“Did you think I took it lightly?”
The faint quaver in his voice made her wild with longing. She wanted to bury herself inside him, down in the depths of the emotions that could make his voice ripple with tension and strain.
She exclaimed in fury, “If only you had taken me in your arms even once, not because I was the lawful, Christian wife they had placed at your side, but as the wife you had yearned for and fought to win. Then you couldn’t have behaved toward me as if those words had not been said.”
Lavrans thought about what she had said. “No . . . then . . . I don’t think I could have. No.”
“If you had been as fond of your betrothed as Simon was of our Kristin . . .”
Lavrans didn’t reply. After a moment, as if against his will, he said softly and fearfully, “Why did you mention Simon?”
“I suppose because I couldn’t compare you to that other man,” Ragnfrid said, confused and frightened herself although she tried to smile. “You and Erlend are too unlike each other.”
Lavrans stood up, took a few steps, feeling uneasy. Then he said in an even quieter voice, “God will not forsake Simon.”
“Have you never thought that God had forsaken you?” asked his wife.
“No.”
“What did you think that night as we sat in the barn, when you found out at the very same moment that Kristin and I—the two people you held dearest and loved the most faithfully—we had both betrayed you as much as we possibly could?”
“I don’t think I thought much about it,” replied her husband.
“But later on,” continued his wife, “when you kept thinking about it, as you say you did . . .”
Lavrans turned away from her. She saw a blush flood his sunburned neck.
“I thought about all the times I had betrayed Christ,” he said in a low voice.
Ragnfrid stood up, hesitating a moment before she dared go over and place her hands on her husband’s shoulders. When he put his arms around her, she pressed her forehead against his chest. He could feel her crying. Lavrans pulled her closer and rested his face against her hair.
“Now, Ragnfrid, we will go to bed,” he said after a moment.
Together they walked over to the crucifix, knelt, and made the sign of the cross. Lavrans said the evening prayers, speaking the language of the Church in a low, clear voice, and his wife repeated the words after him.
Then they undressed. Ragnfrid lay down on the inner side of the bed; the headboard was now much lower because lately her husband had been plagued with dizziness. Lavrans shoved the bolt on the door closed, scraped ashes over the fire in the hearth, blew out the candle, and climbed in beside her. In the darkness they lay with their arms touching each other. After a moment they laced their fingers together.
Ragnfrid Ivarsdatter thought it seemed like a new wedding night, and a strange one. Happiness and sorrow flowed into each other, carrying her along on waves so powerful that she felt her soul beginning to loosen its roots in her body. Now the hand of death had touched her too—for the first time.
This was how it had to end—when it had begun as it did. She remembered the first time she saw her betrothed. At that time Lavrans was pleased with her—a little shy, but willing enough to have affection for his bride. Even the fact that the boy was so radiantly handsome had irritated her. His hair hung so thick and glossy and fair around his pink-and-white, downy face. Her heart burned with anguish at the thought of another man, who was not handsome nor young nor gentle like milk and blood; she was dying with longing to sink into his embrace and drive her knife into his throat. And the first time her betrothed tried to caress her . . . They were sitting together on the steps of a loft back home, and he reached out to take one of her braids. She leaped to her feet, turned her back on him, white with anger, and left.
Oh, she remembered that nighttime journey, when she rode with Trond and Tordis through Jerndal to Dovre, to the woman who was skilled in sorcery. She had fallen to her knees, pulling off rings and bracelets and putting them on the floor in front of Fru Aashild; in vain she had begged for a remedy so her bridegroom might not have his will with her. She remembered the long journey with her father and kinsmen and bridesmaids and the entourage from home, down through the valley, out across the flat countryside, to the wedding at Skog. And she remembered the first night—and all the nights afterwards—when she received the clumsy caresses of the newly married boy and acted cold as stone, never concealing how little they pleased her.
No, God had not forsaken her. In His mercy, He had heard her cries for help when she called on Him, as she sank more and more into her misery—even when she called without believing she would be heard. It felt as if the black sea were rushing over her; now the waves lifted her toward a bliss so strange and so sweet that she knew it would carry her out of life.
“Talk to me, Lavrans,” she implored him quietly. “I’m so tired.”
Her husband whispered, “Venite ad me, omnes qui laborate et onerati estis. Ego reficiam vos1—the Lord has said.”
He slipped one arm under her shoulder and pulled her close to his side. They lay there for a moment, cheek to cheek.
Then she said softly, “Now I have asked the Mother of God to answer my prayer that I need not live long after you, my husband.”
His lips and his lashes brushed her cheek in the darkness like the wings of a butterfly.
“My Ragnfrid, my Ragnfrid.”
CHAPTER 8
KRISTIN STAYED HOME at Husaby during the autumn and winter with no wish to go anywhere; she blamed this on the fact that she was unwell. But she was simply tired. She had never felt so tired before in all her life. She was tired of merriment and tired of sorrow, and most of all tired of brooding.
It would be better after she had this new child, she thought; and she felt such a fierce longing for it. It was the child that would save her. If it was a son and her father died before he was born, he would bear her father’s name. And she thought about how dearly she would love this child and nurse him at her own breast. It had been such a long time since she had had an infant, and she wept with longing whenever she thought about holding a tiny child in her arms again.
She gathered her sons around her as she had in the past and tried to bring a little more discipline and order to their upbringing. She felt that in this way she was acting in accordance with her father’s wishes, and it seemed to give her soul some peace. Sira Eiliv had now begun to teach Naakkve and Bj?rgulf reading and Latin, and Kristin often sat in the parsonage when the children went there for lessons. But they weren’t very eager pupils, and all the boys were unruly and wild except for Gaute, and so he continued to be his mother’s lap-child, as Erlend called him.