Burial Rites (26 page)

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 off. 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.

The suet renders quickly. Three of us drag the pot from the fire to leave it to cool, until we can break the lid of tallow hiding the liquid beneath.

The men come in to eat the kidneys, stinking of shit and wet wool. I think the servants look at us women, dropping bags of blood sausage into a pot of boiling water in the smoky, warm kitchen, with envy. When I serve Jón his food he looks me in the eyes for the first time. ‘Thank you, Agnes,’ he says quietly. It is because of Róslín’s baby – I am sure of it. He sees me differently now.

The men have finished eating, and they leave to fetch the first cuts of meat. I start to measure out the saltpetre and mix it with salt. It reminds me of when I used to help Natan in his workshop: measuring out sulphur, dried leaves, crushed seeds. I have been thinking of Illugastadir a lot today. The slaughter in the only autumn I ever spent there. I enjoyed putting provisions aside for the winter. Things we would eat later, that would sustain Natan on his long trips. He stood against the kitchen doorframe as I mixed the meal through the blood that day, reading to me from the sagas, and telling me of his time in Copenhagen, where the
blodpølse
was spiced and speckled with a type of dried fruit. Then Fridrik and Sigga burst into the room giggling together, with pails of guts from the slaughter yard, snow in their hair, and Natan left me for his workshop.

My fingers sting as I press layer after layer of salted meat into the wooden drum. A pink crust crackles in between my fingers, and my back aches from bending into the barrel. Steina watches me, asking how much water to sprinkle over each layer, remarks on the way her fingertips pucker from the salt. She licks her skin, wrinkles her nose at the taste. ‘I don’t see why we can’t store it all in whey. Salt is so expensive,’ she says.

‘It suits the foreign tongue,’ I reply. This barrel is to be traded for goods. The fattier meat we will store in whey, will keep for the family.

‘Is salt fetched from the sea?’

‘Why do you ask me so many questions, Steina?’

The girl pauses, her cheeks pink. ‘Because you give me answers,’ she mumbles.

Next are the bones, and the heads. I ask Lauga to empty the tallow pot of gristle and water, but she pretends she cannot hear me and keeps her eyes fixed ahead of her. Kristín goes instead. When Steina sidles up to me again, smiling shyly, wondering if there is anything I need doing, I ask her to fill the emptied pot with the bones that cannot be used for anything else. Salt. Barley. Water. Steina and I haul the pot next to the poaching blood sausage, for the marrow to leach into the simmering water, for the salt and heat to prise away all the tenderness from the carcass. She claps her hands when we fix the slopping pot upon the hook and immediately begins to throw more fuel on the fire.

‘Not too much, Steina,’ I say. ‘Don’t cover the coals.’

The sheep-heads I hold close to the embers of the hearth to singe away all the hair. The burning wool does not catch, but shrivels at the lick of flame, and I feel my nostrils flare in the rising stink of it.

Oh, God. The smell.

The badstofa in Illugastadir. The whale fat smeared on the wood and the beds, and then the flame from the lamp smoking on the greasy, woollen blankets. Burning hair.

I can’t do it; I need fresh air. Oh God!

Don’t let them see how it upsets you. I give the heads to Steina, let her do it. I need fresh air. I tell Steina it is the smoke.

Outside the drizzle settles on my face like a blessing. But the stench of scorched wool and burnt hair remains in my nostrils, acrid, sickening me to my core.

It is Margrét who finds me, squatting in the dark with my head on my knees. I wait for her to berate me. What are you doing, Agnes? Get inside. Do as you’re told. How dare you leave Steina to do it all herself. She’s burnt the meat beyond recognition.

But Margrét remains silent. She eases herself down next to me and I hear her knees crack.

‘How quickly the light leaves now.’ Is that all she is going to say?

She’s right. The blue eventide seems to have crept up from the dark intestine of the river in front of us.

The smell of things always seems stronger at night, and sitting here I am aware of the odour of the kitchen on Margrét. Blood sausage. Smoke. Brine. She is breathing heavily, and in the silence of the evening I can hear a catch in her lungs; the grip of something upon her breath.

‘I needed some air,’ I say.

Margrét gives a sigh, clears her throat. ‘No one ever died from fresh air.’

We sit and listen to the faint rush of the river. The drizzle ceases. Snow begins to fall.

‘Let’s see what those girls are doing now,’ Margrét says eventually. ‘I won’t be surprised if Steina has strung herself up on the rafters, instead of the meat. We might discover her smoked through.’

A soft thud sounds from the smithy. The men must be spreading the sheepskins out to dry.

‘Come, Agnes. You’ll catch your death.’

Looking down, I see that Margrét has extended her hand. I take it, and the feel of her skin is like paper. We go inside.

THE FIRE IN THE KITCHEN
had collapsed into a pile of whispering embers, and night had fallen thick upon the spilt blood in the stocks outside, by the time Lauga, with swollen fingers, tied the last wet bag of sausage to a string to hang and dry. Steina, her
apron covered in smears from offal and blood, leaned against the doorframe and watched her sister.

‘It’s snowing outside,’ she said.

Lauga shrugged.

‘Everyone’s gone to bed.’ She sniffed. ‘Smells nice in here, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know when killing ever smelt nice.’ Lauga bent down and picked up the pails that had held the sheep entrails.

‘Oh, leave them to dry out. We’ll set to washing them in the morning.’ Steina walked over to her sister and pulled a stool out in front of the fire. ‘Did you see how Agnes set the meat in store? I’ve never seen anyone work so fast.’

Lauga stacked the pails against the wall and sat down beside Steina, holding her hands out to the hot ashes. ‘She’s probably poisoned the whole barrel.’

Steina pulled a face. ‘She wouldn’t do such a thing. Not to us.’ She sucked a corner of her apron and began to sponge at the stains covering her hands. ‘I wonder what gave her that funny turn.’

‘What turn?’

‘Agnes and I were sitting here, as we are now, tending to the heads, and all of a sudden she throws them in my lap, and off she goes, muttering to herself. Mamma followed her out, and I saw the two of them sitting there, talking. Then they came back inside.’

Lauga frowned and stood up.

‘It’s funny,’ Steina continued. ‘For all she says, I think Mamma holds a fondness for her now.’

‘Steina,’ Lauga warned.

‘She’d never say as much, but –’

‘Steina! In heaven’s name, must you always talk about Agnes?’

Steina looked up at her sister, surprised. ‘What’s wrong with talking about Agnes?’