“Life, you say, and honor. Here at home on my own farm I can surely protect my own daughter. And I don’t believe any maiden of good family and with an honorable and Christian upbringing would part so easily with her honor, or her life. No, this is the kind of thing people write ballads about. I think when a man or a maiden is tempted to do something like that, they make up a ballad about it, which helps them, but they refrain from actually doing it. . . .
“Even you,” he said, stopping in front of his wife. “There was another man you would rather have had, back when the two of us were married. What kind of situation do you think you’d have been in if your father had let you make up your own mind?”
Now it was Ragnfrid’s turn to grow pale as death.
“Jesus and Maria! Who told you . . .”
“Sigurd of Loptsgaard said something about it, right after we moved here to the valley,” said Lavrans. “But give me an answer to my question. Do you think you would have been happier if Ivar had given you to that man?”
His wife stood with her head bowed low.
“That man,” she said almost inaudibly, “didn’t want
me
.” A shudder seemed to pass through her body; she struck at the air with a clenched fist.
Then her husband gently placed his hands on her shoulders.
“Is
that
it?” he said, overcome, and a profound and sorrowful amazement filled his voice. “Is
that
it? For all these years . . . have you been harboring sorrow for
him
, Ragnfrid?”
She was shaking, but she did not answer.
“Ragnfrid?” he said in the same tone of voice. “But after Bjør-gulf died . . . and when you . . . when you wanted me to be toward you—in a way that I couldn’t . . . Were you thinking about the other man then?” he whispered, frightened and confused and tormented.
“How can you think such things?” she whispered, on the verge of tears.
Lavrans leaned his forehead against his wife’s and turned his head gently from side to side.
“I don’t know. You’re so strange, everything you said tonight . . . I was afraid, Ragnfrid. I don’t understand women very well.”
Ragnfrid smiled wanly and put her arms around his neck.
“God knows, Lavrans . . . I begged you because I loved you more than is good for a human soul. And I hated the other man so much that I knew it made the Devil happy.”
“I have loved you, dear wife, with all my heart,” said Lavrans tenderly, kissing her. “Do you know that? I thought we were so happy together—weren’t we, Ragnfrid?”
“You are the best husband,” she said with a little sob, pressing herself against him.
Ardently he embraced her.
“Tonight I want to sleep with you, Ragnfrid. And if you would be toward me the way you were in the old days, then I wouldn’t be . . . such a fool.”
His wife stiffened in his arms and pulled away a little.
“It’s fasting time,” she said quietly, her voice strangely hard.
“So it is.” Her husband chuckled. “You and I, Ragnfrid, we have observed all the fast days and have tried to live by God’s commandments in all things. And now it almost seems to me . . . that we might have been happier if we had had more to regret.”
“Don’t talk that way,” implored his wife in despair, holding his temples in her gaunt hands. “You know that I don’t want you to do anything except what you think is right.”
He pulled her to him once more. He gasped aloud as he said, “God help her. God help us all, my Ragnfrid.
“I’m tired,” he said, releasing her. “You should go to bed now too, shouldn’t you?”
He stood by the door, waiting as she put out the fire in the hearth, blew out the little iron lamp by the loom, and pinched the wick. Together they walked through the rain over to the main house.
Lavrans already had his foot on the stairs up to the loft when he turned back to his wife, who was still standing in the door to the entryway. He pulled her fervently to him one last time and kissed her in the darkness. Then he made the sign of the cross over his wife’s face and went upstairs.
Ragnfrid threw off her clothes and crept into bed. She lay still for a while, listening to her husband’s footsteps overhead in the loft room; then the bed creaked up there and silence fell. Ragnfrid crossed her thin arms over her withered breasts. Yes, God help her. What kind of woman was she? What kind of mother was she? She would soon be old. And yet she was just the same. She no longer begged the way she had when they were young, when she had threatened and raged against this man who closed himself off, shy and modest, when she grew ardent—who turned cold when she wanted to give him more than his husband’s right. That’s the way things were, and that’s how she had gotten with child, time after time—humiliated, furious with shame because she couldn’t be content with his lukewarm, married man’s love. Then, when she was pregnant and in need of kindness and tenderness, he had had so much to give. Whenever she was sick or tormented, her husband’s tireless, gentle concern for her fell like dew on her hot soul. He willingly took on all her troubles and bore them, but there was something of his own that he refused to share. She had loved her children so much that it felt as though her heart were cut out of her each time she lost one of them. God, God, what kind of woman was she, who in the midst of her suffering was capable of tasting that drop of sweetness when he took on her sorrow and laid it close to his own?
Kristin. She would gladly have walked through fire for her daughter; they wouldn’t believe it, neither Lavrans nor the child, but it was true. And yet she felt an anger toward her that was close to hatred right now. It was to forget his own sorrow over the child’s sorrow that Lavrans had wished tonight that he could have given in to his wife.
Ragnfrid didn’t dare get up, for she didn’t know whether Kristin might be lying awake over in the other bed. But she got soundlessly to her knees, and with her forehead leaning against the footboard of the bed, she tried to pray—for her daughter, for her husband, and for herself. As her body gradually grew stiff with the cold, she set out once more on one of her familiar night journeys, trying to break a path to a peaceful home for her heart.
CHAPTER 3
HAUGEN LAY HIGH up on the slope on the west side of the valley. On this moonlit night the whole world was white. Wave after wave of white mountains arched beneath the bluish, washed-out sky with few stars. Even the shadows cast across the snowy surfaces by rounded summits and crests seemed strangely light and airy, for the moon was sailing so high.
Down toward the valley the forest, laden white with snow and frost, stood enclosing the white slopes around the farms with intricate patterns of fences and buildings. But at the very bottom of the valley the shadows thickened into darkness.
Fru Aashild came out of the cowshed, pulled the door shut behind her, and paused for a moment in the snow. The whole world was white, and yet it was still more than three weeks until the beginning of Advent. The cold of Saint Clement’s Day would herald the real arrival of winter. Well, it was all part of a bad harvest year.
The old woman sighed heavily, standing outdoors in the desolation. Winter again, and cold and loneliness. Then she picked up the milk pail and the lantern and walked toward the house, gazing around once more.
Four black spots emerged from the forest halfway down the slope. Four men on horseback. There was the flash of a spear point in the moonlight. They were making their way across with difficulty. No one had come here since the snowfall. Were they heading this way?
Four armed men. It was unlikely that anyone with a legitimate reason for visiting her would travel in such company. She thought about the chest containing Bjørn’s and her valuables. Should she hide in the outbuilding?
She looked out across the wintry landscape and wilderness around her. Then she went into the house. The two old dogs that had been lying in front of the fireplace beat their tails against the floorboards. Bjørn had taken the younger dogs along with him to the mountains.
She blew at the coals in the hearth and laid on some wood. She filled the iron pot with snow and hung it over the fire. She strained some milk into a wooden cask and carried it to the storeroom near the entryway.
Aashild took off her filthy, undyed homespun dress that stank of sweat and the cowshed and put on a dark blue one. She exchanged the rough muslin kerchief for a white linen wimple which she draped around her head and throat. She took off her fleecy leather boots and put on silver-buckled shoes.
Then she set about putting the room in order. She smoothed out the pillows and furs on the bed where Bjørn had been sleeping during the day, wiped off the long table, and straightened the cushions on the benches.
Fru Aashild was standing in front of the fireplace, stirring the evening porridge, when the dogs gave warning. She heard the horses in the yard, the men coming into the gallery, and a spear striking the door. Aashild lifted the pot from the fire, straightened her dress, and, with the dogs at her side, stepped forward and opened the door.
Out in the moonlit courtyard three young men were holding four frost-covered horses. The man standing in the gallery shouted joyfully, “Aunt Aashild, is that you opening the door yourself? Then I must say
‘Ben trouvé!’
”
“Nephew—is that you? Then I must say the same! Come inside while I show your men to the stable.”
“Are you alone on the farm?” asked Erlend. He followed along as she showed the men where to go.
“Yes, Herr Bjørn and his man went out with the sleigh. They were going to see about bringing back some supplies we have stored on the mountain,” said Fru Aashild. “And I have no servant girl,” she added, laughing.
Soon afterward the four young men were seated on the outer bench with their backs against the table, watching the old woman quietly bustling about and putting out food for them. She spread a cloth on the table and set down a single lighted candle; she brought butter, cheese, a bear thigh, and a tall stack of fine, thin pieces of flatbread. She brought ale and mead from the cellar beneath the room, and then she served up the porridge in a beautiful wooden trencher and invited them to sit down and begin.
“It’s not much for you young fellows,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll have to cook another pot of porridge. Tomorrow you’ll have better fare—but I close up the cookhouse in the winter except when I’m baking or brewing. There are only a few of us here on the farm, and I’m starting to get old, my kinsman.”
Erlend laughed and shook his head. He noticed that his men showed the old woman more courtesy and respect than he had ever seen them show before.
“You’re a strange woman, Aunt. Mother was ten years younger than you, but the last time we visited, she looked older than you do tonight.”
“Yes, youth fled quickly enough from Magnhild,” said Fru Aashild softly. “Where are you coming from now?” she asked after a while.
“I’ve been spending some time on a farm up north in Lesja,” said Erlend. “I’ve rented lodgings there. I don’t know whether you can guess why I’ve come here to these parts.”
“You mean whether I know that you’ve asked for the hand of Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn’s daughter here in the south, at Jørundgaard?” asked Fru Aashild.
“Yes,” said Erlend. “I asked for her in proper and honorable fashion, and Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn stubbornly said no. Since Kristin and I refuse to let anything part us, I know of no other way than to take her away by force. I have . . . I’ve had a scout here in the village, and I know that her mother is supposed to be at Sundbu until some time after Saint Clement’s Day and that Lavrans is out at the headland with the other men to bring in the winter provisions for Sil.”
Fru Aashild sat in silence for a moment.
“You’d better give up that idea, Erlend,” she said. “I don’t think the maiden would follow you willingly, and you wouldn’t use force, would you?”
“Oh yes she will. We’ve talked about this many times. She’s begged me many times to carry her away.”
“Did Kristin . . . !” said Fru Aashild. Then she laughed. “That’s no reason for you to count on the maiden coming with you when you show up to take her at her word.”
“Oh yes it is,” said Erlend. “And now I was thinking, Aunt, that you should send an invitation to Jørundgaard for Kristin to come and visit you—for a week or so while her parents are away. Then we could reach Hamar before anyone notices that she’s gone,” he explained.
Fru Aashild replied, still laughing a little, “Did you also think about what we should say—Herr Bjørn and I—when Lavrans comes to call us to account for his daughter?”
“Yes,” said Erlend. “We were four armed men, and the maiden was willing.”
“I won’t help you with this,” said his aunt sternly. “Lavrans has been a faithful friend to us for many years. He and his wife are honorable people, and I won’t participate in betraying them or shaming her. Leave the maiden in peace, Erlend. It’s also about time that your kinsmen heard of other exploits from you than that you were slipping in and out of the country with stolen women.”
“We need to talk alone, Aunt,” said Erlend abruptly.
Fru Aashild took a candle, went into the storeroom, and shut the door behind them. She sat down on a cask of flour; Erlend stood with his hands stuck in his belt looking down at her.
“You can also tell Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn that Sira Jon in Gerdarud married us before we continued on to stay with Duchess Inge bjørg Haakonsdatter in Sweden.”
“I see,” said Fru Aashild. “Do you know whether the duchess will receive you when you arrive there?”
“I spoke with her in Tunsberg,” said Erlend. “She greeted me as her dear kinsman and thanked me for offering her my service, either here or in Sweden. And Munan has promised to give me letters to her.”
“Then you know,” said Fru Aashild, “that even if you can find a priest to marry you, Kristin will relinquish all right to property and inheritance from her father. And her children will not be legitimate heirs. It’s uncertain whether she will be considered your wife.”