The nuns whimpered. They were the worst men of the parish, coarse, ungodly fellows, and surely the latest calamity and despair must have turned them into regular demons. If only Sira Eiliv was home, they lamented. Ever since the onset of the plague, the priest’s position had changed, and the sisters expected him to do everything.
Kristin wrung her hands. “If I have to go alone . . . Mother, may I have your permission to go out there myself?”
The abbess gripped her arm so tightly that she gave a little cry. The old woman, who was unable to speak, struggled to her feet; by gesturing she made them understand that she wanted to be dressed to go out. She demanded to be given the gold cross, the symbol of her office, and her staff. Then she held on to Kristin’s arm since she was the youngest and strongest of the women. All the nuns stood up and followed.
Passing through the door of the little room between the chapter hall and the church choir, they stepped out into the raw, cold winter night. Fru Ragnhild began shivering, and her teeth chattered. She still sweated incessantly from the illness, and the sores left by the plague boils were not fully healed; walking caused her great pain. But she snarled angrily and shook her head when the sisters implored her to turn around. She gripped Kristin’s arm harder, and shaking with cold, she trudged ahead of them through the garden. As their eyes grew used to the dark, the women glimpsed light patches of withered leaves scattered beneath their feet and a pale scrap of cloudy sky above the bare crowns of the trees. Drops of cold water trickled down, and gusts of wind murmured faintly. Sluggish and heavy, the drone of the fjord sighed against the shore beyond the cliffs.
At the bottom of the garden was a small gate; the sisters shuddered at the shriek of the rusted iron bolt as Kristin struggled to shove it open. Then they crept onward through the grove, down toward the parish church. They caught a glimpse of the tarred timber shape, darker against the night, and they saw the roof and ridge turret with its animal-head carvings and cross on the top against the pale gleam of the clouds above the slopes on the other side of the fjord.
Yes, there were people in the cemetery; they sensed their presence rather than saw or heard anything. Now a low, faint gleam of light appeared, as if from a lantern standing on the ground. Something moved in the darkness nearby.
The nuns huddled together, whimpering faintly under their whispered prayers; they took several steps forward, stopped to listen, and moved forward again. They had almost reached the cemetery gate.
Then out of the darkness they heard the shrill cry of a child’s voice: “Hey, stop, you’re getting dirt on my bread!”
Kristin let go of the abbess’s arm and ran forward, through the churchyard gate. She pushed aside several shadowy men’s backs, stumbled on piles of shoveled dirt, and came to the edge of the open grave. She fell to her knees, bent down, and pulled out the little boy who was standing in the bottom, still complaining because there was earth on the good piece of lefse he had been given for sitting still in the pit.
The men were frightened out of their wits and ready to flee. Several were stomping in place; Kristin could see their feet in the light from the lantern on the ground. Then she thought that one of them seemed about to leap at her. At that moment the grayish-white habits of the nuns came into view, and the group of men stood there, in confusion.
Kristin still held the boy in her arms; he was crying for his lefse. She set him down, picked up the bread, and brushed it off.
“Here, eat it. Now your bread is as good as ever. And you men should go on home.” The quaver in her voice forced her to pause for a moment. “Go home and thank God that you were saved before you committed an act you might never be able to atone for.” Now she spoke the way a mistress speaks to her servants: kindly, but as if it would never occur to her that they might disobey. Without thinking, several of the men turned toward the gate.
Then one of them shouted, “Wait a minute, don’t you see it’s a matter of life itself, maybe even all we own? Now that these overstuffed monks’ whores have stuck their noses in it, we can’t let them leave here to talk about what went on!”
None of the men moved, but Sister Agata began shrieking and yelling, with sobs in her voice, “Oh, sweet Jesus, my bridegroom. I thank you for allowing us, your servant maidens, to die for the glory of your name!”
Fru Ragnhild shoved her sternly aside, staggered forward, and picked up the lantern from the ground. No one raised a hand to stop her. When she lifted it up, the gold cross on her breast glittered. She stood leaning on her staff and slowly shone the light down the line, giving a slight nod to each man as she looked at him. Then she gestured to Kristin that she wished her to speak.
Kristin said, “Go home in peace, dear brothers. Have faith that the worthy Mother and these good sisters will be as merciful as God and the honor of His Church will allow them to be. But move aside now so that we might take away this child, and then each of you should return to your own home.”
The men stood there, irresolute. Then one of them shouted in the greatest agitation, “Isn’t it better to sacrifice one than for all of us to perish? This boy here, who belongs to no one—”
“He belongs to Christ. Better for all of us to perish than for us to harm one of his children.”
But the man who had spoken first began yelling again. “Stop saying words like that or I’ll stuff them back into your mouth with this.” He waved his knife in the air. “Go home, go to bed, and ask your priest to comfort you, and keep silent about this—or I swear by the name of Satan that you’ll find out it was the worst thing you’ve ever done, trying to meddle in our affairs.”
“You don’t have to shout so loudly for the one you mentioned to hear you, Arntor. Be assured that he isn’t far away,” said Kristin calmly. Several of the men seemed to grow fearful and involuntarily crept closer to the abbess holding the lantern. “The worst thing, for both us and for you, would have been if we had stayed home while you went about building your home in the hottest Hell.”
But the man, Arntor, cursed and raged. Kristin knew that he hated the nuns because his father had mortgaged his farm to them in order to pay penalties for murder and blood guilt with his wife’s niece. Now he continued slinging out the Fiend’s most hateful lies about the sisters, accusing them of sins so black and unnatural that only the Devil himself could have put such thoughts into a man’s mind.
The poor nuns, terrified and weeping, bowed under the vicious words, but they stood stalwartly around the old abbess, and she held the lantern in the air, shining it at the man and gazing calmly at his face as he raged.
But anger flared up inside Kristin like the flames of a newly lit fire.
“Silence! Have you lost your senses? Or has God struck you blind? Should we dare breathe a word under His admonishment? We who have seen His wedded brides stand up to the sword that was drawn for the sake of the world’s sins? They kept vigil and prayed while we sinned and forgot our Creator every single day; they shut themselves inside the fortress of prayer while we roamed through the world, urged on by avarice for treasures, both great and small, for our own pleasure and our own anger. But they came out to us when the angel of death was sent among us; they gathered up the ill, the defenseless, and the poor. Twelve of our sisters have died from this sickness; all of you know this. Not one of them turned away, not one of them refused to pray for us all with sisterly love, until their tongues dried up in their mouths and their life blood ebbed out.”
“How beautifully you speak about yourself and those like you—”
“I am like you,” she screamed, beside herself. “I’m not one of the holy sisters. I am one of you.”
“How submissive you’ve become, woman,” said Arntor derisively. “I see that you’re afraid. When the end comes, you’ll be saying you’re like her, the mother of that boy.”
“God must be the judge of that; he died for her as well as for me, and he knows us both. Where is she? Where is Steinunn?”