Kristin went over and drank a ladleful of curdled milk from the basin in the corner. Then she went back to the hearth, lifted a stone, and laid it down flat, sprinkling the mullein blossoms on top to dry.
But then she could find no more tasks to do. She undressed in the dark and lay down in the bed next to Erlend. When he put his arms around her, she felt weariness wash over her whole body like a cold wave; her head felt empty and heavy, as if everything inside it had sunk down and settled like a knot of pain in the back of her neck. But when he whispered to her, she dutifully put her arms around his neck.
She woke up and didn’t know what time of night it was. But through the transparent hide2 stretched over the smoke vent she could see that the moon must still be high.
The bed was short and cramped so they had to lie close to each other. Erlend was asleep, breathing quietly and evenly, his chest moving faintly as he slept. In the past she used to move closer to his warm, healthy body when she woke up in the night and grew frightened that he was breathing so silently. Back then she thought it so blissfully sweet to feel his breast rise and fall as he slept at her side.
After a while she slipped out of bed, got dressed in the dark, and crept out the door.
The moon was sailing high over the world. The moss glistened with water, and the rocky cliffs gleamed where streams had trickled during the day—now they had turned to ice. Up on the plateaus frost glittered. It was bitterly cold. Kristin crossed her arms over her breasts and stood still for a moment.
Then she set off along the creek. It murmured and gurgled with the tiny sounds of ice crystals breaking apart.
At the top of the meadow a huge boulder rose up out of the earth. No one ever went near it unless they had to, and then they would be certain to cross themselves. People poured cream under it whenever they went past. Otherwise she had never heard that anyone had ever witnessed anything there, but such had been the custom in that pasture ever since ancient times.
She didn’t know what had come over her that she would leave the house this way, in the middle of the night. She stopped at the boulder and set her foot in a crevice. Her stomach clenched tight, her womb felt cold and empty with fear, but she refused to make the sign of the cross. Then she climbed up and sat on top of the rock.
From up there she could see a long, long way. Far into the ugly bare mountains in the moonlight. The great dome near Dovre rose up, enormous and pale against the pale sky. Snowdrifts gleamed white in the pass on the Gray Peaks. The Boar Range glistened with new snow and blue clefts. The mountains in the moonlight were more hideous than she could have imagined; only a few stars shone here and there in the vast, icy sky. She was frozen to the very marrow and bone; terror and cold pressed in on her from all sides. But defiantly she stayed where she was.
She refused to get down and lie in the pitch dark next to the warm, slumbering body of her husband. She could tell that for her there would be no more sleep that night.
As sure as she was her father’s daughter, her husband would never hear his wife reproach his actions. For she remembered what she had promised when she beseeched the Almighty God and all the saints in heaven to spare Erlend’s life.
That was why she had come out into this troll night to breathe when she felt about to suffocate.
She sat there and let the old, bitter thoughts rise up like good friends, countering them with other old and familiar thoughts—in feigned justification of Erlend.
He had certainly never demanded this of her. He had not asked her to bear any of the things she had taken upon her own shoulders. He had merely conceived seven sons with her. “I will provide for my seven sons, Arne.” God only knew what Erlend had meant by those words. Maybe he meant nothing; it was simply something he had said.
Erlend hadn’t asked her to restore order to Husaby and his other estates. He hadn’t asked her to fight with her life to save him. He had borne it like a chieftain that his property would be dispersed, that his life was at stake, and that he would lose everything he owned. Stripped and empty-handed, with chieftainlike dignity and calm he had accepted the misfortune; with chieftainlike calm and dignity he lived on her father’s manor like a guest.
And yet everything that was in her possession lawfully belonged to her sons. They lawfully owned her sweat and blood and all her strength. But then surely she and the estate had the right to make claims on them.
She hadn’t needed to flee to the mountain pastures like some kind of poor leaseholder’s wife. But the situation was such at home that she felt pressed and hemmed in from all sides—until she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Then she had felt the need to prove to herself that she could do the work of a peasant woman. She had toiled and labored every hour and every day since she had arrived at the estate of Erlend Nikulauss?n as his bride—and realized that someone there would have to fight to protect the inheritance of the one she carried under her heart. If the father couldn’t do it, then she must. But now she needed to be certain. For that matter, she had demonstrated before to her nursemaids and servant women that there wasn’t any kind of work she wasn’t capable of doing with her own hands. It was a good day up here if she didn’t feel an ache in her flanks from standing and churning. It felt good in the morning when she would go along to let out the cattle; the animals had grown fat and glossy in the summer. The tight grip on her heart eased when she stood in the sunset and called to the cows coming home. She liked to see food growing under her own hands; it felt as if she were reaching down into the very foundation from which the future of her sons would be rebuilt.
J?rundgaard was a good estate, but it was not as good as she had thought. And Ulf was a stranger here in the valley; he made mistakes, and he grew impatient. As people saw it in the region, they always had plenty of hay at J?rundgaard. They had the hay meadows along the river and out on the islands, but it wasn’t good hay, not the kind that Ulf was used to in Tr?ndelag. He wasn’t used to having to gather so much moss and foliage, heath and brushwood as they did here.
Her father had known every patch of his land; he had possessed all the farmer’s knowledge about the whims of the seasons and the way each particular strip of field handled rain or drought, windy summers or hot summers; about livestock that he himself had bred, raised, foddered, and sold from, generation after generation—the very sort of knowledge that was needed here. She did not have that kind of knowledge of her estate. But she would acquire it, and her sons would too.
And yet Erlend had never demanded this of her. He hadn’t married her in order to lead her into toil and travail. He had married her so she could sleep in his arms. Then, when her time came, the child lay at her side, demanding a place on her arm, at her breast, in her care.
Kristin moaned through clenched teeth. She was shivering with cold and anger.
“Pactum serva—in Norwegian it means ‘keep thy faith.’ ”