In the west, above the ridges on the other side of the valley, the sky was a yellowish-red. The twilight of the spring evening was about to descend, clear and bright and mild. A few stars appeared, white in the light sky. A little wisp of fog drifted over the bare woods down by the lake, and there were brown patches where the fields lay open to the sun. The smell of earth and thawing snow filled the air.
The little house was at the westernmost edge of the courtyard, facing the hollow of the valley. Erlend went over and stood for a moment behind the wall. The timbers were still warm from the sun as he leaned against them. Oh, how she screamed. . . . He had once heard a heifer shrieking in the grip of a bear —that was up at their mountain pasture, and he was only a half-grown boy. He and Arnbjørn, the shepherd boy, were running south through the forest. He remembered the shaggy creature that stood up and became a bear with a red, fiery maw. The bear broke Arnbjørn’s spear in half with its paw. Then the servant threw Erlend’s spear, as he stood there paralyzed with terror. The heifer lay there still alive, but its udder and thigh had been gnawed away.
My Kristin, oh, my Kristin. Lord, for the sake of Your blessed Mother, have mercy. He rushed back to the church.
The maids came into the hall with the evening meal. They didn’t set up the table, but placed the food near the hearth. The men took bread and fish over to the benches, sat down in their places, not speaking and eating little; no one seemed to have an appetite. No one came to clear away the dishes after the meal, and none of the men got up to go to bed. They stayed sitting there, staring into the hearth fire, without talking.
Erlend had hidden himself in a corner near the bed; he couldn’t bear to have anyone see his face.
Master Gunnulf had lit a small oil lamp and set it on the arm of the high seat. He sat on the bench with a book in his hands, his lips moving gently, soundless and unceasing.
At one point Ulf Haldorssøn stood up, walked forward to the hearth, and picked up a piece of soft bread; he rummaged around among the pieces of firewood and selected one. Then he went over to the corner near the doorway where old man Aan was sitting. The two of them fiddled with the bread, hidden behind Ulf’s cape. Aan whittled and cut the piece of wood. The men cast a glance in their direction now and then. In a little while Ulf and Aan got up and left the hall.
Gunnulf watched them go, but said nothing. He took up his prayers once more.
Once a young boy toppled off the bench, falling to the floor in his sleep. He got up and looked around in bewilderment. Then he sighed softly and sat down again.
Ulf Haldorssøn and Aan quietly came back in and returned to the places where they had sat before. The men looked at them, but no one said a word.
Suddenly Erlend jumped up. He strode across the floor toward his servants. He was hollow-eyed, and his face was as gray as clay.
“Doesn’t anyone know what to do?” he asked. “You, Aan,” he whispered.
“It didn’t help,” replied Ulf, his voice equally quiet.
“It could be that she’s not meant to keep this child,” said Aan, wiping his nose. “Then neither sacrifices nor runes can help. It’s a shame for you, Erlend, that you should lose this good wife so soon.”
“Oh, don’t talk as if she were already dead,” implored Erlend, broken and in despair. He went back to his corner and threw himself down on the enclosed bed with his head near the footboard.
Later a man went outside and then came back in.
“The moon is up,” he said. “It will soon be morning.”
A few minutes later Fru Gunna came into the hall. She sank down onto the beggar’s bench near the door. Her gray hair was disheveled, her wimple had slid back onto her shoulders.
The men stood up and slowly moved over to her.
“One of you must come and hold her,” she said, weeping. “We have no more strength. You must go to her, Gunnulf. There’s no telling how this will end.”
Gunnulf stood up and tucked his prayer book inside his belt pouch.
“You must come too, Erlend,” said the woman.
A raw and broken howl met him in the doorway. Erlend stopped and shivered. He caught a glimpse of Kristin’s contorted, unrecognizable face among the sobbing women. She was on her knees, and they were supporting her.
Over by the door several servant women were kneeling at the benches; they were praying loudly and steadily. He threw himself down next to them and hid his head in his arms. She screamed and screamed, and each time he felt himself freeze with incredulous horror. It couldn’t possibly be like this.
He ventured a glance in her direction. Now Gunnulf was sitting on a stool in front of her and holding her under the arms. Fru Gunna was kneeling at her side, with her arms around Kristin’s waist, but Kristin was fighting her, frightened to death, and trying to push the other woman away.
“Oh no, oh no, let me go—I can’t do it—God, God, help me . . .”
“God will help you soon, Kristin,” said the priest each time. A woman held a basin of water, and after each wave of pain he would take a wet cloth and wipe the sick woman’s face—along the roots of her hair and in between her lips, from which saliva was dripping.
Then she would rest her head in Gunnulf’s arms and doze off for a moment, but the torment would instantly tear her out of her sleep again. And the priest continued to say, “Now, Kristin, you will have help soon.”
No one had any idea what time of night it was anymore. The dawn was already a gray glare in the smoke vent.
Then, after a long, mad howl of terror, everything fell silent. Erlend heard the women rushing around; he didn’t want to look up. Then he heard someone weeping loudly and he cringed again, not wanting to know.
Then Kristin shrieked once more—a piercing, wild cry of lament that didn’t sound like the insane, inhuman animal cries of before. Erlend leaped up.
Gunnulf was bending down and holding on to Kristin, who was still on her knees. She was staring with deathly horror at something that Fru Gunna was holding in a sheepskin. The raw and dark red shape looked like nothing more than the entrails from a slaughtered beast.
The priest pulled her close.
“Dear Kristin—you have given birth to as fine and handsome a son as any mother should thank God for—and he’s breathing!” said Gunnulf fiercely to the weeping women. “He’s breathing—God would not be so harsh as not to hear us.”
And as the priest spoke, it happened. Through the exhausted, confused mind of the mother tumbled, hazily recalled, the sight of a bud she had seen in the cloister garden—something from which red, crinkled wisps of silk emerged and spread out to become a flower.
The shapeless lump moved—it whimpered. It stretched out and became a very tiny, wine-red infant in human form. It had arms and legs and hands and feet with fully formed fingers and toes. It flailed and hissed a bit.
“So tiny, so tiny, so tiny he is,” she cried in a thin, broken voice and then burst into laughing sobs. The women around her began to laugh and wipe their tears, and Gunnulf gave Kristin into their arms.
“Roll him in a trencher so he can scream better,” said the priest as he followed the women carrying the newborn son over to the hearth.
When Kristin awoke from a long faint, she was lying in bed. Someone had removed the dreadful, sweat-soaked garments, and a feeling of warmth and healing was blessedly streaming through her body. They had placed small pouches of warm nettle porridge on her and wrapped her in hot blankets and furs.
Someone hushed her when she tried to speak. It was quite still in the room. But through the silence came a voice that she couldn’t quite recognize.
“Nikulaus, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost . . .”
There was the sound of water trickling.
Kristin propped herself up on her elbow to take a look. Over by the hearth stood a priest in white garb, and Ulf Haldorssøn was lifting a kicking, red, naked child out of the large brass basin; he handed him to the godmother, and then took the lit taper.
She had given birth to a child, and he was screaming so loudly that the priest’s words were almost drowned out. But she was so tired. She felt numb and wanted to sleep.
Then she heard Erlend’s voice; he spoke quickly and with alarm.
“His head—he has such a strange head.”
“He’s swollen up,” said the woman calmly. “And it’s no wonder—he had to fight hard for his life, this boy.”
Kristin shouted something. She felt as if she were suddenly awake, to the very depths of her heart. This was her son, and he had fought for his life, just as she had.
Gunnulf turned around at once and laughed; he seized the tiny white bundle from Fru Gunna’s lap and carried it over to the bed. He placed the boy in his mother’s arms. Weak with tenderness and joy she rubbed her face against the little bit of red, silky-soft face visible among the linen wrappings.
She glanced up at Erlend. Once before she had seen his face look this haggard and gray—she couldn’t remember when, her head felt so dizzy and strange, but she knew that it was good she had no memory of it. And it was good to see him standing there with his brother; the priest had his hand on Erlend’s shoulder. An immeasurable sense of peace and well-being came over her as she looked at the tall man wearing alb and stole; the round, lean face beneath the black fringe of hair was strong, but his smile was pleasant and kind.
Erlend drove his dagger deep into the wall timber behind the mother and child.
“That’s not necessary now,” said the priest with a laugh. “The boy has been baptized, after all.”
Kristin suddenly remembered something that Brother Edvin once said. A newly baptized child was just as holy as the holy angels in heaven. The sins of the parents were washed from the child, and he had not yet committed any sins of his own. Fearful and cautious, she kissed the little face.
Fru Gunna came over to them. She was worn out and exhausted and angry at the father, who had not had the sense to offer a single word of thanks to all the women who had helped. And the priest had taken the child from her and carried him over to his mother. She should have done that, both because she had delivered the woman and because she was the godmother of the boy.
“You haven’t yet greeted your son, Erlend, or held him in your arms,” she said crossly.
Erlend lifted the swaddled infant from the mother’s arms—for a moment he lay his face close.
“I don’t think I’m going to be properly fond of you, Naakkve, until I forget what terrible suffering you caused your mother,” he said, and then gave the boy back to Kristin.
“By all means give him the blame for that,” said the old woman, annoyed. Master Gunnulf laughed, and then Fru Gunna laughed with him. She wanted to take the child and put him in his cradle, but Kristin begged to keep him with her for a while. A moment later she fell asleep with her son beside her—vaguely noticing that Erlend touched her, cautiously, as if he were afraid to hurt her, and then she was sound asleep again.
CHAPTER 5
IN THE MORNING of the tenth day after the child’s birth, Master Gunnulf said to his brother when they were alone in the hall, “It’s about time now, Erlend, for you to send word to your wife’s kinsmen about how things are with her.”
“I don’t think there’s any haste with that,” replied Erlend. “I doubt they will be overly glad at Jørundgaard when they hear that there’s already a son here on the manor.”
“Don’t you think Kristin’s mother would have realized last fall that her daughter was unwell?” Gunnulf asked. “She must be worried by now.”
Erlend didn’t say a word in reply.
But later in the day, as Gunnulf was sitting in the little house and talking to Kristin, Erlend came in. He was wearing a fur cap on his head, a short, thick homespun coat, long pants, and furry boots. He bent down to his wife and patted her cheek.
“So, dear Kristin—do you have any greetings you wish to send to Jørundgaard? I’m heading there now to bring word of our son.”
Kristin blushed bright red. She looked both frightened and happy.
“It’s no more than your father would demand of me,” said Erlend somberly, “that I bring the news myself.”
Kristin lay in silence for a moment.
“Tell them at home,” she said softly, “that I have yearned every day since I left home to fall at Father’s and Mother’s feet to beg their forgiveness.”
A few minutes later, Erlend left. Kristin didn’t think to ask how he would travel. But Gunnulf went out to the courtyard with his brother. Next to the doorway of the main house stood Erlend’s skis and a staff with a spear point.
“You’re going to ski there?” asked Gunnulf. “Who’s going with you?”
“Nobody,” replied Erlend, laughing. “You should know best of all, Gunnulf, that it’s not easy for anyone to keep up with me on skis.”
“This seems reckless to me,” said the priest. “There are many wolves in the mountain forests this year, they say.”
Erlend merely laughed and began to strap on his skis. “I was thinking of heading up through the Gjeitskar pastures before it gets dark. It will be light for a long time yet. I can make it to Jørundgaard on the evening of the third day.”
“The path from Gjeitskar to the road is uncertain, and there are bad patches of fog there too. You know it’s unsafe up in the mountain pastures in the wintertime.”
“You can lend me your flint,” said Erlend in the same tone of voice, “in case I should need to throw mine away—at some elf woman if she demands such courtesies of me as would be unseemly for a married man. Listen, brother, I’m doing now what you said I should do—going to Kristin’s father to ask him to demand whatever penances from me that he finds reasonable. Surely you can allow me to decide this much, that I myself choose how I will travel.”
And with that Master Gunnulf had to be content. But he sternly commanded the servants to conceal from Kristin that Erlend had set off alone.