Hannah Kent - Burial Rites

‘When I saw him today I was worried he would forbid me from seeing you.’

‘And did he?’

Tóti shook his head. ‘He said I must preach to you.’

Agnes gently pulled her hand out of his grasp, and he reluctantly released her. He watched her resume her knitting.

‘Why don’t you tell me about Natan,’ he asked, a little peevish.

Agnes glanced at the people before them. ‘Do you think they need more food brought out?’

‘Margrét would have called you.’ Tóti wiped his sweaty palms against his trousers. ‘Go on, Agnes. Blöndal isn’t here.’

‘And thank the Lord for that.’ Agnes took a deep breath. ‘What do you want me to tell you about Natan? You know that he was my employer at Illugastadir. You’ve obviously heard enough about his character from people around here. What else do you want to know?’

‘When did you meet him?’

‘I met Natan Ketilsson when I was working at Geitaskard.’

‘Where is that?’

‘In Langidalur. It was my sixth farm as a workmaid. It’s run by Worm Beck. He was good to me. I’d been working at Fannlaugarstadir, in the east, then Búrfell. That is when we first met, Reverend, when I was on my way towards Búrfell and you took me across the river. I’d gone because I’d heard that Magnús Magnússon, the man named as my father, was working there, and I thought I might go stay with him.

‘I didn’t stay there long. Magnús was kind, but when I reminded him I was named Magnúsdóttir for him, he flew into a rage and said that my mother had damaged his good name, and would he ever see the end of the trouble women had brought him. I didn’t like to stay after that. Magnús fixed me a bed and let me stay with everyone there, but from time to time I’d see him looking at me with a queer expression and I knew it was because he saw my mother’s likeness. He gave me some money before I left. It was the first time I ever held money in my life.

‘I decided to go to Geitaskard. I set off quite early in the morning on foot, and was following the white river Blanda downstream, when I saw a group of men coming from an eastern mountain pass. They fell in with me and my companions, other servants mostly, and we introduced ourselves, and if one of them wasn’t my own little brother, now all grown up! We hadn’t even recognised each other. Jóas was overcome. He pressed my hand and called me sister, and the others mocked him when they saw tears in his eyes. I was happy to find Jóas too, but I noticed he had the lick of brandy about him, and his dress was slovenly. He told me that he was a servant, but he carried no letter of recommendation, and he had the nervous look of vagrants you see about these parts. Something told me he was not doing well for himself, and I was heartsore to see it. We talked all the way to Geitaskard that morning, and I learnt that Jóas’s childhood hadn’t been any brighter than mine. Mamma had left him soon after she lugged me down to Kornsá, and he told me he’d been thrown up and down the valley like a hot coal. He didn’t know where Ingveldur was, and he said that she could be in hell for all he cared. So that was the two of us, paupers both, only he looked the worse for it. He couldn’t read or write, and when I offered to teach him he was put out of temper and told me not to show off.

‘Jóas and his friends, a greasy lot with nary a clean face between them, told me they were headed to Geitaskard to see what odd jobs they could pick up, it being a large farm. Jóas hadn’t organised himself a position like I had, but I vouched for him in front of Worm, and he was taken on, too. Those were kinder days, having family about me like that, even though we hardly knew each other, and a good farm to work on. There was plenty of food at Geitaskard, not like Gudrúnarstadir or Gafl, or even Gilsstadir. There were times at those farms when I had no choice but to give the bairns tallow candles to eat, and myself a bit of boiled leather. The servants at Geitaskard always minded themselves too. With all those cows and horses, and butter and grass, and thick servings of meat to line your stomach, it wasn’t hard to be good. I fell in with one of the other servants there, María Jónsdóttir. I never had many friends, but she had been a pauper as well, and I suppose we understood one another in a way.

‘Jóas seemed to like Geitaskard, which I was glad to see. But I didn’t care for his friends. They seemed a gang, and were slouch-faced, weedy sort of men, with stained trousers and nits in their hair. Jóas had scratched his scalp raw. Worm got rid of some of the men after no more than a week — he’d caught them sleeping behind the cowshed — and the rest didn’t last long either. I don’t know whether it was because he was a better sort of man, or if it was because he had me there with him, but Jóas let me clean him up and comb the nits out of his hair, and he worked hard. At nights, when we had time to ourselves, we’d talk. He told me he’d heard stories about me, that he’d asked around and heard I’d gone to work at Gudrúnarstadir. He said he’d tried to find me there, but I’d left when he arrived, and they couldn’t remember where I’d gone. I didn’t let him see it, but I wept over that, the thought of my brother trying to find me. He’d had a child, as well. A little girl, whose mamma was a workmaid. But he told me that the baby was stillborn, and the maid did not care for him. I told him about Helga, our poor dead sister, and he said he’d gone to her funeral and that the farmer Jónas, Helga’s father, gave him a little bit of money on account of Jóas being abandoned by a whore. Jóas insisted that our Mamma was no good, and that she could go to hell for leaving two children to the mercy of the parish, which was no kind of mercy at all, and he called her many other things besides. He spoke of Mamma as Magnús had, and we quarrelled about it one night, and when I woke up Jóas couldn’t be found. He’d taken the money that Magnús had given me. I haven’t seen him since.’

There was a loud cackle of laughter from the gathering on the bottom field. Tóti saw that two of the men had let out the cow and the others were trying in vain to herd it back into the field.

‘I’d been saving that money,’ Agnes continued. ‘For when I got married; to pay the licences and help my husband buy a plot of land so we could be decent and independent.’

‘Had you a fiancé?’ Tóti asked.

Agnes smiled. ‘Oh, there was a servant at Geitaskard. Daníel Gudmundsson. He was fond of me, and he told everyone that we were engaged to be wed. He said so in the trials, but I don’t see how he could have been serious. Neither of us had a coin to our name. I let him think what he fancied, so long as it meant that he was kind to me.

‘Daníel worked at Illugastadir when I was there, too. He was at the trials, first as a witness, then Blöndal decided he must have known what was to happen, and he was sentenced to time in the Rasphus in Copenhagen.’

‘Did he know what was going to happen?’ Tóti asked.

Agnes looked up from her needles and regarded him coolly.

‘If anyone knew what was going to happen do you think I’d be sitting here, talking to you? Do you think any of those others, Daníel, Fridrik’s family, would be strapped over a barrel being whipped to within an inch of their lives if they knew what was going to happen?’

There was a moment of silence.

Agnes took a deep breath. ‘After Jóas left, the best thing about working at Geitaskard was María. I never had many friends growing up; I’d been bundled along from farm to farm. To anyone who needed to do their parish duty, or who wanted a girl-stripling to watch over the grass, or sheep, or kettles. I used to keep to myself anyhow. I preferred to read than talk with the others.’ Agnes looked up. ‘Do you like reading?’ she asked Tóti.