She tried to remind herself that in four hours it would be daytime; people would be setting about their daily chores on all the farms throughout the countryside. The sky would grow pale with dawn; the light would rise over the mountains. Then it wouldn’t seem far to go; in the daylight it wasn’t far from Formo to the church. And by then she would have returned home long ago. But it was clear that she would be a different person.
She knew that if it had been one of her own children, she would not have dared make this last attempt. To turn away God’s hand when He reached out for a living soul. When she kept watch over her own ill children, back when she was young and her heart bled with tenderness, when she thought she would collapse in anguish and torment, she had tried to say: Lord, you love them better than I do, let thy will be done.
But now on this night she was walking along, defying her own terror. This child who was not her own—she would save him, no matter what fate she was saving him for. . . .
Because you too, Simon Darre, acquiesced when the dearest thing you possessed on earth was at stake; you agreed to more than anyone can accept with full honor.
Do you not want me to go? He hadn’t been man enough to answer. Deep in her heart she knew that if the child died, Simon would have the strength to bear this too. But she had struck at the only moment when she ever saw him on the verge of breaking down; she had seized hold of that moment and carried it off. She would share that secret with him, the knowledge that she had also witnessed him when he once stood unsteady on his feet.
For he had learned too much about her. She had accepted help from the man she had spurned every time it was a matter of saving the one she had chosen. This suitor whom she had cast aside—he was the man she had turned to each time she needed someone to protect her love. And never had she asked for Simon’s help in vain. Time after time he had stepped forward, covering her with his kindness and his strength.
So she was undertaking this nighttime errand to rid herself of a little of the debt; until that hour, she hadn’t fully realized how heavy a burden it was.
Simon had forced her to see at last that he was the strongest: stronger than she was and stronger than the man to whom she had chosen to give herself. No doubt she had realized this from the moment all three of them met, face-to-face, in that shameful place in Oslo. And yet she had refused to accept it then: that such a plump-cheeked, stout, and gaping young man could be stronger than . . .
Now she was walking along, not daring to call on a good and holy name; she took upon herself this sin in order to . . . She didn’t know what. Was it revenge? Revenge because she had been forced to see that he was more noble-minded than the two of them?
But now you too understand, Simon, that when the life of the one you love more than your own heart is at stake . . . Then the poor person grasps for anything, anything.
The moon had risen over the mountain ridge as she walked up the hill to the church. Again she felt as if she had to overcome a new wave of terror. The moonlight lay like a delicate spiderweb over the tar-timbered edifice. The church itself looked terrifying and ominously dark beneath the thin veil. Out on the green she saw the cross, but for the first time she didn’t dare approach to kneel before the blessed tree. She crept over the churchyard wall at the place where she knew the sod and stone were the lowest and most easily breached.
Here and there a gravestone glistened like water down in the tall, dewy grass. Kristin walked straight across the cemetery to the graves of the poor, which lay near the south wall.
She went over to the burial place of a poor man who had been a stranger in the parish. One winter the man had frozen to death on the mountainside. His two motherless daughters had been taken in by one farm after another,1 until Lavrans Bj?rgulfs?n had offered to keep them and bring them up, for the sake of Christ. When they were full grown and had turned out well, Kristin’s father had found honorable, hardworking husbands for them and married them off with cows and calves and sheep. Ragnfrid had given them bedding and iron pots. Now both women were well provided for, as befitted their station. One of them had been Ramborg’s maid, and Ramborg had carried the woman’s child to be baptized.
So you must grant me a bit of the turf covering you, Bjarne, for Ramborg’s son. Kristin knelt down and pulled out her dagger.
Drops of ice cold sweat prickled her brow and upper lip as she dug her fingers under the dew-drenched sod. The earth resisted . . . it was only roots. She sliced through them with the dagger.
In return, the ghost must be given gold or silver that had been passed down through three generations. She slipped off the little gold ring with the rubies that had been her grandmother’s betrothal ring.
The child is my father’s descendant.
She pushed the ring as far down into the earth as she could, wrapped the piece of sod in the linen cloth, and then spread peat and leaves over the spot where she had removed it.
When she stood up, her legs trembled under her, and she had to pause for a moment before she could turn around. If she looked under her arm right now, she would be able to see them.
She felt a terrible tugging inside her, as if they would force her to do so. All the dead who had known her before in this world. Is that you, Kristin Lavransdatter? Are you coming here in this way?
Arne Gyrds?n lay buried outside the west entrance. Yes, Arne, you may well wonder—I was not like this, back when you and I knew each other.
Then she climbed over the wall again and headed down the slope.
The moon was now bright over the countryside. J?rundgaard lay out on the plain; the dew glittered in the grass on all the rooftops. She stared in that direction, almost listlessly. She felt as if she herself were dead to that home and all the people there; the door was closed to her, to the woman who had wandered past, up along the road on this night.
The mountains cast their shadows over her nearly the whole way back. The wind was blowing harder now; one gust of wind after another came straight toward her. Withered leaves blew against her, trying to send her back to the place she had just left.
Nor did she believe that she was walking along unaccompanied. She heard the steady sound of stealthy footsteps behind her. Is that you, Arne?
Look back, Kristin, look under your arm, it urged her.
And yet she didn’t feel truly afraid anymore. Just cold and numb, sick with desire to give up and sink down. After this night she could never be afraid of anything else in the world.
Simon was sitting in his usual place at the head of the bed, leaning over the child, when she opened the door and stepped inside. For a brief moment he looked up; Kristin wondered if she had grown as worn out and haggard and old as he had during these days. Then Simon bowed his head and hid his face with his arm.
He staggered a bit as he got to his feet. He turned his face away from her as he walked past and over to the door, his head bowed, his shoulders slumped.
Kristin lit two candles and set them on the table. The boy opened his eyes slightly and looked up, his gaze strangely unseeing; he whimpered a bit and tried to turn his head toward the light. When Kristin straightened out his little body, the way a corpse is laid out, he tried to change position, but he seemed too weak to move.
Then she covered his face and chest with the linen cloth and placed the strip of sod on top.