I won’t forget the smell. That room was filled with the smell of her blood, and the sharp, clean scent of the snow on the floorboards. It made me feel sick to breathe it in.
Inga’s nightgown was bunched about her waist, and so I pulled it, stiff with dried blood as it was, back down over her legs so that her body was not so naked. Then I kissed her slack mouth. Finally, I pulled off her cap and pushed my face into her hair. It was the only part of her that still smelt of my foster-mother and not the blood. I lay my body down next to hers and covered my face in her long hair, and breathed her in, for how many minutes I don’t know, until Jón pushed aside the curtain to the loft and picked me up, and carried me back downstairs to bed.
And when I next woke the blizzard had stopped.
This is what I tell the Reverend. I try to tell the story in the best way I know how. I let the words come as I knit, and I snatch little looks at the Reverend’s face, to see if he is moved.
I can feel the others listening. I can feel Steina and Margrét and Kristín and Lauga stretching their ears towards us in the shadowy corner, eating up this story like fresh butter and bread. Margrét and Lauga maybe thinking that it served me right, perhaps feeling sorry for me. Steina thinking I am like her — miserable, ignored. At fault.
But because I know the others are listening, I can’t ask the Reverend what I want to ask. I can’t say, Reverend, do you think that I’m here because when I was a child I said I wanted to die? Because, when I said it, I meant it. I pronounced it like a prayer. I hope I die. Did I author my own fate, then?
I want to ask the Reverend if he thinks I killed the baby. Did I hold her too tightly? But there is no right way to ask this question, and I don’t want to put more thoughts into these women’s heads. There are some things they should not hear.
It seems everyone I love is taken from me and buried in the ground, while I remain alone.
Good thing, then, that there is no one left to love. No one left to bury.
‘WHAT HAPPENED THEN?’ TÓTI ASKED. He realised that he had hardly breathed during Agnes’s story.
‘It’s strange,’ Agnes said, using her little finger to wind the wool about the needle head. ‘Most of the time when I think of when I was younger, everything is unclear. As though I were looking at things through smoked glass. But Inga’s death, and everything that came after it… I almost feel that it was yesterday.’
Across the room, a chair scraped. Margrét gave a muffled cough.
‘I remember that after Inga died Jón was sent to fetch Björn’s relatives,’ Agnes continued. ‘I can remember lying in my bed, watching my foster-father sit on the stool Inga had used for her spindle work. He was too big for its seat. Kjartan was in bed with me, and he was sleeping all hot and heavy on my shoulder. The wind had dropped and it was suddenly very quiet.
‘We eventually heard the clink of harness from the yard outside. Then Björn slowly rose to his feet and stepped towards my bed. He scooped my brother up with one arm so I could sit, and he told me to take the dead baby, wrap its face in a blanket and put it in the storeroom.
‘The baby seemed lighter dead than alive. I held it out from me and walked down the corridor in my stockings.
‘It was very chill in the storeroom. I could see the fog of my breath before me, and my forehead ached from cold. I covered the baby’s face with a corner of the cloth it was wrapped in and laid it upon a sack of dried cod heads. When I stepped back into the corridor, a blast of freezing air hit the side of my face, and I turned to see the door open, the faces of Björn’s brother, sister-in-law and their servant appearing from the murk outside. Their cheeks were wet and shiny from sleet.
‘I remember Uncle Ragnar and Jón carefully carrying Inga down from the loft while Björn was outside, attending to the sheep. It was my job to make sure they didn’t bump her head against the rungs of the ladder. They brought her into the badstofa and set her on the stripped bed. Aunt Rósa was in the kitchen heating some water, and when I asked her what she was doing, she said she was going to clean my poor foster-mamma’s body. She wouldn’t let me watch. She let Kjartan play by her feet, and she ordered me to go upstairs to the loft and help her servant, Gudbjörg.
‘When I climbed the ladder I saw Gudbjörg scrubbing blood off the floorboards. The smell made me feel sick and I started to cry. Gudbjörg took me into her arms. “She’s gone to God now, Agnes. She’s safe.”
‘I sat on the floor with Gudbjörg’s shawl about me and watched the fat of her arms wobble as she knelt and scrubbed the boards. Gudbjörg wrung out the pinked water from the rag over and over again. She kept shaking her head, and sometimes she stopped to wipe her eyes.
‘I told Gudbjörg what Björn had said when I’d screamed that I wanted to die; that he had told me maybe I’d be next. Gudbjörg shushed me and said that Björn wasn’t himself, and didn’t mean it.
‘I told her how Björn had given me the baby to look after, and that I had held it tightly and that it had died in my arms, and I didn’t even notice.
‘Gudbjörg rocked me like I was a baby myself. She said that the child wasn’t meant for this earth, and that it wasn’t my fault it didn’t live. She told me that I was brave and that God would watch over me.’
‘Do you know where Gudbjörg is today?’ Tóti interrupted.
Agnes looked up from her knitting. ‘Dead,’ she said, unwaveringly. She pulled at the ball of wool to loose more thread.
‘When Ragnar, Kjartan and Björn returned from the barn, Rósa called Gudbjörg and me down from the loft and we all sat in the badstofa around the bed where Inga lay. She looked clean, but still. Eerie still, as when the wind drops and the grass doesn’t move, and you feel left behind.
‘Uncle Ragnar produced a flask of brandy and silently passed it around. That was the first time I tasted liquor, and I didn’t much care for it, but Jón had left on my foster-father’s horse to fetch the Reverend, and there was nothing to do but wait and drink. The hours creaked past, and I felt sick from the brandy and the bones in my legs grew stiff from sitting.
‘Jón didn’t return with the priest until late that night. I let them in. The Reverend forgot to knock the snow off his boots.
‘Gudbjörg, Aunt Rósa and I served the men food and they ate it off their laps, Inga on the bed in front of them. Aunt Rósa had lit a candle and placed it near Inga’s head, and I kept checking to see that it hadn’t fallen over; I was worried her hair would catch alight.
‘Once the men had eaten their food, the women took Kjartan and me to the kitchen while the Reverend spoke with the men. I tried to listen to what they were saying, but Aunt Rósa took my arm and pulled Kjartan onto her lap, and she started telling a story to distract us. She only stopped when Uncle Ragnar and Jón walked past the open doorway, carrying Inga’s body between them. They’d covered her face with a piece of cloth. I wanted to know where they were taking her and got up to follow, but Aunt Rósa tightened her grip around my arm and yanked me towards her. Gudbjörg quickly told me that the Reverend had said there was no chance of a burial until spring: the ground in the churchyard was frozen solid, and they were going to keep my poor foster-mother in the storehouse until the ground thawed and someone could dig a grave. We went to the doorway to watch them put Inga away.