“Jesus, she’s as white as her linen wimple,” whispered Audfinna. “Do you think, sir, that I might give her a sleeping potion? She needs to rest a while before it gets much worse.”
She set to work, quietly and efficiently, inspecting the bed that the servant women had prepared on the floor, and telling them to bring more cushions and straw. She put small stone vessels of herbs on the fire to heat. Then she proceeded to loosen all the ribbons and ties on Kristin’s clothing, and finally she pulled out all the pins from the ill woman’s hair.
“I’ve never seen anything so lovely,” she said when the cascading, silky, golden-brown mane tumbled down around the pale face. She had to laugh. “It certainly hasn’t lost much of either fullness or sheen, even though you went bareheaded a little longer than was proper.”
She settled Kristin comfortably among the cushions on the floor and covered her with a blanket.
“Drink this now, and you won’t feel the pains as much—and see if you can sleep a little now and then.”
Gunnulf was ready to leave. He went over and bent down toward Kristin.
“You will pray for me, Gunnulf?” she implored him.
“I will pray for you until I see you with your child in your arms—and after that too,” he said as he tucked her hand back under the covers.
Kristin lay there, dozing. She felt almost content. The pain in her loins came and went, came and went—but it was unlike anything she had ever felt before, so that each time it was over, she wondered whether she had just imagined it. After the anguish and dread of the early morning hours, she felt as if she were already beyond the worst fear and torment. Audfinna walked about quietly, hanging up the infant clothes, blankets, and furs to warm at the hearth—and stirring her pots a little so the room smelled of spices. Finally Kristin slept between each wave of pain; she thought she was back home in the brewhouse at J?rundgaard and was supposed to help her mother dye a large woven fabric—probably because of the steam from the ash bark and nettles.
Then the neighbor women arrived, one after another—wives from the estates in the parish and in Birgsi. Audfinna withdrew to her place with the maids. Toward evening, Kristin began to suffer terrible pain. The women told her to walk around as long as she could bear it. This tormented her greatly; the house was now crowded with women, and she had to walk around like a mare that was for sale. Now and then she had to let the women squeeze and touch her body all over, and then they would confer with each other. At last Fru Gunna from Raasvold, who was in charge of things, said that now Kristin could lie down on the floor. She divided up the women: some to sleep and some to keep watch. “This isn’t going to pass quickly—but go ahead and scream, Kristin, when it hurts, and don’t pay any mind to those who are sleeping. We’re all here to help you, poor child,” she said, gentle and kind, patting the young woman’s cheek.
But Kristin lay there biting her lips to shreds and crushing the corners of the blanket in her sweaty hands. It was suffocatingly hot, but they told her that was as it should be. After each wave of pain, the sweat poured off her.
At times she would lie there thinking about food for all these women. She fervently wanted them to see that she kept good order in her house. She had asked Torbj?rg, the cook, to put whey in the water for boiling the fresh fish. If only Gunnulf wouldn’t regard this as breaking the fast. Sira Eirik had said that it wasn’t, for whey was not milk, and the fish broth would be thrown out. They mustn’t be allowed to taste the dried fish that Erlend had brought home in the fall, spoiled and full of mites that it was.
Blessed Virgin Mary—will it be long before you help me? Oh, how it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. . . .
She was trying to hold out a little longer, before she gave in and screamed.
Audfinna sat next to the hearth and tended the pots of water. Kristin wished that she dared ask her to come over and hold her hand. There was nothing she wouldn’t give to hold on to a familiar and kind hand right now. But she was ashamed to ask for it.
The next morning a bewildered silence hovered over Husaby. It was the day before the Feast of the Annunciation and the farm work was supposed to be finished by mid-afternoon prayers, but the men were distracted and somber, and the frightened maids were careless with their chores. The servants had grown fond of their young mistress, and it was said that things were not going well for her.
Erlend stood outside in the courtyard, talking to his smith. He tried to keep his thoughts on what the man was saying. Then Fru Gunna came rushing over to him.
“There’s no progress with your wife, Erlend—we’ve tried everything we know. You must come. It might help if she sits on your lap. Go in and change into a short tunic. But be quick; she’s suffering greatly, your poor young wife!”
Erlend had turned blood-red. He remembered he had heard that if a woman was having trouble delivering a child she had conceived in secrecy, then it might help if she were placed on her husband’s knee.
Kristin was lying on the floor under several blankets; two women were sitting with her. The moment that Erlend came in, he saw her body convulse and she buried her head in the lap of one of the women, rocking it from side to side. But she didn’t utter a single whimper.
When the pain had passed, she looked up with wild, frightened eyes, her cracked, brown lips gasping. All trace of youth and beauty had vanished from the swollen, flushed red face. Even her hair was matted together with bits of straw and wool from the fur of a filthy hide. She looked at Erlend as if she didn’t immediately recognize him. But when she realized why the women had sent for him, she shook her head vigorously.
“It’s not the custom where I come from . . . for men to be present when a woman is giving birth.”
“It’s sometimes done here in the north,” said Erlend quietly. “If it can lessen the pain a little for you, my Kristin, then you must—”
“Oh!” When he knelt beside her she threw her arms around his waist and pressed herself to him. Hunched over and shaking, she fought her way through the pain without a murmur.
“May I have a few words with my husband alone?” she said when it was over, her breathing rapid and harsh. The women withdrew.
“Was it when she was suffering the agony of childbirth that you promised her what she told me—that you would marry her when she was widowed . . . that night when Orm was born?” whispered Kristin.
Erlend gasped for air, as if he had been struck deep in the heart. Then he vehemently shook his head.
“I was at the castle that night; my men and I had guard duty. It was when I came back to our hostel in the morning and they put the boy in my arms. . . . Have you been lying here thinking about this, Kristin?”
“Yes.” Again she clung to him as the waves of pain washed over her. Erlend wiped away the sweat that poured down her face.
“Now you know,” he said, when she lay quiet once more. “Don’t you want me to stay with you, as Fru Gunna says?”
But Kristin shook her head. And finally the women had to let Erlend go.
But then it seemed as if her power to endure was broken. She screamed in wild terror of the pain that she could feel approaching, and begged pitifully for help. And yet when the women talked of bringing her husband back, she screamed “No!” She would rather be tortured to death.
Gunnulf and the cleric who was with him walked over to the church to attend evensong. Everyone on the estate went along who was not tending to the woman giving birth. But Erlend slipped out of the church before the service was over and walked south toward the buildings.