“Do you remember,” said Eline, “the night I gave birth to your son? You promised then that you would marry me when Sigurd died.”
Erlend pushed back his hair, wet with sweat.
“Yes, I remember,” he said.
“Will you keep your word now?” asked Eline.
“No,” said Erlend.
Eline Ormsdatter looked over at Kristin, smiled slightly, and nodded. Then she turned back to Erlend.
“That was ten years ago, Eline,” he said. “Since that day we have lived together year in and year out like two people condemned to Hell.”
“That’s not entirely true,” she said with the same smile.
“It’s been years since there was anything else,” said Erlend, exhausted. “It wouldn’t help the children. And you know . . . you know that I can hardly stand to be in the same room with you anymore,” he almost screamed.
“I didn’t notice that when you were home this summer,” said Eline with a telling smile. “We weren’t enemies then. Not all the time.”
“If you think that meant we were friends, go ahead and think so,” said Erlend wearily.
“Are you just going to stand here?” said Fru Aashild. She ladled some porridge into two large wooden trenchers and handed one of them to Kristin. The girl took it. “Take it over to the house. Here, Ulv, take the other one. Put them on the table; we must have supper no matter how things stand.”
Kristin and the servant went out with the dishes of food. Fru Aashild said to the others, “Come along, you two; it does no good for you to stand here barking at each other.”
“It’s best for Eline and me to talk this out with each other now,” said Erlend.
Fru Aashild said no more and left.
Over in the house Kristin put the food on the table and brought up ale from the cellar. She sat down on the outer bench, erect as a candlestick, her face calm, but she did not eat. Bjørn and Erlend’s men didn’t have much appetite either. Only Bjørn’s man and the servant who had come with Eline ate anything. Fru Aashild sat down and ate a little porridge. No one said a word.
Finally Eline Ormsdatter came in alone. Fru Aashild offered her a place between Kristin and herself; Eline sat down and ate something. Every once in a while the trace of a secret smile flitted across her face, and she would glance at Kristin.
After a while Fru Aashild went out to the cookhouse.
The fire had almost gone out. Erlend was sitting on the three-legged stool near the hearth, huddled up with his head on his arms. Fru Aashild went over and put her hand on his shoulder. “God forgive you, Erlend, for the way you have handled things.”
Erlend looked up. His face was tear-streaked with misery.
“She’s with child,” he said and closed his eyes.
Fru Aashild’s face flamed up; she gripped his shoulder hard. “Whose is it?” she asked bluntly and with contempt.
“Well, it isn’t mine,” said Erlend dully. “But you probably won’t believe me. No one will. . . .” He collapsed once more.
Fru Aashild sat down in front of him at the edge of the hearth.
“You must try to pull yourself together, Erlend. It’s not so easy to believe you in this matter. Do you swear that it’s not yours?”
Erlend lifted his haggard face. “As truly as I need God’s mercy. As truly as I hope that . . . that God has comforted Mother in Heaven for all that she had to endure down here. I have not touched Eline since the first time I saw Kristin!” He shouted so that Fru Aashild had to hush him.
“Then I don’t see that this is such a misfortune. You must find out who the father is and pay him to marry her.”
“I think it’s Gissur Arnfinsøn, my foreman at Husaby,” said Erlend wearily. “We talked about it last fall—and since then too. Sigurd’s death has been expected for some time. Gissur was willing to marry her when she became a widow if I would give her a sufficient dowry.”
“I see,” said Fru Aashild.
Erlend went on. “She swears that she won’t have him. She will name me as the father. If I swear that I’m not . . . do you think anyone will believe that I’m not swearing falsely?”
“You’ll have to dissuade her,” said Fru Aashild. “There’s no other way out. You must go home with her to Husaby tomorrow. And then you must stand firm and arrange this marriage between your foreman and Eline.”
“You’re right,” said Erlend. Then he bent forward and sobbed aloud.
“Don’t you see, Aunt . . . What do you think Kristin will believe?”
That night Erlend slept in the cookhouse with the servants. In the house Kristin slept with Fru Aashild in her bed, and Eline Ormsdatter slept in the other one. Bjørn went out to sleep in the stable.
The next morning Kristin followed Fru Aashild out to the cowshed. While Fru Aashild went to the cookhouse to make breakfast, Kristin carried the milk up to the house.
A candle was burning on the table. Eline was dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed. Kristin greeted her quietly, got out a basin, and strained the milk.
“Would you give me some milk?” asked Eline. Kristin took a wooden ladle and handed it to the woman. She drank greedily and looked over the rim at Kristin.
“So you’re Kristin Lavransdatter, the one who has robbed me of Erlend’s affections,” she said, handing the ladle back.
“You’re the one who should know whether there were any affections to rob,” replied the young maiden.
Eline bit her lip. “What will you do,” she said, “if Erlend grows tired of you and one day offers to marry you to his servant? Would you obey Erlend in that too?”
Kristin didn’t answer.
Then the other woman laughed and said, “You obey him in everything, I imagine. What do you think, Kristin—shall we throw the dice for our man, we two mistresses of Erlend Nikulaussøn?” When she received no reply, she laughed again and said, “Are you so simple-minded that you don’t deny you’re a kept woman?”
“To you I don’t feel like lying,” said Kristin.
“It wouldn’t do you much good anyway,” replied Eline in the same tone of voice. “I know that boy. I can imagine that he probably rushed at you like a black grouse the second time you were together. And it’s too bad for you, pretty child that you are.”
Kristin’s cheeks grew pale. Sick with loathing she said quietly, “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Do you think he’ll treat you any better than he did me?” Eline continued.
Then Kristin replied sharply, “I won’t complain about Erlend, no matter what he does. I was the one who took the wrong path, and I won’t moan and feel sorry for myself even if it leads me out over the scree.”
Eline was silent for a moment. Then she said, flushed and uncertain, “I was a maiden too, when he took me, Kristin—even though I had been the old man’s wife for seven years. But you probably can’t understand what a wretched life that was.”
Kristin started to tremble violently. Eline gazed at her. Then she took a little horn out of her traveling box which stood at her side on the step of the bed.
She broke the seal and said quietly, “You are young and I am old, Kristin. I know it’s useless for me to fight against you—now it’s your turn. Will you drink with me, Kristin?”
Kristin didn’t move. Then the other woman put the horn to her lips. Kristin noticed that she did not drink.
Eline said, “You might at least do me the honor of drinking to me—and promise that you won’t be a harsh stepmother to my children.”
Kristin took the horn. At that moment Erlend opened the door. He stood there, looking from one woman to the other.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Then Kristin replied, and her voice was shrill and wild. “We’re drinking to each other, your two mistresses.”
He grabbed her wrist and snatched away the horn. “Be quiet,” he said harshly. “You shall not drink with her.”
“Why not?” said Kristin in the same voice as before. “She was jus
t as pure as I was when you seduced her.”
“She’s said that so often that she believes it herself,” replied Erlend. “Do you remember when you made me go to Sigurd with that lie, Eline, and he produced witnesses that he had caught you with another man?”
Pale with disgust, Kristin turned away. Eline’s face had flushed dark red. Then she said spitefully, “Even so, that girl isn’t going to turn into a leper if she drinks with me.”
Furious, Erlend turned toward Eline—and then his face suddenly grew rigid and the man gasped in horror.
“Jesus!” he said almost inaudibly. He grabbed Eline by the arm.
“Then drink to her,” he said, his voice harsh and quavering. “Drink first, and then she’ll drink with you.”
Eline wrenched herself away with a gasp. She fled backward across the room, the man after her.
“Drink,” he said. He pulled his dagger out of his belt and followed her with it in his hand. “Taste the drink you’ve made for Kristin.” He grabbed Eline by the arm, dragged her over to the table, and forced her to bend toward the horn.
Eline screamed once and hid her face in her arm.
Erlend released her and stood there shaking.
“It was a hell with Sigurd,” shrieked Eline. “You . . . you promised—but you’ve treated me even worse, Erlend!”
Then Kristin stepped forward and grabbed the horn. “One of us must drink—you can’t keep both of us.”
Erlend took the horn from her and flung her across the room so she fell to the floor over by Fru Aashild’s bed. He forced the drink to Eline Ormsdatter’s mouth. Standing with one knee on the bench next to her and his hand on her head, he tried to force her to drink.
She fumbled under his arm, snatched the dagger from the table, and stabbed at the man. The blow didn’t seem to cut much but his clothes. Then she turned the point on herself, and immediately fell sideways into his arms.
Kristin got up and came over to them. Erlend was holding Eline; her head hung back over his arm. The death rattle came almost at once; she had blood in her throat and it was running out of her mouth. She spat out a great quantity and said, “I had intended . . . that drink . . . for you . . . for all the times . . . you betrayed me.”
“Go get Aunt Aashild,” said Erlend in a low voice. Kristin stood motionless.
“She’s dying,” said Erlend.
“Then she’ll fare better than we will,” replied Kristin. Erlend looked at her, and the despair in his eyes softened her. She left the room.
“What is it?” asked Fru Aashild when Kristin called her away from the cookhouse.
“We’ve killed Eline Ormsdatter,” said Kristin. “She’s dying.”
Fru Aashild set off at a run. But Eline breathed her last as she stepped through the door.
Fru Aashild had laid out the dead woman on the bench; she wiped the blood from her face and covered it with a linen cloth. Erlend stood leaning against the wall behind the body.
“Do you realize,” said Fru Aashild, “that this was the worst thing that could have happened?”
She had put branches and kindling into the fireplace; now she placed the horn in the middle and blew on it till it flared up.
“Can you trust your men?” she asked.
“Ulv and Haftor, I think I can. I don’t know Jon very well, or the man who came with Eline.”
“You realize,” said Fru Aashild, “that if it comes out that you and Kristin were here together, and that you were alone with Eline when she died, then you might as well have let Kristin drink Eline’s brew. And if there’s any talk of poison, people will remember what I have been accused of in the past. Did she have any kinsmen or friends?”
“No,” said Erlend in a subdued voice. “She had no one but me.”
“Even so,” said Fru Aashild, “it’ll be difficult to cover this up and remove the body without the deepest suspicion falling on you.”
“She must be buried in consecrated ground,” said Erlend, “if it costs me Husaby to do it. What do you say, Kristin?”
Kristin nodded.
Fru Aashild sat in silence. The more she thought about it, the more impossible it seemed to find a solution. In the cookhouse sat four men; could Erlend bribe all of them to keep quiet? Could any of them, could Eline’s man, be paid to leave the country? That would always be risky. And at Jørundgaard they knew that Kristin had been here. If Lavrans found out about it, she couldn’t imagine what he might do. They would have to take the body away. The mountain road to the west was unthinkable now; there was the road to Raumsdal or across the mountain to Nidaros or south down the valley. And if the truth came out, it would never be believed—even if it were accepted.
“I have to discuss this with Bjørn,” she said, standing up and going out.
Bjørn Gunnarsøn listened to his wife’s account without changing expression and without taking his eyes off Erlend.
“Bjørn,” said Aashild desperately, “someone has to swear that he saw her lay hands on herself.”
The life slowly darkened in Bjørn’s eyes; he looked at his wife, and his mouth twisted into a crooked smile.
“You mean that someone should be me?”
Fru Aashild clasped her hands and raised them toward him. “Bjørn, you know what it means for these two. . . .”
“And you think it’s all over for me anyway?” he asked slowly. “Or do you think there’s enough left of the man I once was that I’ll dare to swear falsely to save this boy from going under? I, who was dragged under myself . . . all those years ago. Dragged under, I say,” he repeated.
“You say this because I’m old now,” whispered Aashild.
Kristin burst into sobs that cut through the room. Rigid and silent, she had been sitting in the corner near Aashild’s bed. Now she began to weep out loud. It was as if Fru Aashild’s voice had torn open her heart. This voice, heavy with memories of the sweetness of love, seemed to make Kristin fully realize for the first time what the love between her and Erlend had been. The memory of burning, passionate happiness washed over everything else, washed away the cruel despairing hatred from the night before. She felt only her love and her will to survive.
All three of them looked at her. Then Herr Bjørn went over, put his hand under her chin, and gazed down at her. “Kristin, do you say that she did it herself?”
“Every word you’ve heard is true,” said Kristin firmly. “We threatened her until she did it.”
“She had planned a worse fate for Kristin,” said Aashild.
Herr Bjørn let go of the girl. He went over to the body, lifted it onto the bed where Eline had slept the night before, and laid it close to the wall with the blankets pulled over it.
“You must send Jon and the man you don’t know back to Husaby with the message that Eline will accompany you to the south. Have them ride off around noon. Tell them that the women are asleep in here; they’ll have to eat in the cookhouse. Then speak to Ulv and Haftor. Has she threatened to do this before? Can you bring witnesses forward if anyone asks about this?”
“Everyone who has been at Husaby during the last years we lived together,” said Erlend wearily, “can testify that she threatened to take her own life—and sometimes mine too—whenever I talked about leaving her.”
Bjørn laughed harshly. “I thought so. Tonight we’ll dress her in traveling clothes and put her in the sleigh. You’ll have to sit next to her—”
Erlend swayed where he stood. “I can’t do that.”
“God only knows how much of a man there will be left of you when you take stock of yourself twenty years from now,” said Bjørn. “Do you think you can drive the sleigh, then? I’ll sit next to her. We’ll have to travel by night and on back roads until we reach Fron. In this cold no one will know how long she’s been dead. We’ll drive to the monks’ hostel at Roaldstad. There you and I will testify that the two of you came to words in the back of the sleigh. It’s well attested that you haven’t wanted to live with her since the ban was lifted from yo
u and that you have asked for the hand of a maiden who is your equal. Ulv and Haftor must keep their distance during the whole journey so that they can swear, if necessary, that she was alive the last time they saw her. You can get them to do that, can’t you? At the monks’ hostel you can have her placed in a casket; and then you must negotiate with the priests for peace in the grave for her and peace of the soul for yourself.
“I know it’s not pleasant, but you haven’t handled matters so that it could be pleasant. Don’t stand there like a child bride who’s about to swoon away. God help you, my boy—I suppose you’ve never tried feeling the edge of a knife at your throat, have you?”
A biting wind was coming down off the mountain. Snow was blowing, fine and silvery, from the drifts up toward the moon-blue sky as the men prepared to set off.
Two horses were hitched up, one in front of the other. Erlend sat in the front of the sleigh. Kristin went over to him.
“This time, Erlend, you must take the trouble to send me word about how the journey goes and where you end up.”
He squeezed her hand so hard she thought the blood would burst from her fingernails.
“Do you still dare stand by me, Kristin?”
“Yes, I still do,” she said, and after a moment, “We both bear the blame for this deed. I urged you on because I wanted her dead.”
Fru Aashild and Kristin stood and watched them go. The sleigh dipped down and rose up over the drifts. It vanished in a hollow, to appear farther down on a white meadow. But then the men passed into the shadow of a slope and disappeared for good.
The two women were sitting in front of the fireplace, their backs to the empty bed; Fru Aashild had taken out the bedclothes and straw. They both knew that it was standing there empty, gaping at them.
“Do you want us to sleep in the cookhouse tonight?” Fru Aashild asked.
“It makes no difference where we sleep,” said Kristin.
Fru Aashild went outside to look at the weather.
“No, it doesn’t matter whether a storm blows in or a thaw comes; they won’t get far before the truth comes out,” said Kristin.
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