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Sigurður Snorrason, and he grinned. “Later.”
    He stroked the straps very slowly, carefully, tenderly.
    “You should at least knot up the poor straps, my dear Siggi,” said Jón Hreggviðsson, “even if only for the queen’s sake.”
    The hangman said nothing.
    “Hardly will such an excellent king’s man as Sigurður Snorrason bear taunting words from the mouth of Jón Hreggviðsson,” said a tramp on the wall, in a style like that of the ancient sagas.
    “My dearly beloved king,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.
    Sigurður Snorrason bit his lip and started knotting the straps.
    Jón Hreggviðsson laughed with a gleam in his eye and his white teeth flashed in his black beard—“Just now he knotted his first mistress,” he said. “He’s definitely no yellow-belly. Knot it up again, dear.”
    The spectators began to liven up, like men standing over gamblers whose wagers are huge.
    “O servant of His Royal Majesty, remember our Sire!” came an exhortative voice from the wall, the same that had previously spoken saga-style. The hangman was convinced that his audience stood firmly behind him and the king. He grinned and looked from wall to wall as he made another knot in the straps; he had small gap-teeth and swollen gums.
    “Well, now he’s come to the last one—and the fattest,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “Many a good man has had to give it up just before she’s fully tied.”
    Just then the bailiff arrived, along with the two witnesses, who were wealthy farmers; they pushed the people aside and entered the pen. The bailiff saw that the hangman was knotting up the straps and ordered him to undo the knots, with the proclamation that justice would be served here, not mockery. Then he ordered the hangman to begin.
    The farmer was told to loosen his clothing and wadmal* was draped over the crib. The man was stretched out prone on this bench and Sigurður Snorrason pulled down the man’s breeches and slipped his shirt up over his head. The farmer’s body was lean but strongly built, with convex muscles that knotted with movement. He had a small patch of black, woolly hair that reached from his rigid buttocks to just below the hams of his knees, but otherwise his body was white.
    Sigurður Snorrason signed himself, spat into the palms of his hands, and began his work.
    Jón Hreggviðsson made no move at the first few strokes, but at the fourth and fifth strokes his body was seized with cramps. His legs, his face, and the upper part of his chest lifted, leaving his weight resting on his tightened stomach. His fists clenched, his feet stretched away from his ankles, his joints stiffened, and his muscles hardened. His shoes were newly mended, by the look of the soles. The dogs jumped up on the wall and yelped down into the pen. After eight strokes had been delivered the bailiff said that they would stop for the moment: the criminal had the legal right to a brief respite. His back, however, had only just begun to redden. Jón Hreggviðsson could care less about a respite, and yelled through his shirt:
    “Get on with it in the name of the devil, man!”
    The work was continued without further delay.
    After twelve strokes Jón Hreggviðsson’s back had become somewhat bloodied and bruised, and at the sixteenth his skin actually started to split open between the shoulder blades and at the small of the back. The dogs on the walls yelped madly, but the man lay like a solid block of wood, motionless.
    At the sixteenth stroke the bailiff said that the criminal was to be allowed another respite.
    Jón Hreggviðsson was heard to shout:
    “In the devil’s name, the devil’s name, the devil’s name—!”
    The king’s hangman spat into his palms once more and adjusted the shaft of the straps in his grip.
    “Now he starts on the last—and the fattest,” said the man on the wall, and he started laughing incessantly.
    Sigurður Snorrason stepped forward on his left foot and with his right tried to get a grip on the slick