The Sealwoman's Gift

by Sally Magnusson

  Do you remember our parting at that summer’s end? How could you not – pushed in the door by the soldiers, allowed just a moment to tell me your news and then thrust so roughly out again? Could they not have given us five minutes? But what news! Released to beg a ransom from King Christian! I was so happy and sad and fearful all at once. I tried to be brave for you, though I wept after you were gone. I think I was crying from hopefulness, and also perhaps from something that is not hopeful at all, because I suddenly recalled Oddrún’s word about the king, which she seemed so sure about. Then I reminded myself of how often she used to be wrong. (I do miss Oddrún and all the dreams and warnings we used to smile over.) After that I began to worry about the long journey ahead of you, and whether you would be shipwrecked, or murdered by another set of pirates, or set about by thugs, or struck down by plague, or discovered only years hence, starved to death behind some mouldering wall in a foreign land with your bones picked clean. Oh, what a range of misfortunes I lined up for you, my husband, on your way to Copenhagen. I pray without ceasing that nothing of the sort has befallen you, but as the months have passed, and then the years, without word of a ransom, the imaginings creep back and it is every day harder to keep them at bay.

  We had so little time to talk at the last, you and I. You did try to be cheerful and tell me how lovely it was to see me dressed so fine – and you still, my poor husband, in the clothes you were in when the pirates streamed into Ofanleiti. Indeed I still shiver with pleasure to recall how it felt to drop my own soiled rags on the floor the day I arrived in this house. A servant girl whom I call Flower, for the blossom always pinned to her hair, took me upstairs to the women’s area, which is called here ‘haram’. (Observe the Arabic I am learning!) She washed me and the little ones all over with water from a blue jug, and gave us fresh clothes and even a cradle for Jón. It took some time to become accustomed to wearing pantaloons, but I cannot deny they are cool and comfortable and make hastening up and down the stairs much easier.

  My job here is mostly to sew. Yes, Ólafur, there is no need to fall to the floor as you read this. Margrét did teach me one or two skills, and although I am sure I am not the seamstress Alimah hoped for, I have learned to pass a needle through a tunic tolerably enough. I also have the task of attending the wives as they bathe once a week. You would love the public bathhouse. Water gushes into the basin from two brass taps, hot and cold, and with the steam and the heady scents and the tinkle of water on marble, we all become very pleasantly drowsy. I scrub their skin with pumice stones and rub it with cloves and ginger. Then I spread a burning paste all over and scrape the hairs off with a mussel shell. I must say it is the most peculiar way to spend time, but I cannot pretend it is arduous. In fact, if I could be sure – absolutely sure, Ólafur – that you were in the mood to receive a joke, I would say that if this is slavery I will expect more of it when I get home!

  That really was a joke, dearest husband, to show you I can still make one. The serious point of it is that the work of women captives in this city is probably no worse than anywhere, kitchens being (as I now suspect) kitchens the world over, and it is certainly a boon to have the laundry dried in minutes. My own place in the household is privileged compared to some: I can understand that a captive with a price on her head and an envoy sent to retrieve it is not one it makes sense to mistreat. But I am afraid there are bad tidings concerning Margrét, who bit the finger of a buyer at the slave-market. She has been seen carrying water with her ankles bound in iron, and it grieves me very much to think of it. Please have particular regard to her in your prayers.

  The burdens I carry myself are of a different kind, and I will not, indeed I must not, dwell on them in this letter, for they are yours too. I offer them daily to the Lord, along with the blessings for which I need no reminder to give thanks, not least the continued presence by my side of our two youngest children. How I rejoice to imagine the smile breaking across your face as you read this, the relief, the joy. I will tell you more of Marta and Jón anon. Of Egill, our darling boy, I will say only this: that he is not found. Sometimes I slip out to look for him when I will not be missed. I have lost count of the number of reddish-haired lads I have almost accosted. Then they turn around and pierce me to the core with a stranger’s face.

  Picture me, Ólafur, as dawn filters through the high window and the children slumber by my side. I am on my knees again with the paper on the floor before me, bent over double to scratch upon it. (It never struck me before how useful a table can be.) Today I thought I would tell you something of the household. The two wives are Alimah and Husna. Alimah is about the same age as me, to make a guess, although more rounded and graceful. She has very dark eyes that are difficult to read, and a relatively easy disposition for which I have reason to be grateful. Husna looks barely older than our Helga. She is strained and nervy all the time. The way her eyes dart about makes me think of one of our soot-headed Arctic terns scanning the grassland for an intruder. At any moment I feel she might open her crimson beak and screech her unhappiness across the roofs of Algiers.

  They both have hair that falls below their waists and shines like a raven’s head when I brush it out and sew it with jewels, or gather it into a knot at the nape and bind the tresses into bands of gold to make a headdress so heavy I am heartily glad not to have to wear it myself. They both make me feel extremely plain. I never thought of it before, since who owns a glass in Iceland and of what use would it be anyway to pamper a face that will only be streaked by smoke and flayed by gales the next minute? I have sometimes helped Alimah to dress or painted kohl on her lids and marvelled, truly marvelled, at the beauty to be savoured in the artful outline of an almond eye and the cool loveliness of silk. I never knew this before.

  Both wives, along with their daughters and a pair of aged aunts, sleep in rooms off the first-floor gallery, with slavewomen and servants like Flower and me nearby. This floor belongs entirely to the women, except for one room with the most delicate ornamentation of diamond shapes and trailing roses on the door, which is the master’s. Nobody is allowed to enter it unless invited. I do not see much of the menfolk (male servants and the like) except on the stairs or passing across the courtyard. Their business is on the second floor.

  I see that Jón, curled warm and soft at my side, is awakening. I must lay aside the letter and sit up straight, before he decides it would make a fine start to the day to leap on to my back (as he did yesterday) and instruct me to trot.

  Today, Ólafur, I am stealing a few minutes to write on the rooftop while Alimah is out. I often sit here sewing, far above the street and washed by a breeze from the sea. On a day like this, when the horizon has separated itself into layers of silver, I can look out and pretend it is the Icelandic mainland. Over there is Helga, I will say to myself. What is she up to today?

  Well, that is only a foolish dream. Better I tell you about Jón and Marta, who are here before my eyes. They have both managed to overcome the illnesses that afflicted us all in this city at first and, thanks be to God, are thriving. There are one or two difficult matters with regard to them, with which I will not burden you. Let me tell you instead that Jón is still allowed to be among the women all day and runs about with ceaseless energy. Does this remind you of anyone? And he prattles as loud and long in Icelandic as a young man from a distinguished line of preachers might be expected to.

  Marta sometimes takes my breath away with her cleverness. She speaks Arabic as well as Icelandic, and also has a good grasp of the common tongue. Her fingers are the nimblest I have seen. In fact, I live in fear that one of these days Alimah will notice that she sews a neater hem at the age of six than I do myself. Such a great comfort she is when I am sad. ‘Mamma,’ she will say, ‘let us go inside a story and shut the door’ – and I will tell her a saga or a VERY harmless story about the hidden people and she will sit and listen, perfectly still. You remember how Helga could never stay at peace for two minutes at a time? Marta is quite different. You should see her
now, Ólafur, this very minute. Her face is vanished into an orange as big as her head. Now she is daintily and very precisely licking the juice from her fingers. Looking at her I am thinking of how you and I would have given anything (so we thought in our terrible innocence) to taste an orange. Now our children suck them like guillemot eggs.

  Let me tell you what I know of other Icelanders. It is little enough, because although I am not chained to the house, there are few opportunities to be out hearing news and I depend on Anna Jasparsdóttir for most of it.

  I do know that Einar Loftsson has fared badly. He was thrown into prison for fetching water from a well that Christians are forbidden to use, though nobody had told him, and for punishment his nose and ears were cut off and strung around his neck. Can you imagine such a barbarous thing? I have not seen him myself, but I hear he was bandaged by a doctor and is feeling well enough again to have started making his own brennivín brandy from local herbs to sell. You recall how Einar was always resourceful. Apparently he is declaring to all and sundry that he intends to earn his own ransom.

  Anna visits me here from time to time, more blooming than ever. I fear you will be upset by what has become of her, so let me merely tell you she is happy, although Jón Oddsson must expect trouble. It might be kinder not to mention this if you see him. Did Jaspar ever arrive home?

  Margrét and Jón’s boy was bought by a seafarer and made to row on a galley carrying cloth shipments to the east. The galleys are much feared because so many die at the oar, but the word is that he learned so fast that he is now trusted to command one himself.

  It seems that most Icelandic men find the work harder than anything they were used to. Some have been put to dragging a plough in the fields outside the city and others labour in quarries or mills. I hear of men being beaten like camels and driven harder than a horse, and I myself have seen some (though no Icelander yet) being led through the street on a chain, just like a bullock. Others do better, especially if their owner is not harsh. Unlike the miserable souls who passed by our cell in the state prison, men working for private owners are generally at liberty to go about the city, and some masters even pay a little.

  Many Icelanders have died from disease and heat, and I am sorry to tell you that Einar’s wife is one. There have also been a number of religious conversions among some wishing to improve their conditions and thoughtless of how they will be judged at the last day. I know how it must pain you to hear this. I will say no more, and conclude my thoughts for now.

  I awoke this morning thinking I should tell you something of this master of ours, but I hardly know what to say. He is the only man allowed into the harem, but his visits are not frequent and they are very formal. Honestly, you would think the King of Denmark himself had swept into Ofanleiti on a visit. He sits cross-legged on a rug and smokes a big curly wooden pipe, in silence more or less, while the women flutter nervously around him. Sometimes he will sip a cup of coffee, and then he departs with a dark gaze around the room, whereupon everyone begins to talk and act normally again. You may not be surprised to learn that I have not yet been entrusted with making or serving the coffee. This leaves me nothing to do during the royal visits but watch from my own rug against the wall, remembering now and then to make a stitch.

  Cilleby has once or twice looked across at me – not at all improperly, you may rest assured, but as if trying to work out what I am. How strange to buy something and not know what it is. I have lately decided that his puzzlement is because I have on occasion looked out of curiosity at him, sitting there with his vermilion waistcoat and a yellow turban with a red cap at its centre a tenth the size of the pasha’s that still invades my dreams. When one of the wives speaks to him, she addresses a point nearer his chest than his eyes and he in turn speaks into the air above her head. This seems to me as astounding as any of the customs of this land. No doubt Cilleby feels at liberty to make a frank appraisal of me because he owes a slave-woman none of the respect accorded to a wife.

  I must record in his favour, however, that he appears to be a not ungentle father. I notice such things because I am aware each day of my children growing up without theirs. The other day one of the smallest of his daughters perched on his knee and stroked his chin with an artfulness as captivating as Helga’s when she was preparing to confess a misdemeanour to you. But forgive me: my pledge to write nothing that will make either of us sad is too easily broken. It was just the way Cilleby patted her head absently. It brought tears to my eyes.

  I must conclude this letter soon, Ólafur, else I will be at it for ever, but there is one last thing I must tell you. I have learned to speak another tongue!

  Can you guess how many captured people there are in this city, all trying to make themselves understood to one another? As many as TWENTY THOUSAND, according to Anna, who seems to know most things. Here are the countries they come from: Portugal, Holland, Scotland, England, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Hungary, Spain, France, Italy, Syria, China, Japan, Egypt, Ethiopia. And Iceland, of course. I dare say I have forgotten some. Half of these countries I had not even heard of before.

  Now, do you remember the language you began to learn on the ship? They speak it here. Masters give their orders in it and slaves speak it to one another. It has just occurred to me that you must know this already because you were here for those four weeks, but what you do not know is that your wife now speaks it very well. Note this, Ólafur. You are no longer the only linguist in the family. In fact, it is not so difficult to speak or to understand. I recognise many words from Latin, which I think are Spanish or Italian (you would be able to tell me at once), and there are others from local languages, all mixed up together. But it is not nearly as complicated to learn as Latin, because there is less heed paid to how a word ends, only to its root. The women of the family speak only Arabic, which is much harder, but we do well enough with nods and signs and I am beginning to understand more.

  I have also found out that the people we were wont to call Turks are by no means all Turks. It is true that the highest people are most often from Turkey – they are also called Ottomans – but others, like the family of our high and mighty Ali Pitterling Cilleby, are Moors from Spain. Then there are Berbers, native to this land, and Jews. And besides the slaves, there are the European renegades with their new Arabic names who are here to make money and stride about as if they own the place, which many of them do.

  So, my dear husband, I like to think of you reading this letter as my heart has spoken it, but if you should not, it has given me joy to talk to you. It must be near a month now since I began writing. The heat here is losing its fiery strength and is not, I will confide to you, unpleasant at this time of year. But how much, how very much, do I ache to be at home, with the bite of winter returning to the air and the birds starting to answer the call of the south. I think of it, and of you, all the time.

  If it proves possible, I will take this letter to the harbour tomorrow and wish it God speed to Iceland. I pray it will find you safely back on the island after completing your mission in Denmark.

  I will mention to you only lightly in closing that I am not alone in waiting anxiously to hear word of your audience with the king. We had expected news before now. I am told that a group of Icelandic men have sent a petition to his majesty King Christian to remind him that his subject people, so long hidden from sight in the Barbary, begin to feel forgotten.

  I am not forgotten, Ólafur. I know that. I know you will have done your best.

  Your loving wife, who wishes upon you every Christian blessing,

  Ásta Thorsteinsdóttir

  14

  Scurrying down the steep alleyways of the white city to despatch her letter, Ásta is pleased with the craft that went into those stolen hours with the bamboo stick and the burnt wool ink, and the thought devoted to what not to say. She has been measured and relatively candid, so she assures herself, but also careful of her husband’s feelings. She has not shrieked her desperation to know where the ransom is. She h
as given no hint of how often she wakes in the dawn to Egill’s white face as he is pulled away, torn from her very ribs, and how she cries then and cannot stop. She has not told him about Marta.

  If this paper survives the perilous journey to Iceland, Ólafur will be smiling a few months hence to know that his wife can make a joke in captivity and his children are eating oranges. Of the things that would most deeply distress him he will remain in ignorance. Not a whisper will he hear of how Flower took her aside one day and urged her to prepare herself.

  ‘Alimah has decided it’s time,’ Flower said.

  ‘Time? Time for what?’

  ‘Time that Marta learns to pray.’

  Flower was a slave once herself. She has forgotten the name of the land she was snatched from as a child. Free now, she will remain a servant of the household until she marries.

  ‘Ásta, you must know that all enslaved children in Algiers grow up as Muslims, wherever they come from.’

  Ásta did not know.

  Now Marta has been taught to pray five times a day to the east, pressing her forehead to the floor on a specially woven mat. She chants words that stop Ásta’s blood with ice and would bring such agony to Ólafur as can scarce be imagined. She does it with solemn attention, but also with a touching sensitivity to her mother’s pain.

  ‘Marta mín,’ Ásta whispered one night when they were cuddled on their blanket in the darkness, waiting for sleep. ‘What do you think about when you pray with Flower?’

  The child took a moment to consider. ‘I think a little bit about the words I’m saying. That Allah is great, the most … I’m not sure how to say it in Icelandic.’

  Ásta could feel her daughter’s eyes on her, sensed her pondering the right answer.