Death and horror and suffering seemed to push people into a world without time. No more than a few weeks had passed, if the days were to be counted, and yet it already seemed as if the world that had existed before the plague and death began wandering naked through the land had disappeared from everyone’s memory—the way the coastline sinks away when a ship heads out to sea on a rushing wind. It was as if no living soul dared hold on to the memory that life and the progression of workdays had once seemed close, while death was far away; nor was anyone capable of imagining that things might be that way again, if all human beings did not perish. But “we are all going to die,” said the men who brought their motherless children to the convent. Some of them spoke with dull or harsh voices; some of them wept and moaned. They said the same thing when they came to get the priest for the dying; they said it again when they carried the bodies to the parish church at the foot of the hill and to the cemetery at the convent church. Often they had to dig the graves themselves. Sira Eiliv had sent the men who were left among the lay servants out to the convent fields to bring in the grain, and wherever he went in the parish, he urged everyone to harvest the crops and help each other tend to the livestock so that those who remained wouldn’t suffer from hunger after the scourge had spent its fury.
The nuns at the convent met the first trials with a sense of desperate composure. They moved into the convent hall for good, kept a fire going day and night in the big brick fireplace, and ate and slept in there. Sira Eiliv advised everyone to keep great fires burning in the courtyards and in all the houses, but the sisters were afraid of fire. The oldest sisters had told them so often about the blaze thirty years before. Mealtimes and work regimens were no longer adhered to, and the duties of the various sisters were no longer kept separate as children began to arrive, asking for food and help. The sick were brought inside; they were mostly wealthy people who could pay for gravesites and masses for their souls in the convent, as well as those who were destitute and alone, who had no help at home. Those whose circumstances were somewhere in between stayed in their own beds and died at home. On some farms every single person perished. But in spite of everything, the nuns had still managed to keep to the schedule of prayers.
The first of the nuns to fall ill was Sister Inga, a woman Kristin’s age, almost fifty, and yet she was so terrified of death that it was a horror to see and hear. The chills came over her in church during mass; shaking, her teeth chattering, she crawled on her hands and knees as she begged and implored God and the Virgin Mary to spare her life. A moment later she lay prostrate with a burning fever, in agony, with blood seeping out of her skin. Kristin’s heart was filled with dread; no doubt she would be just as pitifully frightened when her turn came. It was not just the fact that death was certain, but it was the horrifying fear that accompanied death from the plague.
Then Fru Ragnhild herself fell ill. Kristin had sometimes wondered how this woman had come to be chosen for the high position of abbess. She was a quiet, slightly morose old woman, uneducated and apparently without great spiritual gifts. And yet when death placed its hand on her, she showed that she was a true bride of Christ. In her the illness erupted in boils. She refused to allow her spiritual daughters to unclothe her old body, but the swelling finally grew as big as an apple under one arm, and she had boils under her chin; they turned hard and blood-red, becoming black in the end. She endured unbearable agony from them and burned with fever, but each time her mind would clear, she lay in bed like an example of holy patience—sighing to God, asking forgiveness for her sins, and uttering beautiful, fervent prayers for her convent and her daughters, for all those who were sick and sorrowful, and for the peace of everyone’s soul, who would now have to leave this life. Even Sira Eiliv wept after he had given her the viaticum; his steadfast and tireless zeal in the midst of all the misery had otherwise been a thing of wonder. Fru Ragnhild had already surrendered her soul into God’s hands many times and prayed that He would take the nuns under His protection when the boils on her body began to split open. But this turned out to be a turn toward life, and later others experienced the same thing: Those who were stricken with boils gradually recovered, while those stricken with bloody vomiting all died.
Because of the example of the abbess and because they had witnessed a plague victim who did not die, the nuns seemed to find new courage. They now had to do the milking and chores in the cowshed themselves; they cooked their own food, and they brought back juniper and fresh evergreen branches for the cleansing smoke. Everyone did whatever task needed doing. They nursed the sick as best they could and handed out healing remedies: their supplies of theriac and calamus root were gone, but they doled out ginger, pepper, saffron, and vinegar against the sickness, along with milk and food. When the bread ran out, they baked at night; when the spices were gone, people had to chew on juniper berries and pine needles against the sickness. One by one the sisters succumbed and died. Night and day the bells for the dead rang from the convent church and from the parish church in the heavy air, for the unnatural fog hung on; there seemed to be a secret bond between the haze and the pestilence. Sometimes it became a frosty mist, drizzling down needles of ice and half-frozen sleet, covering the fields with rime. Then mild weather would set in, and the fog returned. People took it as an evil omen that all the seabirds had suddenly disappeared. They usually flocked by the thousands along the stream that flows through the countryside from the fjord and resembles a river in the low stretches of meadow but widens into a lake with salt water north of Rein Convent. In their place came ravens in unheard-of numbers. On every stone along the water sat the black birds in the fog, uttering their hideous shrill cries, while flocks of crows more numerous than anyone had ever seen before settled in all the forests and groves and flew with loathsome shrieks over the wretched land.
Once in a while Kristin would think of her own family—her sons, who were spread so far and wide, the grandchildren she would never see; little Erlend’s golden neck would hover before her eyes. But they seemed to grow distant and faded. Now it almost seemed as if all people were equally close and distant to each other in this time of great need. And she had her hands full all day long; it now served her well that she was used to all sorts of work. While she sat and did the milking, starving little children whom she had never seen before would suddenly appear beside her, and she seldom even thought to ask where they were from or how things were back home. She gave them food and took them into the chapter hall or some other room where a fire was lit or tucked them into bed in the dormitory.
With a feeling of wonder she noticed that in this time of great misfortune, when it was more necessary than ever for everyone to attend to their prayers with vigilance, she never had time to collect her thoughts to pray. She would sink to her knees in front of the tabernacle in the church whenever she had a free moment, but she could manage nothing more than wordless sighs and dully murmured
Pater nosters
and
Ave Marias
. She wasn’t aware of it herself, but the nunlike demeanor and manners she had assumed over the past two years swiftly began to fall away; she again became like the mistress she had been in the past, as the flock of nuns diminished, the routines of the convent were abandoned, and the abbess still lay in bed, weak and with her tongue partially paralyzed. And the work mounted for the few who were left to tend to everything.
One day she happened to hear that Skule was still in Nidaros. The members of his crew had either died or fled, and he hadn’t been able to find new men. He was well, but he had cast himself into a wild life, just as many young people, out of despair, had done. They said that whoever was afraid would be sure to die, and so they blunted their fear with carousing and drinking, playing cards, dancing, and carrying on with women. Even the wives of honorable townsmen and young daughters from the best of families ran off from their homes during these evil times. In the company of wanton women they would revel in the alehouses and taverns among the dissolute men. God forgive them, thought Kristin, but she felt as if her heart was too weary to grieve over these things properly.
And apparently even in the villages there was plenty of sin and depravity. They heard little about it at the convent because there they had no time to waste on such talk. But Sira Eiliv, who went everywhere, ceaselessly and tirelessly tending to the sick and dying, told Kristin one day that the agony of people’s souls was worse than that of their bodies.
Then one evening they were sitting around the fireplace in the convent hall, the little group of people left alive at Rein Convent. Huddled around the fire were four nuns and two lay sisters, an old beggar and a half-grown boy, two women who received alms from the convent, and several children. On the high seat bench, above which a large crucifix could be glimpsed in the dusk hanging on the light-colored wall, lay the abbess with Sister Kristin and Sister Turid sitting at her head and feet.
It was nine days since the last death had occurred among the sisters and five days since anyone had died in the convent or the nearest houses. The plague seemed to be waning throughout the countryside as well, said Sira Eiliv. For the first time in three months a glimmer of peace and security and comfort fell over the silent, weary people sitting there. Old Sister Torunn Marta let her rosary sink into her lap and took the hand of the little girl standing at her knee.
“What do you think she could mean? Well, child, now we seem to be seeing that Mary, the Mother of God, never withdraws her mercy from her children for long.”
“No, it’s not the Virgin Mary, Sister Torunn. It’s Hel. She’ll leave the parish, taking her rakes and brooms, when they sacrifice an innocent man at the gate of the cemetery. By tomorrow she’ll be far away.”
“What can she mean?” asked the nun, again uneasy. “Shame on you, Magnhild, for spreading such loathsome, heathen gossip. You deserve to taste the rod for that. . . .”
“Tell us what you mean, Magnhild. Don’t be afraid.” Sister Kristin was standing behind them; her voice sounded strained. She had suddenly remembered that in her youth she had heard Fru Aashild talk about dreadful, unmentionably sinful measures which the Devil tempted desperate men to try.
The children had been down in the grove near the parish church at twilight, and some of the boys had wandered over to a sod hut that stood there; they had spied on several men who were making plans. It seemed that these men had captured a small boy named Tore, the son of Steinunn from down by the shore. That night they were going to sacrifice him to Hel, the plague giantess. The children began talking eagerly, proud to have sparked the attention of the grown-ups. It didn’t seem to occur to them to feel pity for this poor Tore; he was a sort of outcast who roamed the countryside, begging, but never came near the convent. When Sira Eiliv or any of the abbess’s envoys went looking for his mother, she would flee or refuse to talk to them, no matter whether they spoke to her kindly or sternly. She had spent ten years living in the alleyways of Nidaros, but then she acquired a sickness that disfigured her so badly that finally she could no longer earn a living in the manner she had before. And so she had come to the parish and lived in a hovel out on the shore. Occasionally a beggar or the like would move in and share her hut for a time. Who the father of her boy might be, she herself didn’t know.
“We must go out there,” said Kristin. “We can’t just sit here while Christian souls sell themselves to the Devil right on our doorstep.”
The nuns whimpered. They were the worst men of the parish, coarse, ungodly fellows, and surely the latest calamity and despair must have turned them into regular demons. If only Sira Eiliv was home, they lamented. Ever since the onset of the plague, the priest’s position had changed, and the sisters expected him to do everything.
Kristin wrung her hands. “If I have to go alone . . . Mother, may I have your permission to go out there myself?”
The abbess gripped her arm so tightly that she gave a little cry. The old woman, who was unable to speak, struggled to her feet; by gesturing she made them understand that she wanted to be dressed to go out. She demanded to be given the gold cross, the symbol of her office, and her staff. Then she held on to Kristin’s arm since she was the youngest and strongest of the women. All the nuns stood up and followed.
Passing through the door of the little room between the chapter hall and the church choir, they stepped out into the raw, cold winter night. Fru Ragnhild began shivering, and her teeth chattered. She still sweated incessantly from the illness, and the sores left by the plague boils were not fully healed; walking caused her great pain. But she snarled angrily and shook her head when the sisters implored her to turn around. She gripped Kristin’s arm harder, and shaking with cold, she trudged ahead of them through the garden. As their eyes grew used to the dark, the women glimpsed light patches of withered leaves scattered beneath their feet and a pale scrap of cloudy sky above the bare crowns of the trees. Drops of cold water trickled down, and gusts of wind murmured faintly. Sluggish and heavy, the drone of the fjord sighed against the shore beyond the cliffs.
At the bottom of the garden was a small gate; the sisters shuddered at the shriek of the rusted iron bolt as Kristin struggled to shove it open. Then they crept onward through the grove, down toward the parish church. They caught a glimpse of the tarred timber shape, darker against the night, and they saw the roof and ridge turret with its animal-head carvings and cross on the top against the pale gleam of the clouds above the slopes on the other side of the fjord.
Yes, there were people in the cemetery; they sensed their presence rather than saw or heard anything. Now a low, faint gleam of light appeared, as if from a lantern standing on the ground. Something moved in the darkness nearby.