by Caroline Lea
The further away from Skálholt she travels, the more everything blurs, as if the darkening land is casting a veil over her thoughts.
Towards evening, she becomes aware that they are changing direction, riding north-east, towards a ridge of snow-topped mountains.
The land closes around her, like a fist. ‘I thought Stykkishólmur was to the west.’
‘We must find a croft to sleep in.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It is for me, not you – I cannot endure your lamentations about the cold.’ He winks at her and she flushes. ‘Besides,’ he continues, ‘we will arrive in Stykkishólmur tomorrow so you should sleep tonight. I cannot deliver you exhausted. Jón’s rage is best avoided. You must learn how to please him.’
She turns away from him and looks at the mountains, then puts her hand to her throat, where the glass woman chills her skin. Sometimes she feels as if the leather cord is strangling her.
‘There are four crofts this way, in a place called Mundarnes.’ Pétur points beyond the rocky path ahead.
‘That would be . . . Thank you.’
After a short silence, he says, ‘It would be . . . easier if you called me Tómas away from Stykkishólmur. People like to gossip in these parts.’ His face is tight, watchful.
She senses that her answer will dictate whether or not she sleeps with a roof over her head. ‘Very well,’ she says stiffly.
Just before the sun takes its brief dip below the horizon, they reach a bundle of four crofts, packed tightly as a clenched fist.
Pétur raps on the door of the nearest. When a young man opens it, Pétur bows and asks if he might beg a bed for the night with his new wife. They are travelling west and have misjudged the distance, he explains with a laugh.
Lies flow from his mouth like water. Again, twisting unease knifes in Rósa’s gut. The young man has the flat, plain face of a labourer. He nods along with everything Pétur says without speaking a word – perhaps he is a little simple.
Then the man says, ‘What is your name?’
Without faltering, Pétur replies, ‘Tómas Agnarsson.’
‘Is that so?’ The man narrows his eyes. ‘You look very like what I’ve heard of Jón Eiríksson’s man, Pétur. There is much talk of him in these parts.’
Rósa’s blood jolts. The man is anything but simple. A cruel smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.
Pétur doesn’t blink. ‘Many people look alike.’
The smile broadens on the man’s flat face. ‘Not like you, they don’t. You look like a foreigner, not even a Dane – too dark. One of the huldufólk, you are.’
Pétur’s smile is hard. ‘Take care. Superstitions will light fires under your feet.’
‘You’re a foundling child. Egill might have taken you in as his son, but you cannot name your true pabbi. It is certain you are no prestur’s boy. You have the look of an outlander – a savage. Everyone in these parts has heard of you, Pétur, enough to know you on sight. Why do you give a false name?’
‘You would be wise not to pry.’ There is a dangerous edge to his words.
The man rubs his hands. ‘Ah, that would be the Anna Olafsdóttir matter? I heard it ended badly. Nasty state of affairs.’ His broad face sharpens, and when he smiles, he reveals small, pointed teeth, like a rodent’s. ‘Sickness took her, was it?’ His mocking laugh rebounds off the hills around them.
Rósa’s throat constricts.
‘We will sleep elsewhere.’ Pétur turns away.
But the flat-faced man follows, a swagger in his step. ‘This is the new wife then? Look at her – wide-eyed, like a lamb. She doesn’t know what she’s married.’ He laughs and calls to Rósa, ‘Get away while you can.’
Pétur grabs the man by the neck and slams him against the wall of the croft. He struggles, but Pétur draws a knife from his belt and slowly levels it so that the point of the blade rests against the man’s gulping throat.
‘It seems to me,’ Pétur growls, ‘that your face needs reshaping. Your mouth is too big, your ears too small. And your nose is so long it is no wonder you stick it into other people’s affairs. So I will help you.’
The man’s throat bobs as he swallows.
Pétur’s voice is a raw hiss. ‘Shall I shorten your nose?’ He brings the blade upwards. ‘Or perhaps the problem is your eyes.’ He moves the blade to within a hair’s breadth of the man’s left pupil. ‘Or does your throat trouble you?’ He rests the knife edge against a hammering vein in the man’s scrawny neck. ‘It troubles me. Too noisy.’
‘I – I didn’t mean . . .’ The man’s desperate eyes flick to Rósa, who is frozen in horror. ‘Forgive me, mistress, I am sure you will be happily married. I –’
‘Quiet!’ Pétur’s voice is steel. ‘Remember, engi er allheimskr ef þegja má.’
No one is stupid if he can keep silent.
The man gibbers another apology and then, when Pétur releases him, stumbles inside the croft, rubbing his neck and coughing.
Pétur sheaths his blade in his belt and grabs Rósa’s arm. ‘Come. He may have brothers. And the neighbours will have heard.’
‘But the dark –’
‘Damn the dark! We must leave.’ He yanks her arm, pulling her away from the croft, and bundles her into her saddle.
As they gallop away, she looks over her shoulder at the lights from the fires burning in the crofts, then back at Pétur, whose face has shifted and juts savagely, like the fierce stones at Thingvellir.
Rósa grips her horse’s mane and blinks at the endless void of darkness ahead. It is like riding off the edge of a cliff.
Part Two
True is the saying that no man shapes his own fortune.
Icelandic proverb, from The Saga of Grettir the Strong
Rósa
Stykkishólmur, September 1686
The next morning, Rósa and Pétur reach Stykkishólmur.
He had driven them onwards through the night, until Rósa was drowning in exhaustion. He wouldn’t rest, and refused to answer her questions about the flat-faced man’s words. The stranger’s mocking laughter had whirled in her mind. Anna didn’t die of sickness? And Pétur is Egill’s son?
Eventually, she had lain forward along Hallgerd’s neck and let the mare’s movement lull her into a restless doze, full of images of blood dribbling from the gash in an eyeless man’s throat, then of lambs lying down and placing their thin white necks on chopping blocks.
She wakes with the smell of salt sharp in her nostrils. ‘Where are we?’
‘Home.’
They are on a hill. Like the gods of old, they have an aerial view of the remote tiny world below. Behind them stretches a lava field: what was once red liquid rock has frozen and blackened while still bubbling, then smothered itself with moss, but it still has the simmering appearance of shifting liquid, as if the land were a boiling sea of green. Above them, a mountain yawns into the sky, incisors scraping the surface of the clouds and breathing cold air from the snow-covered skull. A wisp of smoke puffs lazily from the gaping jaws.
Pétur nods towards it. ‘Drápuhlídarfjall. Do not worry. It only threatens eruptions. Sometimes there is more smoke, sometimes less, but never any explosion. And we are standing on Helgafell. It is talked about in –’
‘Laxdaela Saga. So Gudrun Ósvífrsdóttir . . .?’
‘She is buried at the foot of the hill, yes. We will pass her grave.’
Rósa feels a thrill of excitement: she spent her childhood in awe of the fierce Saga woman, who married four times and urged men to kill each other for love of her.
‘There is a tale that if you climb Helgafell, starting at Gudrun’s grave, and you don’t look back or speak a word, you will be granted three wishes.’
‘Surely the prestur doesn’t permit such superstitions?’
Pétur turns those golden eyes on her. ‘The prestur dislikes it.’ There is a twist to his mouth at the word prestur. ‘But all old sayings have something in them.’
‘I won’
t tell the prestur you said so.’
‘You should not speak to him at all.’
In a settlement of fewer than thirty souls, how can he expect her not to speak to the prestur? ‘You dislike him? But the man in Mundarnes, he said –’
‘That Egill was my pabbi?’ He purses his lips. ‘I lived in his croft for a time, but that is not the name I would use for him.’
‘But if you grew up with him? Why –’
‘Prying again? The curious child gets burned fingers.’
She twists her fingers in Hallgerd’s mane. Women must not speak their minds: the Bible tells them to be silent, submissive, respectful. She is no Saga heroine. No Gudrun Ósvífrsdóttir.
‘I . . . Forgive me.’
Pétur gives a tight nod, then urges his horse forward. ‘Jón will be waiting.’
As the horses pick their way down Helgafell, Rósa looks back. Stykkishólmur is edged with mountains: like a cupped hand, they protect the village or shield it from prying eyes. Rocks jut out of the greenery: the bones of the soil, scrubbed clean by years of over-harvesting and tree-felling. The grey carcass of the earth peeping up, indecent and raw.
The land flows towards the beach, where there is a scar of black sand, and then the rumpled surface of the sea, which Rósa hasn’t had a chance to take in, so dazzled has she been by the savage beauty of the landscape. The sea is a dull blue near the shore, fading to a smoky mirror in the distance. Islands are scattered over the surface, thousands of them, like rocks thrown by a petulant troll.
As they draw closer, Rósa notices what she has missed before: some of the small mounds of grass near the coast are the roofs of turf-covered crofts – at least ten of them – which are built into the hills so they seem to have grown out of the land. They look bigger than the crofts in Skálholt and, from a distance, are hump-backed, huddled and separate. Rósa is used to crofts rubbing shoulders and even, sometimes – because of the shortage of wood – sharing walls.
‘The crofts are very widely spread.’
He nods. ‘We dig ourselves into the hills. In the winter, the snow cuts us off completely. Each croft is like one of those islands out there.’
Rósa’s stomach lurches at the thought of being snowed in with Jón, a stranger, and Pétur, who lies about his name and holds knives to men’s throats.
Pétur directs them towards the largest croft, set fifty horse-lengths up the hill, separate from the others. A hundred paces from it stands a large turf-roofed barn, and there are several smaller buildings within a stone’s throw of the door. It faces out towards the sea. On the other side, there is a little stream, where she will be able to wash clothes and gather water for cooking. In Skálholt, washing clothes had meant trudging to the Hvítá or Tunga.
As they turn up the path towards the croft, there is a shout from behind them. Rósa sees a dark-robed man standing with both arms raised. His thin face is fish-belly white. He strides towards them, tapping a staff on the ground.
‘Keep still and quiet,’ Pétur mutters.
Rósa nods and casts her eyes down. The skeletal figure stops by Pétur’s mare and clutches the bridle with his bony claws. His black robes show him to be the prestur.
‘This is the new one?’ His voice is a wind-dried rasp.
Pétur’s tone is flat as a blade. ‘As you see.’
The old man stares at Rósa. She fixes her own gaze on Hallgerd’s mane and digs her fingers into its warmth.
‘She is thin,’ he says. ‘Will she last the winter?’
‘She may, if we can keep her from your poison, Egill.’
‘Watch your tongue with me, boy, or you will regret –’
Pétur gives a bark of laughter. ‘Watch my tongue with you? Do you imagine yourself the goði now?’
Egill turns to Rósa. His eyes are bloodshot, as if he is drunk, but his voice is clear and sober. ‘Be careful, young woman. Your husband may look honest, but underneath he is a devil. And Anna was –’
He is cut off as Pétur boots his mare forward. She knocks into Egill, who sprawls on the soil. Pétur grasps Rósa’s reins and both horses break into a canter. Egill’s shouts follow them. His words are lost in the wind, but his rage is clear.
When they are out of earshot, Pétur pulls the horses to a halt. His breath comes in gasps, as if he has been running. Rósa’s heart hammers in her throat. ‘He – he spoke of Anna. What –’
Pétur leans across and pulls on her arm, dragging her close enough to smell the sweat on him, to see the wild urgency in his eyes. ‘No questions about Anna. Not to me, not to anyone in the village, and especially not to Jón. He is a good man. Believe that. No matter what you may hear.’
‘I . . . I will try.’
Pétur squeezes her hand. The gesture leaves her breathless. Then he turns his mare and they ride up to the single croft, which crouches alone and exposed on the hill.
Jón is waiting outside; he must have seen them approaching from a distance. He wears a clean tunic, and his dark hair and beard shine where he has splashed water on them. His expression is grim. ‘What words of wisdom from the old man?’
Pétur flashes a warning glance at Rósa, then gives a tight smile. ‘Egill requires your position of goði – and you are a devil.’
Jón grins. ‘Well, I shall not be goði once he has made a bonfire of me. But, then, if I am a devil, it will hinder the burning.’
Rósa gasps, but Jón laughs. ‘We joke, Rósa. Egill will scorch his own fingers before he can singe a hair on my head.’
Jón’s laughter fades as he stares after Egill. ‘Still, we must be careful. He is never as brave without Olaf standing beside him. Who knows what he might say then?’ He turns to Rósa. ‘Forgive me, Rósa. Welcome!’ He holds out his arms, and leans forward as if to lift her from the saddle, then stops and bows instead.
She dips her head in confusion. ‘Thank you.’ Who is Olaf? She daren’t ask.
‘Look how meek she is, Pétur. Shy as a bird! But do you like your new home, Rósa?’ The sweat glistens on his neck, where his skin meets his tunic.
‘It is very . . . beautiful.’
‘Good. You will be happy, though I must spend hours away from you.’
‘I . . . Of course.’
‘Already obedient! Your pabbi raised you well. Come closer.’
She dismounts, bows and holds out her hand. He takes her fingers and kisses them. She tries not to recoil. His paw-like hands scrape against her skin.
‘Your journey wasn’t too difficult? The path can be rough at this time of year, until the rain.’ He squeezes her hand. ‘I hope this winter will be better than last – mine was the only croft that suffered no damage. Egill was spitting with rage. But you will be safe here.’
She would like to tell him that she is weary and wishes herself at home. She wants to say that Pétur made her ride through the night, and that yesterday evening he threatened to use his knife to gouge out a man’s eye.
But she forces a smile. Her jaw aches. ‘Thank you.’
His eyes brighten, as some tension within him uncoils. Within his giant hand, her own hand sweats.
‘And your mamma?’ he asks.
‘Better. The moss tea Pétur brought has helped her cough, and she has a peat fire, so the air is dry. We’re grateful, truly.’
He waves a hand in the air, as if shooing flies. ‘Enough. Now, you will eat. Pétur will see to dagverður for today.’
Next to her Pétur, who has stood silently observing, raises his eyebrows. The two men watch her. She hears the expectation in the silence.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I will prepare dagverður for all of us.’
Jón presses his fingers into her palm. ‘So biddable,’ he says. ‘Come.’ They leave Pétur waiting outside, while Jón shows her what she has married.
Before today, she imagined being led into the baðstofa to perform her duty – a word that summons vague, blurred images of naked bodies and the shivering promise of pain. She tenses, waiting for her husband to
kiss her. She will not pull away. She must kiss him back.
But Jón doesn’t stop in the baðstofa: he shows her the four beds – short, but wide enough for two people. The room has an open stove and the air is bitter and thick with smoke: all this is familiar, if larger than the cramped Skálholt croft. Above, where she is used to seeing turf and roots, there are rows of tightly packed wooden boards, which form a ceiling. And there is a ladder. She reaches out and rests her hand on a rung.
‘Leave that!’ Jón’s tone is sharp. ‘This way.’
He leads her through an archway to the large kitchen. She has never seen one before. It has a low table, a stool, and the luxury of a raised stone hloðir for cooking, instead of an open fire. Jón studies her face, as if waiting, then steps closer. A muscle pulses in his jaw. He looms over her, sweating.
She swallows. ‘The croft is . . . very fine.’
‘God rewards obedience. I have always thought it fitting that respect is rewarded, while defiance is punished.’
Rósa’s mouth is dry. But she cannot help asking, ‘You have a loft?’
‘Pétur and I made it together. I admire the foreign way of building upwards. When I travelled to Denmark on a merchant ship to trade two gyrfalcons –’
‘Two?’ Gyrfalcons are more precious than gold.
‘The Danes paid well, in cloth and cows. When I saw the houses there, and in the Scottish isles, I knew I wanted a loft space. Somewhere quiet and private.’
‘May I see it? The loft space?’
His expression is suddenly watchful. ‘The room is kept locked.’
‘May I look – briefly?’
His face is hard, as if she has asked something indecent. ‘It holds my farm papers and other private things of no interest to a woman.’
‘Pabbi taught me to read and write. Perhaps I may help you – and I have never seen a loft.’ She smiles expectantly, then turns to the ladder.
‘Stop!’
She freezes.
He scratches his dark beard, then says, more softly, ‘The Bible tells us that wives are subject to their husbands.’