by Caroline Lea
The floor is bare.
Her brain whirrs back through the day: when could Pétur have removed everything? She remembers dozing for a short while. But where would he have put the letters? Her Sagas? And those other writings, scribbled in an unpractised hand. She leans her head against the floor and closes her eyes, so weary she could weep. The wood is warm from the heat of the hloðir below.
It is when Rósa opens her eyes that she sees it. There, carved deep into the darkest areas of the wooden floor, dozens of angular symbols.
Runes.
Her mind hums. She sees suddenly why the loft has been locked, why her husband wants no one in the croft, why he forbade her to come here. But who carved the runes into the wood? Not Jón.
Pétur? People say he is a pagan.
They also say Anna turned to witchcraft before the fever killed her. Witches, and those who shelter them, are condemned to burn at Thingvellir. And what might Jón have done to a wife who risked his reputation by meddling with runes?
Rósa runs her fingers over the runestone in her pocket, then glances at Jón’s sleeping form. He looks weak and helpless now, but the words of a sickly goði would still carry enough weight to condemn her.
She walks through the loft room, down the ladder, through the baðstofa and kitchen, then flings the door open. The blizzard whirls into the croft, burrowing into Rósa’s skin and stealing the air from her lungs. She gasps, closes her eyes, then hurls the runestone out into the storm. When it is discovered, after the thaw, she can claim no knowledge at all.
Her pocket is too light and she feels suddenly exposed, but she slams the door on the snow and the cold, and huddles next to the hloðir. Her hand aches to clutch some talisman for comfort, but apart from the cross in her pocket, she has only the glass woman. She clamps her hand around it and squeezes, waiting for it to crack or splinter. But the fragile figure of the tiny, perfect woman is stronger than it looks. The glass remains cold against Rósa’s skin long after she has stopped trembling.
At night, the snow stops, but it lies slumped like a woollen shroud on the crofts and the hills. The landscape is muffled in ice – who knows how many corpses the snow conceals?
After digging for half a day, Pétur and Páll return, exhausted and grim-faced. They carry a rat each, to feed to the gyrfalcon, but nothing else.
Pétur swings the rats by their tails. ‘Should we feed these to the bird? We may need them ourselves if we want to avoid slaughtering a sheep. Or each other.’ He grins. ‘Smile, Rósa. I will butcher Páll first. He is muscular and would make a delicious stew.’
She stares.
‘No need to thank me for sparing you,’ he continues. ‘I’d be a fool to use you for food – you will fetch a high price with the Danish traders in the spring. If I can keep you and the bird alive, I will be rich. Fat too, once I have eaten Páll.’
Then Pétur hoots and, after a moment, Páll laughs uncertainly. Rósa forces a smile, even as she wants to curl up in the corner, clutching her exposed throat.
They settle into an uneasy silence and, against the backdrop of Jón’s rattling breaths, they sit and knit, trying to ignore the shadow that is creeping into the croft.
They hold Jón’s hand, dripping home-brewed brennevín onto his tongue. Breath by breath, the flesh melts from his bones. His face sharpens; his skull appears.
Rósa makes stews and holds the spoon to his lips, urging him to take a little, Jón, elskan. But he can’t swallow and gabbles gibberish, throwing his arms around, thrashing in half-sleep, as if warding off some imaginary foe. Again, he reminds her of a child. She can barely picture his rage and his threatening glances now.
Once, when she is sponging the sweat from his face, his eyelids flicker and he looks straight at her, into her eyes. His hand paws the air. She flinches away from him and his arm drops back onto the mattress.
‘He wants to hold your hand,’ Pétur murmurs.
She blinks at him and Pétur nods. Slowly she reaches out and clasps Jón’s hand. His lips twitch into something like a smile. Her heart clenches. She looks up at Pétur. He is watching, with a complicated twist to his mouth, but when he notes her gaze on him, he nods his encouragement.
She strokes Jón’s sunken cheek, and she and Pétur take it in turns to wash the wound, which is increasingly red and swollen.
When they are back in the baðstofa, Rósa turns to Pétur. ‘Jón needs help,’ she whispers. ‘Katrín –’
‘Fetching Katrín would be madness.’
‘This is madness,’ Rósa snaps. ‘Do you care if he dies?’
‘Of course I care. But we could tunnel for days, going about in circles. Then we would die. And he would die too. So, yes, Rósa. Yes, I care if he dies. But I don’t want all of us to join him.’ He stamps back up the ladder, and Rósa can hear him stifling what sounds like a sob.
Outside, the wind blows. The candles gutter; the shadows stir, then settle.
Rósa had thought Páll was asleep, curled up on some blankets, but he sits up and murmurs, ‘Pétur is desperate too. You must see that.’ He takes her hand and they sit in busy silence.
Then there is a movement above them and Pétur is scrambling down the ladder. Rósa leaps back, snatching her hand away.
‘I have a thought!’ His voice is raw with excitement and he rushes through the croft, yanks open the door and runs towards the storeroom, banging the door shut behind him. He returns within ten breaths, grinning.
‘Follow me!’ He climbs the ladder, then produces, with a flourish, a small pouch of leaves that look like dried cabbage.
‘Sea kelp. We use it on the animals’ wounds.’ He presses the pouch into Rósa’s hands. ‘Why didn’t I think of it before?’ He looks very young. ‘You can make a tea from it too. Fetch a dish and linen, Rósa. And boil some water.’
She does as he asks and passes everything back up the ladder. Pétur kneels next to Jón and pulls back the blankets. They gasp at the wound.
It is raw and bloated; it bulges around the sewing thread – a ravenous mouth, clamouring with rage.
Pétur winces. ‘Clean it and pack the kelp against it. Hold him down.’ He wipes the wound.
Jón moans.
‘You’re hurting him!’ Rósa protests.
‘Better to hurt him and keep him alive.’ Pétur’s jaw is rigid and Páll holds Jón’s arm as Pétur presses the wound hard. A stench like the guts of a rotting creature fills the room. All three gag and retch.
Jón roars and flaps and howls, animal with pain. Pétur is sweating and shaking.
They continue to bathe the wound and drip the kelp tea into Jón’s mouth all day and into the night. They wipe the sweat from his brow with a damp cloth. As Rósa changes his blankets and strokes his cheek – a gesture she never would have dared had he been conscious – she feels a surge of tenderness.
Later, when Pétur and Páll are sleeping in the baðstofa, she creeps further into the loft, to look again for the papers and cloth that Pétur must have taken, and to examine those deep runic scratches in the floorboards. Something catches her eye: a single scrap of paper stuffed between the boards. Thinking it might be one of her own letters, she clutches it eagerly, only to find, as she pulls it out, that it is covered with an unfamiliar looping hand, not hers or Jón’s.
She squints in the gloom and holds the candle closer to the paper. It is a scrap torn from a larger letter, as if someone has shredded and crumpled it.
. . . most troubling rumours involving your wife. If I refer the matter to Copenhagen, then you will stand answerable, the more so because of Birgit’s death. I am sure I need not emphasize the gravity of this matter, or the mortal danger it places upon . . .
Rósa peers closely at the letters underneath, which have been severed in half when the paper ripped, but she can make out no words.
Birgit had been Egill’s wife and Rósa knew she had died of sickness some time before Anna’s own death. But how could Birgit’s death have cast suspicion on Anna?
/> As she folds the paper to return it, she notices a smudge on the word mortal. Had it been there before? She doesn’t think so. With a creeping horror, she looks down at her hand and sees a brownish stain on her forefinger where her fear-borne sweat has smeared the ink.
Dry-mouthed, she folds the paper and stuffs it as deep into the floorboards as it will go. But when she scrubs her finger against her skirt, the ink remains.
Pétur and Páll come up late that night and send her to the baðstofa to rest.
Exhaustion weights her limbs. She tries to mull over what the letter might have meant, but she can keep her eyes open no longer and falls into a dreamless sleep.
Suddenly, a noise yanks her back to heart-thrumming wakefulness. She bolts upright.
A footfall.
‘Who’s there?’ she hisses.
A creak of wood, the rustle of hay, the crack of joints. Sharp tug of fear in her stomach. She scrabbles backwards on the bed, but her back is already to the wall.
There is a crash from the kitchen. Both Pétur and Páll rush down the ladder.
‘What is it?’
‘What’s happening?’
Crouched on her bed, Rósa hisses, ‘Someone in the kitchen.’
They all edge forward, muscles tense, breath tight.
On the floor in the kitchen, like a bundle of rags that has been dropped next to the stove, is a body. The men spring forward and pull it upright. The figure slumps and the head lolls, hair falling over the face.
At the same time, Pétur and Rósa gasp, ‘Katrín!’
Katrín doesn’t respond and, for a moment, Rósa panics, but then she sees that Katrín’s chest is still rising and falling.
‘How did she get here?’ Rósa demands.
Both men shake their heads.
‘Wrap blankets about her and bring her closer to the stove,’ Rósa says. She boils the stew; the steam wafts around them. Gradually, as though waking from a deep sleep, Katrín revives. She blinks and gives Rósa a weak smile. ‘You’re alive. Thought I’d risked losing my nose to the cold for nothing.’
‘How . . .’
Katrín holds up her mittened hands. ‘Like a fox burrowing.’ She shivers convulsively and her eyes glaze.
‘Save your breath, Katrín,’ Pétur says.
Katrín mumbles, ‘Keep the girl safe . . . I don’t want . . . like Anna . . .’ Her head droops onto her chest.
‘What does she say of Anna?’ Rósa says. ‘Katrín. Katrín?’
‘She’s mumbling nonsense,’ says Pétur. ‘Leave her be.’
Katrín starts and opens her eyes, then takes sips of the tea Rósa presses to her lips. They layer on more blankets and watch her.
After some time she yawns, as if waking from a deep sleep. ‘Where is Jón? He will be eager to hurl me back into the snow to freeze.’
None of them smiles.
Katrín struggles to sit up. ‘Where is he? What happened? He’s hurt?’
‘A ewe gored him,’ Rósa says. ‘The horn went deep and –’
‘Show me.’ Her voice is tight with fear.
Pétur’s gaze is cold. ‘You should rest. Then return home.’ He glances at Rósa.
‘Where is he?’ Katrín demands.
Rósa looks pleadingly at Pétur. ‘She could help him.’
‘No!’
‘He will die.’
‘I have said no!’
Katrín and Páll watch them.
Rósa stands, straight-backed. ‘I will not let him die.’
Pétur’s expression is anguished. ‘Jón wouldn’t want people prying.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Pétur.’ She flinches as soon as she says the words, waiting for his towering rage, bracing herself for his sudden violence.
But he stares at her, as if seeing her for the first time.
‘The loft,’ he grunts.
The tension in the room lifts, like the lid from a boiling pan.
They climb up. Jón has thrown off the blankets; his limbs are sprawled at odd angles – he looks like a carelessly dumped corpse. Stripped of his tunic, he is all shadows. Rósa cannot pull her gaze from the excavated chasm of his hollowed chest, his concave stomach, the cavernous, barred crypt of his ribs. And those raised scars that criss-cross his skin. He looks beaten and helpless.
Rósa tries to shield him with a blanket, but Katrín pushes it away.
‘Not with a fever. He should remain uncovered.’
‘He will be furious,’ Pétur growls.
‘So you’ve said.’ Katrín looks around the room. Her eyes flick over the mattress; she squints into the darkness, where Rósa knows the gyrfalcon must be sitting on its perch, as if carved out of rock. As if guarding those markings.
Pétur watches Katrín’s face. His hand creeps towards his belt, to his knife.
‘A fine mess!’ Katrín snaps, indicating Jón. ‘Were you trying to kill him?’
Pétur uncoils. His hand moves away from his knife and Rósa exhales.
Katrín kneels and presses around Jón’s wound with light, deft fingers.
Pétur says, ‘Don’t touch him. He wouldn’t like it.’
Katrín’s voice is flat. ‘He would like being dead less.’
‘Can you save him?’ Rósa asks.
‘Well, he’s still breathing, despite your efforts, but he’s rotting inside.’ She turns to Rósa. ‘A knife and water. And more of the kelp.’
‘Pétur?’ Rósa says. ‘You heard Katrín.’
Pétur doesn’t move. Páll hovers behind him, face strained.
Rósa sighs. ‘Páll, fetch Katrín whatever she needs.’
He hesitates, staring at Pétur. Rósa raises her eyebrows. Páll nods, then goes down the ladder and returns, moments later, with all that Katrín has asked for.
Katrín flashes a smile at him. ‘We haven’t spoken, but I’m sure we know each other through other people’s chatter. That is what usually happens here.’ Carefully she cuts each of Rósa’s clumsy stitches and squeezes the wound. There is a gush of stinking yellow pus. Rósa has to turn her face away to avoid vomiting.
Katrín grimaces. ‘Water.’
Rósa hands her the bowl and Katrín tips water over the wound, wiping away the weeping ooze. Jón remains unconscious. Only the shuddering rise and fall of his chest reassures Rósa that he is still alive.
Katrín douses the wound in the kelp water. ‘It looks dreadful and the smell is terrible, but that’s simply the poison. If he fights it off, he may live.’
She turns to Pétur. ‘So. I must return to my croft now, yes?’
Pétur looks at his feet. ‘You should . . . stay.’
Katrín nods. ‘Folk are more likeable when they offer a service.’
No one answers.
‘I will sleep in the barn.’
Rósa starts to protest but Katrín holds up a hand. ‘I can tend the animals and Pétur won’t have to keep clutching his knife.’
Pétur scowls and Katrín gives a low laugh. Jón moans and Rósa places a hand on his cheek. Pétur reaches out and grabs her hand – his fingers grasp her wrist so tightly that she flinches. Slowly, he turns her hand over and she sees the smudge of ink from the letter. He examines it, then looks up at her. She snatches her hand back, rubbing her wrist. His jaw clenches but he looks away, then inclines his head to Páll and they go down the ladder to dig through the snow.
The men dig the path to the barn and the storeroom again, in spite of Rósa’s protests that there is too great a risk of Katrín being trapped in the barn by the blizzard. But Pétur is implacable: he will dig the path twice daily, he states, but he will not have Katrín sleeping in the croft. Rósa tries to argue further, but Katrín shakes her head.
‘He’ll keep the path clear. He knows I can help Jón.’
Pétur gives a stiff nod.
Katrín helps Rósa to brew more kelp tea. They burn the wool from a sheep’s head, the acrid smoke stinging their eyes, and Katrín shows her how to boil the skull and weight it with a ston
e so that it sinks to the bottom of the whey barrel. The meat will keep for months this way. They make rye bread and, as they knead the dough, Katrín tells Rósa what has happened to the settlement.
‘When the snow first started falling, people took to the hills to gather up their flocks. Then a moldbylur started: big drifts – you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The men didn’t return. The snow god has them.’
‘The men are still out there?’ Rósa clasps her hands.
‘Frozen, unless they have found a cave.’ Katrín draws a shuddering breath. ‘The snow grew heavier – even Gudrun couldn’t recall the like. Folk began muttering about curses, and that was when the roofs started caving in. Some people escaped. Others were too slow. Buried alive.’
Rósa shakes her head. ‘I cannot imagine . . .’
‘They were there, calling out one moment, gone the next . . . We dug and shouted. Nothing. Six people: four on the hills and two under the crofts somewhere. No bodies.’
‘They must still be buried,’ Rósa says.
Katrín’s gaze is piercing. ‘They left no trace.’
‘The men who went after the sheep – you can’t abandon them.’
Katrín’s mouth trembles. ‘So we should send more men into the hills to die? That’s why I came here. We don’t know what to do.’
‘You were lucky not to freeze.’
‘I am used to the cold. I know to keep moving and where there are caves to shelter. I often walk out in the snow . . .’ She trails off, then gives a small tight smile. ‘I thought Jón . . . He’s the goði.’
Rósa lays a hand on her arm. ‘Did you hope for advice? Or a prayer? You should have gone to Egill. Or has his croft been buried?’
‘Egill is safe, shouting about curses and God’s judgement. But I came for food. Ours is buried or ruined. It is bold to ask but –’
Rósa holds up her hands. ‘Of course. We will be glad to help. We will share everything.’ She notices Katrín’s face. ‘Why are you smiling?’
‘If you are to play the part of goði, then you should demand some payment for your kindness. Jón will wish he had taught you better.’
Rósa flushes. ‘Sometimes I think . . . he loathes me.’
‘He loathes everyone.’ Katrín smiles wryly. ‘Himself most of all.’