He told me this after the two-headed lamb was born at Stapar. One of the servants had run to Illugastadir to tell of it, but by the time Natan and I arrived the lamb was dead. The farmer had killed it on sight because he thought it cursed. Natan asked to take the body so that he might dissect it and learn how it had been formed, but as he unburied the lamb, one of the women walked up to him and spat: ‘Let the Devil take care of his own.’ I watched as he laughed in her face.
We carried the strange thing to his workshop, and, covered with blood and dirt and sickened to the heart, I left Natan alone to butcher it. Sigga and I did not eat the scraps of meat he cut from it, and although he called us ungrateful, although he reminded us of the number of coins he’d exchanged for the twisted corpse, his appetite was not great either. We left the meat for fox bait. The twinned skull he kept in his workshop, the bone the colour of new cream.
I wonder if the Reverend sees me like that lamb. A curiosity. Cursed. How do men ever see women like me?
But the priest is hardly like a man at all. He is as fragile as a child without the bluster and idiocy of youth. I had remembered him as taller than he is. I hardly know what to think of him.
Perhaps he is merely a gifted liar. God knows I have met enough men to know that once weaned off the breast they begin to lie through their teeth.
I will have to think of what to say to him.
THE FOG HAD DISPERSED INTO the blue of the day, and the wet baubles on the grass had dried by the time the family of Kornsá gathered at the edge of the home field to begin cutting the hay. District Officer Jón stood to one side with the two male farmhands recently returned from Reykjavík – Bjarni and Gudmundur – both with long blond hair and beards, and Kristín, Margrét and Lauga to the other. They were all waiting silently for Steina and Agnes to join the circle. Steina stumbled along the yard, Agnes following her, tying a scarf over her braided hair.
‘We’re here,’ Steina said cheerfully. Agnes nodded at Jón and Margrét. The farmhands glanced at her and then at each other.
Jón bowed his head. ‘Our good Lord. We thank you for the good weather you have sent for our harvest. We pray that you see fit to preserve us in this time, to keep us from danger and accident, and to provide us with the hay we need to live. In Jesus’ name, amen.’
The farmhands mumbled their amens, and picked up their long-handled scythes. They had been recently hammered and sharpened, and the iron blades shone brightly. Gudmundur, a short muscular man of twenty-eight, tested the edge of his scythe on the hair of his wrist, then, satisfied the edge was sufficiently honed, swiftly turned it the right way round and scraped it against the grass at his foot. He looked up and noticed Agnes watching him.
‘Gudmundur and Bjarni,’ the District Officer was saying. ‘You’ll be cutting with Kristín and . . .’ Jón hesitated, then briefly glanced at Agnes. The farmhands followed his look, and stared.
‘You’re giving her a scythe?’ Bjarni asked casually, a sallow-looking man. He laughed nervously.
Margrét cleared her throat. ‘Agnes and Kristín will be cutting with you three and Jón. Steina, Lauga and I will rake and turn.’ She glared at Gudmundur, who was smirking at Bjarni, and spat on the ground near his feet.
‘Give them scythes,’ Jón said quietly, and Gudmundur dropped his own on the ground. He turned and picked up another two scythes and handed one to Kristín, who gave a confused curtsey, and then he reached forward to pass the other to Agnes. She extended her arm to take it, but Gudmundur refused to let go. For a brief moment they both stood there, clasping the handle of the scythe together, before Gudmundur suddenly released his hold. Agnes stumbled backwards and the scythe grazed her ankle. Bjarni stifled a laugh.
‘Go fetch your rakes, girls,’ Jón said, ignoring the grins of the farmhands and Lauga, who could not help but smile at Agnes’s panicked glance at her leg.
‘Are you hurt?’ Steina whispered to Agnes as she walked past. Agnes shook her head, her jaw clenched. Margrét looked at her daughter and frowned.