The goat shed was a little old building with a roof that reached all the way down to the ground. It stood in the narrow passageway between the farmyard and the courtyard of the estate, right across from the stable and with other houses built close on either side. Kristin ran onto the gallery of the hearth house and found a broadaxe and a fire hook, but as she rounded the corner of the stable, she didn’t see any fire, just a cloud of smoke billowing out of a hole in the roof of the goat shed. Ivar was sitting up on the ridge, hacking at the roof; Skule and Lavrans were inside, pulling down patches of the thatching and then stomping and trampling out the fire. Now they were joined by Erlend, Ulf, and the men who had been in the smithy. Munan had run over to warn them; so the fire was put out in short order. And yet the most terrible of misfortunes might easily have occurred. It was a sultry, still evening, but with occasional gusts of wind from the south, and if the fire had engulfed the goat shed, all the buildings at the north end of the courtyard—the stable, storerooms, and living quarters—would certainly have burned with it.
Ivar and Skule had been up on the stable roof. They had snared a hawk and were going to hang it from the gable when they caught a whiff of fire and saw smoke coming from the roof below them. They leaped to the ground at once, and with the small axes they were carrying they began chopping at the smoldering sod while they sent off Lavrans and Munan, who were playing nearby—one to find hooks and the other to get their mother. Fortunately the rafters and beams in the roof were quite rotten, but it was clear that this time the twins had saved their mother’s estate by instantly setting about tearing down the burning roof and not wasting time by first running to get help from the grown-ups.
It was hard to understand how the fire had started, except that Gaute had passed that way an hour before, carrying embers to the smithy, and he admitted that the container had not been covered. A spark had probably flown up onto the tinder-dry sod roof.
But less was said about this than about the quick-wittedness of the twins and Lavrans when Ulf later imposed a fire watch and all the servants kept him company during the night while Kristin had strong ale and mead carried out to them. All three boys had been singed on their hands and feet; their shoes were so burned that they split into pieces. Young Lavrans was only nine years old, so it was hard for him to bear the pain patiently for very long, but from the start he was the proudest of the lot, walking around with his hands wrapped up and taking in the praise of the manor servants.
That night Erlend took his wife in his arms. “My Kristin, my Kristin . . . Don’t complain so much about your children. Can’t you see, my dear, what good breeding there is in our sons? You always treat these two hearty boys as if you thought their path would lead between the gallows and the execution block. Now it seems to me that you should enjoy some pleasure after all the pain and suffering and toil you’ve borne through all the years when you constantly carried a child under your belt, with another child at your breast and one on your arm. Back then you would talk of nothing else but those little imps, and now that they’ve grown up to be both sensible and manly, you walk among them as if you were deaf and dumb, hardly even answering when they speak to you. God help me, but it’s as if you love them less now that you no longer have to worry for their sake and these big, handsome sons of ours can give you both help and joy.”
Kristin didn’t trust herself to answer with a single word.
But she lay in bed, unable to sleep. And toward morning she carefully stepped over her slumbering husband and walked barefoot over to the shuttered peephole, which she opened.
The sky was a hazy gray, and the air was cool. Far off to the south, where the mountains merged and closed off the valley, rain was sweeping over the plateaus. Kristin stood there for a moment, looking out. It was always so hot and stuffy in this loft above the new storeroom where they slept in the summertime. The trace of moisture in the air brought the strong, sweet scent of hay to her. Outside a bird or two chittered faintly in their sleep in the summer night.
Kristin rummaged around for her flint and lit a candle stump. She crept over to where Ivar and Skule were sleeping on a bench. She shone the light on them and touched their cheeks with the back of her hand. They both had a slight fever. Softly she said an Ave Maria and made the sign of the cross over them. The gallows and the execution block . . . to think that Erlend could jest about such things . . . he who had come so close. . . .
Lavrans whimpered and murmured in his sleep. Kristin stood bending over her two youngest sons, who were bedded down on a small bench at the foot of their parents’ bed. Lavrans was hot and flushed and tossed back and forth but did not wake up when she touched him.
Gaute lay with his milk-white arms behind his head, under his long flaxen hair. He had thrown off all the bedclothes. He was so hot-blooded that he always slept naked, and his skin was such a dazzling white. The tan color of his face, neck, and hands stood out in sharp contrast. Kristin pulled the blanket up around his waist.
It was difficult for her to be angry with Gaute; he looked so much like her father. She hadn’t said much to him about the calamity he had nearly brought upon them. As clever and levelheaded as the boy was, she thought that doubtless he would learn from the incident and not forget it.
Naakkve and Bj?rgulf slept in the other bed up in the loft. Kristin stood there longer, shining the light on the two sleeping young men. Black down already shadowed their childish, soft pink lips. Naakkve’s foot was sticking out from the covers, slender, with a high instep, a deep arch over the sole, and not very clean. And yet, she thought, it wasn’t long ago that the foot of this man was so small that she could wrap her fingers around it, and she had crushed it to her breast and raised it to her lips, nibbling on each tiny toe, for they were as rosy and sweet as the blossoms on a bilberry twig.
It was probably true that she didn’t pay enough heed to what God had granted her as her lot. The memory of those days when she was carrying Naakkve and the visions of terror she had wrestled with . . . it could pass with fiery heat through her soul. She had been delivered the way a person wakes up to the blessed light of day after terrifying dreams with the oppressive weight of the mare2 on her breast. But other women had awakened to see that the unhappiness of the day was worse than the very worst they had dreamed. And yet, whenever she saw a cripple or someone who was deformed, Kristin would feel heartsick at the reminder of her own fear for her unborn child. Then she would humble herself before God and Holy Olav with a burning fervor; she would hasten to do good, striving to force tears of true remorse from her eyes as she prayed. But each time she would feel that unthawed discontent in her heart, the fresh surge would cool, and the sobs would seep out of her soul like water in sand. Then she consoled herself that she didn’t have the gift of piety she had once hoped would be her inheritance from her father. She was hard and sinful, but surely she was no worse than most people, and like most people, she would have to bear the fiery blaze of that other world before her heart could be melted and cleansed.
And yet sometimes she longed to be different. When she looked at the seven handsome sons sitting at her table or when she made her way up to church on Sabbath mornings as the bells tolled, calling so agreeably to joy and God’s peace, and she saw the flock of straight-backed, well-dressed young boys, her sons, climbing the hillside ahead of her . . . She didn’t know of any other woman who had given birth to so many children and had never experienced what it was like to lose one. All of them were handsome and healthy, without a flaw in their physical or mental capacities, although Bj?rgulf’s sight was poor. She wished she could forget her sorrows and be gentle and grateful, fearing and loving God as her father had done. She remembered her father had said that the person who recalls his sins with a humble spirit and bows before the cross of the Lord need never bow his head beneath any earthly unhappiness or injustice.