He who had been so convinced on that day when he was given Kristin to have and to hold before God and man that everything bad would be driven from his life so completely that he would forget it had ever existed.
He must be the kind of man who couldn’t tolerate anything truly good or pure to be near him. Because Kristin . . . Ever since she had emerged from the sin and impurity into which he had led her, she had been like an angel from God’s heaven. Kind and faithful, gentle, capable, deserving of respect. She had returned honor to Husaby. She had become once again the person she had been on that summer night, when the pure young maiden had crept under his cape there in the convent garden; and he had thought when he felt that slender young body against his side: The Devil himself wouldn’t dare harm this child or cause her sorrow.
Tears streamed down Erlend’s face.
It must be true, what the priests had told him, that sin ate up a man’s soul like rust—for he could find no rest or peace here with his sweet beloved. He longed to be away from her and everything that was hers.
He had wept himself almost to sleep when he sensed that she was up and pacing the floor, quietly humming and singing.
Erlend sprang out of bed, stumbled in the dark over a child’s shoes on the floor, and went right over to his wife and took Gaute from her. The boy started screaming, and Kristin said crossly, “I had almost lulled him to sleep!”
The father shook the crying child, gave him a few slaps on the bottom—and when the boy shrieked even louder, he hushed him so harshly that Gaute fell silent with fear. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before.
“It’s time for you to use what good sense you have, Kristin.” His fury robbed him of all power as he stood there, startled and naked and freezing in the pitch-dark room with a sobbing child in his arms. “There has to be an end to this, I tell you—what do you have nursemaids for? The children will sleep with them; you can’t keep on this way.”
“Won’t you allow me to have my children with me during the time I have left?” replied his wife, her voice low and plaintive.
Erlend refused to acknowledge what she meant.
“During the time you have left, you need rest. Go to bed now, Kristin,” he implored her more calmly.
He took Gaute with him to bed. He hummed to him for a while, and in the dark he found his belt lying on the step of the bed. The little silver medallions adorning it clinked and clattered as the boy played with the belt.
“The dagger isn’t in it, is it?” asked Kristin anxiously from her bed, and Gaute began howling again when he heard his mother’s voice. Erlend hushed him and made the belt clink—at last the child stopped crying and grew calm.
Perhaps it would be unwise to wish for this poor little boy to grow to adulthood—it was not certain that Gaute possessed all his wits.
Oh no, oh no. Blessed Virgin Mary, he didn’t mean that. He didn’t wish death for his own little son. No, no. Erlend held the child close in his arms and pressed his face to the soft, fine hair.
Their handsome sons. But he grew so weary of listening to them all day long; of stumbling over them whenever he came home. He couldn’t understand how three small children could be everywhere at once on such a large estate. But he remembered how furious he had been with Eline because she showed no interest in their children. He must be an unreasonable man, for he was also resentful that he no longer saw Kristin without children clinging to her.
When he held his lawfully born sons in his arms he never felt the same way he had when they gave him Orm to hold for the first time. Oh Orm, Orm, my son. He had been so tired of Eline by then—sick and tired of her stubbornness and her vehemence and her uncontrollable ardor. He had seen that she was too old for him. And he had begun to realize what this madness would eventually cost him. But he hadn’t felt that he could send her away—not after she had given up everything for his sake. The boy’s birth had given him a reason to tolerate the mother, it seemed to him. He had been so young when he became Orm’s father, and he hadn’t fully understood the child’s position, since the mother was another man’s lawful wife.
Sobs overcame him once more, and he held Gaute tighter. Orm—he had never loved any of his children the way he loved that boy; he missed him terribly, and he bitterly regretted every harsh and impatient word he had ever said to him. Orm couldn’t have known how much his father loved him. Bitterness and despair had gradually seized Erlend as it became abundantly clear that Orm would never be considered his lawful son, that he would never be able to inherit his father’s coat of arms. And Erlend felt jealousy too because he saw his son draw closer to his stepmother than to him, and it seemed to him that Kristin’s calm, gentle kindness toward the boy was a form of reproach.
Then came those days and nights that Erlend could not bear to remember. Orm lay on his bier in the loft, and the women came to tell him that they didn’t think Kristin would live. They dug a grave for Orm over in the church, and they asked whether Kristin should be buried there too. Or should she be taken instead to Saint Greg or’s Church to be laid to rest beside his parents?
Oh . . . He held his breath in fear. Behind him lay an entire lifetime of memories from which he had fled, and he couldn’t bear to think of it. Now, tonight, he understood. He could forget about it to some extent from day to day. But he couldn’t protect himself from the memories turning up at some moment such as this—and then it felt as if all courage had been conjured out of him.
Those days at Haugen—he had almost succeeded in forgetting about them entirely. He hadn’t been back to Haugen since that night when he drove off, and he hadn’t seen Bj?rn or Aashild again after his wedding. And now . . . He thought about what Munan had told him—it was said that their spirits had come back. Haugen was so haunted that the buildings stood deserted; no one wanted to live there, even if they were given the farm free.
Bj?rn Gunnarss?n had possessed a type of courage that Erlend knew he himself would never have. His hand had been steady when he stabbed his wife—right through the heart, said Munan.
It would be two years this winter since Bj?rn and Fru Aashild died. People had not seen smoke coming from the buildings at Haugen for nearly a week; finally several men gathered their courage and went over there. Herr Bj?rn was lying in bed with his throat cut; he was holding his wife’s body in his arms. On the floor next to the bed lay his bloody dagger.
Everyone knew what had happened, and yet Munan Baards?n and his brother managed to have the two buried in consecrated ground. Perhaps they had fallen victim to robbers, people said, although the chest containing Bj?rn’s and Aashild’s valuables had not been touched. And the bodies were untouched by mice or rats—in fact, those kinds of vermin never came to Haugen, and people took this as a sign of the woman’s sorcery skills.
Munan Baards?n had been terribly distressed by his mother’s death. He had set off on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela2 at once.