The beautiful large estate lay below her on the hillside, like a jewel on the wide bosom of the slope. She gazed out across all the land she had owned along with her husband. Thoughts about the manor and its care had filled her soul to the brim. She had worked and struggled. Not until this evening did she realize how much she had struggled to put this estate back on its feet and keep it going—how hard she had tried and how much she had accomplished.
She had accepted it as her fate, to be borne with patience and a straight back, that this had fallen to her. Just as she had striven to be patient and steadfast no matter what life presented, every time she learned she was carrying yet another child under her breast—again and again. With each son added to the flock she recognized that her responsibility had grown for ensuring the prosperity and secure position of the lineage. Tonight she realized that her ability to survey everything at once and her watchfulness had also grown with each new child entrusted to her care. Never had she seen it so clearly as on this evening—what destiny had demanded of her and what it had given her in return with her seven sons. Over and over again joy had quickened the beat of her heart; fear on their behalf had rent it in two. They were her children, these big sons with their lean, bony, boy’s bodies, just as they had been when they were small and so plump that they barely hurt themselves when they tumbled down on their way between the bench and her knee. They were hers, just as they had been back when she lifted them out of the cradle to her milk-filled breast and had to support their heads, which wobbled on their frail necks the way a bluebell nods on its stalk. Wherever they ended up in the world, wherever they journeyed, forgetting their mother—she thought that for her, their lives would be like a current in her own life; they would be one with her, just as they had been when she alone on this earth knew about the new life hidden inside, drinking from her blood and making her cheeks pale. Over and over she had endured the sinking, sweat-dripping anguish when she realized that once again her time had come; once again she would be pulled under by the groundswell of birth pains—until she was lifted up with a new child in her arms. How much richer and stronger and braver she had become with each child was something that she first realized tonight.
And yet she now saw that she was the same Kristin from J?rundgaard, who had never learned to bear an unkind word because she had been protected all her days by such a strong and gentle love. In Erlend’s hands she was still the same . . .
Yes. Yes. Yes. It was true that all this time she had remembered, year after year, every wound he had ever caused her—even though she had always known that he never wounded her the way a grown person intends harm to another, but rather the way a child strikes out playfully at his companion. Each time he offended her, she had tended to the memory the way one tends to a venomous sore. And with each humiliation he brought upon himself by acting on any impulse he might have—it struck her like the lash of a whip against her flesh, causing a suppurating wound. It wasn’t true that she willfully or deliberately harbored ill feelings toward her husband; she knew she wasn’t usually narrow-minded, but with him she was. If Erlend had a hand in it, she forgot nothing—and even the smallest scratch on her soul would continue to sting and bleed and swell and ache if he was the one to cause it.
About him she would never be wiser or stronger. She might strive to seem capable and fearless, pious and strong in her marriage with him—but in truth, she wasn’t. Always, always there was the yearning lament inside her: She wanted to be his Kristin from the woods of Gerdarud.
Back then she would have done everything she knew was wrong and sinful rather than lose him. To bind Erlend to her, she had given him all that she possessed: her love and her body, her honor and her share of God’s salvation. And she had given him anything else she could find to give: her father’s honor and his faith in his child, everything that grown and clever men had built up to protect an innocent little maiden if she should fall. She had set her love against their plans for the welfare and progress of her lineage, against their hopes for the fruit of their labors after they themselves lay buried. She had put at risk much more than her own life n this game, in which the only prize was the love of Erlend Niku lauss?n.
And she had won. She had known from the first time he kissed her in the garden of Hofvin until he kissed her today in the little house, before he was escorted from his home as a prisoner—Erlend loved her as dearly as his own life. And if he had not counseled her well, she had known from the first moment she met him how he had counseled himself. If he had not always treated her well, he had nonetheless treated her better than he did himself.
Jesus, how she had won him! She admitted it to herself tonight; she had driven him to break their marriage vows with her own coldness and poisonous words. She now admitted to herself that even during those years when she had looked on his unseemly flirting with that woman Sunniva with resentment, she had also felt, in the midst of her rancor, an arrogant and spiteful joy. No one knew of any obvious stain on Sunniva Olavsdatter’s reputation, and yet Erlend talked and jested with her like a hired man with an alehouse maid. About Kristin he knew that she could lie and betray those who trusted her most, that she could be willingly lured to the worst of places—and yet he had trusted her, he had honored her as best he could. As easily as he forgot his fear of sin, as easily as he had finally broken his promise to God before the church door—he had still grieved over his sins against her, he had struggled for years to keep his promises to her.
She had chosen him herself. She had chosen him in an ecstasy of passion, and she had chosen him again each day during those difficult years back home at J?rundgaard—his impetuous passion in place of her father’s love, which would not allow even the wind to touch her harshly. She had refused the destiny that her father had wished for her when he wanted to put her into the arms of a man who would have safely led her onto the most secure paths, even bending down to remove every little pebble that she might tread upon. She had chosen to follow the other man, whom she knew traveled on dangerous paths. Monks and priests had pointed out remorse and repentance as the road home to peace, but she had chosen strife rather than give up her precious sin.
So there was only one thing left for her; she could not lament or complain over whatever might now befall her at this man’s side. It made her dizzy to think how long ago she had left her father. But she saw his beloved face and remembered his words on that day in the smithy when she stabbed the last knife into his heart; she remembered how they talked together up on the mountain that time when she realized that death’s door stood open behind her father. It was shameful to complain about the fate she had chosen herself. Holy Olav, help me, so that I do not now prove myself unworthy of my father’s love.
Erlend, Erlend . . . When she met him in her youth, life became for her like a roiling river, rushing over cliffs and rocks. During these years at Husaby, life had expanded outward, becoming wide and spacious like a lake, mirroring everything around her. She remembered back home when the Laag overflowed in the spring, stretching wide and gray and mighty along the valley floor, carrying with it drifting logs; and the crowns of the trees that stood rooted to the bottom would rock in the water. In the middle appeared small, dark, menacing eddies, where the current ran rough and wild and dangerous beneath the smooth surface. Now she knew that her love for Erlend had rushed like a turbulent and dangerous current through her life for all these years. Now it was carrying her outward—she didn’t know where.
Erlend, dear friend!