Hannah Kent - Burial Rites

Agnes paused as Tóti grimaced, stroking his neck with his hand.

‘Does something trouble you?’ she asked.

The Reverend cleared his throat. ‘The air is rather close in here, is all,’ he said. ‘Go on. I’ll fetch some water in a little while.’

‘You look pale.’

‘It is only a slight chill from going to and fro in the weather.’

‘Perhaps you ought not return to Breidabólstadur tonight.’

Tóti shook his head, smiling. ‘I’ve felt worse,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Please go on.’

Agnes gave him a careful look, and then nodded. ‘Well, then. The first time I met Fridrik Sigurdsson I was hauling water from the stream. I heard a shout, and saw a red-headed young man and his horse trotting along the mountain path. There was a woman also. Natan peered out of his workshop window at the noise, and didn’t waste time stepping out and locking the door behind him. Not many folks visited Illugastadir, and Natan seemed to prefer it that way.

‘Natan introduced the boy as Fridrik, and Fridrik told me he was the son of the farmer Sigurdur at Katadalur, a farm just up over the mountain. He said he’d been away for the winter, and then he introduced his companion, Thórunn, a servant woman with very bad teeth, who grinned at everyone. I noticed that Sigga was anxious when she first saw Thórunn. To tell you the truth, Reverend, I didn’t like either of the pair on first meeting. I thought Fridrik a braggart and a show-off. He talked aimlessly, speaking of how he was going to make his father a rich man, and he’d fought three men in Vesturhóp and given them all black eyes and worse. All the dull lies you’d expect to hear from a boy of that age. I don’t know why Natan bothered to listen to Fridrik’s boasting — he didn’t often care to hear that sort of thing, although he wasn’t shy about trumpeting his own good fortune. But I supposed that he was a mentor to Fridrik, as he told me he was trying to be to Sigga.

‘That day Natan invited Fridrik and Thórunn inside. I was not particularly interested in my new neighbours, but I gathered that Fridrik’s family was quite poor. He gobbled down his fish like a starveling. I thought him an odd friend for Natan.

‘When Fridrik left, Thórunn trailing like a puppy after him, Natan disappeared. When I found him again, I asked him where he’d been, and he smiled and said that he’d gone to check his belongings. When I asked him why, he told me that Fridrik had long fingers, and only ever called on him to try and discover where he kept his money.

‘I asked Natan why on earth he let Fridrik step foot inside his house if that was the case, and Natan laughed and said he never kept his money in the croft anyway, and besides, he liked the game of it. Theirs was not a true friendship, but a strange rivalry with one another, borne out of boredom. Fridrik thought Natan rich and wanted to take a little of what he had, and Natan encouraged him for his own private amusement, knowing all the while that Fridrik would never find his money. At the time I told Natan I thought it dangerous to provoke a man like that, but Natan laughed and said Fridrik was hardly a man, only a foolhardy boy. But it troubled me. I argued that Fridrik was twice his size, and could easily overpower him if it came to it. Natan did not like that. We had our first row, then.’

‘What did Natan say?’

‘Oh, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me outside and told me to never speak of him in that way in front of Sigga. I said that I’d only told the truth, and hadn’t meant to embarrass him, and that Sigga only thought the best of him, as did I. This appeased him a little, but I was frightened at the way his mood changed so quickly. I learnt later that he was as changeable as the ocean, and God help you if you saw his expression shift and darken. One day he might call you friend, and the next threaten to throw you into the night if you so much as dropped a pail of water on the ground. As folks say, for every mountain there is a valley.’

‘Perhaps if you’d known that you would never have agreed to be his servant?’ Tóti suggested.

Agnes paused, and then shook her head. ‘I wanted to leave Vatnsdalur,’ she said quietly.

‘Tell me about what Sigga is like,’ Tóti suggested gently.

‘Well, that night, after Fridrik’s visit, Sigga began speaking of marriage. I asked her if she did not find Fridrik Sigurdsson a most attractive man with such inviting prospects. I was making fun, of course. Fridrik is freckled, and ginger-haired and as mottled as a sausage, and his family are so poor you might call them barrel-lickers. But when I asked Sigga this, her cheeks turned as bright as new blood, and she asked me if I thought Fridrik was engaged to that Thórunn. It was then that I knew she held some hope for him.

‘I continued teasing Sigga. “Do you know how much hard work it is to get married?” I asked her. Sigga said: “The work can’t be harder than this,” and I laughed and told her I didn’t mean farm work, but the work a maid like her had to do just for the privilege of giving her life away. I reminded her that the priest must give his permission, the District Officer must give his permission, the District Commissioner must also be on side, and then, Natan must be kept happy, for everyone looks to the master for the final word.

‘“You need more than one man to say I do,” I told her. Sigga took this news very badly. She grew pale when I mentioned that Natan must approve of any engagement, and didn’t say anything more about the subject, not even when I tried to cheer her up by telling her what Natan had told me; about his little game with Fridrik.

‘“Do you really think Fridrik is a thief?” she asked, and I said no, I was sure he was a most upstanding fellow.

‘Natan laughed heartily when I told him about Sigga’s reaction to the news that he would have to approve any wedding she had in mind. He said that it was a good thing she knew it. I told him that I thought Sigga was soft on Fridrik, and mentioned concern that Natan thought him a thief. Natan said that that is what happens when you put two creatures in a pen together, and we didn’t speak any more of it at the time.

‘This all happened around lambing season. The weather was clear, and Natan took the chance to earn money by travelling about the north, calling in on folks and selling his medicines. It happened that Natan was away when the lambing began at Illugastadir. When Sigga and I went outside to feed the cow, we saw that one of the ewes was birthing. Neither of us was strong enough to properly swing any lambs that might come out motionless, and we were worried that Natan would return in a few weeks and find his number of sheep not as high as expected. I told Sigga to run to a neighbour and ask for the loan of a workman, even though Natan had said to not let anyone onto his farm. Sigga fetched Fridrik.

‘I was worried to admit him at first, given Natan’s warning, but we needed the help and by the time he arrived more ewes had gone into labour. He was a true farmer’s son, helping us pull the lambs, and swinging them about to get them breathing. When we discovered that one ewe had teats too thick to feed her young, Fridrik fashioned a teat from odds and ends we had about the place and let us feed them ourselves. I liked him a little better after that, but I still wouldn’t let him sleep in the house. I made up a bed for him in the cowshed.

‘Fridrik stayed with us for a week during lambing. I made sure he did not set a finger on anything in the house, for I noticed that Fridrik seemed fixed on naming the price of everything. He would calculate the worth of the lambs born, their mothers, the cow we had there, the land, even the silk ribbon Sigga wore in her hair. I put it down to his being brought up poor. Still, I kept my eyes close on his back, especially when I happened upon him digging holes by the front door of the croft. When I asked him what he was doing, he laughed and said it was naught, only he’d asked Natan to keep some money for him, and wouldn’t it happen but that Natan had forgotten where it was buried and he’d never seen it again. I knew him to be lying. Fridrik Sigurdsson didn’t have a coin to his name, and I knew Fridrik had been looking for Natan’s money.