Ramborg went to church to visit her husband’s grave a couple of times; otherwise she never left her manor. But Kristin went south to see her as often as she could. She now sincerely wished that she had known her sister better. The widow looked like such a child in her mourning garb. Her body seemed fragile and only half grown in the heavy, dark blue gown; the little triangle of her face was yellow and thin, framed by the linen bands beneath the black woolen veil, which fell in stiff folds from the crown of her head almost to the hem of her skirts. And she had dark circles under her big eyes, the coal-black pupils wide and always staring.
During the hay harvest there was a week’s time when Kristin couldn’t get away to see her sister. From the harvesters she heard that a guest was visiting Ramborg at Formo: Jammælt Hal vardssøn. Kristin remembered that Simon had mentioned this man; he owned an exceedingly large estate not far from Dyfrin, and he and Simon had been friends since childhood.
A week into the harvest the rains came. Then Kristin rode over to see her sister. Kristin sat talking about the terrible weather and about the hay and then asked how things were going at Formo.
All of a sudden Ramborg said, “Jon will have to manage things here; I’m heading south in a few days, Kristin.”
“Yes, you must be longing for your children, poor dear,” said Kristin.
Ramborg stood up and paced the floor.
“I’m going to tell you something that will surprise you,” the young woman said after a moment. “You and your sons will soon be invited to a betrothal feast at Dyfrin. I said yes to Jammælt before he left here, and Gyrd will hold the wedding.”
Kristin sat without saying a word. Her sister stood staring at her, pale and dark-eyed.
Finally the older sister spoke, “I see that you won’t be left a widow for very long after Simon’s death. I thought you mourned him so grievously. But you can make your own decisions now.”
Ramborg did not reply. After a moment Kristin asked, “Does Gyrd Darre know that you intend to marry again so soon?”
“Yes.” Ramborg began pacing again. “Helga advises me to do so. Jammælt is rich.” She laughed. “And Gyrd is such a clever man that he must have seen long ago that our life was so wretched together, Simon’s and mine.”
“What are you saying! No one else has ever noticed that your life together was wretched,” Kristin said after a pause. “I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything but friendship and goodwill between the two of you. Simon indulged you in every way, gave you everything you wished for, always kept in mind your youth, and took care that you should enjoy it and be spared toil and travail. He loved his children and showed you every day that he was grateful to you for giving birth to the two of them.”
Ramborg smiled scornfully.
Kristin continued fiercely, “If you have any cause to think that your life wasn’t good together, then surely Simon is not to blame.”
“No,” said Ramborg. “I will bear the blame—if
you
do not dare.”
Kristin sat there, dumbfounded.
“I don’t think you know what you’re saying, sister,” she replied at last.
“Yes, I do,” said Ramborg. “But I can believe that
you
might not know. You’ve had so little thought for Simon that I’m convinced this may be new to you. You considered him good enough to turn to whenever you needed a helper who would gladly have carried red-hot iron for your sake. But never did you give any thought to Simon Andressøn or ask what it might have cost him. I was allowed to enjoy my youth, yes. With joy and gentleness Simon would lift me up into the saddle and send me off to feasts and merriment; with equal joy and gentleness he would welcome me when I came back home. He would pat me the way he patted his dog or his horse. He never missed me while I was gone.”
Kristin was on her feet; she stood quietly next to the table. Ramborg was wringing her hands so the knuckles cracked, pacing back and forth in the room.
“Jammælt . . .” she said in a calmer voice. I’ve known for years how he thought of me. I saw it even while his wife was still alive. Not that he ever gave himself away in word or deed—you mustn’t think that! He grieved for Simon too and came to me often to console me—that much is true. It was Helga who said to both of us that now it would be fitting if we . . .
“And I don’t know what I should wait for. I will never find more consolation or any less than I feel right now. I want to try living with a man who has been silently thinking of
me
for years on end. I know all too well what it feels like to live with a man who is silently thinking about someone else.”
Kristin didn’t move. Ramborg stopped in front of her, with her eyes flashing. “You know what I say is true!”
Kristin left the room without a word, her head bowed. As she stood in the rain outside in the courtyard, waiting for the servant to bring her horse, Ramborg appeared in the doorway. She stared at her sister with dark and hateful eyes.
Not until the next day did Kristin remember what she had promised Simon if Ramborg should marry again. She rode back to Formo. This was not an easy thing for her to do. And the worst of it was that she knew there was nothing she could say that would give her sister any help or solace. This marriage to Jammælt of Ælin seemed to her a rash decision when Ramborg was in such a state of mind. But Kristin realized that it would do no good for her to object.
Ramborg was sullen and morose and answered her sister curtly. Under no circumstances would she allow her stepdaughter to go to Jørundgaard. “Things at your estate are not such that I would think it advisable to send a young maiden over there.” Kristin replied meekly that Ramborg might be right about that, but she had promised Simon to make the offer.
“If Simon, in his feverish daze, didn’t realize that he was offending me when he made this request of you, then surely you should realize that you offend me by mentioning it,” said Ramborg, and Kristin had to return home without accomplishing her goal.
The next morning promised good weather. But when her sons came in for breakfast, Kristin told them they would have to bring in the hay without her. She had a mind to set off on a journey, and she might be gone several days.
“I’m thinking of going north to Dovre to find your father,” she said. “I intend to ask him to forget the discord that has existed between the two of us, to ask him when he will come home to us.”
Her sons blushed; they didn’t dare look up, but she could tell they were glad. She pulled Munan into her arms and bent her face down to look at him. “You probably don’t even remember your father, do you, little one?”
The boy nodded mutely with sparkling eyes. One by one the other sons cast a glance at their mother. Her face looked younger and more beautiful than they had seen it in many years.
She came out to the courtyard some time later, dressed for travel in her church attire: a black woolen gown trimmed with blue and silver at the neck and sleeves and a black, sleeveless hooded cloak since it was high summer. Naakkve and Gaute had saddled her horse as well as their own; they wanted to go with their mother. She didn’t voice any objections. But she said little to her sons as they rode north across Rost Gorge and up toward Dovre. For the most part she was silent and preoccupied; if she spoke to the young lads, it was about other things, not about where they were going.
When they had gone so far that they could look up the slope and glimpse the rooftops of Haugen against the horizon, she asked the boys to turn back.
“You know full well that your father and I have much to talk about, and we would rather discuss things while we’re alone.”
The brothers nodded; they said goodbye to their mother and turned their horses around.
The wind from the mountains blew cool and fresh against her hot cheeks as she came over the last sharp rise. The sun gilded the small gray buildings, which cast long shadows across the courtyard. The grain was just about to form ears up there; it stood so lovely in the small fields, glistening and swaying in the wind. Tall crimson fireweed in bloom fluttered from all the heaps of stones and up on the crags; here and there the hay had been piled up in stacks. But there wasn’t a trace of life on the farm—not even a dog to greet her or give warning.
Kristin unsaddled her horse and led it over to the water trough. She didn’t want to let it roam loose, so she took it over to the stable. The sun shone through a big hole in the roof; the sod hung in strips between the beams. And there was no sign that a horse had stood there for quite some time. Kristin tended to the animal and then went back out to the courtyard.
She looked in the cowshed. It was dark and desolate; she could tell by the smell that it must have stood empty for a long time.
Several animal hides were stretched out to dry on the wall of the house; a swarm of blue flies buzzed up into the air as she approached. Near the north gable, earth had been piled up and sod spread over it, so the timbers were completely hidden. He must have done that to keep in the heat.
She fully expected the house to be locked, but the door opened when she touched the handle. Erlend hadn’t even latched the door to his dwelling.
An unbearable stench met her as she stepped inside: the rank and pungent smell of hides and a stable. The first feeling that came over her as she stood in his house was a deep remorse and pity. This place seemed to her more like an animal’s lair.
Oh yes, yes, yes, Simon—you were right!
It was a small house, but it had been beautifully and carefully built. The fireplace even had a brick chimney so that it wouldn’t fill the room with smoke, as the hearths did in the high loft room back home. But when she tried to open the damper to air out the foul smell a bit, she saw that the chimney had been closed off with several flat rocks. The glass pane in the window facing the gallery was broken and stuffed with rags. The room had a wooden floor, but it was so filthy that the floorboards were barely visible. There were no cushions on the benches, but weapons, hides, and old clothing were strewn about everywhere. Scraps of food littered the dirty table. And the flies buzzed high and low.
She gave a start and stood there trembling, unable to breathe, her heart pounding. In that bed over there, in the bed where that
thing
had lain when she was here last . . . Something was lying there now, covered with a length of homespun. She wasn’t sure what she thought. . . .
Then she clenched her teeth and forced herself to go over and lift up the cloth. It was only Erlend’s armor, with his helmet and shield. They were lying on the bare boards of the bed, covered up.
She glanced at the other bed. That’s where they had found Bjørn and Aashild. That’s where Erlend now slept. No doubt she too would sleep there in the night.
How must it have been for him to live in this house, to sleep here? Once again all her other feelings were drowned in pity. She went over to the bed; it hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. The straw under the hide sheet had been pressed down until it was quite hard. There was nothing else but a few sheepskin blankets and a couple of pillows covered with homespun, so filthy that they stank. Dust and dirt scattered as she touched the bedding. Erlend’s bed was no better than that of a stableboy in a stall.
Erlend, who could never have enough splendor around him. Erlend, who would put on silk shirts, velvet, and fine furs if he could find the slightest excuse to do so; who resented having to let his children wear handwoven homespun on workdays; and who had never liked it when she nursed them herself or lent her maids a hand with the housework—like a leaseholder’s wife, he said.
Jesus, but he had brought this upon himself.
No, I won’t say a word. I will take back everything I said, Simon. You were right. He must not stay here . . . the father of my sons. I will offer him my hand and my lips and ask his forgiveness.
This isn’t easy, Simon. But you were right. She remembered his sharp gray eyes, his gaze just as steadfast, almost to the very end. In that wretched body which had begun to decay, his pure, bright spirit had shone from his eyes until his soul was drawn home, the way a blade is pulled back. She knew it was as Ramborg had said. He had loved her all these years.
Every single day in the months since his death she couldn’t help thinking about him, and now she saw that she had realized it even before Ramborg spoke. During this time she had been forced to mull over all the memories she had of him, for as far back as she had known Simon Darre. In all these years she had carried false memories of this man who had once been her betrothed; she had tampered with these memories the way a corrupt ruler tampers with the coin and mixes impure ore with the silver. When he released her and took upon himself the blame for the breach of promise, she told herself, and believed it, that Simon Andressøn had turned away from her with contempt as soon as he realized that her honor had been disgraced. She had forgotten that when he let her go, on that day in the nuns’ garden, he was certainly not thinking that she was no longer innocent or pure. Even back then he was willing to bear the shame for her inconstant and disobedient disposition; all he asked was that her father should be told that he was not the one who sought to break the agreement.
And there was something else she now knew. When he had learned the worst about her, he stood up to redeem for her a scrap of honor in the eyes of the world. If she could have given her heart to him then, Simon would have still taken her as his wife before the church door, and he would have tried to live with her so she would never feel that he concealed a memory of her shame.
But she still knew that she could never have loved him. She could never have loved Simon Andressøn. And yet . . . Everything that had enraged her about Erlend because he didn’t have particular traits—those were the traits that Simon did possess. But she was a pitiful woman who couldn’t help complaining.