I DID NOT DREAM IN the storeroom at Stóra-Borg. Curled up on the wooden slats with a mouldy horse-skin for warmth, sleep came to me like a thin tide of water. It would lap against my body but never submerge me in oblivion. There would be something to wake me – the sound of footsteps, or the scrape of the chamber pot on the floor as a maid came to empty it, the heady stink of piss. Sometimes, if I lay still with my eyes tightly closed and pushed every thought out of my mind, sleep would trickle back. My mind would shift in and out of consciousness, until the briefest chink of light crept into the room, and the servants shoved me a bit of dried fish. Some days I think that I haven’t really slept since the fire, and that maybe sleeplessness is punishment from God. Or Bl?ndal, even: my dreams taken with my belongings to pay for my custody.
But last night, here at Kornsá, I dreamt of Natan. He was boiling herbs for a draught, and I was watching him and running my hands over the smithy’s turf wall. It was summer, and the light was tinged with pink. The herbs for the draught had a strong perfume, and it surrounded me as I stood there. I breathed in the bittersweet scent, feeling a slow wave of happiness rise over me. I was finally gone from the valley. Natan turned and smiled. He was holding a glass beaker filled with scum he had collected off the brewing herbs, and steam was rising from it. He looked like a sorcerer in his black worsted stockings and the smoke rising from his hand. Natan stepped through the pool of sunlight and I opened my arms to him, laughing, feeling like I might die from love, but as I did the beaker slipped from his grasp and smashed on the floor and darkness poured into the room like oil.
I can’t be sure if I have slept since that dream.
Natan is dead.
I wake every morning with a blow of grief to my heart.
The only thing for it is to push my mind back underwater, back to the dream, back to the golden moment that enveloped me before the beaker broke. Or to imagine Brekkukot, when Mamma was with me. If I concentrate I can see her sleeping in the bed opposite mine, and Jóas, little Jóas scratching at his fleabites. I will use my fingernail to crush them against my thumb.
But the memories I haul up are cold. I know what comes after Brekkukot. I know what happens to Mamma, and to Jóas.
When I open my eyes I see Margrét lying awake in her bed. She tosses and turns, and picks absently at her blanket. Her nightcap is a little loose, and I can see her grey hair scraped over her head and twisted into tight plaits, even as she rests. I can almost make out the contours of her skull.
Her face is a blotch, half-hidden by the blanket she has drawn about her. She’s turned to study the sleeping officer lying in the cot opposite.
The officer is snoring and the farm mistress clicks her tongue in disapproval. I hear you, old woman. You’ve had enough already? Try a year of them and their hard hands, hard looks.
The dried seaweed in her pillow rustles as she turns her head. She sees me. She sucks in a quick breath and snatches a hand to her heart.
I should have been more careful. Never be caught staring at someone. They’ll think you want something from them.
‘You’re awake. Good.’ The farm mistress smoothes her hair across her forehead, and regards me for a moment, unsure, perhaps, of how long I have been watching her.
‘Get up,’ she says.
I obey. The wooden slats are cool under my feet.
Margrét hands me a servant’s garb of blue wool and we dress in silence. She keeps a nervous eye on the snoring officer. I pull the rough cloth down over my head, and look about the room. There are other people asleep in the beds. Servants, perhaps. There is no time to find out who they might be – Margrét leads me down the dank corridor of the cottage, pausing only to tug at a strip of turf that has come loose and hangs in threads across a beam.