‘It’s not poison, Róslín,’ Margrét had said. ‘Save us the tantrum.’ There had been a moment then. A shared look with Agnes. A quick, taut smile.
The baby had come in breech, like Agnes said. Legs first, bloody toes peeping through, then the body, and finally, the head, with the cord wound about its arm and neck. But it was alive, and that was all Róslín needed to know.
Agnes had refused to deliver it. She had asked Ingibjörg to help it into the world, and would not touch it, even later, when Róslín had fallen asleep, and the sound of the herded, bleating sheep began to resound throughout the valley. Margrét had thought it strange — the way Agnes would not cradle the newborn. What is it she had said? ‘It ought to live.’ As though it would die if Agnes took it into her arms.
There had been double cause to celebrate that evening. Snæbjörn was elated, plied with rum and brandy by the other farmers, so that when he climbed into the sorting pen to drag his sheep into his family’s hold, he staggered and slipped in the mud, and received a sharp butt to the head from a ram. Margrét heard Páll tell the story to his recovering mother, brightly recalling how Snæbjörn had to be dragged out to lie on the grass while the others sorted the rest of the animals.
They hadn’t eaten until late. Margrét’s daughters had rescued what they could of the neglected cooking and served it to the ravenous workhands that night. ‘It was snowing a little,’ Steina said, after they had heard about Róslín’s childbirth. She glanced over at Agnes. ‘It must have been a good sign.’
‘I did very little,’ Agnes said. ‘Ingibjörg delivered it.’
‘No,’ Margrét had corrected. ‘That tea of angelica root — where did you learn such a thing?’
‘It’s common knowledge,’ Agnes had murmured.
‘Probably Natan,’ Lauga suggested sourly.
Margrét wondered at how, even for an hour, Agnes had seemed part of the family. She’d found herself speaking with Agnes the following day, asking her about what dyes she was used to making, and they’d gone on like mistress and servant, until Lauga had come into the room and complained that she was sick of Agnes staring at her clothes and belongings. Lauga knew as well as Margrét that if Agnes were a thief, they would have noticed something missing by now. Not even the silver brooch had shifted from its place in the dust underneath the bed. Margrét briefly wondered if Lauga was jealous of Agnes, before putting the thought out of her mind. Why on earth would Lauga be envious of a woman who would be dead before the weather turned again? Yet, there was an intensity to her revulsion that seemed fired by something more than resentment.
Gently extracting her legs from under her husband’s heavy weight, Margrét got out of bed, padded quietly to the window and peered through the dried skin. There was sleet outside. What a nuisance, she thought. Though the rams and milking sheep had been put to pasture in the cropped home field, the yearling lambs were still penned in. They were to begin the slaughter today.
Margrét thought back to when Agnes had first arrived at Kornsá. Some part of her had relished the tension between her family and the criminal, was greedy for it, even. It had unified them; made her feel closer to her daughters, her husband. But now she realised that their silence had shifted into something more natural and untroubled. Margrét worried at this. She was too used to Agnes’s presence on the farm. Perhaps it was the usefulness of an extra pair of hands about the place. Having another woman’s help had already eased the pain in her back, and her cough did not seem to interrupt her breath as frequently as it had done. She avoided thinking about what would happen when the day of execution was announced. No, it was better to not think of it at all, and if she was feeling more comfortable around the woman then it was because it was easier to get the work done. No point looking over one’s shoulder when the task at hand was before you.
THERE IS AN URGENCY THAT comes with slaughter. The weather is bad, there is ice in the rain, and the wind is like a wolf nipping at your heels, reminding you that winter is coming. I feel as low as the dense snow clouds that are gathering.
No one wants to work into the night, and so we are all wrapped in layers, waiting outside in the October half-light, for the servants and Jón to catch the first sheep. They have kept aside as many animals as they think will keep us during the winter. Have they kept me amongst their number of mouths to feed? I fight an impulse to offer myself up to Jón and his knife. Why not kill me here, now, on an unremarkable day? It is the waiting that cripples. The sheep scavenge for what grass hasn’t been blistered brown by the weather. Do these dumb animals know their fate? Rounded up and separated, they only have to wait one icy night in fear. I have been in the killing pen for months.
Gudmundur catches the first sheep, kneeling on it to fix its head still. I don’t like him, but he is efficient — the throat is slit through to the spinal cord, and he is so quick with the pail that hardly a drop is spilled. Only a few minutes and all the blood is let. I step forward to take the pail from him, but he ignores me and hands it to Lauga. Never mind. Ignore him, too. I wait for a pail of blood from Jón, who has heaved his slaughtered ewe over the pen to better catch the red flow. There is always more blood than expected, and it always leaps in a direction unpredicted. Some of the blood spills onto the muddy ground, and into the grey wool of the animal, but soon the pail is full.
I return inside where Margrét has banked up the fire with dung and peat. My eyes water from the smoke, and Margrét coughs in the haze, but as she reminds me, we’ll have no cause for complaint when we eat the smoked meat we’ll string up over the rafters. I put my blood down and return outside.
We wait until the sheep are skinned. Bjarni’s ewe is still bleeding out — he lacks the technique for good slaughter. Gudmundur is nimble with a knife, however. He reminds me of Fridrik, who came to help with the killing at Illugastadir before he and Natan dropped all pretence of friendship. Fridrik always seemed a little too keen to rip the animal apart — a little too quick with the blade. Jón is slower, but more careful. He begins skinning from the back hocks, and breaks the joint in the hind legs without any sinew left to cut. Gudmundur skins as much as he can down the shoulders, but struggles to pull the skin off the brisket, and Jón asks Bjarni to help him. Together they haul the sheep onto the wall, where the rest of the skin is punched out from the carcass and finally pulled off. Bjarni has made a mess of it. I wish I could step in to show him how it’s done. Imagine their faces if I stepped forward and requested a knife.
We take the pluck of heart, lungs and oesophagus, and the intestines and the stomach, as the carcass is gutted.
That autumn at Illugastadir, Natan nicked the gall bladder of a sheep. The bitter liquid spilled onto the meat, and Fridrik howled with laughter. ‘You pretend to be a doctor,’ he said to Natan. Strange, how these moments come back to me now.
With the offal in our pails, we leave the men to cut the flesh into portions and hang it, and return to the kitchen. Some of the smoke has cleared now, and the fire is high. Margrét has set a pot of water upon the hearth to boil, and all of us begin work on the sausage. Even Lauga helps by straining the blood through a cloth. She flinches as flecks hit her face as it slops. I go outside to collect the stomachs for the sausage, and when I return the air inside the croft is thick with the animal smell of boiling fat and kidneys, frying for the men’s breakfast. Margrét has placed some suet into another pot and covered it with water to simmer. Kristín, Margrét, Steina and I stitch the stomachs into bags, leaving a small hole for the stuffing. When Lauga has finished straining the blood I stir in the rest of the suet and the rye flour, and I suggest we stir in some lichen as well, as we used to do at Geitaskard. When Margrét agrees, and sends Lauga down to the storeroom to get it, I feel a swell of happiness murmur throughout my heart. This is my life as it used to be: up to my elbows in the guts of things, working towards a kind of survival. The girls chatter and laugh as they stuff the bags with the bloody mix. I can forget who I am.