I am alone.
There is no watchful eye, no guard at the door, no rope, no fetters, no locks, and I am all by myself, unbound. I am paralysed by the thought of it. Surely someone has an eye to a keyhole? Surely someone has pressed his body to a crack in the wall, is waiting to see what I will do, waiting to storm the room with a finger pointing like a knife at my throat.
But there is no one. Not a soul.
I stand in the centre of the room, and let my eyes adjust to the gloom. Yes, I am quite alone, and a tremble of exhilaration passes along my skin, like the tremor on the surface of a pot of water about to boil. In this minute I can do anything: I can examine the cottage, or lie down, or talk aloud, or sing. I can dance, or swear, or laugh and no one will know.
I could escape.
A bubble of fear passes up my spine. It’s the feeling of standing on ice and suddenly hearing it crack under your weight – both thrilling and terrifying together. At Stóra-Borg I dreamt of escape. Of finding the key to my fetters and fleeing – I never thought of where I might go. There was never a chance. Yet here, now, I could slip out of the yard and run down the far end of the valley, away from the farms, to wait and escape under night into the highlands, where the sky will cover me with her rough, grey hand. I could flee to the heath. Show them that they cannot keep me locked up, that I am a thief of time and will steal the hours denied to me!
Specks of dust drift in the sunlight coming through the dried membrane fastened to the window. As I watch them, the thrill of escape is sucked away, like water down a geyser. I would only be trading one death sentence for another. Up in the highlands blizzards howl like the widows of fishermen and the wind blisters the skin off your face. Winter comes like a punch in the dark. The uninhabited places are as cruel as any executioner.
My knees are weak as I stumble to my bed. With my eyes closed, the silence of the room presses upon me like a hand.
When my heart slows, I look over to where the officer slept, the coverlet twisted and the worn mattress exposed. He ought to have replaced the bed board – he’ll have bad luck. Perhaps if the bed is still warm, he is nearby. It feels intrusive to touch the bare mattress, but it’s cold. He’s gone. My bed is made. I run my hands over the thin blanket, worn smooth from use. How many other bodies have lain here before me? How many nightmares have been produced under this cloth?
The floor is boarded, but the walls and ceiling are not, and the turf is in need of repair; slabs of dried sod have slumped inwards and thinned, leaving fissures in the wall and the room prey to draughts. It will be cold in winter.
But I might be dead before then.
Quickly! Push that thought away.
Dead grass hangs sinister from the ceiling like unwashed hair. A few carved ornaments have been arranged across the rafters, and a cross is nailed to the lintel over the entrance.
Do they sing hymns in the winter here? Maybe they recite the sagas instead – I prefer a story to a prayer. They whipped me for that at this farm, Kornsá, once, when I was young and fostered out to watch over the home field. The farmer Bj?rn did not like that I knew the sagas better than him. You’re better off keeping company with the sheep, Agnes. Books written by man, not God, are faithless friends and not for your kind.
I might have believed him were it not for my foster-mother Inga and the lessons she gave me, delivered in whispers as he dozed in the evening.