St Monans, Fife, Scotland 1790. Two women are forced to publicly repent in church, one for adultery the other for breaching the sabbath. Wealthy housewife, Florrie, and salt serf, Eliza, form a quick and unusual bond over their mutual humiliation. So when Florrie’s husband decides she must accompany him on a trade venture to Iceland, she insists Eliza comes as her maid.
Far from home, isolated and fearful, the two women grow ever closer. Then Florrie’s husband reveals his sinister plan: he will leave her in Iceland, banished for the shame she has cast upon him. Florrie must escape, but when she turns to Eliza for help she realizes nothing is quite as it seems . . .
Inspired by an attempt by Scottish merchants to annex Iceland as a remote prison for the British Empire, The Repentants is a chilling tale of betrayal, exile and survival
Florrie feels neglected. She has a lovely home, a husband who has inherited a salt works run by several generations of his family and an inheritance of her own as soon as she turns 21. Her husband Jonny has been struggling the burns he incurred by running into fire at work to make sure the building was clear. Florrie knows there is more to marriage than she and Jonny share even before the injury, particularly in the bedroom where he takes no care for her pleasure at all. This restlessness has drives her to back door of the Mermaid Inn in her most alluring dress. Inside and up the back stairs is a room where an Icelandic sailor is waiting for her. For a blissful moment Florrie is finally experiencing something, when the door is flung open and she is discovered. While there’s no criminal punishment for adultery, religion is important in this Scottish community and the minister at the kirk is keen on shaming his penitents. Florrie becomes one of the repentants, wearing sack cloth and standing in front of the congregation facing her neighbours and everything they think about her. It’s humiliating for her and for her husband, so when Jonny lets her know about his plan to spend some months in Iceland she sees it as an escape. With the Icelandic contacts he was introduced to at his gentleman’s club he plans to set up another salt works. However, instead of the serfs he owns in Scotland, the plan is for a ship full of local convicts to serve their hard labour sentences in the salt works. Florrie is determined to go and requests the company of a salt serf called Eliza who was a repentant on the same day. She asks Eliza to be her lady’s maid, but in truth Eliza has no choice since she was signed up as a serf to Jonny’s family as soon as she was born. Underneath the surface though she has spirit and is fiercely independent. With two restless women and a man determined to indenture others for monetary gain, this trip may bring more than any of them expect.
The story is told from the perspective of three women: Florrie, Eliza and Hallgerd – a woman who is their neighbour in Iceland. Florrie’s narration comes from her journal and there are letters here and there too. What these women share is their experience of misogyny from men who think they have the right to control women through marriage, religion, slavery or just because they believe they have the right to do whatever they want, when they want. Eliza has largely avoided men back home, she lived alone and her repentance was for missing kirk two Sundays in a row. She doesn’t care much what the congregation think of her, because she’s well aware of the hypocrisy of church people. She can’t really be lower in their estimation anyway. As the story unfolds we realise what she’s been doing to survive and who is willing to exploit that knowledge. She was my favourite character because of her inner strength and determination to survive. At the kirk, when she’s asked if she’s scared of the devil she shows her defiance and understanding of her situation: “the devil does not frighten me minister. but men do”. Once she has a plan, she will never tolerate being manipulated, restricted or punished again. Florrie realises as soon as they reach Iceland that this is not going to be an easy way of life and definitely not the standard she had back home. In her journal she reminisces about that morning at the inn where for a brief time she felt desired:
“The most vivid memory, the one where I am astride him and we are going at it for the second time, pure bliss, I was right.”
However, her journal isn’t the safe space she thinks it is, her mother read it when she lived at home, Jonny reads it now and he makes sure that others do too. Florrie remembers that beautiful pink dress too, the one that the dressmaker’s assistant said was “whorish”, and its matching wrapper that got lost at the inn. The third repentant that Sunday was a lady called Auld Beatrice and she was there for being a nag. She recognises something in Florrie and warns her to develop her inner life and skills:
“I hope you are not too reliant on those looks of yours. A woman needs to be resourceful. Or years from now, when you are my age and miserable at how your looks have slid, you will regret not having any other skills.”
Between Eliza and Beatrice, Florrie gets the message to shrug off shame and realise that she’s only being treated like this because men like to assert their power over women. Deep down Florrie is furious with herself, she’s angry with Jonny for professing such love for her before their marriage then withdrawing it afterwards, but she’s angrier with herself for believing it. Now their home is a small cottage, the weather is bitter and there’s literally nothing – no shops, church, clubs for entertainment. Reykjavik is a busier place but still has only one two storey house that Jonny’s contacts have commandeered as the headquarters of their operation. It was originally the home of Hallgerd their neighbour. She has so many memories of her childhood in that home and hates seeing it used by a man who wants to show his power by having the best house in town. She is surviving alone, while her husband takes jobs on sailing ships and chooses where he sleeps. I loved the blunt and honest way these women talked to each other, fully aware they are the equal of men but having to find ways around their assumed power. It felt like the women and Iceland had many things in common. After stopping over in Copenhagen which is a bustling port, Iceland is a shock to the system. It feels vast and unknowable, but men still think they can use it, tame it and exploit it for profit. Hallgerd is part of the land, she knows it and the power it holds underneath the surface, she can even feel it in her body when a volcano is ready to erupt. The sailors align women with strange abilities, they are scared to have Eliza and Florrie on their ship and give them a bleeding cure in case their menstrual blood attracts sea serpents. It made my blood boil that it was the men who were terrified of a natural process, but it was the women who had to bear the responsibility for that fear. I was reminded so strongly of the Coventry Patmore poem The Angel in the House:
“A woman is a foreign land
Of which though there he settle young,
A man will ne’er quite understand
The custom, politics and tongue.”
It also reminded me of a recent conversation on X where a man said ‘ I don’t trust something that bleeds for seven days and doesn’t die’. Men still fear us and policy is being made on the basis of that fear and the urge to control us. I was hoping that all the women, especially Eliza, would see that the men’s suspicion and fear is the female superpower and she could use it to escape and flourish. Kate Foster has become a must-buy author for me over her four novels because her female characters are so layered and there’s a firm feminist stance as she writes these fascinating characters back into history. She doesn’t just concentrate on one class either, giving us both working and wealthy women and the difference that makes to their journey through life. Most of all her stories grab hold of the reader and are absolutely full of atmosphere. I’ve no doubt she has another hit on her hands with this novel.
Out 28th May from Mantle Books
