In the convent portal the nuns met the procession, carrying lighted tapers in their hands. Kristin no longer had her full wits about her, but she sensed that she was half carried, half supported through the doorway. The white-plastered vaulted room was filled with flickering light from yellow candle flames and red pinewood torches, and the stomping of feet roared like the sea—but for the dying woman it was like a mirror of her own sinking life flame, and the footsteps on the flagstones seemed to be the crash of death’s current, rising up toward her.
Then the glow of light spread outward to a larger space; she was once again under a dark, open sky—out in the courtyard. The light played over a gray stone wall with heavy pillars and tall windows: the church. Someone was carrying her—it was Ulf again—but now he became one with all those who had ever carried her. When she put her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek against his prickly bearded neck, she felt like a child again, with her father, but she also felt as if she were taking a child in her own arms. Behind his dark head there were red lights, and they seemed to be shining from the fire that nourishes all love.
Some time later she opened her eyes and her mind was clear. She was sitting propped up in a bed in the dormitory; a nun stood leaning over her, wearing a linen cloth on the lower half of her face, and she noticed the smell of vinegar. It was Sister Agnes; she could tell by the eyes and the tiny red wart on her forehead. And it was daytime. A clear gray light entered the room through the little windowpane.
She was not suffering now, but she was soaked with sweat, terribly weak and tired, and she had a sharp, stabbing pain in her breast when she breathed. Greedily she drank a soothing potion that Sister Agnes held to her lips. But she was freezing.
Kristin leaned back against the pillows, and now she remembered everything that had happened the night before. The wild shimmer of a dream had vanished completely; she realized that she must have been slightly out of her wits. But it was good that she had done what she had: rescued the little boy and prevented those poor people from being burdened with such a misdeed. She knew she should be overjoyed that she had been fortunate enough to do this before she died, but she didn’t have the strength to rejoice as she ought to. She had more a sense of contentment, the way she felt lying in bed back home at J?rundgaard, weary from a day’s work well done. And she had to thank Ulf. . . .
She had spoken his name, and he must have been sitting in the shadows near the door and heard her, for he crossed the room and stood before her bed. She stretched out her hand to him, and he took it, clasping it firmly and warmly in his.
Suddenly the dying woman grew uneasy; her hands fumbled under the folds of bedclothes around her neck.
“What is it, Kristin?” asked Ulf.
“The cross,” she whispered, and pulled out her father’s gilded cross. She recalled that she had promised the day before to offer a gift for the soul of poor Steinunn. But she had forgotten that she owned no more earthly possessions. She owned nothing more than this cross, which her father had given her, and her wedding ring. She still wore that on her finger.
She took it off and looked at it. It lay heavy in her hand, pure gold and set with large red stones. Erlend, she thought. And she realized that now she should give it away; she didn’t know why, but she felt that she should. She closed her eyes in pain and handed the ring to Ulf.
“Who do you want to leave it to?” he asked softly. When she didn’t reply, he said, “Should I give it to Skule?”
Kristin shook her head, keeping her eyes closed tight.
“Steinunn . . . I promised . . . masses for her. . . .”
She opened her eyes and looked at the ring lying in the dark palm of the smith. And her tears burst forth in torrents, for she felt as if she had never before fully understood what it signified. The life to which this ring had married her, over which she had complained and grumbled, raged and rebelled. And yet she had loved it so, rejoicing over it, with both the bad and the good, so that there was not a single day she would have given back to God without lament or a single sorrow she would have relinquished without regret.
Ulf and the nun exchanged a few words that she couldn’t hear, and he left the room. Kristin tried to lift her hand to wipe her eyes but didn’t have the strength; her hand remained lying on her breast. It hurt so terribly inside, her hand seemed so heavy, and she felt as if the ring were still on her finger. Her mind was becoming confused again; she must see if it was true that the ring was gone, that she hadn’t merely dreamed she’d given it away. She was also becoming uncertain. Everything that had happened in the night, the child in the grave, the black sea with the small, swift glimpses of the waves, the body she had carried . . . she didn’t know whether she had dreamed it all or been awake. And she didn’t have the strength to open her eyes.
“Sister,” said the nun, “you mustn’t sleep yet. Ulf has gone to bring the priest to you.”
Kristin woke up with a start and fixed her eyes on her hand. The gold ring was gone; that was certain enough. There was a shiny, worn mark where it had sat on her middle finger. On the brown, rough flesh it was quite clear—like a scar of thin white skin. She thought she could even make out two round circles from the rubies on either side and a tiny scratch, an M from the center of the ring where the holy symbol of the Virgin Mary had been etched into the gold.
The last clear thought that took shape in her mind was that she was going to die before the mark had time to fade, and it made her happy. It seemed to her a mystery that she could not comprehend, but she was certain that God had held her firmly in a pact which had been made for her, without her knowing it, from a love that had been poured over her—and in spite of her willfulness, in spite of her melancholy, earthbound heart, some of that love had stayed inside her, had worked on her like sun on the earth, had driven forth a crop that neither the fiercest fire of passion nor its stormi est anger could completely destroy. She had been a servant of God—a stubborn, defiant maid, most often an eye-servant in her prayers and unfaithful in her heart, indolent and neglectful, impatient toward admonishments, inconstant in her deeds. And yet He had held her firmly in His service, and under the glittering gold ring a mark had been secretly impressed upon her, showing that she was His servant, owned by the Lord and King who would now come, borne on the consecrated hands of the priest, to give her release and salvation.
As soon as Sira Eiliv had anointed her with the last oil and viaticum, Kristin Lavransdatter again lost consciousness. She lay there, violently vomiting blood, with a blazing fever, and the priest who was sitting with her told the nuns that the end would come quickly.
Several times the dying woman’s mind cleared enough that she could recognize one face or another: Sira Eiliv or the sisters. Fru Ragnhild herself was there once, and she saw Ulf. She struggled to show that she knew them and that it was good they were with her and wished her well. But for those who stood at her bedside, it merely looked as if she were flailing her hands in the throes of death.
Once she saw Munan’s face; her little son was peeking at her through a crack in the door. Then he pulled back his head, and his mother lay there, staring at the door to see if the boy would look through it again. Instead Fru Ragnhild appeared and wiped her face with a damp cloth, and that too felt good. Then everything disappeared in a dark red haze and a roar, which at first grew fearfully loud, but then the din gradually died away, and the red fog became thinner and lighter, and at last it was like a fine morning mist before the sun breaks through, and there was not a sound, and she knew that now she was dying.
Sira Eiliv and Ulf Haldorss?n left the deathbed together. In the doorway leading out to the convent courtyard, they stopped.