letting the blizzard into his home.

  I heaved against the door to shut it, but the wind was too strong. My hands stiffened with the cold rush of air. It was as though the wind was some form of ghoul demanding to enter. Then, all of a sudden, the wind dropped, and the door slammed shut. As though the spirit had finally entered and closed the door behind it.

  I returned to the badstofa with oil and filled the lamps. Björn was angry at me for letting the cold air in, with Inga in such a delicate state.

  The blizzard hurled itself upon our croft that afternoon, and raged for three days. On the second, Inga began to have her baby.

  It was too soon.

  Late that night, amidst the sound emitted by the wind and snow and ice, Inga began to have terrible pains. I believe she was afraid that this baby, too, would arrive before its time.

  When Björn realised that the baby was coming, he sent Jón, their workman, to his brother’s farm for his sister-in-law and their servant woman. My foster-father bade Jón tell the women what was happening, so that they might at least give their advice, if they couldn’t return with him.

  Jón protested that the blizzard was too forceful, and that he couldn’t be expected to perform such a task, but Björn was a demanding man. So Jón dressed himself in thick garments and went outside, but he returned soon after, covered in ice and snow, and told my foster-father that he couldn’t see two steps in front of him, and that he wouldn’t be made to walk farther than the barn when the weather promised only death. Yet, Björn made him try again, and when Jón returned, half-frozen with cold, telling him he could scarcely stand in the wind, and had not made it more than six feet, my foster-father took him by the collar of his jacket and pushed him outside. I think then, when he opened the door, he saw just how dangerous the weather was, for when Jón returned inside a few minutes later, shaking with cold and anger, Björn said nothing, but let Jón undress and get into bed to revive himself.

  I’m sure Björn was scared then, too.

  Inga had remained in her bed and was now groaning with pain, as white as milk and overcome with a shuddering that left her covered in sweat. Björn carried her from the badstofa to the apartment in the loft – there used to be a loft in this cottage – so she might be afforded some privacy, but when he lifted her, her nightgown and the linen of her bed were soaked with water, and I cried out in surprise. I thought she had wet herself.

  ‘Don’t move her, Björn!’ I called, but he ignored me and lifted my foster-mother up the stairs, asking me to boil water and bring him some wadmal. I did as he asked, taking the new woven stuff I myself had made. I asked if I might see Mamma, but he told me to go and look after Kjartan, so I returned to the badstofa.

  Kjartan must have realised that something ill was afoot, for he was whimpering when I returned. As I sat back on our bed, he clambered across and in my own fear and need for comfort, I pulled him onto my lap, and we sat waiting for Björn to tell us what to do, listening to the storm.

  We waited for a long time. Kjartan fell asleep against my neck, so I laid him down in our bed and tried to card some wool, separating the tangles into thin wisps between my paddles, and picking out the little burrs. But my fingers were shaking. All the while I could hear Inga in the loft, crying out. I reminded myself that the crying was normal, and that soon I’d have a new foster-brother or sister to love.

  After some hours Björn stepped down from the loft. He entered the badstofa, and I saw that he was holding a small parcel. It was the baby. Björn’s face was ashen, and he held out the wee thing and made me take it into my arms. Then he left the room and returned to the loft to see to his wife.

  I was excited to hold the baby. It was very small and light, and didn’t move much, but it was mewling, and it rumpled its eyes and mouth, and its face was very red and awful looking. I unwrapped it and saw that it was a girl.

  Kjartan had awoken by this time. It had become chill inside; the wind was getting in through some crack, and a draught suddenly blew out most of the tallow candles we had lit and put on the table. Only one candle remained and, in its flickering light, our shadows danced out across the wall, and Kjartan started to cry. He closed his eyes and buried his head into my shoulder.

  Because it had become so cold, I tried to tuck the baby in its blanket in my shawl, and then used my pillow to hold it close to my chest. But we didn’t have down pillows, only seaweed, and they did not give off much warmth. But the baby had stopped crying, and I thought that maybe it wasn’t too cold, and would be all right. I used my fingers to wipe a little of the thick fluid off the baby’s head, and then Kjartan and I gave it a kiss.

  We sat on the bed together for a long time. Hours passed. Days could have slipped by for all I knew. It remained gloomy and cold, and the storm raged endlessly. I had told Kjartan to go and pull off the blankets from his parents’ bed, and we’d draped them around us, huddling together for warmth. Inga’s moans came unceasingly from the loft. It was a sound someone might make if they were asleep and having a terrible nightmare: a low, awful language without words, just sounds. And the wind was blowing so hard all the while, that sometimes I couldn’t tell if it was Inga crying out, or the wind, making the candle gutter in its candlestick.

  I had put an arm around Kjartan, and used the other to bring the baby close to my chest, and I told them both to try to listen to my heartbeat so that they would forget the snowstorm.

  I think we fell asleep. I say I think, because I don’t remember waking, but I do remember suddenly seeing Björn standing in the badstofa. The last candle had snuffed out, and in the dimness of the room I could just see him standing very still, his head hanging down.

  ‘Inga is dead,’ he said. The words fell heavily in the room. ‘My wife is dead.’

  ‘Björn,’ I said, ‘the baby is here. Take the baby,’ and I moved it out from under the blankets and offered it to him.

  He wouldn’t take it. ‘The baby is dead too,’ he said.

  I looked down at what I held in my hands, and I saw that the baby had become still, and that it wasn’t warm any more. The blankets were only warm because I had pressed them to my own body. I started to cry. Kjartan saw the baby’s little blue face, with the dried blood still clinging to its cheek, and he saw that it didn’t move, and he began to whimper. Björn watched us. I became upset, and I put the baby on the bed, and threw myself down on the floor with my face in my hands. I was wailing, and I cried out, ‘I want to die too!’

  ‘Maybe you will,’ Björn replied. That was all he said to comfort me. ‘Maybe you will die too.’

  I lay on the floor for a long time, screaming. I remember the wooden boards – the very same ones here by our feet now – were wet and smeared with my tears and the mess from my nose. I was angry at Björn, sitting on his bed in the darkness, with his head in his hands and not crying, not screaming, not telling me to get up and stop my tantrum. He was as frozen as the ground outside. And so I screamed and rolled on the floor until my eyes were swollen and my hands stung from slapping the wood. I howled like the blizzard outside, until I remembered Inga in the loft, and then I got u
p and ran out of the room, tripping on my skirts and falling on my knees. I climbed the stairs to the loft and ran inside.

  In our loft there was a little window in the roof, above the beams. We normally stuffed the hole with cloth to keep out the rain and snow, but it had fallen out, and let in a little blue light, although the blizzard still stormed outside. It was extremely cold in the room. My breath floated out from me in a soft cloud. A great deal of snow had blown in, and it had melted into a large puddle on the floor, and I saw that puddle first, how it threw back the light admitted by the window, so that it was bright on the floor, like a looking glass. And then I saw Inga.

  In the blue light of the room her blood looked purple. She lay on a narrow mattress of hay, over the woven wadmal I had given Björn earlier, except that the cloth was no longer white, but stained with blood. Her eyes were open and they reflected the light in moist glints that made me think she was still alive. I bent down to her and cried out ‘Mamma!’ and put my hand on her shoulder, but when I touched her I knew that she was dead. Her body had stiffened, and she was cold to touch.

  Her blood was everywhere. Her nightgown seemed black with it, all over her legs and the bed, but her bare shoulders were smeared in it too, and I noticed her hands, which lay beside her, palms upturned, were covered in it, just like when she’d make sausage, letting the blood clot and straining it through linen. Her face was white, too white in the dim room, and her hair had slipped from her cap and was stiff over her forehead.

  I won’t forget the smell. That room was filled with the smell of her blood, and the sharp, clean scent of the snow on the floorboards. It made me feel sick to breathe it in.

  Inga’s nightgown was bunched about her waist, and so I pulled it, stiff with dried blood as it was, back down over her legs so that her body was not so naked. Then I kissed her slack mouth. Finally, I pulled off her cap and pushed my face into her hair. It was the only part of her that still smelt of my foster-mother and not the blood. I lay my body down next to hers and covered my face in her long hair, and breathed her in, for how many minutes I don’t know, until Jón pushed aside the curtain to the loft and picked me up, and carried me back downstairs to bed.