Burial Rites (33 page)

Why doesn’t he come?

If the Reverend came tonight, would I tell him that Natan and I were as husband and wife? Then I could tell him about what began to change between us. Perhaps he guesses at it anyway.

The salt came. The darkling wind rose and the black sand began to sting. The way down. The cold path down to colder water. The salt came.

What would I say to Tóti?

Reverend, Natan began to leave Illugastadir at the close of summer, and each time he returned, it was as though he became more of a stranger to me. He’d catch me alone in the dairy, take the scrubbing brush out of my hand and draw me to him, only to ask me if I had kept Daníel warm in his bed while he was out, scraping together a living by luring death out of the bowels of his countrymen. He even accused me of loving Fridrik! That lug of a boy, swinging his fists about and stinking of unwashed wool. Natan’s accusations seemed comical to me. Couldn’t he see how much I missed him? How different he was from any other man I had known?

I imagine Tóti’s face blushing. I imagine him wiping his sweaty palms against the material of his trousers. His slow nod. The light from the candle in the badstofa flickering over his face as he watches me, wide-eyed.

Reverend, I would say, I told Natan that Daníel was nothing to me. That Fridrik was enamoured with Sigga. I told him that I was his for as long as he’d have me, that I’d be his wife if he wished it.

It was those moods of his that took him away. I’d find Natan in the workshop measuring broths, skimming the dirty froth off boiling roots. I’d offer my help, as I helped him when I first came. He began to push me out of his way. He didn’t want me, he said. Did he mean he didn’t want my help, or my presence? He’d direct me towards the door.

‘Go. I don’t want you here. I’m busy.’

Sometimes I’d go to the outhouse and hammer the dried cod heads with a cow thighbone. Just to beat and rail against something. He is falling out of love with you, I told myself. And I began to wonder whether he ever loved me.

But there were still hours when he found me alone by the shore, collecting eiderdown. He would take me beside the birds’ nests, his hands in my hair, his look as desperate as a drowning man’s.
He needed me like he needed air. I felt it in his gaze, in the way he grappled for my body like a buoy in the water.

Reverend Tóti, draw your stool nearer. I’ll tell you what it was really like.

I hated being his servant. One night I would be his lover, with the hard rhythm of his breath matching my own. And then, the next, I was Agnes the workmaid. Not even the housekeeper! And his cool commands began to seem like reprimands.

‘Call the sheep home from pasture. Milk the cow. Milk the sheep. Fetch water. Collect the ashes and spread them upon the soil. Feed Thóranna. Make her stop crying. Make her stop crying! This pot is still dirty. Ask Sigga to show you how to wash the beakers properly.’

Do you understand what I am saying, Reverend? Or is love constant for you? Have you ever loved a woman? A person you love as much as you hate the hold they have on you?

I hated the way my mind would turn to Natan throughout the day, until I was sick with the pattern of my thoughts. I hated the nausea that came at the suggestion he did not care for me. I hated the way I kept tripping up over those rocks to his workshop, again and again, to bring him things he no longer required.

It took Daníel to tell me how it really was.

The farmhand was waiting for me one day when Natan was not at home. I stepped out of the workshop, locked the door, and saw Daníel standing on the shore, his scythe in one hand, his hat in the other.

‘What were you doing in there?’ he asked me.

‘None of your business.’

‘We’re not allowed in there,’ he said. ‘Where did you find the key?’

‘Natan gave it to me. He trusts me.’

‘Oh yes,’ Daníel said, ‘I forgot you maids get special treatment.’

‘And what do you mean by that?’

Daníel laughed. ‘Where are
my
sealskin shoes? Where are
my
new clothes?’

Natan was generous when the mood took him. ‘You haven’t been here long,’ I pointed out to Daníel. ‘I’m sure you’ll receive a present when Natan returns.’

‘I don’t want something from Natan.’

‘No? You were just complaining about our special treatment.’

‘I want something from you.’

Daníel’s tone changed then. His voice became softer. ‘Agnes, you must know that I am fond of you.’

I laughed. ‘Fond of me? You told everyone at Geitaskard we were engaged!’

‘I was hopeful, Agnes. I am hopeful. You won’t be Natan’s forever, Agnes.’

His words stopped me cold. A sudden dizziness spun through me. ‘What did you say?’

‘Don’t think we don’t know. Sigga, me, Fridrik. We all know. Everyone at Geitaskard. They knew you were sneaking off to the storeroom at night.’ He smirked.

‘If you spent less of your time spreading gossip, and more time spreading grass, we’d all be better off. Go do as you’re meant to, Daníel.’

His face screwed up in anger. ‘You think you’re better than us because you’ve found another farmer who lets you share his bed?’

‘Don’t be vulgar.’

‘Don’t be fooled. Just because you play at being a wife, does not make you a married woman, Agnes.’

‘I am his housemistress, that’s all.’

Daníel laughed. ‘Oh yes, his mistress, certainly.’

My temper broke then. I snatched the scythe from his hand and shoved it back into his chest. ‘And what are you, Daníel? A workman
who speaks ill of his master? Who insults the woman he would like to claim as his own? You disgust me.’

Would I tell the Reverend this, if he were here? Perhaps he has drawn his own conclusions. Perhaps that is why he does not come.

I could tell him of another day, the day of the death waves. Sigga had sent me outside to fetch stones to mend the wall of the hearth, and it was while I was out there that I heard the splash of the oar against the water. It was a still day, the kind of day where the world is holding its breath. The sea was coiled.

Daníel and Natan had gone fishing, but it was too early in the morning for them to return. I could see Daníel rowing, and Natan sitting still and upright in the boat. As they came closer I could see that Natan’s face was set in a grim line, his hands clutching the wooden boat as though he were about to be sick.

As soon as they reached the shoreline, Natan threw himself out of the boat and began stomping through the shallows. He scuffed the shore with his boots so that pebbles flew in a spray about him.

I had been living with Natan long enough by then to know that nothing could assuage the black moods that overtook him, so when I saw him thunder up the beach, the water dripping from his clothes, I remained silent. He didn’t look at me as he passed, but marched towards the farm.

When Daníel had pulled the boat onto the shore, I walked down to ask him what had happened. Had they fought? Had they lost a net?

Daníel seemed amused at his master’s display of temper. He started to haul nets from the boat, and gave me some to carry back up to Illugastadir.

‘Natan thinks we were hit with death waves,’ he said. Salt clung to his beard. He said that he hadn’t pegged Natan for being such a superstitious bastard.

They had been dragging the nets when out of nowhere they were hit by three large waves. Daníel said they were lucky that the boat didn’t overturn. He had scrambled to save the line, and fortunately prevented it all from going overboard, but when he looked up Natan was white as a ghost. When Daníel asked him what the matter was, Natan looked at him as though he had lost his mind. ‘Those were death waves, Daníel.’

Daníel told Natan that death waves were an old wives’ tale, and he didn’t think a learned man like him would be fooled by such a thing. Then Daníel said Natan had snapped, grabbed him by the sleeve and told him that he wouldn’t be laughing when he was buried at the bottom of the ocean.

Daníel said that he’d thrown off Natan’s grip, and offered to bail the water the waves had brought into the boat, but that Natan had only said: ‘Damn you, Daníel. Do you think I’m going to sit here and wait for another wave to drown me? We’re going back.’

Daníel thought it wouldn’t be beyond Natan to drown him in a temper, just to show the truth of the superstition, so he rowed them to shore.

After Daníel had told me all of this, I decided to speak with Natan, even though Daníel told me to leave him be. He said that Natan had got it into his head that he was doomed, and that we should let him come to his senses in his own good time. But I followed Natan to the croft, where I found him shouting at Sigga. She was trying to undress him from his wet clothes, and the soaked shirt had caught about his face.

Seeing that Sigga was upset by his harsh words, I told her to leave and began to undress Natan myself, but he pushed me away and called Sigga back. ‘You forget your place, Agnes,’ he said.

Later that day I followed Natan to his workshop, carrying an unlit lamp I thought he might need. The days had shortened so
rapidly over the weeks, and the light was shuddering to a close. The ocean looked uneasy.

When Natan tried the workshop door, he found it was already open. He demanded to know if I’d been in there without his permission, and I told him that he knew I had been tending the fire while he’d gone fishing. I had probably forgotten to lock the door, but he began to accuse me of meddling with his things, of trying to find his money, of taking advantage of him.

Taking advantage of
him
! My tongue got the better of me then, and I told him that he was the one who had lured me out to his lonely farm with a lie. He had told me I was his housemistress, and yet all the while it was Sigga. I asked him if he’d been paying her higher wages than me, and why he had thought to trick me in the first place, when he knew I would have followed him anyway!

Natan began to check his belongings. It hurt me that he thought I might have taken something of his. What did I want with his coins, or medicines, or whatever else he had hidden in there?

I stayed in the workshop. He could not make me leave. When he was satisfied nothing was missing he took out some sealskins that needed curing and refused to say anything more to me. But it was late in the afternoon and the sky outside was flat and grey, a poor light to be working by. I sulked by the hearth and watched him, waiting for him to turn to me, to take me in his arms, to apologise.

Perhaps Natan forgot I was there, or else he did not care, but after a time he set his knife on the ground, and wiped his hands on a rag. Then he walked outside the workshop and stood on the furthest fringe of the outcrop, staring out to sea. I followed him.

I slipped my arms about his waist to comfort him and told him I was sorry.

Natan did not pull away from my embrace, but I felt his body
stiffen at my touch. I buried my face into the greasy folds of his shirt and kissed his back.

‘Don’t,’ he muttered. His face was still turned towards the sea. I tightened my hands upon his stomach and pressed myself against him.

‘Stop it, Agnes.’ He grabbed my hands, and pushed me away from him. His muscles moved as he clenched and unclenched his jaw.

A gale picked up. It knocked Natan’s hat from his head and carried it out to sea.

I asked him what was wrong. I asked him if someone had threatened him, and he laughed. His eyes were stony. His hair, no longer constrained by his hat, whipped about his head in a dark tangle.

He said that he saw signs of death all about him.

In the silence that followed, I took a deep breath. ‘Natan, you’re not going to die.’

‘Explain the death waves then.’ His voice was low, taut. ‘Explain the premonitions. The dreams that I’ve been having.’

‘Natan, you laugh about those dreams.’ I was trying to remain calm. ‘You tell everybody about them.’

‘Do you see me laughing, Agnes?’

He stepped towards me and grasped my shoulders, bringing his face so close to mine that our foreheads touched.

‘Every night,’ he hissed, ‘I dream of death. I see it everywhere. I see blood, everywhere.’

‘You’ve been skinning animals –’

Natan gripped me harder about the shoulders. ‘I see it upon the ground, in dark, sticky pools.’ He licked his lips. ‘I taste it, Agnes. I wake with the taste of blood in my mouth.’

‘You bite your tongue in your sleep –’

He gave an unfriendly smile. ‘I saw you and Daníel talking about me by the boat.’

‘Let go of me, Natan.’

He ignored me.

‘Let go of me!’ I twisted myself out of his grasp. ‘You should listen to yourself. You sound like an old woman, harping on about dreams and premonitions.’

It was cold. A great, churning cloud had moved in from the sea, snuffing all but the faintest scratchings of light from the sky. Yet even in the near darkness, I could see Natan’s eyes shine. His gaze unnerved me.

‘Agnes,’ he said. ‘I’ve been dreaming about you.’

I said nothing, suddenly longing to return to the croft and light the lamps. I was aware of the ocean, not two steps from our feet.

‘I dream that I’m in bed and I can see blood running down the walls. It drips on my head and the drops burn my skin.’

He took a step towards me.

‘I am bound to my bed, and the blood rises about me until I am covered. Then, suddenly, it’s gone. I can move, and I sit up and look about me and the room is empty.’

He pressed my hand and I felt the sharp edge of his nail dig into the flesh of my palm.

‘But then, I see
you
. I walk towards you. And as I draw closer I see that you’re nailed to the wall by your hair.’

As he said this, a great gust of wind blew my cap from my head, and my hair was loosed. Unbraided as it was, the long tendrils were immediately lashed about by the wind. Natan quickly reached out and grabbed a handful, using it to pull me closer.

‘Natan! You’re hurting me!’

But Natan was distracted. ‘What’s that?’ he whispered.

On the wind I could suddenly smell the heavy stench of rot, dark and putrid.

‘It’s the seaweed. Or a dead seal. Let go of my hair.’