Hannah Kent - Burial Rites

Agnes squinted and looked out over the valley. Her expression was inscrutable.

‘Agnes…’ Tóti sighed. ‘I’m only an Assistant Reverend. My training is incomplete. Perhaps you need a qualified clergyman, or one from your own district who knows you? Surely someone else has shown you kindness? Who was your Reverend here?’

Agnes tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. ‘I haven’t met many churchmen I care for, and certainly none that I would claim know me,’ she said.

A few ravens swept through the valley, landing on the stone fence, and both Tóti and Agnes saw Margrét’s head bob up from behind it. ‘Nuisances!’ she cried. A clod of dirt flew over the wall and the birds took off, cawing indignantly. Tóti looked at Agnes and smiled, but Agnes was stony-faced.

‘They won’t like that,’ she murmured to herself.

‘Well,’ Tóti said, taking a deep breath. ‘If you require a spiritual advisor, then I will consider it my duty to visit you. As District Commissioner Blöndal so desires, I will come to guide you in your prayers, so that you may walk towards what lies ahead of you with faith and dignity. I will take it as my responsibility to supply you with spiritual comfort and hope.’

Tóti fell silent. He had rehearsed this speech as he rode to the farm, and he was pleased that he’d managed to remember to say ‘spiritual comfort’. It sounded paternalistic, and self-assured, as though he was in a lofty state of spiritual certainty: a state he felt he should be in, but had a vague, discomfiting sense that he was not.

Still, he wasn’t used to talking so formally, and his hands sweated against the tissue-thin paper of the Testament. He carefully closed the book, making sure not to crease any pages, and wiped his palms on his thighs. Now would be a good time to quote scripture, as his father was wont to do, but all he could think of was his sudden yearning for his snuff horn.

‘Perhaps I have made a mistake, Reverend.’ Agnes’s voice was measured, calm.

Tóti didn’t know what to say. He looked at the bruises on her face and bit his lip.

‘Perhaps it will be better if you stay at Breidabólstadur. I thank you but… Do you really think…?’ She covered her mouth with her hands and shook her head.

‘My dear child, don’t cry!’ he exclaimed, rising from the turf.

Agnes took her hands away. ‘I’m not crying,’ she said, flatly. ‘I have made a mistake. You call me a child, Reverend Thorvardur, but you’re little more than a child yourself. I’d forgotten how young you are.’

Tóti had no response for this. He regarded her for a moment, then nodded grimly and swiftly replaced his hat on his head. He bid her a good day.

Agnes watched him walk past the stone fence to farewell Margrét and the girls. The pastor and women stood together for a few minutes, chatting and looking over at her. Agnes tried to hear what they were saying, but the wind had picked up and it was blowing their words away from her. Only when Tóti raised his hat to Margrét and began to walk to the hitching post to retrieve his cob did Agnes hear Margrét call out: ‘Easier to squeeze blood from a stone, I should think!’

THE REST OF THE DAY passes in work — in weeding and tending the pitiable herbs. I listen to the far-off bleats of sheep. The poor things look thin and patchy with the winter wool newly pulled from their backs. After the priest left, the daughters, Margrét and I ate a dinner of dried fish and butter. I made sure I chewed each morsel twenty times. Then we returned to the garden, and now I start to try and mend the wall, pulling away the rocks that have shifted, sorting them on the ground, then rebuilding it, locking the stones into place and relishing the heavy mass of them in my hands.

I so often feel that I am barely here, that to feel weight is to be reminded of my own existence.

Margrét and I work in silence; she speaks to me only when giving me an order. It seems our minds are fixed on other things, and I think of how strange it is that fortune has led me back to Kornsá, where I lived as a child. Where I first learnt what it was to grieve. I think about the paths that I have taken, and I think about the Reverend.

Thorvardur Jónsson who asks to be called Tóti like a farmer’s son. He seems too callow for his station. There is a softness about his voice, and about his hands. They are not long and stained by tinctures as Natan’s were, or meaty like the hands of farm help, but small, and thin and clean. He rested them upon his Bible as he spoke to me.

I have made a mistake. They condemn me to death and I ask for a boy to coach me for it. A red-headed boy, who gobbles his buttered bread and toddles to his horse with the seat of his pants wet, this is the young man they hope will get me on my knees, full of prayer. This is the young man I hope will be able to help me, although with what and how I cannot think.

The only person who would understand how I feel is Natan. He knew me as one knows the seasons, knows the tide. Knew me like the smell of smoke, knew what I was, and what I wanted. And now he is dead.

Perhaps I should say to him, poor boy, go back to the parsonage and back to your precious books. I was wrong: there is nothing you can do for me. God has had His chance to free me, and for reasons known to Him alone, He has pinned me to ill fortune, and although I have struggled, I am run through and through with disaster; I am knifed to the hilt with fate.

To the Deputy Governor of North-East Iceland ,

Thank you for Your Excellency’s most illustrious letter from the 10th of January this year, concerning the charges of murder, arson and other crimes brought against the defendants Fridrik, Agnes and Sigrídur, for which they have been sentenced to death. In response to your letter, allow me to inform you that B. Henriksson, the blacksmith who was solicited to build the axe to be used for the execution, quoted the cost of five silver dollars of the realm for his work and materials, following my suggestions as to the make and size of the axe on the 30th of December last year. After receiving Your Excellency’s letter however, I thought, in agreeance with Your Excellency, that it would be better to purchase a broader axe from Copenhagen for the same price, and that is why I since asked Simonsen the merchant to arrange that for me.

In this summer the man concerned, Simonsen, came to me with the axe, and although it has been made exactly as requested, I was surprised when I learnt from Simonsen that it had cost twenty-nine dollars of the realm. On examination of the bill, I found this sum to be correct, and was understandably forced to pay Herr Simonsen’s invoice from the funds allotted to this case by Your Excellency.

Now, as I dare to explain to you the overdrawn state of these funds, I humbly ask if this expense should not, in fact, have been drawn from the monies budgeted for this case, which, amongst other items of expense, serve to pay for the custody of the prisoners. Also, I humbly enquire of Your Excellency what we are supposed to do with this axe after it has been used for the executions.

I am, Your Excellency, your most humble and obedient servant.

HÚNAVATN DISTRICT COMMISSIONER

Björn Blöndal

TÓTI HAD LEFT KORNSÁ WITH the full intention of writing to Blöndal and reneging on his promise to meet with Agnes. His second conversation with the criminal had been a failure; he hadn’t even led a simple prayer. Yet, the thought that he would necessarily have to explain why he had changed his mind after only two visits filled him with dread and embarrassment, and he left off composing the letter. I will do it tomorrow, he promised himself with each new day at Breidabólstadur, but two weeks had passed, the peasants were readying themselves for the mid-July harvest, and he had not so much as picked up his quill.