At four o’clock that afternoon, Gudjon and Hogni finished making a casket for Bjorn Snorri Thorvald. It lay on two trestles in the small workshop behind the Radagerdi farm, ready to be transported to the doctor’s house. The two carpenters scrutinized their work as they brushed the sawdust and shavings off their clothing. Hogni snorted some snuff, and Gudjon lit a cigarette. It was a fairly rudimentary casket made of smoothened unpainted pine planks with a brass cross on the lid, precisely as the deceased had prescribed. Bjorn Snorri had talked it over with Gudjon several months earlier and, in fact, had asked him to get working on it straightaway, but Gudjon wouldn’t hear of it. He could make a decent casket for his neighbor if it was needed, but it would be out of the question to start making it before the person in question was definitely dead. Anything else would have been inappropriate and disrespectful to the Lord.
It was still raining, but it was warm when Thormodur Krakur arrived in his Sunday attire, towing his handcart. The three men carried the casket out of the workshop and placed it on the cart. Then they walked across the island pulling the cart behind them.
Inspector Lukas and a crew member from the ship stood outside the doctor’s house.
“Johanna is obviously under house arrest,” Hogni whispered heavyheartedly.
They carried the casket into the house and all the way into the living room where Bjorn Snorri’s corpse had been laid out on the bed, newly washed and dressed in a white tunic. A white linen ribbon had been wrapped around his head to lock his jaw into place and keep his mouth closed. Three white candles flickered on a bedside table. Johanna Thorvald and Reverend Hannes were in the room as they arrived, and received them.
The casket was placed on the floor by the side of the body, and Johanna placed a white quilt inside it and a pillow at the head. The three men then helped to lift the twisted body and place it in the casket.
Reverend Hannes stepped forward and said a farewell prayer to the house, after which the gathering recited an “Our Father” and sang a short psalm. Finally, they all drew a cross over the body, the quilt was drawn over the deceased’s face, and the lid was placed on the casket. Gudjon took a hammer and firmly sealed the lid with some nails.
Hogni and Gudjon carried the casket between them out of the house and placed it on the cart. Thormodur Krakur lifted the handles of the cart and started to pull it away. Johanna and Reverend Hannes walked behind him, followed by Hogni and Gudjon and finally, at a considerable distance, Lukas, the police inspector, and his assistant from the coast guard ship.
As they walked, Hogni pondered the deceased. He and his daughter had lived in the house for about two years. Last year Bjorn Snorri had been mobile enough to take walks around the island and speak to people. Everyone knew he had come to Flatey to die, and that made some of the islanders slightly awkward with him. But everyone could see that he was a very intelligent and educated man with an insatiable eagerness for knowledge. He asked people exhaustive questions about their professions and deeds and kept notes in a little diary. Eventually, though, he came out less and less, until finally he just stayed indoors, confined to his medical bed. From then on it was the islanders who visited him at the doctor’s house and told him stories. Mostly they were tales about accidents and losses at sea from the past decades and centuries, which had been preserved in people’s memories, and Bjorn Snorri lapped it all up with a smile on his lips and a grateful glow in his eyes. And now Hogni started to wonder if these stories could be found in writing somewhere. Some of these incidents were probably recorded in the annals, but who knew if any written record had been kept of the actual stories that lay behind them and had been orally passed down from generation to generation. Perhaps this invaluable knowledge was dying with every individual who passed away on the islands, including Bjorn Snorri himself. He had undoubtedly written countless pieces about his area of research, but didn’t the main bulk of knowledge always go unrecorded? Or was it just that the dead hadn’t disappeared, but simply moved on, slightly ahead of us? Would he himself one day get a chance to learn something from Bjorn Snorri in some other place?
They arrived at the church, and Hogni and Gudjon lifted the casket as Thormodur Krakur opened the door. They carried the coffin inside and placed it on trestles in the middle of the floor. Then they walked outside again.
Johanna said good-bye and immediately headed back to her house, accompanied by Inspector Lukas and his assistant, while the others lingered in front of the church, enjoying the mild weather and the view.
“Is that what I think it is? Do I see a man waving from the islet of Kerlingarholmur?” said Thormodur Krakur, peering south across the strait where it was now high tide. Hogni looked in the direction the deacon was pointing and saw a man standing on the edge of the shore waving with both hands.
“That wouldn’t be the magistrate’s envoy roaming on the skerry?” Hogni asked. “They were looking for him earlier today.”
Gudjon grinned. “He’s worse than the sheep. What’s he doing roaming over there?”
“I’ll go get him,” said Hogni. “Sigurbjorn’s old boat is down there on the shore. You can give me a hand pushing her into the sea.”
Question thirty-five: The price of the king’s axe. Sixth letter. The king held an axe that was inlaid in gold and had a shaft that was enveloped in silver with a large silver band embedded with a precious stone. Halli kept staring at the axe. The king noticed this immediately and asked Halli if he liked it. He answered that he did.
“Have you ever seen a finer axe?”
“I don’t think so,” said Halli.
“Would you submit yourself to sodomy for this axe?” asked the king.
“No,” said Halli, “but I can understand why you want to sell it for the same price that you paid for it.”
“So it shall be, Halli,” said the king. “Take it and make the best use of it; it was given to me as a gift and therefore I shall give it you.” Halli thanked the king.
The answer is “sodomy,” and the sixth letter is y.