“I know, I know,” interrupted her husband impatiently. “All the more reason to handle with caution what one has inherited.”
But his wife continued. “There is also this: It doesn’t seem to me that Kristin would be an unequal match for Erlend. In Sweden your lineage is among the best; your grandfather and your father bore the title of knight in this country. My distant ancestors were barons, son after father for many hundreds of years down to Ivar the Old; my father and my grandfather were sheriffs of the county. It’s true that neither you nor Trond has acquired a title or land from the Crown. But I think it could be said that things are no different for Erlend Nikulauss?n than for the two of you.”
“It’s not the same thing,” said Lavrans vehemently. “Power and a knight’s title lay just within reach for Erlend, and he turned his back on them for the sake of whoring. But I see now that you’re against me too. Maybe you think, like Aasmund and Trond, that it’s an honor for me that these noblemen want my daughter to be one of their kinswomen.”
“I told you,” said Ragnfrid rather heatedly, “that I don’t think you need to be so offended and afraid that Erlend’s kinsmen will think they’re condescending in this matter. But don’t you realize one thing above all else? That gentle, obedient child had the courage to stand up to us and reject Simon Darre. Haven’t you noticed that Kristin has not been herself since she came back from Oslo? Don’t you see that she’s walking around as if she had just stepped out from the spell of the mountain? Don’t you realize that she loves this man so much that if you don’t give in, a great misfortune may befall us?”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Lavrans, looking up sharply.
“Many a man greets his son-in-law and does not know it,” said Ragnfrid.
Her husband seemed to stiffen; he slowly turned white in the face.
“And you are her mother!” he said hoarsely. “Have you . . . have you seen . . . such certain signs . . . that you dare accuse your own daughter of this?”
“No, no,” said Ragnfrid quickly. “I didn’t mean what you think. But no one can know what may have happened or is going to happen. Her only thought is that she loves this man. That much I’ve seen. She may show us someday that she loves him more than her honor—or her life!”
Lavrans leaped up.
Have you taken leave of your senses? How can you think such things of our good, beautiful child? Nothing much can have happened to her there, with the nuns. I know she’s no milkmaid who gives up her virtue behind a fence. You must realize that she can’t have seen this man or spoken to him more than a few times. She’ll get over him. It’s probably just the whim of a young maiden. God knows it hurts me dearly to see her grieving so, but you know that this has to pass with time!
“Life, you say, and honor. Here at home on my own farm I can surely protect my own daughter. And I don’t believe any maiden of good family and with an honorable and Christian upbringing would part so easily with her honor, or her life. No, this is the kind of thing people write ballads about. I think when a man or a maiden is tempted to do something like that, they make up a ballad about it, which helps them, but they refrain from actually doing it. . . .
“Even you,” he said, stopping in front of his wife. “There was another man you would rather have had, back when the two of us were married. What kind of situation do you think you’d have been in if your father had let you make up your own mind?”
Now it was Ragnfrid’s turn to grow pale as death.
“Jesus and Maria! Who told you . . .”
“Sigurd of Loptsgaard said something about it, right after we moved here to the valley,” said Lavrans. “But give me an answer to my question. Do you think you would have been happier if Ivar had given you to that man?”
His wife stood with her head bowed low.
“That man,” she said almost inaudibly, “didn’t want me.” A shudder seemed to pass through her body; she struck at the air with a clenched fist.
Then her husband gently placed his hands on her shoulders.
“Is that it?” he said, overcome, and a profound and sorrowful amazement filled his voice. “Is that it? For all these years . . . have you been harboring sorrow for him, Ragnfrid?”
She was shaking, but she did not answer.
“Ragnfrid?” he said in the same tone of voice. “But after Bj?rgulf died . . . and when you . . . when you wanted me to be toward you—in a way that I couldn’t . . . Were you thinking about the other man then?” he whispered, frightened and confused and tormented.
“How can you think such things?” she whispered, on the verge of tears.
Lavrans leaned his forehead against his wife’s and turned his head gently from side to side.
“I don’t know. You’re so strange, everything you said tonight . . . I was afraid, Ragnfrid. I don’t understand women very well.”
Ragnfrid smiled wanly and put her arms around his neck.
“God knows, Lavrans . . . I begged you because I loved you more than is good for a human soul. And I hated the other man so much that I knew it made the Devil happy.”
“I have loved you, dear wife, with all my heart,” said Lavrans tenderly, kissing her. “Do you know that? I thought we were so happy together—weren’t we, Ragnfrid?”
“You are the best husband,” she said with a little sob, pressing herself against him.
Ardently he embraced her.
“Tonight I want to sleep with you, Ragnfrid. And if you would be toward me the way you were in the old days, then I wouldn’t be . . . such a fool.”
His wife stiffened in his arms and pulled away a little.
“It’s fasting time,” she said quietly, her voice strangely hard.
“So it is.” Her husband chuckled. “You and I, Ragnfrid, we have observed all the fast days and have tried to live by God’s commandments in all things. And now it almost seems to me . . . that we might have been happier if we had had more to regret.”
“Don’t talk that way,” implored his wife in despair, holding his temples in her gaunt hands. “You know that I don’t want you to do anything except what you think is right.”
He pulled her to him once more. He gasped aloud as he said, “God help her. God help us all, my Ragnfrid.
“I’m tired,” he said, releasing her. “You should go to bed now too, shouldn’t you?”
He stood by the door, waiting as she put out the fire in the hearth, blew out the little iron lamp by the loom, and pinched the wick. Together they walked through the rain over to the main house.