The nuns huddled together, whimpering faintly under their whispered prayers; they took several steps forward, stopped to listen, and moved forward again. They had almost reached the cemetery gate.
Then out of the darkness they heard the shrill cry of a child’s voice: “Hey, stop, you’re getting dirt on my bread!”
Kristin let go of the abbess’s arm and ran forward, through the churchyard gate. She pushed aside several shadowy men’s backs, stumbled on piles of shoveled dirt, and came to the edge of the open grave. She fell to her knees, bent down, and pulled out the little boy who was standing in the bottom, still complaining because there was earth on the good piece of
lefse
he had been given for sitting still in the pit.
The men were frightened out of their wits and ready to flee. Several were stomping in place; Kristin could see their feet in the light from the lantern on the ground. Then she thought that one of them seemed about to leap at her. At that moment the grayish-white habits of the nuns came into view, and the group of men stood there, in confusion.
Kristin still held the boy in her arms; he was crying for his
lefse.
She set him down, picked up the bread, and brushed it off.
“Here, eat it. Now your bread is as good as ever. And you men should go on home.” The quaver in her voice forced her to pause for a moment. “Go home and thank God that you were saved before you committed an act you might never be able to atone for.” Now she spoke the way a mistress speaks to her servants: kindly, but as if it would never occur to her that they might disobey. Without thinking, several of the men turned toward the gate.
Then one of them shouted, “Wait a minute, don’t you see it’s a matter of life itself, maybe even all we own? Now that these overstuffed monks’ whores have stuck their noses in it, we can’t let them leave here to talk about what went on!”
None of the men moved, but Sister Agata began shrieking and yelling, with sobs in her voice, “Oh, sweet Jesus, my bridegroom. I thank you for allowing us, your servant maidens, to die for the glory of your name!”
Fru Ragnhild shoved her sternly aside, staggered forward, and picked up the lantern from the ground. No one raised a hand to stop her. When she lifted it up, the gold cross on her breast glittered. She stood leaning on her staff and slowly shone the light down the line, giving a slight nod to each man as she looked at him. Then she gestured to Kristin that she wished her to speak.
Kristin said, “Go home in peace, dear brothers. Have faith that the worthy Mother and these good sisters will be as merciful as God and the honor of His Church will allow them to be. But move aside now so that we might take away this child, and then each of you should return to your own home.”
The men stood there, irresolute. Then one of them shouted in the greatest agitation, “Isn’t it better to sacrifice
one
than for all of us to perish? This boy here, who belongs to no one—”
“He belongs to Christ. Better for all of us to perish than for us to harm one of his children.”
But the man who had spoken first began yelling again. “Stop saying words like that or I’ll stuff them back into your mouth with this.” He waved his knife in the air. “Go home, go to bed, and ask your priest to comfort you, and keep silent about this—or I swear by the name of Satan that you’ll find out it was the worst thing you’ve ever done, trying to meddle in our affairs.”
“You don’t have to shout so loudly for the one you mentioned to hear you, Arntor. Be assured that he isn’t far away,” said Kristin calmly. Several of the men seemed to grow fearful and involuntarily crept closer to the abbess holding the lantern. “The worst thing, for both us and for you, would have been if we had stayed home while you went about building your home in the hottest Hell.”
But the man, Arntor, cursed and raged. Kristin knew that he hated the nuns because his father had mortgaged his farm to them in order to pay penalties for murder and blood guilt with his wife’s niece. Now he continued slinging out the Fiend’s most hateful lies about the sisters, accusing them of sins so black and unnatural that only the Devil himself could have put such thoughts into a man’s mind.
The poor nuns, terrified and weeping, bowed under the vicious words, but they stood stalwartly around the old abbess, and she held the lantern in the air, shining it at the man and gazing calmly at his face as he raged.
But anger flared up inside Kristin like the flames of a newly lit fire.
“Silence! Have you lost your senses? Or has God struck you blind? Should we dare breathe a word under His admonishment? We who have seen His wedded brides stand up to the sword that was drawn for the sake of the world’s sins? They kept vigil and prayed while we sinned and forgot our Creator every single day; they shut themselves inside the fortress of prayer while we roamed through the world, urged on by avarice for treasures, both great and small, for our own pleasure and our own anger. But they came out to us when the angel of death was sent among us; they gathered up the ill, the defenseless, and the poor. Twelve of our sisters have died from this sickness; all of you know this. Not one of them turned away, not one of them refused to pray for us all with sisterly love, until their tongues dried up in their mouths and their life blood ebbed out.”
“How beautifully you speak about yourself and those like you—”
“
I
am like
you,
” she screamed, beside herself. “I’m not one of the holy sisters. I am one of you.”
“How submissive you’ve become, woman,” said Arntor derisively. “I see that you’re afraid. When the end comes, you’ll be saying you’re like
her
, the mother of that boy.”
“God must be the judge of that; he died for her as well as for me, and he knows us both. Where is she? Where is Steinunn?”
“Go out to her hovel, and I’m sure you’ll find her there,” replied Arntor.
“Yes, someone should send word to the poor woman that we have her boy here,” said Kristin to the nuns. “We can go out to see her tomorrow.”
Arntor snickered, but another man shouted reluctantly, “No, no . . . She’s dead.” He told Kristin, “Fourteen days ago Bjarne went out to her place and bolted the door shut. She was lying there, close to death.”
“She was lying there?” Kristin gave the men a look of horror. “Didn’t anyone bring a priest to her? Is . . . the body . . . still lying there? And no one has had enough mercy to put her into consecrated ground? And her child you were going to . . .”
Seeing her horror seemed to make the men lose their wits from fear and shame; they began shouting all at once.
Above all the other voices, one man cried out, “Go and get her yourself, sister!”
“Yes! Which of you will go with me?”
No one answered.
Arntor shouted, “You’ll have to go alone.”
“Tomorrow, as soon as it’s light, we will go to get her, Arntor. I myself will pay for her resting place and a mass for her soul.”
“Go out there now. Go there tonight. Then I’ll believe that you’re all full of holiness and virtue.”
Arntor had thrust his face close to hers. Kristin raised her clenched fist up before his eyes; she uttered a loud sob of fury and terror.
Fru Ragnhild came over and stood at Kristin’s side; she struggled to speak. The nuns cried that the next day the dead woman would be brought to her grave.
But the Devil seemed to have robbed Arntor of all reason; he kept on screaming, “Go now. Then we’ll believe in the mercy of God.”
Kristin straightened up; pale and rigid, she said, “I will go.”
She lifted up the child and put him into Sister Torunn’s arms; she shoved the men aside and began running swiftly toward the gate, stumbling over hillocks and heaps of earth, as the wailing nuns raced after her and Sister Agata yelled that she would go with her. The abbess shook her fists to say that Kristin should stop, but she seemed completely beside herself.
At that moment there was a great commotion in the darkness over by the cemetery gate. In the next instant Sira Eiliv’s voice asked: “Who is holding a
ting
here?” He stepped into the glow of the lantern; they saw that he was carrying an axe in his hand. The nuns crowded around him; the men made haste to disappear into the darkness, but at the gate they were met by a man holding a drawn sword in his hand. A tumult ensued, with the clang of weapons, and Sira Eiliv called out: “Woe to any man who breaks the peace of the cemetery.” Kristin heard someone say it was the mighty smith from Credoveit. A moment later a tall, broad-shouldered man with white hair appeared at her side. It was Ulf Haldorssøn.
The priest handed him the axe—he had borrowed it from Ulf—and then took the boy, Tore, from the nun as he said, “It’s already past midnight. All the same, it would be best if you all came back to the church. I want to tend to these matters tonight.”
No one had any other thought but to comply. But when they reached the road, one of the pale gray figures slipped away from the flock of women and headed for the path leading into the woods. The priest shouted, ordering her to come with the others.
Kristin’s voice replied from the dark; she was already a good way down the path: “I can’t come, Sira Eiliv, until I’ve kept my promise.”
The priest and several others set off running. She was leaning against the fence when Sira Eiliv reached her. He raised the lantern. Her face was dreadfully white, but when he looked into her eyes, he realized that she had not gone mad, as he first had feared.
“Come home, Kristin,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll go with you, several men. I will go with you myself.”
“I’ve given my word. I can’t go home, Sira Eiliv, until I have done as I promised.”
The priest stood in silence for a moment. Then he said softly, “Perhaps you are right. Go then, sister, in God’s name.”
Strangely shadowlike, Kristin slipped into the darkness, which swallowed up her gray-clad figure.
When Ulf Haldorssøn appeared at her side, she said in a halting and vehement voice, “Go back. I didn’t ask you to come with me.”
Ulf laughed quietly. “Kristin, my mistress, haven’t you learned yet that things can happen without your request or orders? And I see you still don’t realize, no matter how many times you’ve witnessed it, that you can’t always manage alone everything that you’ve taken on. But I will help you to undertake this burden.”
There was a rushing sound in the pine forest all around them, and the roar of the waves out on the shore grew louder and then fainter, carried on the gusts of wind. They were walking in pitch-darkness.
After a while Ulf said, “I’ve accompanied you before, Kristin, when you went out at night. I thought I could be of some help if I came with you this time as well.”
She was breathing hard in the dark. Once she stumbled over something, and Ulf grabbed hold of her. Then he took her hand and led the way. After a moment he noticed that she was weeping as she walked along, and he asked her what she was crying about.
“I’m crying because I was thinking that you’ve always been so kind and loyal toward us, Ulf. What can I say? I know that it was mostly for Erlend’s sake, but I almost think, kinsman . . . you’ve always judged me less harshly than you had the right to, after what you first saw of my actions.”
“I have always been fond of you, Kristin—no less than I was of him.” He fell silent. Kristin saw that he was overcome by great emotion. Then he continued, “That’s why it was so hard for me as I sailed over here today. I came to bring you news that I find difficult to tell you. May God give you strength, Kristin.”
“Is it Skule?” asked Kristin in a low voice after a moment. “Is Skule dead?”
“No, Skule was fine when I spoke to him yesterday, and now few people are dying in town. But I received news from Tautra this morning—” He heard her give a deep sigh, but she did not speak.
After a moment he said, “It’s already been ten days since they died. But there are only four brothers left alive at the monastery, and the island is almost swept clean of people.”
They had now reached the edge of the woods. Over the flat expanse of land before them came the roaring din of the wind and sea. Up ahead in the darkness shone a patch of white—sea swells in a small inlet, with a steep pale sand dune above.
“That’s where she lives,” said Kristin. Ulf noticed that slow, fitful tremors passed over her. He gripped her hand hard.
“You’ve chosen to take this burden upon yourself. Keep that in mind, and don’t lose your wits now.”
Kristin said in an oddly thin, pure voice, which the wind seized and carried off, “Now Bjørgulf’s dream will come true. I trust in the mercy of God and the Virgin Mary.”
Ulf tried to see her face, but it was too dark. They walked across the tide flats; several places were so narrow beneath the cliff that a wave or two surged all the way up to their feet. They made their way over tangled seaweed and large rocks. After a while they glimpsed a bulky dark shape against the sand dune.
“Stay here,” said Ulf curtly. He went over and threw himself against the door. She heard him hack away at the osier latches and then throw himself at the door again. She saw it fall inward, and he stepped inside the black cave.
It was not a particularly stormy night. But it was so dark that Kristin could see nothing but the sea, alive with tiny glints of foam rolling forward and then sliding back at once, and the gleam of the waves lapping along the shore of the inlet. She could also make out the dark shape against the hillside. She felt as if she were standing in a cavern of night, and it was the hiding place of death. The crash of the breaking waves and the trickle of water ebbing between the tidal rocks merged with the flush of blood inside her, although her body seemed to shatter, the way a keg splinters into slats. She had a throbbing in her breast, as if it would burst from within. Her head felt hollow and empty, as if it were leaking, and the gusts of wind swirled around her, blowing right through her. In a strangely listless way she realized that now she must be suffering from the plague herself—but she seemed to be waiting for the darkness to be split by a light that would roar and drown out the crash of the sea, and then she would succumb to terror. She pulled up her hood, which had been blown back, drew the black nun’s cloak closer, and then stood there with her arms crossed underneath, but it didn’t occur to her to pray. Her soul had more than enough to do, working its way out of its collapsing house, and that was what made her breast ache as she breathed.