“Let me do that,” begged Kristin. “I have a younger back.”
They worked without talking. Kristin stood near the storeroom door and churned, and Aashild carded wool over by the hearth. Not until Kristin had strained out the churn and was forming the butter did she suddenly say, “Aunt Aashild—aren’t you ever afraid of the day when you have to face God’s judgment?”
Fru Aashild stood up and went over to stand in front of Kristin in the light.
“Perhaps I’ll have the courage to ask the one who created me, such as I am, whether He will have mercy on me when the time comes. For I have never asked for His mercy when I went against His commandments. And I have never asked God or man to return one penning of the fines I’ve had to pay here in my earthly home.”
A moment later she said quietly, “Munan, my eldest son, was twenty years old. Back then he wasn’t the way I know him to be now. They weren’t like that then, those children of mine . . .”
Kristin replied softly, “And yet you’ve had Herr Bj?rn by your side every day and every night all these years.”
“Yes,” said Aashild, “that I have.”
A little later Kristin was done with forming the butter. Then Fru Aashild said that they ought to try lying down for a while.
In the dark bed she put her arm around Kristin’s shoulder and pulled the girl’s head toward her. And it wasn’t long before she could hear by her even and quiet breathing that Kristin was asleep.
CHAPTER 4
THE FROST HUNG ON. In every stable of the village the starving animals lowed and complained, suffering from the cold. But the people were already rationing the fodder as best they could.
There was not much visiting done during the Christmas season that year; everyone was staying at home.
At Christmas the cold grew worse; each day felt colder than the one before. People could hardly remember such a harsh winter. And while no more snow fell, even up in the mountains, the snow that had fallen on Saint Clement’s Day froze as hard as stone. The sun shone in a clear sky, now that the days were growing lighter. At night the northern lights flickered and sputtered above the mountain ridges to the north; they flickered over half the sky, but they didn’t bring a change in the weather. Once in a while it would cloud over, sprinkling a little dry snow, but then the clear skies and biting cold would return. The Laag murmured and gurgled lazily beneath the bridges of ice.
Each morning Kristin would think that now she could stand it no longer; that she wouldn’t be able to make it through the day, because each day felt like a duel between her father and herself. And was it right for them to be so at odds with each other right now, when every living thing, every person and beast in the valleys, was enduring a common trial? But when evening came she had made it through after all.
It was not that her father was unfriendly. They never spoke of what lay between them, but Kristin could feel that in everything he left unsaid he was steadfastly determined to stand by his refusal.
And she burned with longing for his affection. Her anguish was even greater because she knew how much else her father had to bear; and if things had been as they were before, he would have talked to her about his concerns. It’s true that at J?rundgaard they were better prepared than most other places, but even here they felt the effects of the bad year, every day and every hour. In the winter Lavrans usually spent time breaking and training his foals, but this year, during the autumn, he had sold all of them in the south. His daughter missed hearing his voice out in the courtyard and watching him tussle with the lanky, shaggy two-year-old horses in the game that he loved so much. The storerooms, barns, and bins on the farm had not been emptied after the harvest of the previous year, but many people came to J?rundgaard asking for help, either as a purchase or a gift, and no one asked in vain.
Late one evening a very old man, dressed in furs, arrived on skis. Lavrans spoke to him out in the courtyard, and Halvdan took food to him in the hearth room. No one on the farm who had seen him knew who he was, but it was assumed that he was one of the people who lived in the mountains; perhaps Lavrans had run into him out there. But Kristin’s father didn’t speak of the visit, nor did Halvdan.
Then one evening a man arrived with whom Lavrans Bj?rgulf s?n had had a score to settle for many years. Lavrans went out to the storeroom with him. But when he returned to the house, he said, “Everyone wants me to help them. And yet here on my farm you’re all against me. Even you, wife,” he said angrily to Ragnfrid.
Then Ragnfrid lashed out at Kristin.
“Do you hear what your father is saying to me? I’m not against you, Lavrans. You know full well, Kristin, what happened south of here at Roaldstad late in the fall, when he traveled through the valley in the company of that other whoremonger, his kinsman from Haugen—she took her own life, that unfortunate woman he had enticed away from all her kinsmen.”
Her face rigid, Kristin replied harshly, “I see that you blame him as much for the years when he was striving to get out of sin as for those when he was living in it.”
“Jesus Maria,” cried Ragnfrid, clasping her hands together. “Look what’s become of you! Won’t even this make you change your mind?”
“No,” said Kristin. “I haven’t changed my mind.”
Then Lavrans looked up from the bench where he was sitting with Ulvhild.
“Nor have I, Kristin,” he said quietly.
But Kristin knew in her heart that in some way she had changed —if not her decision, then her outlook. She had received word of the progress of that ill-fated journey. It had gone easier than anyone could have expected. Whether it was because the cold had settled in his wound or for some other reason, the knife injury which Erlend had received in his chest had become infected. He lay ill at the hostel in Roaldstad for a long time, and Herr Bj?rn tended to him during those days. But because Erlend had been wounded, it was easier to explain everything else and to make others believe them.
When he was able to continue, he transported the dead woman in a coffin all the way to Oslo. There, with Sira Jon’s intervention, he found a gravesite for her in the cemetery of Nikolaus Church, which lay in ruins. Then he had confessed to the Bishop of Oslo himself, who had enjoined him to travel to the Shrine of the Holy Blood in Schwerin. So now he had left the country.
There was no place to which she could make a pilgrimage to seek redemption. Her lot was to stay here, to wait and worry and try to endure her opposition to her parents. A strange, cold winter light fell over all her memories of her meetings with Erlend. She thought about his ardor—in love and in sorrow—and it occurred to her that if she had been able to seize on all things with equal abruptness and plunge ahead at once, then afterward they might seem of less consequence and easier to bear. Sometimes she thought that Erlend might give her up. She had always had a slight fear that it could become too difficult for them, and he would lose heart. But she would not give him up—not unless he released her from all promises.
And so the winter wore on. And Kristin could no longer fool herself; she had to admit that now the most difficult trial awaited all of them, for Ulvhild did not have long to live. And in the midst of her bitter sorrow over her sister, Kristin realized with horror that her own soul had been led astray and was corrupted by sin. For as she witnessed the dying child and her parents’ unspeakable grief, she thought of only one thing: if Ulvhild dies, how will I be able to endure facing my father without throwing myself down before him, to confess everything and to beg him to forgive me and to do with me what he will.