Near the entrance, close to the mistress’s bed, is a grey woollen curtain that has been nailed to a slat. I suppose it serves as a door to the room beyond. The curtain falls short and in the gap above the floor the legs of a table are visible. They’re slightly splintered, as though someone has gnawed at them.
The badstofa is almost as bare as all those years ago, although little planks have been nailed between the sloping rafters and the wall supports to serve as shelves. They hold the usual things – wooden canisters, sheep horns, a pipe, fishbones, mittens and knitting needles. There is a small painted trunk under one of the beds. An abandoned slipper wanting mending. The familiarity of day-to-day things can be comforting. I once had things like this. My white sack with the dried flowers in it. The stone Mamma gave me before she left. It will bring you good luck, Agnes. It is a magic stone. Put it under your tongue and you will be able to talk to the birds.
That stone sat in my mouth for days. If the birds understood my questions, they never cared to answer them.
Kornsá of Húnavatn District. I was delivered to its doorstep at six years old with a kiss and a stone from Mamma, and now I’ve been dragged here again at three and thirty winters because of two dead men and a fire. I’ve worked at more northern farms than should have been my share. But poverty scrapes these homes down until they all look the same, and they all have in common the absence of things that ought to be there. I might as well have been at one place all my life.
This is it, then. Kornsá, my last grim corner. The last bed, the last roof, the last floor. The last of everything brings lugs of pain, as though there will be nothing left, but smoke from fires abandoned. I must pretend that I am a servant still, and that these are my new quarters and I must think of all the chores I will do, and how I will make my mistress comment on the dexterity of my fingers. I used to think that if I worked hard I might one day be made a housemistress. But not here. Not at Kornsá.
Kornsá. It trips over and over itself in my head, so that I must very quietly say it aloud and feel the sound of it. I tell myself that it’s just another farm, and I softly chant the names of all the places I have lived at. It’s like an incantation: Flaga, Beinakelda, Litla-Giljá, Brekkukot, Kornsá, Gudrúnarstadir, Gilsstadir, Gafl, Fannlaugarstadir, Búrfell, Geitaskard, Illugastadir.
Of all the names, one is a mistake. One is a nightmare. The stair you miss in the darkness.
The name is everything that went wrong. Illugastadir, the farm by the sea, where the soft air rings with the clang of the smithy, and gulls caw, and seals roll over in their fat. Illugastadir, where the night is lit by fire, where smoke turns in the early morning to engulf the stars, and in ruins, always Illugastadir, cradling dead bodies in its cage of burnt beams.
Outside, the officers burst into laughter. One of them is talking about his rich cousin in Helgavatn.
‘Let’s stop and relieve him of his brandy!’ one suggests.
‘Yes! And his wife and daughters!’ another shouts. They laugh again.
Will someone stay to make sure I don’t run away? To make certain I don’t light the lamps, in case I dash the flame upon the floor. To make sure I keep my hands clean, and my tongue still, and my legs together, and my eyes down.
I am the property of the Crown now.
I hope they all leave today.
As I strain to listen to the officers’ conversation I notice that something has been hidden under the bed across from me, something shiny. It is a silver brooch, a strange thing to have in a room so stripped of luxury. Was it stolen? It wouldn’t be so strange in this valley, where people can catch sheep and slice the marks from their ears before the flock scatters, and men grow their nails long to better pick up coins. There’s many a thieving farmer and servant who has felt the law’s whip in these parts. Even Natan bore the scars of his own youthful brush with the birch rod.
I pick up the brooch. It’s unexpectedly heavy.