‘I hope your mistress will let you come outside for a time,’ she says, smiling. ‘You ought to feel the sun on your face.’
She and Margrét leave, but her words hang in the room behind her. You ought to feel the sun on your face. ‘Before you die,’ I cannot not help but add, aloud, to the rustle of the embers.
The guests arrive on foot and horseback, the women bearing food and the men coyly slipping small bottles of brandy from out of their vests and coats. I see them as I place dishes on the tables, but for the most part Margrét keeps me busy in the kitchen, out of sight of the neighbours. They look sideways at me and fall silent as I set jugs of milk down, pats of fresh butter.
I don’t want to be out here. There will be people I know, perhaps farmers I have worked for, servants I have shared quarters with. My forehead aches from the tightness of my plaits, and I suddenly long to untie them, to walk about with my hair unbraided, to lie on my back in the sun.
TóTI FOUND AGNES IN THE dairy, churning the butter.
‘Not joining the party, Agnes?’ he asked quietly.
She didn’t turn around. ‘I am better use in here,’ she said, continuing to raise the plunger and push it through the cream. Tóti thought it was a good sound, the dull splash of the churn.
‘I hope you don’t mind me interrupting you.’
‘No. But if you don’t mind, I won’t stop until the butter takes.’
Tóti leant against the doorframe as Agnes continued to raise and drop the plunger. After a moment he became aware of Agnes’s breath, fast and hard in the small room. It seemed intimate somehow; the rhythm of the plunger and the sound of quickened breathing. He felt himself blushing. Eventually a thud could be heard inside the small barrel, and Agnes stopped and deftly strained the butter from the buttermilk. Tóti blinked as Agnes washed it then formed and slapped the paddle, skilfully forcing out the remaining liquid, and thought of what Bl?ndal had said. Someone plunged the knife into Natan Ketilsson’s belly.
Once the butter had been shaped and covered with a cloth, Tóti suggested that they go outside to take the air. Agnes looked nervous, but after fetching some knitting from the badstofa, followed Tóti outside. They sat down on the turf pile by the croft and looked across at the group of adults and children, the farmers getting steadily drunker on their brandy, and the women gossiping in tight clusters of dark clothes. Several were taking turns to hold a baby, clucking into its face. It broke into a wail.
‘I have been to Bl?ndal,’ Tóti said eventually.
Agnes blanched. ‘What did he want?’
‘He thinks I should spend more time engaging you in prayers and sermons, and less time letting you speak.’
‘Bl?ndal likes only one thing better than religious chastisement, and that is the sound of his own voice.’ Agnes’s words were crabbed.
‘Is it true Bl?ndal hired Natan to heal his wife?’
Agnes gave him a wary look. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘Yes, that’s true. Natan visited Hvammur some years back to give her poultices and bleed her.’
Tóti nodded. ‘Bl?ndal also told me a little about Fridrik. Apparently he is doing very well under the guardianship of Birni Olsen and the counsel of Reverend Jóhann.’ He looked at Agnes to measure her reaction. She narrowed her eyes.
‘Will they get up an appeal for him too?’ she asked.
‘He did not say.’ Tóti cleared his throat. ‘Agnes, a servant called Karitas sends her regards. She asked if you had spoken to me about Natan.’
Agnes stopped knitting and clenched her jaw.
‘Karitas?’ Her voice cracked.
‘She asked to speak with me after I had met with Bl?ndal. She wanted to tell me about Natan.’
‘And what did she say about him?’
Tóti rummaged for his snuff horn, poured a little on his hand and snorted it. ‘She said that she could not bear working for him. She said that he toyed with people.’
Agnes said nothing.