‘I sat on the floor with Gudbj?rg’s shawl about me and watched the fat of her arms wobble as she knelt and scrubbed the boards. Gudbj?rg wrung out the pinked water from the rag over and over again. She kept shaking her head, and sometimes she stopped to wipe her eyes.
‘I told Gudbj?rg what Bj?rn had said when I’d screamed that I wanted to die; that he had told me maybe I’d be next. Gudbj?rg shushed me and said that Bj?rn wasn’t himself, and didn’t mean it.
‘I told her how Bj?rn had given me the baby to look after, and that I had held it tightly and that it had died in my arms, and I didn’t even notice.
‘Gudbj?rg rocked me like I was a baby myself. She said that the child wasn’t meant for this earth, and that it wasn’t my fault it didn’t live. She told me that I was brave and that God would watch over me.’
‘Do you know where Gudbj?rg is today?’ Tóti interrupted.
Agnes looked up from her knitting. ‘Dead,’ she said, unwaveringly. She pulled at the ball of wool to loose more thread.
‘When Ragnar, Kjartan and Bj?rn returned from the barn, Rósa called Gudbj?rg and me down from the loft and we all sat in the badstofa around the bed where Inga lay. She looked clean, but still. Eerie still, as when the wind drops and the grass doesn’t move, and you feel left behind.
‘Uncle Ragnar produced a flask of brandy and silently passed it around. That was the first time I tasted liquor, and I didn’t much care for it, but Jón had left on my foster-father’s horse to fetch the Reverend, and there was nothing to do but wait and drink. The hours creaked past, and I felt sick from the brandy and the bones in my legs grew stiff from sitting.
‘Jón didn’t return with the priest until late that night. I let them in. The Reverend forgot to knock the snow off his boots.
‘Gudbj?rg, Aunt Rósa and I served the men food and they ate it off their laps, Inga on the bed in front of them. Aunt Rósa had lit a candle and placed it near Inga’s head, and I kept checking to see that it hadn’t fallen over; I was worried her hair would catch alight.
‘Once the men had eaten their food, the women took Kjartan and me to the kitchen while the Reverend spoke with the men. I tried to listen to what they were saying, but Aunt Rósa took my arm and pulled Kjartan onto her lap, and she started telling a story to distract us. She only stopped when Uncle Ragnar and Jón walked past the open doorway, carrying Inga’s body between them. They’d covered her face with a piece of cloth. I wanted to know where they were taking her and got up to follow, but Aunt Rósa tightened her grip around my arm and yanked me towards her. Gudbj?rg quickly told me that the Reverend had said there was no chance of a burial until spring: the ground in the churchyard was frozen solid, and they were going to keep my poor foster-mother in the storehouse until the ground thawed and someone could dig a grave. We went to the doorway to watch them put Inga away.
‘The Reverend was following Bj?rn down the corridor. I heard him say: “At least it leaves you plenty of time to make the coffins.” Then he suggested that they put her in the barn.
‘“Too warm,” my foster-father replied.
‘Uncle Ragnar and Jón laid Inga next to the dead baby in the storehouse. At first they put her down on a bag of salt, then Uncle Ragnar pointed out that the salt might be needed sooner than we could bury Inga, so they swapped the salt for dried fish, and I could hear the thin, dried bones of the cod snap in the sack, under the weight of her body.’
‘When did they bury her?’ Tóti asked. He suddenly felt claustrophobic sitting in the badstofa, surrounded by the muffled clicks of knitting needles and the rasp and squeak of wool.