‘Some pirates handed me these. They must have guessed the child would lack covering.’
Ásta flares up at once. A long labour and a difficult birth have done nothing to dampen her feelings about their captors.
‘I won’t thank them, Ólafur, so don’t expect it. I won’t be grateful.’
He nods soothingly. ‘We’ll be grateful to our heavenly father instead, then, who sends us all good things. And here’ – he touches the baby’s furred cheek, marvelling that there can exist anything in the world so soft – ‘is one of them.’
Ásta presses her lips to the small, linen-clad back, drinking in the scent of salt air. Then they look at each other in the swinging lamplight. Shadows are playing across her eyes, these eyes Ólafur has loved since he watched them studying his map the day she first came to Ofanleiti. He has delighted ever since in trying to describe to himself their colour, which is not quite grey, or not always grey, but a shade closer to the hue of the sea when the sun catches it by surprise some days. There are gulls whose wings become exactly so in their second autumn: you could study them for an hour without deciding whether they are grey or blue.
He remembers the way these eyes appraised him as he showed her around that day. Here was Jón’s slip of a niece, nervous as a foal and daunted by just one glance at the loom, yet he was the one who felt he was being assessed. An opinion was being formed. Almost immediately he found himself showing off.
It was Jón who had decided he needed a housekeeper. Ólafur’s formidable young daughter Thorgerdur, who had more or less managed the house since she was twelve, was bound for the mainland to keep the priest’s house in Torfastadir.
‘It’s time for Ásta to move on,’ Jón had said. They were returning from one of their shared services at Landakirkja, where the two island priests took it in turns to preach and sing by the altar. ‘She’s eighteen now – some years older than your Thorgerdur. I confess that Margrét has occasionally had to take issue with … how shall I put this? … her dedication, but my dear wife can be difficult to impress. She assures me she has taught Ásta well.’
The men’s habit on a Sunday was to walk awhile on the hill behind the church, enjoyably dissecting the shortcomings of the congregation, before the one headed east to Kirkjubaer and the other west to Ofanleiti. Sometimes they stopped to enjoy a libation from Jón’s capacious pocket at the sentinel rock dubbed the Priest Stone, from where the whole island could see them perched like a couple of ravens in their flapping ministerial coats. It was there that Jón made his offer. Whether he suspected that Ólafur, many years on his own since his wife died, was lonely, and had it in mind from the start that he needed more than a housekeeper, was never made clear.
‘You need have no worry that you are depriving us,’ Jón added gaily. This was a point that had not occurred to Ólafur. ‘Margrét has plenty of other help now.’
Jón was not giving a convincing impression of a man who believed his niece would be any loss to the housekeeping arrangements at Kirkjubaer and Ólafur was sceptical. (As well he might have been, he smiles to himself now, watching Ásta put the baby’s wrinkled fingers to her lips.) But Jón had made up his mind. He slapped Ólafur heartily on the shoulder.
‘I believe you will enjoy her company, my friend. She’ll keep you on your toes. Trust me on this matter.’
When Ásta arrived – small, sharp-chinned, with thick fair hair and those disconcerting grey eyes – Ólafur showed her around the house. It was arranged much like any other, only somewhat bigger, as he could not resist pointing out. He darted up and down the passageway from the kitchen, where meats were smoking above the fire for winter, to the pantry and the dairy, then up a rickety stair into the communal badstofa, lined with the usual wooden beds. When the cold began to bite, she would find this room warmed by the beasts wintering below, he heard himself boasting, knowing it was still a novelty on Heimaey to have your living and sleeping area in the loft and that Jón did not. Sensing her examination, Ólafur fairly bounced from room to room, expanding his chest a fraction as he passed through a shaft of light, quite unnecessarily lifting the edge of the loom with one hand to demonstrate how heavy it was. He must have been well past forty years by then, but every priest in Iceland had to be as much farmer as pastor and he knew he was strong. He still took his turn to swing from cliff to cliff to capture the spring eggs and – God preserve him from vanity – could shear a sheep as fast as any.
He showed her his writing paper. He showed her his books. Her amber hair was pulled back, plaited and fixed under her cap, and when she bent to look he could not help noticing a shapely neck. There was a tinge of red in her hair – no, more like gold, really; a hint of sunset, anyway – that you would need to see unpinned to judge. May the Lord forgive him, what was he thinking of? By the time he came to show Ásta his map, Ólafur Egilsson was in love.
The baby stirs and Ásta puts him to her breast, sucking in her breath at the sting of it, flooded with the love for this child that pours out of her faster than any milk. Ólafur, sitting on the floor at her side, turns courteously the other way, and she is touched by the civility of the gesture in the midst of so much chaos. He has always been polite, her Ólafur.
‘Do you remember, mín kaera,’ he says, still facing away, ‘the day you came to Ofanleiti? I shudder to think how I began prancing around the moment I met you.’
She laughs. ‘You knew me from the very first,’ she says to his back. ‘I was so appalled to see Thorgerdur’s big loom with those dread stone weights and realise that I was to be in charge of the weaving, not to mention everything else. And somehow you understood. You were different from the man I had seen in the pulpit.’
‘Was I? In what way?’
She can’t see his face and hopes he is not offended. Ólafur can be defensive about his priestly status.
‘You waved your hands a great deal and had plenty to say for yourself, which I would have expected. But you also became quite still and watchful and, you know, thoughtful. And not so sure of yourself. That was a different side. And you laughed – there was the real surprise.’
He says nothing. Now she is sure he is smiling.
She remembers noticing, as she followed him from room to room, how slender his shoulders were, and that he did not blunder about like her uncle or bash his head on every lintel, but was quick and graceful. She noticed the wiry arms and the long hair, brown as a nut, which hung often across his eyes and begged for the services of a sharp knife. She noticed him noticing how she nearly burst into tears when she saw that loom. The prospect of taking over from efficient young Thorgerdur Ólafsdóttir in the home of such a notoriously censorious preacher terrified her. She had begged Jón not to send her.
And then – she drops a kiss on the baby’s head and thinks back – didn’t he ask what was troubling her and didn’t she mumble something about fearing she would fail him in the tasks ahead? Yes, that’s how it went. And he smiled, his eyes crinkling in a nice way, and said he was sure she would not fail him – although he assumed she knew they must eat. ‘We have old people and labourers to feed here and I must confess to being partial to a meal myself from time to time.’
She gave him a wobbly smile.
‘And we will be hard put to clothe ourselves if the loom is not made to rattle now and then, won’t we?’
She nodded uncertainly.
‘But we might also have a look at a book together when the summer work is past and we can award ourselves some winter lamplight in here. Your uncle tells me you like to read, do you not?’
This is the moment she remembers best: the strange fluttery feeling at the mention of books. She probably gaped a bit. Ólafur was looking at her very directly, slightly amused at her reaction, as if trying to work out the nature of this package he had been sent.
‘I have something of which I’m very fond that I will show you. You’ve heard of Bishop Gudbrandur Thorláksson perhaps?’
‘You don’t have his Bible?’ she squeaked.
‘Sadly not. Every church in Iceland is supposed to buy one, although God knows how. Perhaps one day. But I’ve got something else. There’s hardly enough light to see properly, but look here.’
From under one of the beds he pulled out a wooden box, simply carved, and withdrew from it a piece of parchment. He sat down on the bed and patted the space next to him for her to join him. Then he spread the parchment on his knee, gently smoothed the creases and nudged it towards her. She gazed at it with heart-pounding awe. Never had she seen a thing of such beauty. Around the edges there swam great fish in an ocean of waves. She made out sea-creatures with gaping maws and curved horns, cattle frisking in the shallows, giant birds. They all cavorted around a large shape, strangely formed with bulbous noses and fat fingers. What monster was depicted here? There were words all over in a flowing hand, but none she could decipher easily in the dimness except one alone, there at the top in capital letters: ISLANDIA.
She looked at him for guidance, feeling stupid.
‘It’s a map, Ásta. A map of Iceland. A copy of one that Gudbrandur drew and a good enough likeness to his, I’m told. Can you see how it works? Imagine that this line here, see, is the southern coastline. Above it is drawn the volcano Hekla and further along we see the glaciers Eyjafjallajökull and Mýrdalsjökull with – look just here – birds below.’
She stared at the birds with delight, bending close to study the lines.
‘And you can follow the coast all the way around – in and out of the east fjords, see, and up and around the north. Here is Hólar, the northern bishopric where Gudbrandur has his seat. And then come with me further along. This big fistful of fingers up here is the west fjords and then down we come again to the southwest.’
He was tracing a bony index finger round the knobbly lines of the map as he talked, his voice becoming ever more excited and his speech faster. A hank of hair kept falling into his eye and he pushed it away impatiently.
‘See, we can hop inland a little just here and we’re in the valley of Mosfell, with a red sign to show a church and houses there. That’s you, although I think you were not born when this was drawn. Or perhaps there you were, newly arrived on God’s earth and looking about you in your mother’s arms with just such a solemn expression as you wear now.’
He laughed a little sheepishly, and she wondered at the way this man only encountered before in confident pulpit diatribe seemed so suddenly ill at ease. He returned his gaze to the map immediately.
‘Just a little further over to the east is the southern bishopric of Skálholt, where I went to school, and your uncle Jón also. It has a much bigger red symbol, because the church there is large and there are farms all around.’ His finger moved south. ‘And look down here, Ásta. What do you think these great rocks are in the middle of the sea, surrounded by such mighty fish? Can you read what it says?’
‘VEST … MANNA … EIAR,’ she sounded out carefully. ‘Our Westman Islands are here!’ She laughed out loud for the joy of it. ‘And these words in the corner, they’re Latin, aren’t they?’
‘Yes they are,’ he said quietly, giving her another long look. She supposed he had not known a girl before who knew Latin. ‘Ponder what this means, Ásta. Here we sit in a house in Ofanleiti, without so much as a plank of driftwood to line the walls and spare us a few draughts, and yet here we also are on the map of Iceland.’
She gazed at it, beguiled.
‘Think of it. Maps mean our poor nation is known not just to God and the Danes and a few English rogues and squabbling German merchants, but to the whole world. Can you imagine that there are countries with white sands that stretch forever and fruits that would sate you with sweetness? I have heard of these places and if my map went far enough south they would be just about … here.’
He ran his finger past the Westman Isles to the bottom of the map and let it drift on through the air until it dropped on the bed between them like a pouncing gull and stabbed within an inch of her dress. Then he removed his hand hurriedly and began to tidy the map away.
‘They are places you and I will never see, but I hear stories at the harbour every day. Perhaps you will like to hear them too.’ He smiled again. ‘Once you have mastered the loom.’
‘I would like that very much,’ she said, setting the loom firmly aside and hugging to herself the thought of maps and stories and a badstofa warmed by animal heat in winter. She was beginning to think she might be happy at Ofanleiti.
The baby is asleep again. She lifts him to her shoulder and the pirate shirt fans out around him.
‘You can turn back now.’
Ólafur shuffles around and they look at each other again, mellow with memories, their newborn son between them.
7
Getting up is painful, but so is sitting so it might be as well to try. The delivery has left Ásta torn and bruised, and after reclining in the same position for so long, there exists scarcely another part of her that is not also aching. She is entitled to a turn on the deck and longs for it, but rope ladders are still beyond her. All she can do is hold on to Margrét for support and essay an old woman’s totter about the confined area that has been her home for two weeks, each clutching at the other as the ship pitches. Two steps forwards to where Oddrún is still clamped to the floor, two back, turn, two forwards, two back, feeling herself ripped again with every step. Then she sinks back to the wood and yelps on to her side, wondering if her body will ever feel normal again.
Around her, life in the hold has arranged itself into a kind of routine. People have found themselves tasks: some hand out bread and mead; some are appointed to collect waste where they may and throw it to the waves; others organise the allotted excursions on deck at such times as the wind is light, the sea clear and the captain in reasonable temper. The interminable hours below are occupied by reciting sagas or rímur. Egill Skallgrímsson’s kennings boom out of the shadows to make more hearts than Ásta’s contract with longing. She strains to catch each saga telling, exulting to see in her mind’s eye the breaths of horses over the lava plains and their tails streaming in the wind. Even Oddrún has been persuaded to suck on a biscuit soaked in ale and give voice to some quavery dream that takes her listeners from where they are to a land where ravens beat their tattered wings and slumbering volcanoes wake.
Margrét has done her best to rub the excretions of childbirth from both their dresses and, emboldened to demand yet more water, embarked on a frenzy of scrubbing. She shoves her bucket between listless neighbours with a sarcastic retort for anyone who protests. Her efforts have done little for the stench and less for anyone’s peace of mind, but they keep the flies out of her head.
From time to time Anna Jasparsdóttir slips over for a chat. Ásta watches her twisting a stump of rope for Marta, a crescent of pink tongue just visible as she concentrates. How lovely the girl is, with her even teeth and neat nose and blue-green eyes. No wonder half the men on Heimaey were after her before doting Jón Oddsson swept her off to the farmhouse at Stakkagerdi with the promise of a blue dress from Copenhagen. He is not on board. Escaped, Anna believes, although Ásta finds it hard to imagine stout Jón Oddsson flitting down a cliff. Her father Jaspar, a slow-talking Dane with too many teeth, is thought to be on one of the other ships.
‘I’ve come to a decision,’ Anna says, offering Marta the rope-doll and smiling as the child takes it in her arms and begins to croon.
‘What have you decided, Anna mín?’
‘I’ve made up my mind that whatever awaits us when we land, I am going to make the best of it.’
Ásta glances at her again, this time with a flicker of admiration. For all the softness of her looks, this is not a woman you would catch howling for her husband at the water’s edge or enquiring after elven elixirs when life becomes painful. Anna’s spirit reminds her of Margrét, scrubbing away invincibly over there, refusing to be cowed. Personally Ásta is looking ahead with nothing but the most gut-wrenching dread.
Ólafur continues to ke
ep her supplied with information gathered from around the ship. Now that he has persuaded one of the pirates to teach him the rudiments of the common tongue used by the crew (a source of the frankest fascination), his news has advanced from the composition of turbans. He reports that the janissary soldiers are mainly Turkish but others among the corsairs are from countries like England, the Low Countries and France. Some of those, he has learned to his distress, have chosen to recant their Christian faith to become renegade privateers, while others, captive themselves, are forced into piracy. Ásta is still at a loss to understand how Ólafur can bring himself to exchange a friendly word with any of them.
She is on her knees removing a strip of lavishly stained cloth from under the baby, who is making a firm protest, when she looks up to see her husband navigating his usual hazardous course across the hold.
‘Hear what I’ve learned today,’ he begins with an air of high drama, casting around for a space to sit. ‘I know how they carried out the invasion of Iceland.’
A sudden roll of the ship throws him forward against Oddrún, who grunts and stirs. He rights himself hurriedly.
‘Dear lady, forgive me.’ Used to the company of a well-padded Oddrún, he is shocked at how thin she feels to his flailing hand, how sharp the bones in her spine.
‘Anyway, Ásta, here is what I’ve discovered. It seems that after making free around the Mediterranean for years and years, the Turks had an eye on the northern lands. But they could only venture there once Dutch and English and Venetian renegades had taught them how to build sailing ships. Their oared galleys would never have made it so far. This is most interesting, don’t you think?’
Ásta, wiping away more yellow curds, agrees that it is, indeed, interesting.
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