Hannah Kent - Burial Rites

AFTER THEY DECIDE I MUST leave, the Stóra-Borg men sometimes tie my legs together in the evening, as they do with the forelegs of horses, to ensure I will not run away. It seems that with each passing day I become more like an animal to them, another dull-eyed beast to feed with what can be scraped together and to be kept out of the weather. They leave me in the dark, deny me light and air, and when I must be moved, they bind and lead me where they will.

They never speak to me here. In winter, in the badstofa, I could always hear myself breathing, and I’d get scared to swallow for fear the whole room might hear it. The only sounds to keep a body company then were the rustling of Bible pages and whisperings. I’d catch my name on the lips of others, and I knew it wasn’t in blessing. Now, when they are forced by law to read out the words of a letter or proclamation, they talk as if addressing someone behind my shoulder. They refuse to meet my eyes.

You, Agnes Magnúsdóttir, have been found guilty of accessory to murder. You, Agnes Magnúsdóttir have been found guilty of arson, and conspiracy to murder. You, Agnes Magnúsdóttir, have been sentenced to death. You, Agnes. Agnes .

They don’t know me.

I remain quiet. I am determined to close myself to the world, to tighten my heart and hold on to what has not yet been stolen from me. I cannot let myself slip away. I will hold what I am inside, and keep my hands tight around all the things I have seen and heard, and felt. The poems composed as I washed and scythed and cooked until my hands were raw. The sagas I know by heart. I am sinking all I have left and going underwater. If I speak, it will be in bubbles of air. They will not be able to keep my words for themselves. They will see the whore, the madwoman, the murderess, the female dripping blood into the grass and laughing with her mouth choked with dirt. They will say ‘Agnes’ and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.

REVEREND THORVARDUR JÓNSSON SIGHED AS he left the church and entered the cool, damp air of the afternoon. Just over one month had passed since he had accepted Blöndal’s offer to visit the condemned woman, and he had questioned his decision every day since. Each morning he had felt troubled, as though newly woken from a nightmare. Even as he had made his daily walk to the small church of Breidabólstadur to pray and sit awhile in the silence, his stomach had crowded with nerves, and his body had trembled as if exhausted by his mind’s ambivalence. It had been no different today. As he had sat on the hard pew, gazing into his hands, he caught himself wishing that he were ill, gravely ill, so that he might be excused for not riding to Kornsá. His reluctance, and his willingness to sacrifice his own blessed health, horrified him.

It is too late now, he thought to himself as he walked through the rather pitiful garden within the churchyard. You have given your word to man and God, and there is no turning back.

Once, before his mother had died, the church plot had been full of small plants that threw purple blossoms over the edges of the graves in summer. His mother had said that the dead made the flowers sway, to greet the churchgoers after winter. But when she died, his father ripped out the wild flowers and the graves had lain bare ever since.

The door to the Breidabólstadur croft was ajar. As Tóti let himself in, the heavy warmth from the kitchen, and the smell of melting tallow from the candle in the corridor, made him feel nauseous.

His father was bent over the bubbling kettle, poking something with a knife.

‘I ought to leave now, I think,’ Tóti announced.

His father looked up from the boiling fish and nodded.

‘I’m expected to arrive early in the evening to acquaint myself with the family at Kornsá, and be present when… Well, when the criminal arrives.’

His father frowned. ‘Go then, son.’

Tóti hesitated. ‘Do you think I’m ready?’

Reverend Jón sighed and lifted the kettle off its hook over the coals. ‘You know your own heart.’

‘I’ve been praying in the church. I wonder what Mamma would have thought about it all.’

Tóti’s father blinked slowly and looked away.

‘What do you think, father?’

‘A man must be true to his word.’

‘Is it the right decision, though? I… I don’t want to displease you.’

‘You should seek to please the Lord,’ Reverend Jón muttered, trying to scoop his fish from the hot water with his knife.

‘Will you pray for me, father?’

Tóti waited for a response, but none came. Perhaps he thinks he is better suited to meet murderesses, Tóti thought. Perhaps he is jealous she chose me. He watched his father lick a fragment of fish from where it had stuck to the blade. She chose me , he repeated to himself.

‘Don’t wake me when you return,’ Reverend Jón called out as his son turned and left the room.

Tóti slipped a saddle over his horse and mounted. ‘This is it, then,’ he whispered quietly. He gently squeezed his knees to urge his horse forward, and looked back at the croft. Its thin wreath of kitchen smoke dissipated into the soft drizzle of the afternoon.

Travelling through the long grasses of the valley surrounding the church, the Assistant Reverend tried to think of what he should say. Should he be kind and welcoming, or stern and impenetrable, like Blöndal? As he rode, he rehearsed various tones of voice, different greetings. Perhaps he should wait until he saw the woman. Unexpectedly, a small thrill flickered through his body. She was only a workmaid, but she was a murderess . She had killed two men. Slaughtered them like animals. He silently mouthed the word to himself. Murderess. Morðingi . It slipped through his mouth like milk.

As he travelled over the north peninsula with its thin lip of ocean on the horizon, the clouds began to clear and the soft red light of the late June sun flooded the pass. Drops of water glittered brightly upon the ground, and the hills appeared pink and muted, shadows moving slowly across them as clouds drifted overhead. Small insects wound their way through the air, lit up like flecks of dust as they passed through the sunshine, and the sweet, damp smell of grass, almost ready to be harvested, lingered in the cool air of the valleys. The dread that Tóti had felt so firmly lining his stomach dissipated as he fell into a quiet appreciation of the countryside before him.

We are all God’s children, he thought to himself. This woman is my sister in Jesus, and I, as her spiritual brother, must guide her home. He smiled and brought his horse to a tölt . ‘I will save her,’ he whispered.

3rd of May 1828

Undirfell, Vatnsdalur

The convict Agnes Magnúsdóttir was born at Flaga in the parish of Undirfell in 1795. She was confirmed in 1809, at which age she was written as having ‘an excellent intellect, and strong knowledge and understanding of Christianity’.

This is what is listed in the Undirfell Ministerial Book.

P. Bjarnason

THEY HAVE TAKEN ME FROM the room and put me in irons again. This time they sent an officer of the court, a young man with pocked skin and a nervous smile. He’s a servant from Hvammur, I recognised his face. When his lips broke apart I could see that his teeth were rotting in his mouth. His breath was awful, but no worse than my own; I know I am rank. I am scabbed with dirt and the accumulated weeping of my body: blood, sweat, oil. I cannot think of when I last washed. My hair feels like a greased rope; I have tried to keep it plaited, but they have not allowed me ribbons, and I imagine that to the officer I looked like a monstrous creature. Perhaps that was why he smiled.