On the Cold Coasts

BITTER AS WORMWOOD
    The girl on the bedstead screamed and clutched desperately at the older woman sitting next to her, as yet another contraction coursed through her body. Her blue-gray, bloodshot eyes widened horribly, like they would burst from their sockets. The midwife wiped streams of sweat from the girl’s forehead with a linen cloth and brushed her straight, black hair to one side.
    “Hush, child,” she said wearily. “This hysteria will only make things harder.”
    Ragna Gautadottir made no reply. She barely heard what was being said anymore. She had been in labor since last night, and it was now past noon. Daylight had come and gone in a heartbeat, and twilight had once again descended on the snow-covered land. Outside was a cold and dark kingdom. It was the thirteenth day of January, the feast day of St. Hilary.
    “In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,” said the Lord to Eve, “and thy desire shall be to thy husband.” But there was no husband in the vicinity, and she who was enduring this sorrow was barely a woman herself.
    The linen shift, soaked through with perspiration, clung to her body, clearly revealing the constriction of her taut belly during the contractions. Occasionally, in between, there was a billowing movement as the unborn child moved inside her. The child was impatient to see this world, unaware of all the toil and trouble that awaited it, ignorant of all that was and would be. Better if it had never been conceived, and best if it dies, Ragna thought as she had a thousand times before, and instantly she felt ashamed of her thoughts. She stared up at the ceiling of the bedchamber and squinted to see better in the dim light of the lantern. She didn’t have to—she knew precisely where it was. She had carved the letter in the rafter of the sloping ceiling above her bed: M for Michael. In her mind’s eye, his boyish face appeared, pale and wan, as it had been that cursed day in April last year when she first saw him, dragged from the sea, weathered and beaten…

    They had all seemed dead at first, and no one was surprised. The blizzard that had started in the blink of an eye just before daybreak on Holy Thursday was over by noon. Even so, it was cold, and the men who lay scattered among the goods in the sand were drenched by the sea and the snow. Some of them looked asleep, the pallor of death on their skin the only indication that the Lord had already taken them into His merciful embrace. Others were so mutilated that a mere glance filled the onlooker with horror. Lying on the shore was a man with a leg bone protruding from his leather cloak, another with his head so askew that the neck was most certainly broken, and a third with eyes open and staring but only the whites visible and one of his arms all but torn from his body. His mouth was filled with sand, and a small snail crawled across his forehead. A flock of northern fulmars glided above, silently, as though out of respect for all this death; one had touched down on the back of a young boy’s corpse and flew up with wings flapping as the group of people drew near. Despite the mutilation there was no blood; the corpses had already been washed in the salty water. Hel, the goddess of death, reigned here. There was an eerie quiet, no sound but the innocuous washing of the waves. A few eider ducks cooed softly at each other as they rode the waves between the land and the Helenarholmi islet. Three bodies lay on the raised beach, blue and dead in the wilted dune grass; most likely they had made it onto dry land alive, but had been given the kiss of death by the cold and their own injuries.
    The rough, green waters of Skagafjord had sucked down two ships, lock, stock, and barrel. A third, the vessel Trinity of Bristol, had been driven up onto the black shore. The raging, white-capped waves had shattered the two-masted schooner and washed oak panels and cargo far up onto the land. The freight and supplies belonging to the English were scattered across the sands: shoes by the dozen, tin cups and plates, rolls of burlap, sailcloth and ropes, boxes and oars. A spared barrel of beer rolled back and forth on the shore with the movement of the waves.
    It later transpired that two dozen English ships plus one had been wrecked off the shores of Iceland that very same morning, which in addition to being Holy Thursday was also the first day of summer according to the Icelandic calendar. Everyone on board perished, and the wrecked vessels