Burial Rites

by Hannah Kent

  Agnes said nothing.

  ‘I have met others here in this valley who say he was a sorcerer, that he got his name from Satan,’ Tóti said.

  ‘That’s a very popular story. And plenty believe it too.’

  ‘Do you believe it?’

  Agnes smoothed the length of the unfinished stocking out across her knees. ‘I don’t know,’ she said finally. ‘Natan believed in dreams. His mother had foresight and her dreams often came true. His family is famous for it. He made me tell him my dreams and put a lot of store by them.’

  Agnes stopped running her palm over the stocking and looked up. ‘Reverend,’ she said quietly. ‘If I tell you something, will you promise to believe me?’

  Tóti felt his heart leap in his chest. ‘What is it you want to tell me, Agnes?’

  ‘Remember when you first visited me here, and you asked me why I had chosen you to be my priest, and I told you that it was because of an act of kindness, because you had helped me across the river?’ Agnes cast a wary glance out to the group of people on the edge of the field. ‘I wasn’t lying,’ she continued. ‘We did meet then. But what I didn’t tell you was that we had met before.’

  Tóti raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry, Agnes. I don’t remember.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have. We met in a dream.’ She stared at Tóti, as if worried he would laugh.

  ‘A dream?’ The Reverend was struck again by the contrast of her dark lashes against the lightness of her eyes. She is unlike anyone else, he thought.

  Satisfied that he wasn’t going to laugh, Agnes resumed her knitting. ‘When I was sixteen years old I dreamt that I was walking barefoot in a lava field. It was covered with snow and I was lost and scared – I didn’t know where I was, and there was no one to be seen. In every direction there was nothing but rock and snow, and great chasms and cracks in the ground. My feet were bleeding, but I had to keep going – I didn’t know where, but I was walking as fast as I could. Just when I thought I would die from fear, a young man appeared. He was bareheaded, but wore a priest’s collar, and he gave me his hand. We kept going in the same direction as before – we didn’t know where else to go – and even though I was still terrified, I had his hand in mine, and it was a comfort.

  ‘Then suddenly, in my dream, I felt the ground give way beneath my feet, and my hand was wrenched out of the young man’s, and I fell into a chasm. I remember looking up as I fell into the darkness, and seeing the ground close back up over my head. It shut out the light and the face of the man who had appeared. I was dropped into the earth, buried in silence, and it was unbearable, and then I woke.’

  Tóti felt his mouth go dry. ‘Was I that man?’ he asked.

  Agnes nodded. She had tears in her eyes. ‘It terrified me when I saw you then, at Gönguskörd. I recognised you from my dream, and I knew then that you were bound to my life in some way, and it worried me.’ Agnes wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘After we parted I found out your name. I heard that you were to be a priest like your father, and that you were going south to the school there, and I knew then that my dream was real, and that we would meet for a third time. Even Natan believed that everything comes in threes.’

  ‘But you are not down a chasm, and it is not yet dark,’ Tóti said.

  ‘Not yet,’ Agnes replied quietly, swallowing hard. ‘Anyway. It wasn’t the darkness in the chasm that scared me. It was the silence.’

  Tóti was thoughtful. ‘There is a lot in this world and the next that we don’t understand. But just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean we have to be afraid. We can be sure of so little in this life, Agnes. And it is frightening. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t frightened by what I did not know. But we have God, Agnes, and more than that, we have His love and He takes our fear away.’

  ‘I can’t feel sure of anything like that.’

  Tóti reached over and tentatively took up her hand. ‘Trust me, Agnes. I’m here, as I was in your dream. You can feel my hand in yours,’ he added.

  Tóti pressed her slender fingers, her knuckles. He was aware of her smell, the sweet scent of fresh buttermilk, and a sourness also. Of skin? Of the dairy? He fought off a sudden compulsion to put her fingers in his mouth.

  Unaware of his thoughts, Agnes smiled and patted his knee with her free palm. ‘I am sure that you will make a fine priest after all,’ she said.

  Tóti stroked the skin on the back of her hand. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘Blöndal nearly didn’t let me come to you.’ He felt conspiratorial.

  ‘Of course he didn’t.’

  ‘When I saw him today I was worried he would forbid me from seeing you.’

  ‘And did he?’

  Tóti shook his head. ‘He said I must preach to you.’

  Agnes gently pulled her hand out of his grasp, and he reluctantly released her. He watched her resume her knitting.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about Natan,’ he asked, a little peevish.

  Agnes glanced at the people before them. ‘Do you think they need more food brought out?’

  ‘Margrét would have called you.’ Tóti wiped his sweaty palms against his trousers. ‘Go on, Agnes. Blöndal isn’t here.’

  ‘And thank the Lord for that.’ Agnes took a deep breath. ‘What do you want me to tell you about Natan? You know that he was my employer at Illugastadir. You’ve obviously heard enough about his character from people around here. What else do you want to know?’

  ‘When did you meet him?’

  ‘I met Natan Ketilsson when I was working at Geitaskard.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘In Langidalur. It was my sixth farm as a workmaid. It’s run by Worm Beck. He was good to me. I’d been working at Fannlaugarstadir, in the east, then Búrfell. That is when we first met, Reverend, when I was on my way towards Búrfell and you took me across the river. I’d gone because I’d heard that Magnús Magnússon, the man named as my father, was working there, and I thought I might go stay with him.

  ‘I didn’t stay there long. Magnús was kind, but when I reminded him I was named Magnúsdóttir for him, he flew into a rage and said that my mother had damaged his good name, and would he ever see the end of the trouble women had brought him. I didn’t like to stay after that. Magnús fixed me a bed and let me stay with everyone there, but from time to time I’d see him looking at me with a queer expression and I knew it was because he saw my mother’s likeness. He gave me some money before I left. It was the first time I ever held money in my life.

  ‘I decided to go to Geitaskard. I set off quite early in the morning on foot, and was following the white river Blanda downstream, when I saw a group of men coming from an eastern mountain pass. They fell in with me and my companions, other servants mostly, and we introduced ourselves, and if one of them wasn’t my own little brother, now all grown up! We hadn’t even recognised each other. Jóas was overcome. He pressed my hand and called me sister, and the others mocked him when they saw tears in his eyes. I was happy to find Jóas too, but I noticed he had the lick of brandy about him, and his dress was slovenly. He told me that he was a servant, but he carried no letter of recommendation, and he had the nervous look of vagrants you see about these parts. Something told me he was not doing well for himself, and I was heartsore to see it. We talked all the way to Geitaskard that morning, and I learnt that Jóas’s childhood hadn’t been any brighter than mine. Mamma had left him soon after she lugged me down to Kornsá, and he told me he’d been thrown up and down the valley like a hot coal. He didn’t know where Ingveldur was, and he said that she could be in hell for all he cared. So that was the two of us, paupers both, only he looked the worse for it. He couldn’t read or write, and when I offered to teach him he was put out of temper and told me not to show off.

  ‘Jóas and his friends, a greasy lot with nary a clean face between them, told me they were headed to Geitaskard to see what odd jobs they could pick up, it being a large farm. Jóas hadn’t organised himself a position like I had, but I vouched for him in fro
nt of Worm, and he was taken on, too. Those were kinder days, having family about me like that, even though we hardly knew each other, and a good farm to work on. There was plenty of food at Geitaskard, not like Gudrúnarstadir or Gafl, or even Gilsstadir. There were times at those farms when I had no choice but to give the bairns tallow candles to eat, and myself a bit of boiled leather. The servants at Geitaskard always minded themselves too. With all those cows and horses, and butter and grass, and thick servings of meat to line your stomach, it wasn’t hard to be good. I fell in with one of the other servants there, María Jónsdóttir. I never had many friends, but she had been a pauper as well, and I suppose we understood one another in a way.

  ‘Jóas seemed to like Geitaskard, which I was glad to see. But I didn’t care for his friends. They seemed a gang, and were slouch-faced, weedy sort of men, with stained trousers and nits in their hair. Jóas had scratched his scalp raw. Worm got rid of some of the men after no more than a week – he’d caught them sleeping behind the cowshed – and the rest didn’t last long either. I don’t know whether it was because he was a better sort of man, or if it was because he had me there with him, but Jóas let me clean him up and comb the nits out of his hair, and he worked hard. At nights, when we had time to ourselves, we’d talk. He told me he’d heard stories about me, that he’d asked around and heard I’d gone to work at Gudrúnarstadir. He said he’d tried to find me there, but I’d left when he arrived, and they couldn’t remember where I’d gone. I didn’t let him see it, but I wept over that, the thought of my brother trying to find me. He’d had a child, as well. A little girl, whose mamma was a workmaid. But he told me that the baby was stillborn, and the maid did not care for him. I told him about Helga, our poor dead sister, and he said he’d gone to her funeral and that the farmer Jónas, Helga’s father, gave him a little bit of money on account of Jóas being abandoned by a whore. Jóas insisted that our Mamma was no good, and that she could go to hell for leaving two children to the mercy of the parish, which was no kind of mercy at all, and he called her many other things besides. He spoke of Mamma as Magnús had, and we quarrelled about it one night, and when I woke up Jóas couldn’t be found. He’d taken the money that Magnús had given me. I haven’t seen him since.’

  There was a loud cackle of laughter from the gathering on the bottom field. Tóti saw that two of the men had let out the cow and the others were trying in vain to herd it back into the field.

  ‘I’d been saving that money,’ Agnes continued. ‘For when I got married; to pay the licences and help my husband buy a plot of land so we could be decent and independent.’

  ‘Had you a fiancé?’ Tóti asked.

  Agnes smiled. ‘Oh, there was a servant at Geitaskard. Daníel Gudmundsson. He was fond of me, and he told everyone that we were engaged to be wed. He said so in the trials, but I don’t see how he could have been serious. Neither of us had a coin to our name. I let him think what he fancied, so long as it meant that he was kind to me.

  ‘Daníel worked at Illugastadir when I was there, too. He was at the trials, first as a witness, then Blöndal decided he must have known what was to happen, and he was sentenced to time in the Rasphus in Copenhagen.’

  ‘Did he know what was going to happen?’ Tóti asked.

  Agnes looked up from her needles and regarded him coolly.

  ‘If anyone knew what was going to happen do you think I’d be sitting here, talking to you? Do you think any of those others, Daníel, Fridrik’s family, would be strapped over a barrel being whipped to within an inch of their lives if they knew what was going to happen?’

  There was a moment of silence.

  Agnes took a deep breath. ‘After Jóas left, the best thing about working at Geitaskard was María. I never had many friends growing up; I’d been bundled along from farm to farm. To anyone who needed to do their parish duty, or who wanted a girl-stripling to watch over the grass, or sheep, or kettles. I used to keep to myself anyhow. I preferred to read than talk with the others.’ Agnes looked up. ‘Do you like reading?’ she asked Tóti.

  ‘Very much.’

  Agnes gave a wide smile, and for the first time Tóti remembered the servant girl he had helped over the river. Her eyes were bright, and her lips parted to reveal even teeth; she suddenly looked younger, altered. He was aware of his own chest rising and falling. She is quite beautiful, he thought.

  ‘Me too,’ she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘I like the sagas best. As they say, blíndur er bóklaus maður. Blind is a man without a book.’

  Tóti felt something rise in him, a cry, or a laugh. He gazed at Agnes, at the afternoon sun lighting the tips of her eyelashes, and wondered at Blöndal’s words. Agnes killed Natan because she was spurned. He saw the sentence written in his mind.

  ‘When I was a girl, I used to be hired out to watch over fields. Sometimes those farms had books.’ She gestured to the rocky hills behind them. ‘I used to take them and read up over Kornsá Hill. I could fall asleep there, and have some peace from the farm, and from the chores. Though sometimes I’d be caught and punished.’

  ‘Your confirmation said that you were well-read.’

  Agnes straightened her back. ‘I liked confirmation; the Holy Communion and everyone looking at you as you walked up the aisle and knelt before the priest. The farmers and their wives couldn’t tell me not to read when they knew I was preparing for confirmation. I could go to the church and study with the Reverend there, if he had time. I was given a white dress, and there were pancakes afterwards.’

  ‘What about poetry?’

  Agnes looked sceptical. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Do you like it? Do you compose?’

  ‘I don’t brag about my poems. Not like Rósa. Everyone knows hers.’ She shrugged.

  ‘That is because they are beautiful.’

  Agnes went quiet. ‘Natan loved that about Rósa. He loved the way she knew how to build things with words. She invented her own language to say what everyone else could only feel.’

  ‘I hear Natan was a poet, too.’ Tóti pretended nonchalance. ‘Did you two speak in poems to each other, as Rósa and Natan did?’

  ‘Not like Rósa, no. But we spoke to each other in a kind of poetry.’ Agnes looked out over the field. ‘I met Natan on a day like this.’

  ‘A harvest celebration?’

  She nodded. ‘At Geitaskard. I was serving with María. We were bringing out food and drink, and taking our time about it too. María knew everything there was to know about a person, and I remember that she’d been pointing out the swollen belly of one of the farmer’s servants and saying some things that perhaps weren’t kind, but she had me laughing till I couldn’t breathe. Then she grasped me by the elbow and dragged me to the cowshed, and told me that she’d just seen Natan Ketilsson arrive on horseback.

  ‘I already knew about Natan, of course. He was famous for all sorts of things, depending on who you spoke to. Everyone found out about his affair with Rósa. Everyone knew her children were Natan’s, not Ólaf’s. Natan travelled all through the north. As a young man he went about letting blood and then he went to Copenhagen, and everyone said he came back a sorcerer. They also said that he became friends with Blöndal, who was studying there at the time, and that is why he never got caught for what he did later. Everyone thought Natan was a thief, and it’s true that he was whipped for it when he was younger. No one could account for his having so much money when they saw for themselves how little they put in his palm. Some swore that he got others to steal animals for him. He had a lot of enemies. But whether those folks were wronged or just jealous is hard to say. Stories have a way of boiling over, and Natan himself liked to keep people guessing.’

  ‘What was your opinion of Natan then?’

  ‘Oh, I had none to speak of, then. I’d never met him before, though his brother Ketil had once tried to woo me. In the cowshed María told me that Natan had finally left Rósa and taken up a farm for himself. A lot of people were talking about it on account of
Rósa being well-liked, and sorry to see her heartbroken, though she was married. María told me that Worm was a great friend of Natan’s, and had helped him buy Illugastadir, a farm right by the sea with plenty of seals and eider ducks and driftwood too, if you could haul it from the shore. She said Natan had started giving himself some airs, calling himself Lyngdal, not Ketilsson, though neither of us could work out why – it was a strange sort of name to have, not Icelandic in the slightest. María thought it was probably to make himself out to be a Dane, and I wondered that he was allowed to change his name at all. María told me that men might do as they please, and that they are all Adams, naming everything under the sun.

  ‘We brushed ourselves down and María bit her lips to make them redder. Then we walked out of the cowshed, pretending to see if any of the dishes had been emptied.

  ‘It was then that I saw Natan for the first time. I thought he’d be a big man, a handsome, upright fellow with long hair, like those men servant girls usually go giddy over. But Natan was not handsome. The man I saw talking with Worm was not tall and he was quite thin in the face – he never looked strong. His hair was reddish-brown, and his nose was too big for his face. I thought he looked like a fox with his chestnut hair and beady little eyes, and told María so. She burst out laughing, and said no wonder some northerners thought he was a shapeshifter.

  ‘Natan noticed us then. It was obvious that we had made a joke at his expense, but he didn’t seem to mind. He made some comment to Worm and began walking towards us.

  ‘I remember that he was smiling, as though he knew us already. I suppose he liked the attention. “Good afternoon, girls,” he said. He wasn’t much taller than I was, but his voice was deep. He said: “May I have the pleasure of learning your names?” and I answered for the both of us.

  ‘Natan smiled and made a bow, and it was then that I noticed his hands. They were very white, like a woman’s hands, and his fingers were as slender as birch twigs, and as lengthy. No wonder they called him “long-fingers”. He said he was pleased to meet us both, and wasn’t it a fine day? He started to ask us if we were enjoying the celebration, but I interrupted him, and said that he hadn’t yet given us his name. María scoffed, but Natan always liked those who had a tongue in their heads, as he told me later. He said his name was Natan Lyngdal. There was a glitter in his eye.