I LET MY BODY FALL into a rhythm. I sway back and forth and let gravity bring the scythe down and through the grass, until I rock steadily. Until I feel that I am not moving myself, and that the sun is driving me. Until I am a puppet of the wind, and of the scythe, and of the long, slow strokes that propel my body forward. Until I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.
It’s a good feeling, not quite being in control. Of being gently swung back and forth, until I forget what it is to be still. Like being with Natan in those first months, when my heartbeat shuddered through me and I could have died, I was so happy to be desired. When the smell of him, of sulphur and crushed herbs, and horse-sweat and the smoke from his forge, made me dizzy with pleasure. With possibility.
I feel drunk with summer and sunlight. I want to seize fistfuls of sky and eat them. As the scythes run sharp fingers through the stalks, the cut grass makes a gasping sound.
Suddenly, I know that the servant, the one called Gudmundur, is watching me. He has arched his head around to leer. Perhaps he thinks I don’t notice.
I was fourteen when men began to look at me like that. Hired on at Gudrúnarstadir, I arrived in March with my belongings in a white sack, and my head sore from tightly braided hair. My first proper employ. There was a young man hired on back then as well. A tall man, with bad skin and a way of watching the servant girls – Ingibj?rg, Helga and me – that made us avoid him. I’d hear him touch himself at night – a hurried shuffling under the blanket, then a groan, or, sometimes, a whimper.
I let my body swing, I let my arms fall. I feel the muscles of my stomach contract and twist. The scythe rises, falls, rises, falls, catches the sun across its blade and flicks the light back into my eye – a bright wink of God. I watch you, the scythe says, rippling though the green sea, catching the sun, casting it back to me. The servant exhales, swings his scythe, stares in a low way at my bare arms. I flick the grass and the light through the air. I watch you, says the scythe.
AS PROMISED, REVEREND TóTI RETURNED to Kornsá early the next morning, well before the sun had risen from its resting point above the horizon. His body ached from the first day of harvest at Breidabólstadur, and he relished the smack of cold air on his face and the fine fog of his mare’s breath as they rode along the track to the Vatnsdalur valley. All the settlements of the district had begun their haymaking the previous day, and the sight of half-cleared fields, the grass gathered into cocks to stop the dew from damping the hay, contributed to a sense of order and prosperity. The lush north, they called it. Everywhere small birds hopped amongst the stubble, picking at the insects made vulnerable by the harvest, and coils of smoke lifted from the slanted roofs of the valley’s crofts and cottages.
At the large farm of Hvammur where Tóti knew Bj?rn Bl?ndal lived with his family and servants, on the other side of the river and within view from Kornsá, several chimneys could be seen giving off smoke. The flat wooden face of the adjoined turf huts boasted glass windows that glimmered brightly, even in the weak yellow light of morning. Like eyes, thought Tóti, feeling fanciful. He’d heard that much of the Illugastadir trial had been held in the guest room of the farm, which looked out onto the winding body of the river and its fringe of golden marsh grass.
I wonder what went through her mind, Tóti mused, peering at the farm from across the river. Sitting there in that room when they told her she had to die. Did she look out of the window and see the ice floe on the river? Possibly the world was too dark to see anything. Possibly they covered the windows with a curtain to block out the light.