Hannah Kent - Burial Rites

My tongue has swollen in my mouth and it cannot be moved to form words. What would I say to him anyway, now that it has come to this? I pick at the scabs on my wrists where the irons chafe the skin, and blood bubbles up to the surface. He notices.

‘Well. I must… I’m glad to have met you, but… it’s late. You must be… uh, I will call again soon.’ He bows awkwardly, then turns and walks away, tripping in his haste. He goes before I can let him know I understand. I smear the fresh blood across my arm as I watch him stumble to his horse.

Now I am alone. I watch the ravens, and listen to the horses eat.

ONCE THE MEN FROM STÓRA-BORG had eaten and retired to their tents for the night, Margrét picked up the dirty wooden bowls and returned inside. She smoothed the blankets over her sleeping daughters, and walked slowly around the small room, bending down to pick up the strands of dry grass that had fallen from the turf layered between the rafters. She despaired at the dust in the room. The walls had once been panelled with Norwegian wood, but Jón had removed the boards to pay a debt owed to a farmer across the valley. Now the bare walls of turf collapsed their dirt and grass onto the beds in summer, and grew dank in winter, issuing moulds that dripped onto the woollen blankets and infested the lungs of the household. The home had begun to disintegrate, a hovel that had spread its own state of collapse to its inhabitants. Last year two servants had died from diseases wrought by the damp.

Margrét thought of her own cough, and instinctively raised a hand to her mouth. Ever since the news brought by the District Commissioner, her lungs had issued rot with increased regularity. She rose each morning with a weight upon her chest. Margrét could not tell whether it was dread of the criminal’s arrival, or the night’s accumulated dross in her lungs, but it made her think of the grave. Everything’s collapsing inward, she thought.

One of the officers had gone to fetch Agnes from where they had left her tied with the horses. Margrét had only caught a distant glimpse of the woman when she had left the dim rooms of the farmhouse to bring the men their supper — a slight blur of blue, a smudge of skirt being hauled off a horse. Now her heart thumped. Soon the murderess would be in front of her. She would see the woman’s face; feel her warmth in the small confines. What was to be done? How to behave in front of such a woman?

If only Jón were here, she thought. He could tell me what I should say to her. It takes a man, a good man, to know how to manage a woman who has made her bed among stones.

Margrét sat down and absently picked at the grass in her hand. She had managed the servants who had drifted through her husband’s household for almost four decades, across as many farms, and yet she felt sluggish with her own uncertainty and apprehension. This woman, this Agnes, was not a servant, certainly no guest, and no pauper. She deserved no charity, and yet, she was condemned to die. Margrét shuddered. The light from the lamp played her shadow across the floorboards.

Dull footsteps sounded from the farmhouse doorway. Margrét stood quickly, the gathered grass fluttering to the ground as she released her clenched fists. The officer’s voice boomed from the shadows of the corridor.

‘Mistress Margrét of Kornsá? I have the prisoner. May we enter?’

Margrét took a deep breath and straightened her posture. ‘This way,’ she commanded.

The officer entered the badstofa first, smiling broadly at Margrét, who stood stiffly, her hands gripping the cloth of her apron. She glanced to where her daughters lay sleeping and felt the blood pulse in her throat.

There was a moment of silence as the officer blinked to accustom his eyes to the low light, and then, abruptly, he pulled the woman into the room.

Margrét was unprepared for the filth and wretchedness of the woman’s appearance. The criminal wore what seemed to be a servant’s common working dress of roughly woven wool, but one so badly stained and caked with dirt that the original blue dye was barely discernible under the brown grease that spread across the neckline and arms. A thick weight of dried mud pulled the fabric awkwardly from the woman’s body. Her faded blue stockings were soaked through, sunk about the ankles, and one was torn, exposing a slice of pale skin. Her shoes, of sealskin it seemed, had split at the seam, but were so covered in mud that it was impossible to see how damaged they were. Her hair was uncovered by a cap and matted with grease. It hung in two dark braids down her back. Several strands had come loose and fell limply about the woman’s neck. She looked as if she’d been dragged from Stóra-Borg, Margrét thought. The woman’s face was hidden; she stared at the floor.

‘Look at me.’

Agnes slowly raised her head. Margrét winced at the smear of dried blood across the woman’s mouth, and the grime that lay in streaks across her forehead. There was a yellow bruise that spread from her chin down to the side of her neck. Agnes’s eyes flickered from the ground to Margrét’s own, and she felt unnerved by their intensity, their colour made lighter and sharper by the dirt on her face. Margrét turned to the officer.

‘This woman has been beaten.’ The officer searched Margrét’s face for amusement, and, finding none, lowered his eyes. ‘Where are her things?’

‘Only the clothes on her back,’ the officer said. ‘The clerks took what she had to cover her vittles.’

Invigorated by a sudden curl of anger, Margrét pointed to the irons about the woman’s wrists.

‘Is it necessary to keep her bound like a lamb ripe for slaughter?’ she asked him.

The officer shrugged and felt about him for a key. In a few deft twists he freed Agnes from the handcuffs. Her arms fell to her sides.

‘You may go now,’ Margrét told the officer. ‘One of you may come in when I retire to sleep, but I want some time alone with her.’

The officer’s eyes grew wide. ‘Are you certain?’ he asked. ‘It’s not safe.’

‘As I said, I’ll ask for you when I retire to bed. You may wait outside the doorway and I’ll call out should there be need for it.’

The officer hesitated, then nodded and left with a salute. Margrét turned to Agnes, who stood, unmoving, in the middle of the room.

‘You,’ she said, ‘you follow me.’

Margrét did not wish to touch the woman, but the lack of light indoors forced her to grip Agnes’s arm in order to steer her into the right room. She could feel the bones in her wrist, crusted blood against her fingertips. The woman smelt like stale urine.

‘This way.’ Margrét walked slowly down to the kitchen, ducking her head under the low doorframe.

The kitchen was lit by the dying embers of the fire in the raised hearth of stones, and a small hole in the thatched turf ceiling that served as a chimney. It let through a weak, pink light that lay across the packed earth floor and illuminated the smoke that hung about the room. Margrét led Agnes inside, then turned and faced her.

‘Take off your clothes. You need to wash if you’re going to sleep in my blankets. I won’t have you infesting this house with any more lice than already plague the place.’

Agnes’s face was impassive. ‘Where is the water?’ she croaked.

Margrét hesitated, and then turned to a large kettle that sat upon the coals. Plunging her hand into it, she pulled out crockery that had been left to soak, and then heaved it onto the ground.

‘There,’ she said. ‘And it’s warm. Now hurry up, it’s past midnight.’

Agnes looked at the kettle and then suddenly fell to the ground. At first Margrét thought she had fainted, then quickly realised her mistake. She watched as Agnes bent her head over the kettle’s rim and scooped handfuls of greasy water into her mouth, gasping and drinking with the same urgency as an animal at a trough. Water ran down her chin and neck, dripping into the stiff folds of her dress. Without thinking, Margrét bent down and pushed Agnes’s forehead from the kettle.