‘For Benedikt.’
Without bothering to throw on her coat, she scurries outside to the letterbox and drops it in.
Between them they perform a number of chores that secure the house, checking and double-checking that alarms are set, lights are off, curtains and shutters are closed. The thermostat is set to twenty degrees centigrade.
Once they’re ready, Verity makes a note of the day and time. She pauses in her note-taking.
‘I don’t want to sleep alone, not when we’re both going to be under. The Tower Room?’ she asks.
Constance nods.
Verity climbs the stairs to the child’s room where she drags the mattress from his bed onto the middle of the floor. Constance joins her and pulls out the futon from one of the bespoke cupboards built into the circular room. The futon conjures another memory of the occasions when they would sleep on the floor while their boy tossed in fits and woke in the middle of the night from nightmares. Lawless House swells with memories of him.
After they build their makeshift sleeping arrangements with cushions and quilting, Verity places a bowl of dried lavender on a shelf near where their heads will lie.
Each sister still wears her necklace and phials, which they remove now.
‘Where? Where should we hide them – there’s usually no need.’
A strange moon-faced mechanical man stares at them from a shelf on the other side of the room. Their boy had been fascinated by automatons, and had just begun a collection when he was taken from them. Constance places their phials inside the compartment of the round wooden platform on which it stands.
The sisters fall back on the mattresses in sighs, relieved the day is finally over and that their preparations are complete. Sighs turn to gaping yawns and now a deep weariness overcomes them. They lie, side by side, facing each other. The mattresses point their four corners into the circular room. Speaking softly with one another, as they did when they talked late into the night as young girls, their eyes become incredibly heavy.
And then, Verity is gone.
Constance still has a few more minutes before she too, will be lost to the long sleep. Her gaze remains on Verity, whose long silver hair fans out behind her. Only once before had the sleep overtaken them at the same time. It is just as unnerving now as it was then. She thinks again of the letter, and wonders if they are strong enough to live with the fear of their supply dwindling. Lastly, before her body commands her to fall into oblivion, the face of the boy appears, and now, lying on her back, one arm at rest upon her forehead, she reaches out to touch it. His face fades as she closes her eyes and turns on her side to face her sister again.
Their bodies curve like parentheses, mirroring the walls of the room. For two weeks they will sleep in an undisturbed half-death. They will have no sense of adjusting their positions, though their bodies will move and stretch in a variety of scenes. Dreams will not crowd their slumber. Time will pass without the call to relieve themselves, nor will their bodies sense hunger or thirst – all functions that normally poke through the nights to remind them they are still alive will be absent for fourteen days.
The snowfall has ceased and the evergreens no longer bend from thrusts of wind. The nocturnal animals that feed upon the garden have completed their evening business. The train tracks lie empty. A cowl of stillness descends upon Lawless House. The sisters Fitzgerald will not wake again until a new year rises.
ICELAND
1783
CHAPTER SEVEN
It is the latter part of May and the spring has been mild.
The insides of Stefán Hilmarsson’s calves and thighs ache, even though his horse maintains a smooth gait. His roan Glossi is a good tölter and Stefán hopes to break his journey at one of his southernmost farms before nightfall – if the skies remain clear. Tethered to Glossi is another horse, a black, silver-maned mare, Vinda – both horses have scrambled through the bogs and over rocks and whenever they come to dry, smooth ground they dart forward into the tölt at an explosive speed.
Anxious to be home again after a week of travelling, Stefán makes his last official journey as magistrate. He has had enough of governing and longs to retreat from the responsibility. The crown of Denmark holds the monopoly on all trading and though he was one of few who lobbied for an open economy, it has come to nothing and only made him unpopular in Copenhagen.
His tenant farmers, men, women and children, split the skin of their fingers and ruin their eyes to produce the coarse, dense woollen fabric, the wadmal they illegally trade with the British. He allows it, and indeed secures his own trade agreements with forbidden ships and their countries. He relishes slipping through Copenhagen’s mighty grasp – but only for the right price. The foreigners’ ships transport the wadmal to Ireland, Scotland and England where its durability is prized. Whenever the English translator complains of the inclement British weather in his patchy, laboured speech, Stefán laughs outright because the translator has never wintered in Iceland, where horses and sheep drop down dead on account of the cold.
This wadmal, that is their life source, and the uncountable hours of tending the sheep, the endless winter days and nights of weaving and knitting, makes people touchy. Many of his farmers would rather be fishing. The truth is, they are all part-time fishermen, and the Crown continues to isolate and monopolize them, though they give their lives for a net of cod. All do what they must for one reason – to hold a
