‘Then, let’s pray.’ He glanced at the group of women before taking up Agnes’s cold, clammy hand.
‘Lord God, we pray to you this evening with sad hearts. Give us strength to bear the burdens we must carry, and the courage to face our fates.’ Tóti paused and looked at Agnes. He was aware that the other women were listening.
‘Lord,’ he continued, ‘I thank you for the family of Kornsá, who have opened their home and hearts to Agnes and I.’ He heard Margrét clear her throat. ‘I pray for them. I pray they have compassion and forgiveness. Be with us always, O Lord, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’
Tóti squeezed Agnes’s hand. She looked at him, her expression inscrutable.
‘Do you think it’s my fate to be here?’
Tóti thought a moment. ‘We author our own fates.’
‘So it has nothing to do with God then?’
‘It’s beyond our knowing,’ Tóti said. He gently placed her hand back on the blanket. The feel of her cold skin unsettled him.
‘I am quite alone,’ Agnes said, almost matter-of-factly.
‘God is with you. I am here. Your parents are alive.’
Agnes shook her head. ‘They may as well be dead.’
Tóti cast a quick look at the women knitting. Lauga had snatched Steina’s half-finished sock from her lap and was ripping back the wool to amend an error.
‘Have you no loved one I might summon?’ he whispered to Agnes. ‘Someone from the old days?’
‘I have a half-brother, but only sweet Jesus knows what badstofa he’s darkening at the moment. A half-sister, too. Helga. She’s dead. A niece. Dead. Everyone’s dead.’
‘What about friends? Did any friends visit you at Stóra-Borg?’
Agnes smiled bitterly. ‘The only visitor at Stóra-Borg was Rósa Gudmundsdóttir of Vatnsendi. I don’t think she’d describe herself as my friend.’
‘Poet-Rósa.’
‘The one and only.’
‘They say she speaks in lines of verse.’
Agnes took a deep breath. ‘She came to me in Stóra-Borg with a poem.’
‘A gift?’
Agnes sat up and leant closer. ‘No, Reverend,’ she said plainly. ‘An accusation.’
‘What did she accuse you of?’
‘Of making her life meaningless.’ Agnes sniffed. ‘Amongst other things. It wasn’t her finest poem.’
‘She must have been upset.’
‘Rósa blamed me when Natan died.’
‘She loved Natan.’
Agnes stopped and glared at Tóti. ‘She was a married woman,’ she exclaimed, a tremor of anger in her voice. ‘He wasn’t hers to love!’
Tóti noticed the other women had stopped knitting. They were watching Agnes, her last sentence having carried loudly across the room. He rose to fetch the spare stool beside Kristín.
‘I’m afraid we’re disturbing you,’ he said to them.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to use the irons,’ Lauga asked nervously.
‘I think we are better off without them.’ He returned to Agnes’s side. ‘Perhaps we should speak of something else.’ He was anxious that she should remain calm in front of the Kornsá family.
‘Did they hear?’ she whispered.
‘Let’s talk about your past,’ Tóti suggested. ‘Tell me more about your half-siblings.’
‘I barely knew them. I was five when my brother was born, and nine when I heard about Helga. She died when I was twenty-one. I only saw her a few times.’
‘And you’re not close to your brother?’
‘We were separated when he was only one winter old.’
‘When your mother left you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you remember her from before then?’
‘She gave me a stone.’
Tóti shot her a questioning look.
‘To put under my tongue,’ Agnes explained. ‘It’s a superstition.’ She frowned. ‘Bl?ndal’s clerks took it.’