Hannah Kent - Burial Rites

But last night, here at Kornsá, I dreamt of Natan. He was boiling herbs for a draught, and I was watching him and running my hands over the smithy’s turf wall. It was summer, and the light was tinged with pink. The herbs for the draught had a strong perfume, and it surrounded me as I stood there. I breathed in the bittersweet scent, feeling a slow wave of happiness rise over me. I was finally gone from the valley. Natan turned and smiled. He was holding a glass beaker filled with scum he had collected off the brewing herbs, and steam was rising from it. He looked like a sorcerer in his black worsted stockings and the smoke rising from his hand. Natan stepped through the pool of sunlight and I opened my arms to him, laughing, feeling like I might die from love, but as I did the beaker slipped from his grasp and smashed on the floor and darkness poured into the room like oil.

I can’t be sure if I have slept since that dream.

Natan is dead.

I wake every morning with a blow of grief to my heart.

The only thing for it is to push my mind back underwater, back to the dream, back to the golden moment that enveloped me before the beaker broke. Or to imagine Brekkukot, when Mamma was with me. If I concentrate I can see her sleeping in the bed opposite mine, and Jóas, little Jóas scratching at his fleabites. I will use my fingernail to crush them against my thumb.

But the memories I haul up are cold. I know what comes after Brekkukot. I know what happens to Mamma, and to Jóas.

When I open my eyes I see Margrét lying awake in her bed. She tosses and turns, and picks absently at her blanket. Her nightcap is a little loose, and I can see her grey hair scraped over her head and twisted into tight plaits, even as she rests. I can almost make out the contours of her skull.

Her face is a blotch, half-hidden by the blanket she has drawn about her. She’s turned to study the sleeping officer lying in the cot opposite.

The officer is snoring and the farm mistress clicks her tongue in disapproval. I hear you, old woman. You’ve had enough already? Try a year of them and their hard hands, hard looks.

The dried seaweed in her pillow rustles as she turns her head. She sees me. She sucks in a quick breath and snatches a hand to her heart.

I should have been more careful. Never be caught staring at someone. They’ll think you want something from them.

‘You’re awake. Good.’ The farm mistress smoothes her hair across her forehead, and regards me for a moment, unsure, perhaps, of how long I have been watching her.

‘Get up,’ she says.

I obey. The wooden slats are cool under my feet.

Margrét hands me a servant’s garb of blue wool and we dress in silence. She keeps a nervous eye on the snoring officer. I pull the rough cloth down over my head, and look about the room. There are other people asleep in the beds. Servants, perhaps. There is no time to find out who they might be — Margrét leads me down the dank corridor of the cottage, pausing only to tug at a strip of turf that has come loose and hangs in threads across a beam.

‘Falling to pieces,’ she mutters.

She moves too fast for me to look into the other rooms of the croft. It’s not a large dwelling, but I remember from my first time here a storeroom for barrels, and that little room there, with the buckets and pans and a milking tray, must be the dairy, or perhaps they have turned it into a pantry. We pass the kitchen. My clothes from Stóra-Borg lie heaped in one corner.

It is already a fine day outside. The grass is wet from a night rain, and the blades look bright in the light of the rising sun. There is a brisk wind and it blows ripples across the puddles in the yard. I notice the small things, now.

‘As you can see,’ Margrét begins, pausing when she trips on a piece of driftwood that has tumbled off the pile outside the croft. ‘As you can see, there is a great amount of work that must be done about this place.’

This is the first thing she has said since bidding me dress. I say nothing and keep my eyes lowered. I notice that her skirt hem is stained from years of brushing the ground.

Margrét stands up straight and puts her hands on her hips, as though trying to make herself bigger. Her nails are bitten to the quick.

‘I shall make no secret of my displeasure to you. I don’t want you in my home. I don’t want you near my children.’

Those sleeping bodies were her children.

‘I have been forced to keep you here, and you…’ She falters a little. ‘You are forced to be kept.’

Our shoulders are tensed against the morning wind, which buffets our dresses against our legs. When I was little my foster-mamma, Inga, showed me how to spread the material of my skirt out against a gale and pretend I had wings. It was a feeling of flying. One day, she told me, the wind would pick me up and I would be blown along in its path, and everyone in the valley would look up and see my shift. I used to laugh at that.

‘My husband Jón is at Hvammur, but he will return this morning. Our farmhands will be returning any day to begin the haymaking. It won’t do to act up. I don’t know what you did at Stóra-Borg, but let me tell you, you will have no opportunity to take advantage of us here.’

She knows nothing.

‘Now.’ She clasps her hands tightly against her waist. ‘It is my understanding that you were in a serving position before…’ She pauses.

Before what? Before Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson had their skulls hammered in?

‘Yes, mistress.’

It alarms me to hear my voice aloud. It seems a lifetime ago that I spoke freely at all.

‘A servant?’ She hasn’t heard me over the wind.

‘Yes, a servant. Since I was fifteen. A hireling before that.’

She is relieved.

‘You know how to spin and knit, and cook, and tend the animals?’

I could do it in my sleep.

‘Can you wield a knife?’

My stomach drops. ‘Pardon, mistress?’

‘Can you cut hay? Can you wield a scythe? God knows how many servants have never cut grass in their lives, I understand it’s not common practice these days for women to mow, but we are a farm of few hands and —’

‘I can wield a scythe.’

‘Good. Well, as far as I’m concerned, you shall work for your keep. Yes, you shall pay for my inconvenience. I have no use for a criminal, only a servant.’

Criminal. The word hangs in the air. Heavy, unmoved by the bluster of the wind.

I want to shake my head. That word does not belong to me, I want to say. It doesn’t fit me or who I am. It’s another word, and it belongs to another person.

But what is the use of protesting against language?

Margrét clears her throat.

‘I will not tolerate violence. I won’t take lazing. Any cheek, any step out of line, any idle, or thieving, or conniving hands and I will drive you out. I will drag you out of this farm by your hair if I have to. Are we clear?’

She does not wait for an answer. She knows I have no choice.

‘I’ll show you the stock,’ she says, taking a deep breath. ‘I’ll milk the ewes and cow while you…’

Her eyes slip from mine to the next farm along the valley. Something has caught her attention.

SNÆBJÖRN, THE FARMER FROM GILSSTADIR, walked up the slope of the valley. Next to him was one of his seven sons, Páll, entrusted that summer with shepherding the sheep of Kornsá. Struggling to keep up was Snæbjörn’s wife, Róslín, with two of her youngest daughters in tow.

‘God help me,’ Margrét muttered. ‘Here comes the horde.’ She suddenly gave a start and grabbed Agnes’s arm. ‘Go inside,’ she whispered. She pulled Agnes back beside the croft and gave her an urgent push towards the door. ‘Inside! Now.’