by Caroline Lea
‘The loft?’
‘The locked room?’ Pétur shakes his head.
Páll is frowning. ‘What is a loft? And why is it locked?’
‘He stays here,’ Pétur says.
Rósa sighs and piles more fuel onto the fire to quell the convulsive shivering that is racking Jón’s body. As the peat burns, the smoke thickens. Soot and ash spiral through the air.
The first time Jón coughs, he howls, and a stain like rich wine spreads across his tunic. Pétur dashes to his side and presses his hand to the wound. Jón moans and, as the smoke billows, coughs and cries out again.
Rósa does not take her eyes from Pétur’s face. ‘So much smoke will kill him.’
Pétur shuts his eyes, then opens them. ‘The loft, but . . . He will be furious.’
‘Would you prefer him alive and angry, or dead?’
Pétur gives a bark of laughter, then gazes at her. The expression in his golden eyes is unreadable. ‘He thought you such a little mouse, Rósa, when he married you. Help me carry him.’
Between them, they manage to heave Jón up the ladder, where they rest him on the ledge, slumped like scythed hay. His breathing is shallow but Rósa’s large stitches have held him together – a stuffed doll, bulging at the middle.
Pétur draws a key from a pouch at his hip as carelessly as he might produce a knife. Rósa is open-mouthed. He turns to Rósa and Páll. ‘I will take him in now.’
Rósa shakes her head. ‘No, you must –’
‘You must go back down the ladder.’
‘The croft is mine –’
‘The croft is Jón’s. He is your husband, who told you to stay away from the loft.’
Páll steps forward, half smiling. ‘What is this, Pétur? Why –’
‘You would do best not to ask questions. It is safer. For everyone.’
Páll puts his hand out. ‘But wait –’
‘It is safer,’ says Pétur. ‘Believe me. Some things it is better not to know.’
Páll looks about to argue, but Rósa sees Pétur’s body brace; she remembers Mundarnes and the man who had challenged him. She remembers the knife against his throat.
‘Páll, come down with me,’ Rósa murmurs.
He doesn’t respond. His gaze, still fixed upon Pétur, is hard and cold.
Rósa puts her hand on Páll’s arm. ‘Come with me. Please.’
He gives a brief, tight nod, and they descend the ladder, while Pétur waits.
When they are back in the baðstofa, they stare at one another, listening to the sound of the door swinging open almost silently, on well-oiled hinges, and the grating sound of Pétur dragging Jón’s body over the floor above their heads.
Páll spreads his hands. ‘I don’t understand –’
‘I know,’ Rósa hisses, then presses her finger to her lips.
They listen to the shuffle of footsteps, the creak of the floorboards and the sound of muffled whispering. The noises are straight out of Rósa’s tormented dreams, and she has to stop herself placing her hands over her ears.
Eventually, Pétur climbs down the ladder. He walks straight past them and into the kitchen, then tips some water into a pot and sets it on the hloðir.
He turns to Rósa. ‘The wound needs cleaning. You must have moss. Where is it?’ He speaks as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, as if there is not a secret room over their heads, as if he had not just growled a threat at them.
Rósa blinks, then passes Pétur a pot of pale green fronds, which he empties into the pan. She almost reminds him that Katrín would have more moss and other herbs besides, but the set of his jaw silences her.
For the rest of that day, Pétur keeps Páll and Rósa separate. Every time he climbs the ladder, he makes Páll come up after him and sit outside the loft room while he tends Jón. He tells Rósa to stay in the kitchen.
Rósa listens for voices when Pétur is in the loft: she can hear whispering, but nothing to distinguish one voice from another. For a moment, she allows herself to imagine that Anna is indeed up there, and has been all this time. What would that mean for Rósa? What happens to an unnecessary second wife, once the first has been revealed?
In the late afternoon, Pétur descends the ladder again.
‘The animals need feeding,’ he says tersely to Páll. ‘You will come with me. Rósa, we will need to eat when we return.’
She looks down at her hands and nods, minutely. Páll sighs and stands. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches them pulling on layer after layer of cloaks and blankets. Every time Pétur moves his arms, the keys in his pocket jingle, until he is wearing so many layers that their sound is muffled.
Then he opens the door and the storm roars into the croft. The wind is like a physical punch and the cold air compresses Rósa’s chest. Within the few moments it takes the men to walk outside and shut the door, she is shuddering uncontrollably.
She huddles near the hloðir and counts sixty heartbeats, then moves quickly to the ladder. The door at the top looks the same as it ever did and is locked, of course. Pétur wouldn’t have been so careless. When she presses her ear to the wood, she can hear Jón’s laboured breathing, but no other sound. She waits for whispering, or footsteps, but there is nothing.
She sighs and goes down the ladder. It is when she is walking back to crouch next to the warmth of the hloðir that something on the floor catches her eye. Something gleaming in the straw. She picks it up and, for a moment, thinks she must have finally slipped into madness because . . . It cannot be, surely. And yet . . .
Keys! She shuts her fist around them and closes her eyes. She daren’t let herself hope. But now she is turning and putting one hand after the other on the rungs of the ladder, and now she is putting one of the keys into the lock and it fits – it fits! – and now she is turning it and pushing against the door, and the whole croft is watching her and she holds her breath and the door swings open and the cold air gusts out with a foetid, primal stink.
Rósa hesitates: the black space gapes in front of her, and the loft is filled with Jón’s harsh breathing. It is hard not to imagine his eyes upon her as she steps into the room. She moves like a sleepwalker, shuffling through the shadows, arms outstretched, heart hammering.
Jón is laid by one wall, his hands clasped across his stomach where the ewe’s horn tore through him. His skin is waxen, his breaths rapid, and his body seems shrunken, somehow: his muscled legs and arms are concealed beneath a blanket, and in sleep, there is something soft and childlike in his features. She crouches next to him. He stirs and groans, and Rósa bolts upright, ready to run if his eyes open. But, although his eyelids flutter, he doesn’t look at her. Instead, his mouth opens, as if he is trying to speak. He coughs and Rósa notices that his tongue is dry, his lips cracked. Quickly, she dips the corner of the blanket into the moss tea and presses it to his mouth. He sucks on the cloth, like a nursing babe. Rósa dips the cloth in again and again, and he opens his mouth, although his eyes remain shut. Slowly, she reaches out and strokes the hair back from his forehead.
Finally, his breathing steadies and deepens. His mouth closes. Rósa sets the jug back on the floor and wipes her cheeks, which are wet. She hadn’t realized she was crying.
Shakily, she stands and looks around the rest of the loft room; she had expected old barrels or tangled, ragged fishing cords. But instead, just this: Jón’s mattress, a small table, a chamber pot. All quite clean, quite empty – as if they are waiting to be used. She searches the shadows for any sign of another person who might have been here – any sign at all.
The loft stretches the entire length of the croft, and Rósa cannot see the far wall from so close to the door. What if Anna is waiting in the shadows? Or what if the ghost, the draugr, has pressed itself into the walls and is watching Rósa, even now? She takes a breath and begins to walk.
Her footsteps echo through the dark space and she hears whispering ahead of her. She freezes, halfway down the long room. When she turns to look
back, the rectangle of light from the doorway seems very far away: in the time it would take her to run to it, someone could leap on her and clamp their hands around her neck. She touches her exposed throat; her pulse flutters under her fingers.
She almost turns. Almost. But she walks on.
Darkness. Silence. She is nearly at the end of the room and she inhales shakily. There is nothing here. She stretches her arms out and takes another deep breath. It must have been her imagination – all of it.
Then, suddenly, from the darkest corner, a snap of cloth. Rósa jumps and cries out.
Something alive! Someone . . .
There is a flapping again, and a flash of white. She flings herself back against the wall, away from this ghost that rustles in the gloom.
‘Anna!’ she hisses.
Another flutter. It sounds so much like the inhalations that Rósa had heard when she pressed her ear to the door. She crouches on the floor, unable to move. This is the draugr she had feared. This is the creature that will smother her, or seep into her body and infect her mind, until she doesn’t know herself and is wandering the hills, muttering and weeping.
Her body screams at her to run, but she cannot move: her eyes are fixed on the trembling white shape.
But then, as her breathing steadies, she notices that the draugr isn’t creeping forward: it isn’t advancing on her, ready to smother her. It seems fixed, somehow, and its struggling movements look like attempts to escape.
She narrows her eyes, peering through the gloom, then gasps.
Not a ghost. No draugr.
A bird!
‘A gyrfalcon,’ she whispers, her mind reeling. All those noises . . .
The bird shifts and stretches its white wings wide. Rósa sees the cruel curve of a yellow beak, as the creature twitches its head from left to right. She straightens up and tiptoes towards it, slowly, so as not to startle it. She has never been this close to a gyrfalcon, has only seen them soaring in the distant skies – savage, beautiful murderers. The bird fixes her with a beady eye and thuds the air with its wings, bating from the perch, then being tugged back by the leather jesses on its scaly legs.
Rósa stops at arm’s length from the creature. It flicks its head towards her. Its reptilian eyes remind her that it has one purpose, and one alone: to kill. It flexes its feet, fixing its hooked claws into the perch.
Gyrfalcons are worth a fortune, especially to Danish traders. It is said that nobles in Denmark will pay the bird’s weight in gold.
But, as she gazes at the creature, Rósa is struck by another thought: not of the bird’s value, but of the old stories about this taloned hunter of ice.
It is said that, if a falcon is captured as a person is dying, and if the creature is held close to the body at the last breath, then the dead person’s spirit enters the bird.
And behind the perch, along with the droppings and the lacework of scattered bones of tiny creatures, there is a wad of material.
Clothing, Rósa realizes with a chill. And, next to it, a bundle of paper and stones. She kneels and squints at the little pile – if only she could move past the bird to look more closely. She is sure some of those papers are her own letters. And, next to them, some other writing in a large, scrawling hand she doesn’t recognize.
She leans forward and reaches out.
The gyrfalcon turns its cold yellow eyes on her and clacks its beak; she steps away from it, pressing her back to the wall. The bird inclines its head to follow her movements, then launches itself from its perch, straight at her face.
Rósa gasps and falls, landing painfully on her wrist, but she barely notices: she is too intent on getting away from the bird, away from that merciless, searching stare.
She scrambles backwards, until the sharp yellow eyes fade into the gloom, then leans her head against the croft wall and concentrates on the rise and fall of her own chest. When she can bring herself to stand, she almost trips over something large and wooden.
She runs her hands over it. It cannot be . . . And yet, yes, it is . . . A crib.
Rósa looks back to where the bird rests in the shadows, and then to the crib before her. It is made of driftwood, which has been carefully smoothed by the mouth of the sea, then planed by hand. The edges, where the wood has been cut, have been rounded with a rough stone. It is a work of patience and love.
Her thoughts turn again to the noises. She looks at the shadowy shape of the gyrfalcon, tethered at the end of the loft. Tales of children transforming into animals fill her head. It gazes back at her, unblinking – she can just make out the yellow eyes, through the gloom – then hunches its body, as if preparing to launch itself at her again. She is far enough away that it will not reach her, cannot touch her. It clacks its beak. She looks away. It is a bird, just a bird. The old stories are simply tales told to frightened children . . .
But still . . . She looks back at the crib. Had there been a child? There had never been any rumour of a baby, or even a pregnancy – or no whispers that had travelled south to Skálholt. But Jón is so good at silencing people. She thinks of the stone-faced, close-lipped inhabitants of the village, who carry secrets in the slump of their shoulders and the narrowing of their eyes.
Perhaps there was a child and it died. What if . . . What if Anna had been pregnant and Jón had shut her away up here, after she had discovered something – whatever it was he was so eager to conceal? She studies the crib, peering closely at the wood. There are no marks on it, no signs of use.
Behind her, Jón stirs and murmurs, making Rósa jump. His eyes open, briefly, and he looks straight at her.
‘Anna!’ he hisses. Then his eyes close again and he is still. She watches him, heart thudding, but he makes no movement, other than the rise and fall of his ribcage.
There is a sudden crunching noise from below, and the rumble of voices from outside the croft, and Rósa remembers: Pétur will be returning.
She springs upright, darts across the loft and out the door, her damp palms sliding over the handle. She fumbles with the key, almost dropping it, and the voices from outside are louder now. She sobs as she tries to turn it in the lock, but it is stiff and sticks fast.
Pétur will find the door unlocked. She imagines the rage on his face.
Her breath comes in frantic gasps as she tries one last time. The lock shrieks, the key turns. And, as it does so, it slices into the palm of her hand, leaving a perfect semicircular imprint in the shape of the end of the key.
She curses as blood seeps down her wrist and she has to stumble down the ladder one-handed. She trips and almost falls as she races through the baðstofa, presses a cloth to her wound, snatches up some knitting and sits on her bed. At the last moment, she remembers the key in her pocket, and throws it into the straw where she found it. It lands perfectly but, too late, she sees the smear of her blood across the metal.
Then Pétur and Páll walk in and she forces herself to smile. Her hand throbs.
Their faces are rimmed with ice; Pétur strides straight past her, then climbs the ladder. She hears him search his pockets for the key, hears his sharp intake of breath when he realizes it is not there. She sits, frozen, and waits for him to come down. Páll looks at her, his eyebrows raised, and she finds she cannot meet his eyes, in case something in his expression breaks through the fragile skin of her pretence.
Pétur walks back into the baðstofa and clicks his tongue. ‘The key?’
She keeps her face smooth, although her insides churn. Her throat is dry, her mouth parched, but her voice is steady as the lie slips from her tongue, like water. ‘I haven’t seen it.’
She watches as Pétur pats his pockets again, muttering. A strange tightness forms in her throat: she has to smother a bubble of hysterical laughter. Her hand pulses. Any moment now, he will see the wound.
‘Perhaps you dropped it outside.’
He curses, then moves to the door. And she watches him go, watches as he opens the door and steps out into the blizzard, which will swallow hi
m while he is hunting for the key that she threw on the floor, moments before. For a moment, she imagines his body, rigid and blue with cold, crushed under the weight of the ruthless snow god.
‘Pétur!’ Páll calls, pointing at the floor.
The key flashes in the firelight as Pétur returns and snatches it up, then claps Páll on the shoulder. ‘Good man. I’d have frozen looking for it.’ Pétur grins as he describes his death, and Rósa forces herself to smile along with him, even as she cannot help picturing his corpse.
Then Pétur looks down at the key and sees the blood. His jaw hardens and Rósa’s throat constricts as she waits. After a moment, Pétur wipes the key on his sleeve, saying nothing about it.
Slowly, Rósa exhales.
Jón
Near Thingvellir, December 1686
Killing is never an act I have undertaken lightly. If a life must be taken, it should be done with reverence and from necessity. I have heard that there are countries across the ocean where men thrill at the thought of murder. They delight in feeling the victim’s heart slowing, watching the eyes clouding.
I have only ever killed when I had no other choice. Yet now I am stalking through the darkness: two knives in my belt, a sharpened piece of flint in my fist, and enough rage in my belly to drive that stone into a human skull.
Before I met Pétur, I had never slain another man – not intentionally. But knowing Pétur changed everything: suddenly, I found myself capable of murder.
Pétur became Egill and Birgit’s son at about twelve summers, though he has no true idea of his age. A merchant had found him wandering around the volcanic rocks at the base of Hekla, foraging for leaves and berries, thin as an oar, and coated in so much dirt that he might have been made of earth. The merchant used a loaf of bread as bait, coaxed Pétur to his cart, then bound his wrists and ankles and tried to sell him as a slave. No one would buy him: Pétur bared his teeth and growled, snapping his jaws if anyone came too close. The merchant brought him into Stykkishólmur to sell to one of the Danes, hoping they might take the boy to Denmark as some feral curiosity.