by Hannah Kent
‘María asked if he wasn’t actually Ketilsson, and Natan replied that yes, indeed he was also Ketilsson, and that he had a great many more names besides, though not all of them were fit for our delicate ears. He was easy in his address, Reverend. He always knew what to say to people; what would make them feel good. And what would cut the deepest.
‘We didn’t speak for long. Worm summoned Natan, and he made his farewell, but not before he murmured that he hoped he would see more of us at a later time when he was not so called upon.’
Reverend Tóti ran a finger around his gums, dislodging a dreg or two of tobacco. He wiped his fingertip on his trousers, and couldn’t help but notice the small, unremarkable shape of his own pink hands. He felt a snag of envy in his chest.
‘When did you see Natan again, after that?’
Agnes paused to count her stitches before casting off. ‘Oh, that same day,’ she said. ‘María and I were kept busy all afternoon, running errands for Worm’s wife, and keeping the children from underfoot, but we were given the evening to celebrate the harvest in our own way. It was a fine delicate sort of twilight, and all the servants sat outside to watch the night fall down. One of the hands was telling a story of the hidden people, when a cough was heard and we saw Natan standing behind our group in the shadows. He apologised for sneaking up on us, but told us he was fond of stories, and would we humour a stranger by allowing him to join our festivities? One of the servant men said that Natan Ketilsson was hardly a stranger, especially amongst the women, and most laughed. But one or two of the men and also a number of the workmaids looked away.
‘María made room for Natan next to her. I was on the outer of the group, not being as popular on account of my having a certain way of talking to people, but Natan walked right past María and sat down next to me. “Now, we are all ready,” he said, and he looked over to the man who had been speaking, and he invited him to continue his tale. We all sat into the night telling stories and looking at the stars, until it was time to sleep and that was that.’
‘Why do you think Natan chose to sit next to you?’
Agnes shrugged. ‘He told me afterwards that he’d been watching me all day, and could not read me. I misunderstood him at first, and said, well, no wonder, for I was a woman, not a book. And he laughed, and said that no, he could read people too, although some seemed to be in a script he couldn’t comprehend.’ Agnes gave a slight smile. ‘Make what you will of that, Reverend. But that is what he said.’
THE REVEREND IS SURELY WONDERING at what we were to one another. I watch him and know that he is thinking of Natan and I, letting the thought roll through his mind, savouring it, like a child sucking the marrow out of a bone. He might as well be sucking a stone.
Natan.
How can I truly recall the first moment of meeting him, when the hand I felt press my own was merely a hand? It is impossible to think of Natan as the stranger he was, once, to me. I can picture the way he looked, and recall the weather, and the play of light across his stubbled face, but that virgin moment is impossible to recapture. I cannot remember not knowing Natan. I cannot think of what it was not to love him. To look at him and realise I had found what I had not known I was hungering for. A hunger so deep, so capable of driving me into the night, that it terrified me.
I did not lie to the Reverend. That night of stars and stories, and the warm pressure of his hand on mine, happened as I told him. But I did not tell Tóti what followed when the servants went to bed. I did not tell him that María went with them too, sending me a reproachful glance. I did not say that we were left alone, and that Natan urged me to stay with him in the half-light. To talk, he said. Only to talk.
‘Tell me who you are, Agnes. Here, let me take your hand so that I might learn a little of you.’
The swift warmth of his fingers tracing the length of my open palm.
‘These are calluses, so you are a hard worker. But your fingers are strong. You not only work hard, but you do your work well. I can see why Worm hired you. See this? You have a hollow palm. Like my own, here, can you feel how it is unfilled?’
The soft depression, the ghost creases in his skin, the suggestion of bones.
‘Do you know what it means, to have a hollow palm? It means there is something secretive about us. This empty space can be filled with bad luck if we’re not careful. If we expose the hollow to the world and all its darkness, all its misfortune.’
‘But how can one help the shape of one’s hand?’ I was laughing.
‘By covering it with another’s, Agnes.’
The weight of his fingers on mine, like a bird landing on a branch. It was the drop of the match. I did not see that we were surrounded by tinder until I felt it burst into flames.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Poet-Rósa’s poem to Natan Ketilsson,
c. 1827
Ó, hve sæla eg áleit mig, –
engin mun því trúande, –
þá fjekk eg líða fyrir þig
forsmán vina, en hinna spje.
Sá minn þanki sannur er, –
þó svik þín banni nýting arðs –
Ó, hve hefir orðið þjer
eitruð rosin Kiðjaskarðs!
Oh, how happy I believed I was –
no one could have known how free –
even when I suffered for you,
when everyone was mocking me.
Traitor, look at your misfortune –
these are my thoughts, they’re true –
Oh, how this rose of Kidjaskard
has gone and poisoned you!
AUTUMN FELL UPON THE VALLEY like a gasp. Margrét, lying awake in the extended gloom of the October morning, her lungs mossy with mucus, wondered at how the light had grown slow in coming; how it seemed to stagger through the window, as though weary from travelling such a long way. Already it seemed a struggle to rise. She’d wake in the chill night with Jón pressing his toes against her legs to warm them, and the farmhands were coming in from feeding the cow and horses with their noses and cheeks pink with the ice in the air. Her daughters had said that there was a frost every morning of their berrying trip, and snow had fallen during the round-up. Margrét had not gone, not trusting her lungs to last the long walk up over the mountain to find and herd the sheep from their summer pasture, but she’d sent everyone else. Except Agnes. She could not let her walk over the mountain. Not that she would flee. Agnes wasn’t stupid. She knew this valley, and she knew what little escape it offered. She’d be seen. Everyone knew who she was.
The round-up had been a day of disquiet. The farmhands had left first, before light, riding horses up beyond the Vididals mountain with other men of the valley, and some of the women of the district had followed on foot not long after. Margrét had stayed behind with Agnes to prepare the meal for their return. As soon as it had grown light that day, Margrét had felt uneasy. The sky had dawned grey and foreboding, and she had known something would happen. It was the way the clouds had crouched too close to the ground. The smell of iron in the air. All morning she’d been thinking of the people who had been lost on the mountains. Only the year before a maidservant had gone missing in a sudden snowstorm during round-up, and they hadn’t found her bones until the next spring, miles away from where she’d last been seen. Worry pressed on Margrét’s mind to the point where she found herself talking to Agnes just for the relief of expressing concern. Together they listed the people they had known who had died on the mountains. A bleak conversation to have, thought Margrét, but there was some comfort in talking about death aloud, as though in naming things, you could prevent them from happening. Perhaps that was why Agnes spoke more to the Reverend than he to her, she thought.
She’d been right, of course; something had happened. Soon after midday, with no one yet returned from the mountain, there had come a rapid knocking on the farm door, and Ingibjörg had burst in. ‘It’s Róslín,’ she had said.
The farm at Gilsstadir was overrun with children. Margrét h
ad noticed that despite the chaos, the smoking kitchen filled with burning pots and kettles left to boil over, Róslín’s horde of children seemed bored at the fact of their mother’s labour. After the three women had entered, Róslín had staggered to the badstofa, pale and sweating. Something was wrong, she kept repeating. Of course, she was horrified to see Agnes standing quietly in the doorway, but as Ingibjörg had calmly pointed out, where else was Margrét supposed to put her?
The baby had been wayward. It was Agnes who had told them that, suddenly stepping forward to place her hands on Róslín’s belly. Róslín had screamed, had demanded the others get Agnes off her, but neither Margrét nor Ingibjörg had moved. Even as Róslín batted at her hands and scratched her arms, Agnes had continued to gently press her thin fingers against the swollen round.
It’s in breech, she had said. Róslín had groaned then, and stopped fighting. Agnes had not moved either, but told Róslín to lie down on the floor, and remained by her side throughout the ordeal. Margrét remembered how Agnes had not taken her hands off the woman. Throughout the whole birth she had stroked Róslín with those slender palms of hers, soothing her, telling the children to get out of the way, to fetch cloth, to boil water. She had one of them run back to Kornsá to fetch some of the wild angelica collected by the girls on their berrying trip. ‘It’s in a tray of sand in the pantry,’ she had said, and Margrét had wondered at how Agnes seemed so familiar with her home. ‘Don’t bruise the root. Run back with a little handful.’ She’d asked Ingibjörg to make a tea of the root, told her it would let it come more easily. When the hot liquid was brought to her lips, Róslín clenched her jaw, refused to drink it.
‘It’s not poison, Róslín,’ Margrét had said. ‘Save us the tantrum.’ There had been a moment then. A shared look with Agnes. A quick, taut smile.
The baby had come in breech, like Agnes said. Legs first, bloody toes peeping through, then the body, and finally, the head, with the cord wound about its arm and neck. But it was alive, and that was all Róslín needed to know.
Agnes had refused to deliver it. She had asked Ingibjörg to help it into the world, and would not touch it, even later, when Róslín had fallen asleep, and the sound of the herded, bleating sheep began to resound throughout the valley. Margrét had thought it strange – the way Agnes would not cradle the newborn. What is it she had said? ‘It ought to live.’ As though it would die if Agnes took it into her arms.
There had been double cause to celebrate that evening. Snæbjörn was elated, plied with rum and brandy by the other farmers, so that when he climbed into the sorting pen to drag his sheep into his family’s hold, he staggered and slipped in the mud, and received a sharp butt to the head from a ram. Margrét heard Páll tell the story to his recovering mother, brightly recalling how Snæbjörn had to be dragged out to lie on the grass while the others sorted the rest of the animals.
They hadn’t eaten until late. Margrét’s daughters had rescued what they could of the neglected cooking and served it to the ravenous workhands that night. ‘It was snowing a little,’ Steina said, after they had heard about Róslín’s childbirth. She glanced over at Agnes. ‘It must have been a good sign.’
‘I did very little,’ Agnes said. ‘Ingibjörg delivered it.’
‘No,’ Margrét had corrected. ‘That tea of angelica root – where did you learn such a thing?’
‘It’s common knowledge,’ Agnes had murmured.
‘Probably Natan,’ Lauga suggested sourly.
Margrét wondered at how, even for an hour, Agnes had seemed part of the family. She’d found herself speaking with Agnes the following day, asking her about what dyes she was used to making, and they’d gone on like mistress and servant, until Lauga had come into the room and complained that she was sick of Agnes staring at her clothes and belongings. Lauga knew as well as Margrét that if Agnes were a thief, they would have noticed something missing by now. Not even the silver brooch had shifted from its place in the dust underneath the bed. Margrét briefly wondered if Lauga was jealous of Agnes, before putting the thought out of her mind. Why on earth would Lauga be envious of a woman who would be dead before the weather turned again? Yet, there was an intensity to her revulsion that seemed fired by something more than resentment.
Gently extracting her legs from under her husband’s heavy weight, Margrét got out of bed, padded quietly to the window and peered through the dried skin. There was sleet outside. What a nuisance, she thought. Though the rams and milking sheep had been put to pasture in the cropped home field, the yearling lambs were still penned in. They were to begin the slaughter today.
Margrét thought back to when Agnes had first arrived at Kornsá. Some part of her had relished the tension between her family and the criminal, was greedy for it, even. It had unified them; made her feel closer to her daughters, her husband. But now she realised that their silence had shifted into something more natural and untroubled. Margrét worried at this. She was too used to Agnes’s presence on the farm. Perhaps it was the usefulness of an extra pair of hands about the place. Having another woman’s help had already eased the pain in her back, and her cough did not seem to interrupt her breath as frequently as it had done. She avoided thinking about what would happen when the day of execution was announced. No, it was better to not think of it at all, and if she was feeling more comfortable around the woman then it was because it was easier to get the work done. No point looking over one’s shoulder when the task at hand was before you.
THERE IS AN URGENCY THAT comes with slaughter. The weather is bad, there is ice in the rain, and the wind is like a wolf nipping at your heels, reminding you that winter is coming. I feel as low as the dense snow clouds that are gathering.
No one wants to work into the night, and so we are all wrapped in layers, waiting outside in the October half-light, for the servants and Jón to catch the first sheep. They have kept aside as many animals as they think will keep us during the winter. Have they kept me amongst their number of mouths to feed? I fight an impulse to offer myself up to Jón and his knife. Why not kill me here, now, on an unremarkable day? It is the waiting that cripples. The sheep scavenge for what grass hasn’t been blistered brown by the weather. Do these dumb animals know their fate? Rounded up and separated, they only have to wait one icy night in fear. I have been in the killing pen for months.
Gudmundur catches the first sheep, kneeling on it to fix its head still. I don’t like him, but he is efficient – the throat is slit through to the spinal cord, and he is so quick with the pail that hardly a drop is spilled. Only a few minutes and all the blood is let. I step forward to take the pail from him, but he ignores me and hands it to Lauga. Never mind. Ignore him, too. I wait for a pail of blood from Jón, who has heaved his slaughtered ewe over the pen to better catch the red flow. There is always more blood than expected, and it always leaps in a direction unpredicted. Some of the blood spills onto the muddy ground, and into the grey wool of the animal, but soon the pail is full.
I return inside where Margrét has banked up the fire with dung and peat. My eyes water from the smoke, and Margrét coughs in the haze, but as she reminds me, we’ll have no cause for complaint when we eat the smoked meat we’ll string up over the rafters. I put my blood down and return outside.
We wait until the sheep are skinned. Bjarni’s ewe is still bleeding out – he lacks the technique for good slaughter. Gudmundur is nimble with a knife, however. He reminds me of Fridrik, who came to help with the killing at Illugastadir before he and Natan dropped all pretence of friendship. Fridrik always seemed a little too keen to rip the animal apart – a little too quick with the blade. Jón is slower, but more careful. He begins skinning from the back hocks, and breaks the joint in the hind legs without any sinew left to cut. Gudmundur skins as much as he can down the shoulders, but struggles to pull the skin off the brisket, and Jón asks Bjarni to help him. Together they haul the sheep onto the wall, where the rest of the skin is punched out from the carcass and finally pulled o
ff. Bjarni has made a mess of it. I wish I could step in to show him how it’s done. Imagine their faces if I stepped forward and requested a knife.
We take the pluck of heart, lungs and oesophagus, and the intestines and the stomach, as the carcass is gutted.
That autumn at Illugastadir, Natan nicked the gall bladder of a sheep. The bitter liquid spilled onto the meat, and Fridrik howled with laughter. ‘You pretend to be a doctor,’ he said to Natan. Strange, how these moments come back to me now.
With the offal in our pails, we leave the men to cut the flesh into portions and hang it, and return to the kitchen. Some of the smoke has cleared now, and the fire is high. Margrét has set a pot of water upon the hearth to boil, and all of us begin work on the sausage. Even Lauga helps by straining the blood through a cloth. She flinches as flecks hit her face as it slops. I go outside to collect the stomachs for the sausage, and when I return the air inside the croft is thick with the animal smell of boiling fat and kidneys, frying for the men’s breakfast. Margrét has placed some suet into another pot and covered it with water to simmer. Kristín, Margrét, Steina and I stitch the stomachs into bags, leaving a small hole for the stuffing. When Lauga has finished straining the blood I stir in the rest of the suet and the rye flour, and I suggest we stir in some lichen as well, as we used to do at Geitaskard. When Margrét agrees, and sends Lauga down to the storeroom to get it, I feel a swell of happiness murmur throughout my heart. This is my life as it used to be: up to my elbows in the guts of things, working towards a kind of survival. The girls chatter and laugh as they stuff the bags with the bloody mix. I can forget who I am.
