by Caroline Lea
There is a bang from outside the croft, and Rósa jumps away from him, as if dropping a hot pan.
Páll’s eyes are wide with alarm. He starts to speak, but Rósa puts a finger to her lips, then picks up a cloth as Jón walks into the croft.
‘Ah, Páll,’ he says, his eyes darting back and forth between him and Rósa. ‘You must help with the sheep. Pétur’s arm pains him.’
‘Of course,’ Páll says.
Jón waits, watching him, and when Páll doesn’t move, he growls, ‘Go on, then.’
Páll goes out into the dark, leaving Jón and Rósa alone. Jón walks very close to her and she freezes. His massive bulk makes her think of the stories of Arctic bears.
‘You are a sensible woman, are you not? A good wife.’
‘I hope so.’
‘And good wives know when to stay silent.’
She nods. Her throat is dry.
He takes her hand and kisses her fingertips, one by one. ‘I am fortunate to have found a woman I can trust absolutely.’
She says nothing. His hands are rough. Calluses from the fishing cords, from the scythe. Calluses from wielding a knife.
He steps closer to her, pressing the length of his body against hers, wrapping his arms around her in what should feel like an affectionate embrace but pinions her arms to her sides. Her heart batters unevenly in her chest.
‘Look at me,’ he murmurs.
She raises her eyes to his.
‘What were you talking of with Páll?’
Her mind whirrs. ‘Only about when we were children.’ She swallows. ‘We used to go from one croft to another, begging for skyr.’
‘You were hungry?’
She nods.
‘Ah, well, you aren’t hungry now. I provide everything you need, do I not?’
He kisses her forehead. She stays very still and waits for him to release her.
After Jón has left, Rósa sits in the darkness of the croft, remembering the feel of Páll’s hand on her neck, reliving the moment to smother the noises from above and the voices in her head.
Rósa sees Páll less and less as the men spend more time preparing for the harsh winter ahead. He joins Jón and Pétur to sleep in the barn with the sheep, cows and horses; the animals must grow used to being inside before winter. Jón and Páll take turns to separate sheep that have locked horns in frustration and, after seven days, Jón tells Páll that he may stay for the winter. Rósa’s heart flips in her chest and she smiles at Páll, until she notices Jón staring at her. She lowers her gaze and returns to gathering stray tufts of wool.
Later, when darkness has settled around the croft and Rósa sits alone in the baðstofa, waiting for sleep, she hears a scratching of metal on wood. She bolts upright, heart hammering, then realizes that the sound is coming from outside.
She wraps a shawl about her shoulders and steps out into the gloom, quashing thoughts of some spirit risen from the sea. She stumbles, twisting her ankle in the dark, and gasps. The pain is real. Everything else is just stories.
The scratching again, and a figure crouched low, next to the window.
‘Who’s there?’ she hisses.
The figure turns and stands: it is taller than a woman should be, and broader. It towers over her and she opens her mouth to scream.
‘Rósa!’ It is Páll.
She crumples forward and stifles a sob. He reaches for her, lifts her before she falls and holds her against his chest. ‘Forgive me, I didn’t mean to startle you.’ His voice is muffled by her hair and she feels him press his lips to her forehead.
‘I . . .’ She finds she cannot speak. His fingers move across her cheek tentatively, as if he is touching something impossibly fragile.
She pushes him away. ‘Jón?’
‘In the barn. Pétur with him.’
‘You must go back. It is too dangerous.’
‘To talk to you? To comfort you? Jón could not protest at that. He is no monster.’ He takes her hand between his.
She closes her eyes. She cannot tell Páll that her husband’s every glance sets a hum of fear across her skin. Páll will ask what Jón has done to terrify her, and she will have to reply that he has done nothing, nothing at all. But that sometimes, when she looks into his eyes, it is like staring into the depths of the river Hvítá, which used to drown people with indiscriminate brutality: women and children would disappear, and the river would rush remorselessly onwards, its churning waters unchanged.
Instead, she says to Páll, ‘People gossip in the village. And Jón is mindful of his reputation. I would not have him send you back to Skálholt.’
He sighs and drops her hand. ‘You must find a way to see me during the day, then. Out in the open.’
She nods, aware that she is agreeing to dip her toes into the churning waters.
Páll leans forward and kisses her cheek. She gasps, but before she can speak, he has turned to walk down the hill to the barn. From the set of his shoulders, she knows he will be laughing: he has always enjoyed danger.
After Páll has stayed for nearly two weeks, Jón introduces him to the villagers: he addresses them at the end of a church service on the bare bone of the hill outside the croft. They crane their necks as Jón introduces Páll: ‘My new man. Blood relative to my wife.’
Páll smiles as Jón claps him on the back. Pétur hangs back, his jaw hard.
Jón stands tall, staring at the villagers. ‘Remember, the Bible tells us to be obedient. We must obey our God and listen to those who have authority over us. Indolence is a sin. Gluttony is a sin. Lust is a sin. Idle gossip is a sin. God tells us to go forth and to sin no more, for those who sin will burn in the fiery pit of Hell for eternity.’
There is a sighing and a rustling from the congregation, like birds fluffing their feathers before settling in to endure the cold.
Afterwards, Katrín passes close to Rósa and murmurs, ‘That was a warning.’
‘To me?’
‘A warning to all of us to remain obedient and keep our distance.’
Something black, flapping in the breeze, catches Rósa’s eye. She looks up and, like a raven, shadow-feathered and glint-eyed, Egill sits on a distant rock, his gaze fixed on her. Olaf, his lackey, stands behind him. Olaf is as broad as he is tall; his face is the puce of liver sausage, his arms, like shanks of mutton, folded across his broad chest.
Olaf leans in close to Egill and mutters something. Egill nods. Both men continue to stare at her.
When they are not out on the boat, Jón and Pétur spend the days schooling Páll. There is plenty to be done, what with ploughing the fields and the endless task of caring for the sheep. There are lambs to be weaned, ewes to be dipped and the wool to be clipped from around the tail, ready for mating. They show Páll once, then leave him. Rósa suspects it is a test, but it allows her to spend time with him, in the open, as they had decided. It allows her to drink in the sight of him and imagine, for a moment, the life she might have lived.
Páll struggles with the ewes: wrapping his arms around their heaving bodies, barely managing to clip a finger’s width of wool before the beasts break free.
After both his tunics have been ripped, Páll growls, ‘This is impossible.’
Rósa is patching his tunic, where a horn has torn the wool. ‘Let me help.’
‘Be serious. There must be someone else Jón can find to do this. Some men can have the whole fleece off in three breaths.’ He clutches at a ewe. She dodges him and charges past, knocking him over yet again.
Rósa tugs the thread tighter. ‘Jón dislikes outsiders.’
Páll grins. ‘Every Icelander dislikes outsiders. But I have seen no illegal English merchants in these parts, no stranded Basque whalers for him to massacre.’
‘How can you laugh at such a thing?’ Rósa thinks of the village where the whalers had become stranded; on the instructions of the village goði, the people had slit the throat or sliced open the stomach of every man, then rowed the bloodied bodies far out to sea.
The corpses of dead whalers washed up on the western shores of Iceland for weeks. ‘Jón is not a villain, as that goði was.’
‘Of course he is not.’ Páll’s smile is uncertain. ‘That is why I jested. Jón is a good man, surely. And the village leaders often distrust outlanders.’
Rósa purses her lips and stops sewing just long enough to glance over her shoulder. The men are out of earshot, down the hill. ‘Jón mistrusts nearly everyone.’
Páll stands and brushes himself down. ‘Why did he marry you, then, Rósa from Skálholt? And his first wife was from elsewhere too, was she not?’
‘Near Thingvellir.’
‘And I’m more of an outsider than a villager. He allows me to stay.’
‘Pétur’s arm. You work hard and . . .’ Rósa pricks her finger and winces. Jón seems to prefer outsiders, trusting strangers more than the villagers.
‘Does no one from the settlement ever come up here?’ Páll asks.
‘He goes to their homes every week to pray with them and offer advice. But he does not like them to visit the croft.’ She puts her bleeding finger into her mouth.
‘Why?’
She feels a surge of irritation. Doesn’t he know how dangerous it can be to ask questions? ‘They have the prestur too. Jón is their goði, not their nursemaid.’
Páll smiles. ‘It does not baffle you that your husband was chosen as goði when he wishes to spend his time alone?’
She sets down her sewing and looks at the barn doorway, where a rectangle of sea is perfectly framed. It promises other worlds, far away. But for Rósa the ocean might as well be a depthless picture upon a wall.
Páll nudges her boot with his toe. ‘More fool Jón to trust the craftiest egg-thief in Skálholt. Oh, come, Rósa, I thought that might make you smile.’
‘I am trying to patch your tunic without stitching the sleeves together.’
His grin fades and his gaze drops to her mottled skin and swollen knuckles. She resists the urge to sit on her hands.
He leans towards her. ‘You work hard.’
She keeps her voice brisk, keeps stitching. ‘There is much work to do.’
He nods. ‘And have you friends here?’
‘There is a woman. Katrín. She is . . . kind. But I am busy.’
His warm gaze settles on her face. ‘You always liked to hide behind books. Do you ever think of them? And your writing?’
She smiles thinly. ‘No time for books here, Páll.’ She thinks of the scribbled scraps of writing she had brought with her from Skálholt. But people have been burned as witches for writing poetry: she imagines Jón’s rage if he found them. She had held her writing over the hloðir, but hadn’t been able to burn it; instead, she had stuffed her words, along with her letters, into the gaps in the floor.
Now Páll says, ‘And do you miss reading?’
She clenches her jaw. She misses everything about her old life: the reading and writing, the long days of freedom. ‘I miss Mamma.’ Again, the tug of longing to return to her, or at least send a letter. But she would have to write a list of lies, or Sigridúr would be tramping over the freezing mountains, risking her own life in her rage.
‘Sigridúr was well when I saw her last,’ Páll says. ‘The moss tea has done her the world of good. She has meat now, every day. And warm clothes.’
Rósa reminds herself of it every time she wants to run from the croft and hide in the hills.
Páll sits next to her on a bundle of hay sheaves. He smells of sheep and sweat. ‘They say Jón’s last wife died of loneliness.’
She fiddles with a loose thread and stitches it back in. She can’t look at his face. ‘You cannot die of loneliness, Páll.’
He looks at her for three breaths, then rises to try to capture a ewe.
Rósa holds the glass woman in her pocket, running her fingers over the perfect, smooth lines.
Over the afternoon, time stretches, and Rósa forgets everything except the barn, the animals and Páll. He turns to smile at her every time he releases one of the shorn animals and she smiles in return. They could almost be back in Skálholt.
Occasionally, Rósa holds a hoof, or strokes a flank. It becomes a rhythm: the weight of the ewe between them, the warm, greasy wool coming away under the sharp metal, then the ewe struggling to right herself before they finally release her.
Rósa watches his face until her eyes sting; she laughs at his jokes and, when he puts a hand on her arm, she allows the weight of her body to rest against him.
It is only when a dark shadow falls across the doorway, cutting off the rectangle of light, that Rósa sees Jón staring at them, his arms crossed over his chest. She has no idea how long he has been watching, but her stomach jolts and she recoils from Páll.
‘The sheep are nearly shorn,’ she says.
Jón walks deliberately slowly into the barn and, standing very close to her, says, ‘You shouldn’t be here, Rósa. You might easily be hurt.’
Rósa shoots a frantic glance at Páll, who is about to speak. When he catches her eye, he nods and closes his mouth. Rósa exhales.
Jón looks the ewes over and gives Páll an approving clap on the back. ‘Fine work. We will be glad to have you this winter.’
Rósa turns away to pick up her sewing, still shaking. If she closes her eyes, she can still feel those moments with Páll’s hands on hers, his arm alongside hers, his laughter uncurling in her ear. She runs the memories through her mind again and again, like fiddling with perfect pearls on a fragile thread.
The next morning she feels, for the first time in weeks, as though she can breathe. Páll will be here this winter. The thought is like a flicker of light in the gloom.
So she is unprepared, when she is scrubbing the tabletop, for Jón to appear in the kitchen and sit on the bench. He should be in the field, but he watches her, tapping his forefinger against his lip.
His gaze makes her cheeks burn. She offers him a timorous smile, but his eyes are flint. Finally, he says, ‘Do you know your Commandments by heart, Rósa?’
She doesn’t pause in her scrubbing. ‘All Christians do.’
‘And you obey the Commandments?’
A finger of sweat creeps down her spine. ‘I hope so.’
He leans forward. ‘Tell me the Commandments, Rósa.’
She wipes the hair back from her forehead with her wrist. ‘Honour the Lord; keep the Sabbath; honour your parents; do not blaspheme or be covetous; do not steal or commit murder or – or adultery . . .’ Her eyes flash to his face, but he is impassive.
‘And?’ he murmurs.
Her mind scrabbles. ‘Do not bear false witness.’
‘Yes.’ He stands and walks over to her, slowly. ‘Do not deceive, Rósa. So, I ask you again, do you keep the Commandments?’
‘I . . .’ Her mouth is dry. He is so broad. His body emanates heat, and she finds she has leaned backwards until the wall is hard against her spine.
‘Deceit may take many forms, Rósa. Hiding your thoughts, for instance. Or hiding other things.’ She blinks at him, thinking of yesterday, when he must have seen her body close to Páll’s. Or perhaps he knows of her conversations with Katrín, her disobedience in going down to the village. A man in Skálholt once beat his wife to death because he suspected her of disobeying him. Not a soul protested when they heard her scream.
‘I am not hiding anything.’ She cannot hold his gaze.
He nods slowly, then leans forward and puts his mouth very close to her ear. ‘You will write to your mamma. Tell her you are well. I will send the letter.’
Her stomach turns to water. He raises his eyebrows and she whispers, ‘Thank you.’
He smiles and pats her hand. Then he is gone. As she watches him striding up the hill, she cannot stop her hands trembling. As soon as he is out of sight, she runs to the bed and crouches down.
No letters. They are all gone. Her stories too. The stories that could be evidence of witchcraft; the stories that could see her burned.
And then her unease turns to horror.
No knife.
Jón
Near Thingvellir, December 1686
When I was a child, I imagined evil to be some dark force – a cloven-hoofed and horned beast eager to lead man into temptation. I imagined a creature like my pabbi, sunk in his cups: bloat-faced, spitting threats and violence. But life has taught me that darkness resides in every human heart, a tiny smudge of sooty smut on even the whitest of souls. And I must admit that the same stain marks my humanity, as it does the soul of every man and woman.
With my every breath, I have fought that festering kernel of darkness, which rots within my spirit, growing with each thought.
Now, after everything that has passed, I am alone in my cave, near Thingvellir. I curl into my own body, shuddering, and I remember.
I have lived in the same croft all my life. When I was a child, it was a pinched and draughty place. The walls crumbled and the turf roof seemed always on the point of collapse – exposed roots snaked from the soil, revealing the rotten skeleton of the broken beams beneath.
My pabbi traded the food that should have filled our bellies; he swigged ale all day and gulped brennevín at the first sign of darkness. He was a fisherman, and we also had a small field. But he left the boat to rot on the beach. What crops he planted withered from lack of water or were smothered by the weeds he allowed to rampage.
We were thin and dirty. The greedy goði taxed us on what little food my pabbi could produce. The people of Stykkishólmur avoided us, as if our poverty were some infection. We were but a step away from the vagrants and exiles who were left to beg by the roads until they were murdered by the cold and buried by the snow.
I felt a burning shame on looking at Pabbi’s drink-softened features, his slack jaw and bleary eyes, his drunken animal twitches. And I despised the cries from inside the croft when he beat Mamma, dull, hopeless calls, wordless, and without expectation of response. They were always cut short when he threw her onto the bed and clamped his hand over her mouth, then used his bulk to crush her, while he yanked up her shift. I watched through the gaps in the turf, helpless.