Simon leaned over the table and rested his head on his arms. If only they would think he was so drunk that he’d fallen asleep—he just wanted to be left alone.
Nothing was any different than he’d expected—or at least ought to have expected. She wasn’t either. Here she sat, the only woman among all these men, as gentle and modest, comfortable and confident as ever. That’s how she had been back then—when she betrayed him—shameless or innocent, he wasn’t sure. Oh, no, that wasn’t true either . . . she hadn’t been confident at all, she hadn’t been shameless—she hadn’t been calm behind that calm demeanor. But the man had bewitched her; for Erlend’s sake she would gladly walk on searing stones—and she had trampled on Simon as if she thought he was nothing more than a cold stone.
And here he lay, thinking foolishness. She had wanted to have her way and thought of nothing else. Let them have their joy—it made no difference to him. He didn’t care if they produced seven more sons; then there would be fourteen to divide up the inheritance from Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn’s estate. It didn’t look as if he would have to worry about his own children; Ramborg wasn’t as quick to give birth as her sister. And one day his descendants would be left with power and wealth after his death. But it made no difference to him—not this evening. He wanted to keep on drinking, but he knew that tonight God’s gifts would have no hold on him. And then he would have to lift his head and perhaps be pulled into the conversation.
“Well, you probably think you would have made a good regent, don’t you?” said Munan scornfully.
“No, you should know that we intended that position for you,” laughed Erlend.
“In God’s name, watch your tongue, man.”
The others laughed.
Erlend came over and touched Simon’s shoulder.
“Are you sleeping, brother-in-law?” Simon looked up. Erlend was standing before him with a goblet in his hand. “Drink with me, Simon. To you I owe the most gratitude for saving my life—which is dear to me, even such as it is, my man! You stood by me like a brother. If you hadn’t been my brother-in-law, I would have surely lost my head. Then you could have had my widow. . . .”
Simon leaped to his feet. For a moment they stood there staring at each other. Erlend grew sober and pale; his lips parted in a gasp.
Simon knocked the goblet out of the other man’s hand with his fist; the mead spilled out. Then he turned on his heel and left the room.
Erlend stayed where he was. He wiped his hand and wrist on the fabric of his surcoat without realizing that he was doing so, then looked around—the others hadn’t noticed. With his foot he pushed the goblet under the bench, then stood there a moment before following after his brother-in-law.
Simon Darre was standing at the bottom of the stairs. Jon Daalk was leading his horses from the stable. He didn’t move when Erlend came down to stand beside him.
“Simon! Simon . . . I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I was saying!”
“Now you do.”
Simon’s voice was toneless. He stood stock-still, without looking at the other man.
Erlend glanced around him helplessly. A pale sliver of the moon shone through the veil of clouds; small, hard bits of snow were falling. Erlend shivered in the cold.
“Where . . . where are you going?” he asked uncertainly, looking at the servant and horses.
“To find myself another inn,” said Simon curtly. “You know full well that I can’t stay
here.
”
“Simon!” Erlend exclaimed. “Oh, I don’t know what I would give to have those words unsaid!”
“As would I,” replied the other man in the same voice.
The door to the loft opened. Kristin stepped out onto the gallery with a lantern in her hand; she leaned over and shone the light on them.
“Is that where you are?” she asked in her clear voice. “What are you doing outdoors?”
“I thought I should see to my horses—as it’s the custom for polite people to say,” replied Simon, laughing up at her.
“But . . . you’ve taken your horses out!” she said merrily.
“Yes, a man can do strange things when he’s been drinking,” said Simon in the same manner as before.
“Well, come back up here now!” she called, her voice bright and joyful.
“Yes. At once.” She went inside, and Simon shouted to Jon to put the horses back in the stable. Then he turned to Erlend, who was standing there, his expression and demeanor oddly numb. “I’ll come inside in a few minutes. We must try to pretend it was never said, Erlend—for the sake of our wives. But this much you might realize: that you were the last man on earth I wanted . . . to know about . . . this. And don’t forget that I’m not as forgetful as you are!”
The door above them opened again; the guests came swarming out, and Kristin was with them; her maid carried the lantern.
“Well, it’s getting late,” teased Munan Baardsøn, “and I think these two must be longing for bed. . . .”
“Erlend. Erlend. Erlend.” Kristin had flung herself into his arms as soon as they were alone inside the loft. She clung tightly to him. “Erlend, you look sad,” she whispered fearfully, with her half-parted lips against his mouth. “Erlend?” She pressed both of her hands to his temples.
He stood there for a moment with his arms limply clasped around her. Then, with a soft moaning sound in his throat, he crushed her to him.
Simon walked over to the stable; he was going to tell Jon something, but halfway there he forgot what it was. For a moment he stood in front of the stable door and looked up at the hazy moonlight and the snow drifting down—now bigger flakes were beginning to fall. Jon and Ulf came out and closed the door behind them, and then the three men walked together over to the building where they would sleep.
III: THE CROSS
PART I
HONOR AMONG KIN
CHAPTER 1
DURING THE SECOND year that Erlend Nikulaussøn and Kristin Lavransdatter lived at Jørundgaard, Kristin decided to spend the summer up in the mountain pastures.
She had been thinking about this ever since winter. At Skjenne it had long been the custom for the mistress herself to stay in the mountain pastures; in the past a daughter from the manor had once been lured into the hills, and afterward her mother insisted on living in the mountains each summer. But in many ways they had their own customs at Skjenne; people in the region were used to it and expected as much.
But elsewhere it wasn’t customary for the women of the gentry on the large estates to go up to the pastures. Kristin knew that if she did so, people would be surprised and would gossip about it.
In God’s name, then, let them talk. No doubt they were already talking about her and her family.
Audun Torbergssøn owned nothing more than his weapons and the clothes on his back when he was wed to Ingebjørg Nikulaus-datter of Loptsgaard. He had been a groom for the bishop of Hamar. It was back when the bishop came north to consecrate the new church that Ingebjørg suffered the misfortune. Nikulaus Sigurds søn took it hard at first, swearing by God and man that a stableboy would never be his son-in-law. But Ingebjørg gave birth to twins, and people said with a laugh that Nikulaus evidently thought it would be too much to support them on his own. He allowed his daughter to marry Audun.
This happened two years after Kristin’s wedding. It had not been forgotten, and people probably still thought of Audun as a stranger to the region; he was from Hadland, of good family, but his lineage had become quite impoverished. And the man himself was not well liked in Sil; he was obstinate, hardheaded, and slow to forget either bad or good, but he was a most enterprising farmer, with a fair knowledge of the law. In many ways Audun Torbergssøn was now a respected man in the parish and a man with whom people were loath to become foes.
Kristin thought about Audun’s broad, tanned face with the thick, curly red hair and beard and those sharp, small blue eyes of his. He looked like many other men she had seen; she had seen such faces among their servants at Husaby, among Erlend’s men and ship’s crew.
She sighed. It must be easier for such a man to assert himself as he sat there on his wife’s ancestral estate since he had never ruled over anything else.
All winter and spring Kristin spent time talking to Frida Styrkaarsdatter, who had come with them from Trøndelag and was in charge of all her other maids. Again and again she would tell the woman that such and such was the way they did things here in the valley during the summer, this was what the haymakers were used to getting, and this was how things were done at harvest time. Surely Frida must remember how Kristin had done things the year before. For she wanted everything on the manor to be just as it was during Ragnfrid Ivarsdatter’s time.
But to come right out and say that she would not be there on the farm during the summer, that was hard for her to do. She had been the mistress of Jørundgaard for two winters and a summer, and she knew that if she went up to the mountain pastures now, it would be the same as running away.
She realized that Erlend was in a terribly difficult position. Ever since the days when he sat on his foster mother’s knee, he had never known anything other than that he was born to command and rule over everything and everyone around him. And if the man had allowed himself to be ruled and commanded by others, at least he had never been aware of this himself.
He couldn’t possibly feel the way he outwardly seemed. He must be unhappy here. She herself . . . Her father’s estate at the bottom of the quiet, closed-in valley, the flat fields along the curve of the gleaming river through the alder woods, the farms on the cultivated land far below at the foot of the mountain, and the steep slopes above, with the gray clefts against the sky overhead, pale slides of scree and the spruce forest and leafy woods clambering upward through the meadows from the valley—no, this no longer seemed to her the most beautiful and safest home in the world. It felt closed off. Surely Erlend must think that it was ugly and confining and unpleasant.
But no one could tell anything from his appearance except that he seemed content.
On the day when they let out the livestock at Jørundgaard, she finally managed to speak of it, in the evening as they ate their supper. Erlend was picking through the fish platter in search of a good piece; in surprise he sat there with his fingers in the dish while he stared at his wife. Then Kristin added quickly that it was mostly because of the throat ailment that was rampant among the children in the valley. Munan wasn’t strong; she wanted to take him and Lavrans along with her up to the mountains.
Well, said Erlend. In that case it would be advisable for Ivar and Skule to go with her too.
The twins leaped up from the bench. During the rest of the meal they both chattered at once. They wanted to go with Erling, who would be camping north among the Gray Peaks with the sheep. Three years before, the sheepherders from Sil had caught a poacher and killed him near his stone hut in the Boar Range; he was a man who had been banished to the forest from ster Ødal. As soon as the servants got up from the table, Ivar and Skule brought into the hall all the weapons they owned and sat down to tinker with them.
A little later that evening Kristin set off southward with Simon Andressøn’s daughters and her own sons Gaute and Lavrans. Arngjerd Simonsdatter had been at Jørundgaard most of the winter. The maiden was now fifteen years old, and one day during Christmas at Formo, Simon had mentioned that Arngjerd ought to learn something more than what they could teach her at home; she was just as skilled as the serving maids. Kristin had then offered to take the girl home with her and teach her as best she could, for she could see that Simon dearly loved his daughter and worried a great deal about her future. And the child needed to learn other ways than those practiced at Formo. Since the death of his wife’s parents Simon Andressøn was now one of the richest men in the region. He managed his properties with care and good sense, and he oversaw the farm work at Formo with zeal and intelligence. But indoors things were handled poorly; the serving women were in charge of everything. Whenever Simon noticed that the disarray and slovenliness in the house had surpassed all bounds, he would hire one or two more maids, but he never spoke of such things to his wife and seemed neither to wish nor to expect that she should pay more attention to the housekeeping. It was almost as if he didn’t yet consider her to be fully grown up, but he was exceedingly kind and amenable toward Ramborg and was constantly showering her and the children with gifts.
Kristin grew fond of Arngjerd after she got to know her. The maiden was not pretty, but she was clever, gentle, good-hearted, nimble-fingered, and diligent. When the young girl accompanied her around the house or sat by her side in the weaving room in the evenings, Kristin often thought that she wished one of her own children had been a daughter. A daughter would spend more time with her mother.
She was thinking about that on this evening as she led Lavrans by the hand and looked at the two children, Gaute and Arngjerd, who were walking ahead of her along the road. Ulvhild was running about, stomping through the brittle layer of nighttime ice on the puddles of water. She was pretending to be some kind of animal and had turned her red cloak around so that the white rabbit fur was on the outside.
Down in the valley in the dusk the shadows were deepening across the bare brown fields. But the air of the spring evening seemed sated with light. The first stars were sparkling, wet and white, high up in the sky, where the limpid green was turning blue, moving toward darkness and night. Above the black rim of the mountains on the other side of the valley a border of yellow light still lingered, and its glow lit up the scree covering the steep slope that towered above them as they walked. At the very top, where the snowdrifts jutted out over the ridges, the snow glistened, and underneath glittered the glaciers, which gave birth to the streams rushing and splashing everywhere down through the scree. The sound of water completely filled the air of the countryside; from below reverberated the loud roar of the river. And the singing of birds came from the groves and leafy shrubbery on all sides.