“You shouldn’t have made such a long journey,” she said faintly.
“No man lives longer than he is meant to live,” replied Simon in the same voice. “I wanted to come home. There are things we must discuss: how everything is to be arranged after I’m gone.”
He chuckled. “All fires burn out sooner or later.”
Kristin gazed at him, her eyes shiny with tears. He had always had so many proverbs on his lips. She looked down at his flushed red face. The heavy cheeks and the folds under his chin seemed to have sunk, lying in deep furrows. His eyes seemed both dull and glistening, but then clarity and intent returned to them. He looked up at her with the steady, searching glance that had been the most constant expression in his small, sharp, steel-gray eyes.
When daylight filled the room, Kristin saw that Simon’s face had grown pinched around the nose. A white streak stretched downward on either side to the corners of his mouth.
She walked over to the little glass-paned window and stood there, swallowing her tears. A golden-green light sparkled and gleamed in the thick coating of frost on the window. Outside, it was no doubt as beautiful a day as the whole week had been.
It was the mark of death. . . . She knew that.
She went back and slid her hand under the coverlet. His ankles were swollen all the way up to his calves.
“Do you want me—do you want me to send for Sira Eirik now?” she asked in a low voice.
“Yes, tonight,” replied Simon.
He had to speak of it before he confessed and received the last rites. Afterward he must try to turn his thoughts in another direction.
“It’s odd that you should be the one who will probably have to tend to my body,” said Simon. “And I’m afraid I won’t be a particularly handsome corpse.”
Kristin forced back a sob. She moved away to prepare another soothing potion.
But Simon said, “I don’t like these potions of yours, Kristin. They make my thoughts so muddled.”
After a while he asked her to give him a little all the same. “But don’t put so much in it that it will make me drowsy. I have to talk to you about something.”
He took a sip and then lay waiting for the pain to ease enough that he would have the strength to talk to her clearly and calmly.
“Don’t you want us to bring Sira Eirik to you, so he can speak the words that might give you comfort?”
“Yes, soon. But there is something I must say to you first.”
He lay in silence for a while. Then he said, “Tell Erlend Niku lauss?n that the words I spoke to him the last time we parted—those words I have regretted every day since. I behaved in a petty and unmanly fashion toward my brother-in-law that night. Give him my greetings and tell him . . . beg him to forgive me.”
Kristin sat with her head bowed. Simon saw that she had turned blood red under her wimple.
“You will give this message to your husband, won’t you?” he asked.
She gave a small nod.
Then Simon went on. “If Erlend doesn’t come to my funeral, you must seek him out, Kristin, and tell him this.”
Kristin sat mutely, her face dark red.
“You wouldn’t refuse to do what I ask of you, now that I’m about to die, would you?” asked Simon Andress?n.
“No,” she whispered. “I will . . . do it.”
“It’s not good for your sons, Kristin, that there is enmity between their father and mother,” Simon continued. “I wonder whether you’ve noticed how much it torments them. It’s hard for those lively boys, knowing that their parents are the subject of gossip in the countryside.”
Kristin replied in a harsh, low voice, “Erlend left our sons—not I. First my sons lost their foothold in the regions where they were born into noble lineage and property. If they now have to bear having gossip spread about them here in the valley, which is my home, I am not to blame.”
Simon lay in silence for a moment. Then he said, “I haven’t forgotten that, Kristin. There is much you have a right to complain about. Erlend has managed poorly for his children. But you must remember, if that plan of his had been carried out, his sons would now be well provided for, and he himself would be among the most powerful knights in the realm. The man who fails in such a venture is called a traitor to his king, but if he succeeds, people speak quite differently. Half of Norway thought as Erlend did back then: that we were poorly served by sharing a king with the Swedes and that the son of Knut Porse was probably made of stronger stuff than that coddled boy, if we could have won over Prince Haakon in his tender years. Many men stood behind Erlend at the time and tugged on the rope along with him; my own brothers did so, and many others who are now called good knights and men with coats of arms. Erlend alone had to fall. And back then, Kristin, your husband showed that he was a splendid and courageous man, even though he may have acted otherwise, both before and since.”
Kristin sat in silence, trembling.
“I think, Kristin, that if this is the reason you’ve said bitter words to your husband, then you must take them back. You should be able to do it, Kristin. Once you held firmly enough to Erlend; you refused to listen to a word of truth about his behavior toward you when he acted in a way I never thought an honorable man would act, much less a highborn gentleman and a chivalrous retainer of the king. Do you remember where I found the two of you in Oslo? You could forgive Erlend for that, both at the time and later on.”
Kristin replied quietly, “I had cast my lot with his by then. What would have become of me afterward if I had parted my life from Erlend’s?”
“Look at me, Kristin,” said Simon Darre, “and answer me truthfully. If I had held your father to his promise and chosen to take you as you were . . . If I had told you that I would never remind you of your shame, but I would not release you . . . What would you have done then?”
“I don’t know.”
Simon laughed harshly. “If I had forced you to celebrate a wedding with me, you would never have taken me willingly into your arms, Kristin, my fair one.”
Now her face turned white. She sat with her eyes lowered and did not reply.
He laughed again. “I don’t think you would have embraced me tenderly when I climbed into your bridal bed.”
“I think I would have taken my knife to bed with me,” she whispered in a stifled voice.
“I see you know the ballad about Knut of Borg,” said Simon with a bitter smile. “I haven’t heard that such a thing ever happened, but God only knows whether you might have done it!”
Some time later he went on, “It’s also unheard of among Christian people for married folks to part ways of their own free will, as you two have done, without lawful cause and the consent of the bishop. Aren’t you ashamed? You trampled on everyone, defied everyone in order to be together. When Erlend was in mortal danger, you thought of nothing but how to save him, and he thought much more about you than about his seven sons or his reputation and property. But whenever you can have each other in peace and security, you’re no longer capable of maintaining calm and decency. Discord and discontent reigned between you at Husaby too—I saw it myself, Kristin.
“I tell you, for the sake of your sons, that you must seek reconciliation with your husband. If you are even the slightest bit at fault, then surely it’s easier for you to offer Erlend your hand,” he said in a somewhat gentler tone.
“It’s easier for you than for Erlend Nikulauss?n, sitting up there at Haugen in poverty,” he repeated.
“It’s not easy for me,” she whispered. “I think I’ve shown that I can do something for my children. I’ve struggled and struggled for them. . . .”
“That is true,” said Simon. Then he asked, “Do you remember that day when we met on the road to Nidaros? You were sitting in the grass, nursing Naakkve.”
Kristin nodded.
“Could you have done for that child at your breast what my sister did for her son? Given him away to those who were better able to provide for him?”