“Stay here,” said Ulf curtly. He went over and threw himself against the door. She heard him hack away at the osier latches and then throw himself at the door again. She saw it fall inward, and he stepped inside the black cave.
It was not a particularly stormy night. But it was so dark that Kristin could see nothing but the sea, alive with tiny glints of foam rolling forward and then sliding back at once, and the gleam of the waves lapping along the shore of the inlet. She could also make out the dark shape against the hillside. She felt as if she were standing in a cavern of night, and it was the hiding place of death. The crash of the breaking waves and the trickle of water ebbing between the tidal rocks merged with the flush of blood inside her, although her body seemed to shatter, the way a keg splinters into slats. She had a throbbing in her breast, as if it would burst from within. Her head felt hollow and empty, as if it were leaking, and the gusts of wind swirled around her, blowing right through her. In a strangely listless way she realized that now she must be suffering from the plague herself—but she seemed to be waiting for the darkness to be split by a light that would roar and drown out the crash of the sea, and then she would succumb to terror. She pulled up her hood, which had been blown back, drew the black nun’s cloak closer, and then stood there with her arms crossed underneath, but it didn’t occur to her to pray. Her soul had more than enough to do, working its way out of its collapsing house, and that was what made her breast ache as she breathed.
She saw a flame flare up inside the hovel. A moment later Ulf Haldorss?n called to her. “You must come here and light the way for me, Kristin.” He stood in the doorway and handed her a torch of charred wood.
The stench of the corpse nearly suffocated her, even though the hut was so drafty and the door was gone. Wide-eyed, with her lips parted—and her jaw and lips felt as rigid as wood—she looked for the dead woman. But she saw only a long bundle lying in the corner on the earthen floor. Wrapped around it was Ulf’s cape.
He had pulled loose several long boards from somewhere and placed the door on top. As he cursed the clumsy tools, he made notches and holes with his axe and dagger and struggled to bind the door to the boards. Several times he cast a quick glance up at her, and each time his dark gray-bearded face grew stonier.
“I wonder how you thought you would manage to do this all alone,” he said, bending over his work. He looked up, but the rigid, lifeless face in the red glow of the tarred torch remained unchanged—the face of a dead woman or a mad creature. “Can you tell me that, Kristin?” He laughed harshly, but it did no good. “I think it’s about time for you to say a few prayers.”
In the same stiff and listless tone she began to pray: “Pater noster qui es in celis. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua sicut in celo et in terra.” Then she came to a halt.
Ulf looked at her. Then he took up the prayer, “Panum nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie . . .” Swiftly and firmly he said the words of the Pater noster to the end, then went over and made the sign of the cross over the bundle; swiftly and firmly he picked it up and carried it over to the litter that he had made.
“You take the front,” he said. “It may be a little heavier, but you won’t notice the stench as much. Throw the torch away; we’ll see better without it. And don’t stumble, Kristin; I would rather not have to touch this poor corpse again.”
The raging pain in her breast seemed to rise up in protest when she lifted the poles of the litter over her shoulders; her chest refused to bear the weight. But she clenched her teeth. As long as they walked along the shore, where the wind blew, she hardly noticed the smell of the body.
“I’d better climb up first and pull the litter up after me,” said Ulf when they reached the slope where they had come down.
“We can go a little farther,” said Kristin. “Over to the place where they bring down the seaweed sledges; it’s not as steep.”
The man could hear that her voice sounded calm and composed. And now that it was over, he started sweating and shivering; he had thought she was going to lose her wits that night.
They struggled onward over the sandy path that led across the clearing to the pine forest. The wind blew freely but not as strongly as it had on the shore, and as they walked farther and farther away from the roar of the tide flats, she felt as if it was a journey home from the uttermost terrors of darkness. The land was pale on both sides of the path—a field of grain, but there had been no one to harvest it. The smell of the grain and the sight of the withering straw welcomed her back home, and her eyes filled with the tears of sisterly compassion. Out of her own desperate terror and need she had come home to the community of the living and the dead.
From time to time the dreadful stink of decay would wash over her if the wind blew at her back, but it wasn’t as foul as when she was standing inside the hut. Here the air was full of the fresh, wet, and cold purity of the breeze.
And stronger than the feeling that she was carrying something gruesome on the litter behind her was the sense that Ulf Hal dorss?n was walking along, protecting her back against the living and black horror they had left behind; its crashing sound became fainter and fainter.
When they reached the outskirts of the pine forest, they noticed lights. “They’re coming to meet us,” said Ulf.
A moment later they were met by an entire throng of men carrying torches, a couple of lanterns, and a bier covered with a shroud. Sira Eiliv was with them, and Kristin was surprised to see that the group included several men who had been in the cemetery earlier that night; many of them were weeping. When they lifted the burden from her shoulders, she nearly collapsed. Sira Eiliv was about to catch her when she said quickly, “Don’t touch me. Don’t come near me. I can feel that I have the plague myself.”
But Sira Eiliv put his hand under her arm all the same.
“Then it should be of comfort for you to remember, woman, what Our Lord has said: That which you have done unto one of my poorest brothers or sisters, you have also done unto me.”
Kristin stared at the priest. Then she shifted her glance to the men, who were moving the body to the bier from the litter Ulf had made. Ulf’s cape fell aside; the tip of a worn shoe gleamed, dark with rain in the light of the torches.
Kristin went over, knelt down between the poles of the litter, and kissed the shoe.
“May God bless you, sister. May God bathe your soul in His light. May God have mercy on all of us here in the darkness.”
Then she thought it was life itself working its way out of her—an unthinkable, piercing pain as if something inside, firmly rooted to the utmost ends of her limbs, had been torn loose. All that was contained within her breast was ripped out; she felt it fill her throat. Her mouth filled with blood that tasted of salt and filthy copper; a moment later her entire robe was covered with glistening, dark wetness. Jesus, can there be so much blood in an old woman? she thought.
Ulf Haldorss?n lifted her up in his arms and carried her.