Agnes looked up from her needles and regarded him coolly.
‘If anyone knew what was going to happen do you think I’d be sitting here, talking to you? Do you think any of those others, Daníel, Fridrik’s family, would be strapped over a barrel being whipped to within an inch of their lives if they knew what was going to happen?’
There was a moment of silence.
Agnes took a deep breath. ‘After Jóas left, the best thing about working at Geitaskard was María. I never had many friends growing up; I’d been bundled along from farm to farm. To anyone who needed to do their parish duty, or who wanted a girl-stripling to watch over the grass, or sheep, or kettles. I used to keep to myself anyhow. I preferred to read than talk with the others.’ Agnes looked up. ‘Do you like reading?’ she asked Tóti.
‘Very much.’
Agnes gave a wide smile, and for the first time Tóti remembered the servant girl he had helped over the river. Her eyes were bright, and her lips parted to reveal even teeth; she suddenly looked younger, altered. He was aware of his own chest rising and falling. She is quite beautiful, he thought.
‘Me too,’ she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘I like the sagas best. As they say, blíndur er bóklaus maeur. Blind is a man without a book.’
Tóti felt something rise in him, a cry, or a laugh. He gazed at Agnes, at the afternoon sun lighting the tips of her eyelashes, and wondered at Bl?ndal’s words. Agnes killed Natan because she was spurned. He saw the sentence written in his mind.
‘When I was a girl, I used to be hired out to watch over fields. Sometimes those farms had books.’ She gestured to the rocky hills behind them. ‘I used to take them and read up over Kornsá Hill. I could fall asleep there, and have some peace from the farm, and from the chores. Though sometimes I’d be caught and punished.’
‘Your confirmation said that you were well-read.’
Agnes straightened her back. ‘I liked confirmation; the Holy Communion and everyone looking at you as you walked up the aisle and knelt before the priest. The farmers and their wives couldn’t tell me not to read when they knew I was preparing for confirmation. I could go to the church and study with the Reverend there, if he had time. I was given a white dress, and there were pancakes afterwards.’
‘What about poetry?’
Agnes looked sceptical. ‘What about it?’
‘Do you like it? Do you compose?’
‘I don’t brag about my poems. Not like Rósa. Everyone knows hers.’ She shrugged.
‘That is because they are beautiful.’
Agnes went quiet. ‘Natan loved that about Rósa. He loved the way she knew how to build things with words. She invented her own language to say what everyone else could only feel.’
‘I hear Natan was a poet, too.’ Tóti pretended nonchalance. ‘Did you two speak in poems to each other, as Rósa and Natan did?’
‘Not like Rósa, no. But we spoke to each other in a kind of poetry.’ Agnes looked out over the field. ‘I met Natan on a day like this.’
‘A harvest celebration?’