“He didn’t have to become a servant, Ulf didn’t,” were the words that came out, but his sobs lodged, gasping, in his chest. “You could have taken the farm after Haldor, you know that’s what I intended. . . .”
“It wasn’t a very good farm that you gave Haldor; you bought a cheap husband for your wife’s serving maid,” said Ulf. “He fixed it up and managed it well, and it seemed to me reasonable that my brothers should take it over after their father. That’s one thing. But I had no desire to end up as a farmer, either—and least of all up on the slope, staring down at the Hestnes courtyard. It seemed to me that I heard every day that Paal and Vilborg were going around saying vicious things about how you gave much too grand a gift to your bastard son.”
“I offered to help you, Ulf,” said Baard, weeping. “When you wanted to go out traveling with Erlend. I told you everything as soon as you were old enough to understand. I begged you to return to your father.”
“I call the man my father who looked after me when I was small. That man was Haldor. He was good to Mother and to me. He taught me to ride a horse and to fight with a sword—the way a farmer wields his club, I remember Paal once said.”
Ulf flung the knife he was holding so that it clattered across the table. Then he got to his feet, picked up the knife, wiped it on the back of his thigh, and stuck it in its sheath. He turned to Erlend. “Put an end to this feast now and send the servants to bed! Can’t you see that your wife is still not used to the banquet customs we have in our family?”
And with that he left the hall.
Sir Baard stared after him. He seemed so pitifully old and frail as he sat slumped among the velvet cushions. His daughter, Vilborg, and one of his servants helped Baard to his feet and escorted him out.
Kristin sat alone in the high seat, weeping and weeping. When Erlend touched her, she angrily struck his hand aside. She swayed a few times as she walked across the floor, but she replied with a curt “no” when her husband asked if she was ill.
She detested these closed beds. Back home they simply had tapestries hung up facing the room, and thus it was never hot or stuffy. But now it was worse than ever . . . it was so hard for her to breathe. She thought that the hard lump pressing on her all the way up under her ribcage must be the child’s head; she imagined him lying with his little black head burrowed in amongst the roots of her heart. He was suffocating her, as Erlend had done before when he pressed his dark-haired head to her breast. But tonight there was no sweetness in the thought.
“Will you never stop your crying?” asked her husband, trying to ease his arm under her shoulder.
He was quite sober. He could tolerate a great deal of liquor, but he usually drank very little. Kristin thought that never in all eternity would this have happened back at her home—never had she heard people fling slanderous words at each other or rip open something that would be better left unsaid. As many times as she had seen her father reeling from intoxication and the hall full of drunken guests, there was never a time when he couldn’t keep order in his own house. Peace and good will reigned right up until everyone tumbled off the benches and fell asleep in joy and harmony.
“My dearest wife, don’t take this so hard,” implored Erlend.
“And Sir Baard!” she burst into tears. “Shame on such behavior—this man who spoke to my father as if he were bearing God’s message. Yes, Munan told me about it at our betrothal banquet.”
Erlend said softly, “I know, Kristin, that I have reason to cast down my eyes before your father. He’s a fine man—but my foster father is no worse. Inga, the mother of Paal and Vilborg, lay paralyzed and ill for six years before she died. That was before I came to Hestnes, but I’ve heard about it. Never has a husband tended to an ailing wife in a more faithful or loving manner. But it was during that time that Ulf was born.”
“Then it was an even greater sin—with his sick wife’s maid.”
“You often act so childish that it’s impossible to talk to you,” said Erlend in resignation. “God help me, Kristin, you’re going to be twenty this spring—and several winters have passed since you had to be considered a grown-up woman.”
“Yes, it’s true that you have the right to scoff at me for that.”
Erlend moaned loudly.
“You know yourself that I didn’t mean it like that. But you lived all that time at J?rundgaard and listened to Lavrans—so splendid and manly he is, but he often talks as if he were a monk and not a grown man.”
“Have you ever heard of any monk who has had six children?” she said, offended.
“I’ve heard of that man, Skurda-Grim, and he had seven,” said Erlend in despair. “The former abbot at Holm . . . No, Kristin, Kristin, don’t cry like that. In God’s name, I think you’ve lost your senses.”
Munan was quite subdued the next morning. “I didn’t think you would take my ale-babble so much to heart, young Kristin,” he said somberly, stroking her cheek. “Or I would have kept better watch on my tongue.”
He said to Erlend that it must be strange for Kristin with the boy being there. It would be best to send Orm away for the time being. Munan offered to take him in for a while. Erlend approved, and Orm wanted to go with Munan. But Kristin missed the child deeply; she had grown fond of her stepson.
Now she once again sat alone with Erlend in the evenings, and there was not much companionship in him. He would sit over by the hearth, say a few words now and then, take a drink from the ale bowl, and play with his dogs. He would go over to the bench and stretch out—and then he would go to bed, asking a couple of times whether she was coming soon, and then he’d fall asleep.
Kristin sat and sewed. Her breathing was audible, shallow and heavy. But it wouldn’t be long now. She couldn’t even remember how it felt to be light and slim in the waist—or how to tie her shoes without strain and effort.
Now that Erlend was asleep she no longer tried to hold back her tears. There was not a sound in the hall except the firewood collapsing in the hearth and the dogs stirring. Sometimes she wondered what they had talked about before, she and Erlend. But then they hadn’t talked much—they had had other things to do in those brief, stolen hours together.
At this time of year her mother and the maids used to sit in the weaving room in the evenings. Then her father and the men would come to join them and sit down with their work—they would repair leather goods and farm tools and make carvings out of wood. The little room would be crowded with people; conversation flowed quietly and easily among them. Whenever somebody went over to drink from the ale keg, before he hung up the ladle he would always ask whether anyone else would like some—that was the custom.
Then someone would recite a short saga—perhaps about giants in the past who had fought with grave-barrow ghosts and giantesses. Or her father, as he whittled, would recount those tales of knights that he had heard read aloud in Duke Haakon’s hall when he was a page in his youth. Strange and beautiful names: King Os antrix, Titurel the knight; Sisibe, Guinevere, Gloriana, and Isolde were the names of the queens. But on other evenings they told bawdy tales and ribald sagas until the men were roaring with laughter and her mother and the maids would shake their heads and giggle.
Ulvhild and Astrid would sing. Ragnfrid had the loveliest voice of all, but they had to plead before they could get her to sing. Lavrans didn’t need such persuasion—and he could play his harp so beautifully.
Then Ulvhild would put down her distaff and spindle and press her hands behind her hips.