Kristin Lavransdatter (111 page)

He turned his head away. And so she walked past him, stepped soundlessly out the door, and closed it silently behind her.

 

It was pitch dark outside, with small gusts of wind from the south making all the stars blink and flicker uneasily. She had reached no farther than the road up between the fences when she felt as if she had stepped into eternity itself. An endless path both behind her and up ahead. As if she would never emerge from what she had entered into when she walked out into this night.

Even the darkness was like a force she was pressing against. She plodded through the mud; the road had been churned up by the carts carrying unthreshed grain, and now it was thawing in the south wind. With every footstep she had to pull herself free from the night and the raw chill that clung to her feet, swept upward, and weighted down the hems of her garments. Now and then a falling leaf would drift past her, as if something alive were touching her in the dark—gentle but confident of its superior power: Turn back.

When she came out onto the main road, it was easier to walk. The road was covered with grass, and her feet did not get stuck in the mire. Her face felt as rigid as stone, her body tensed and taut. Each step carried her mercilessly toward the forest grove through which she would have to pass. A feeling rose up inside her like an inner paralysis: She couldn’t possibly walk through that patch of darkness. But she had no intention of turning around. She couldn’t feel her body because of her terror, yet all the while she kept moving forward, as if in her sleep, steadily stepping over stones and roots and puddles of water, unconsciously careful not to stumble or break her steady stride and thus allow fear to overwhelm her.

Now the spruce trees rustled closer and closer in the night; she stepped in among them, still as calm as a sleepwalker. She sensed every sound and hardly dared blink because of the dark. The drone of the river, the heavy sighing of the firs, a creek trickling over stones as she walked toward it, passed by it, and then continued on. Once a rock slid down the scree, as if some living creature were moving about up there. Sweat poured from her body, but she did not venture either to slow or to speed her step because of it.

Kristin’s eyes had now grown so accustomed to the dark that when she emerged from the woods, she could see much better; a glint came from the ribbon of the river and from the water on the marshes. The fields became visible in the blackness; the clusters of buildings looked like clumps of earth. The sky was also beginning to lighten overhead; she could feel it, although she didn’t dare look up at the black peaks towering above. But she knew that it would soon be time for the moon to rise.

She tried to remind herself that in four hours it would be daytime; people would be setting about their daily chores on all the farms throughout the countryside. The sky would grow pale with dawn; the light would rise over the mountains. Then it wouldn’t seem far to go; in the daylight it wasn’t far from Formo to the church. And by then she would have returned home long ago. But it was clear that she would be a different person.

She knew that if it had been one of her own children, she would not have dared make this last attempt. To turn away God’s hand when He reached out for a living soul. When she kept watch over her own ill children, back when she was young and her heart bled with tenderness, when she thought she would collapse in anguish and torment, she had tried to say: Lord, you love them better than I do, let thy will be done.

But now on this night she was walking along, defying her own terror. This child who was not her own—she
would
save him, no matter what fate she was saving him for. . . .

Because you too, Simon Darre, acquiesced when the dearest thing you possessed on earth was at stake; you agreed to more than anyone can accept with full honor.

Do you not want me to go? He hadn’t been man enough to answer. Deep in her heart she knew that if the child died, Simon would have the strength to bear this too. But she had struck at the only moment when she ever saw him on the verge of breaking down; she had seized hold of that moment and carried it off. She would share that secret with him, the knowledge that she had also witnessed
him
when he once stood unsteady on his feet.

For he had learned too much about her. She had accepted help from the man she had spurned every time it was a matter of saving the one she had chosen. This suitor whom she had cast aside—he was the man she had turned to each time she needed someone to protect her love. And never had she asked for Simon’s help in vain. Time after time he had stepped forward, covering her with his kindness and his strength.

So she was undertaking this nighttime errand to rid herself of a little of the debt; until that hour, she hadn’t fully realized how heavy a burden it was.

Simon had forced her to see at last that he was the strongest: stronger than she was and stronger than the man to whom she had chosen to give herself. No doubt she had realized this from the moment all three of them met, face-to-face, in that shameful place in Oslo. And yet she had refused to accept it then: that such a plump-cheeked, stout, and gaping young man could be stronger than . . .

Now she was walking along, not daring to call on a good and holy name; she took upon herself this sin in order to . . . She didn’t know what. Was it revenge? Revenge because she had been forced to see that he was more noble-minded than the two of them?

But now you too understand, Simon, that when the life of the one you love more than your own heart is at stake . . . Then the poor person grasps for anything, anything.

The moon had risen over the mountain ridge as she walked up the hill to the church. Again she felt as if she had to overcome a new wave of terror. The moonlight lay like a delicate spiderweb over the tar-timbered edifice. The church itself looked terrifying and ominously dark beneath the thin veil. Out on the green she saw the cross, but for the first time she didn’t dare approach to kneel before the blessed tree. She crept over the churchyard wall at the place where she knew the sod and stone were the lowest and most easily breached.

Here and there a gravestone glistened like water down in the tall, dewy grass. Kristin walked straight across the cemetery to the graves of the poor, which lay near the south wall.

She went over to the burial place of a poor man who had been a stranger in the parish. One winter the man had frozen to death on the mountainside. His two motherless daughters had been taken in by one farm after another,
¹
until Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn had offered to keep them and bring them up, for the sake of Christ. When they were full grown and had turned out well, Kristin’s father had found honorable, hardworking husbands for them and married them off with cows and calves and sheep. Ragnfrid had given them bedding and iron pots. Now both women were well provided for, as befitted their station. One of them had been Ramborg’s maid, and Ramborg had carried the woman’s child to be baptized.

So you must grant me a bit of the turf covering you, Bjarne, for Ramborg’s son. Kristin knelt down and pulled out her dagger.

Drops of ice cold sweat prickled her brow and upper lip as she dug her fingers under the dew-drenched sod. The earth resisted . . . it was only roots. She sliced through them with the dagger.

In return, the ghost must be given gold or silver that had been passed down through three generations. She slipped off the little gold ring with the rubies that had been her grandmother’s betrothal ring.

The child is my father’s descendant.

She pushed the ring as far down into the earth as she could, wrapped the piece of sod in the linen cloth, and then spread peat and leaves over the spot where she had removed it.

When she stood up, her legs trembled under her, and she had to pause for a moment before she could turn around. If she looked under her arm right now, she would be able to see them.

She felt a terrible tugging inside her, as if they would force her to do so. All the dead who had known her before in this world. Is that you, Kristin Lavransdatter? Are you coming here in this way?

Arne Gyrdsøn lay buried outside the west entrance. Yes, Arne, you may well wonder—I was not like this, back when you and I knew each other.

Then she climbed over the wall again and headed down the slope.

The moon was now bright over the countryside. Jørundgaard lay out on the plain; the dew glittered in the grass on all the rooftops. She stared in that direction, almost listlessly. She felt as if she herself were dead to that home and all the people there; the door was closed to her, to the woman who had wandered past, up along the road on this night.

The mountains cast their shadows over her nearly the whole way back. The wind was blowing harder now; one gust of wind after another came straight toward her. Withered leaves blew against her, trying to send her back to the place she had just left.

Nor did she believe that she was walking along unaccompanied. She heard the steady sound of stealthy footsteps behind her. Is that you, Arne?

Look back, Kristin, look under your arm, it urged her.

And yet she didn’t feel truly afraid anymore. Just cold and numb, sick with desire to give up and sink down. After this night she could never be afraid of anything else in the world.

 

Simon was sitting in his usual place at the head of the bed, leaning over the child, when she opened the door and stepped inside. For a brief moment he looked up; Kristin wondered if she had grown as worn out and haggard and old as he had during these days. Then Simon bowed his head and hid his face with his arm.

He staggered a bit as he got to his feet. He turned his face away from her as he walked past and over to the door, his head bowed, his shoulders slumped.

Kristin lit two candles and set them on the table. The boy opened his eyes slightly and looked up, his gaze strangely unseeing; he whimpered a bit and tried to turn his head toward the light. When Kristin straightened out his little body, the way a corpse is laid out, he tried to change position, but he seemed too weak to move.

Then she covered his face and chest with the linen cloth and placed the strip of sod on top.

At that moment the terror seized her again, like a great sea swell.

She had to sit down on the bed. The window was right above the short bench, and she didn’t dare sit with her back to it. Better to look them in the eyes if anyone should be standing outside and looking in. She pulled the high-backed chair over to the bed and sat down facing the windowpane. The stifling black of the night pressed against it; one of the candles was reflected in the glass. Kristin fixed her eyes on it, clutching the arms of the chair so that her knuckles grew white; now and then her arms trembled. She couldn’t feel her own legs, as chilled and wet as they were. She sat there with her teeth chattering from horror and cold, and the sweat ran like ice water down her face and back. She sat without moving, merely casting now and then a quick glance at the linen cloth, which faintly rose and fell with the child’s breath.

Finally the pale light of dawn appeared in the windowpane. The rooster crowed shrilly. Then she heard men out in the courtyard. They were heading for the stable.

She slumped against the back of the chair, shuddering as if with convulsions, and tried to find a position for her legs so they wouldn’t twitch and jerk around from the shaking.

There was a strong movement under the linen cloth. Andres pushed it away from his face, whimpering crossly. He seemed partially conscious since he grunted at Kristin when she jumped to her feet and leaned over him.

She grabbed the cloth and sod, rushed over to the fireplace, and stuffed twigs and wood inside it; then she threw the ghostly goods into the fresh, crackling fire. She had to stand still for a moment, holding on to the wall. The tears poured down Kristin’s face.

She took a ladleful of milk from the little pot that stood near the hearth and carried it over to the child. Andres had fallen asleep again. He seemed to be slumbering peacefully now.

Then she drank the milk herself. It tasted so good that she had to gulp down two or three more ladlefuls of the warm drink.

Still, she didn’t dare speak; the boy hadn’t yet said a comprehensible word. But she sank to her knees next to the foot of the bed and recited mutely to herself:

Yes, yes, yes. This was a terrible thing she had done. But he was their only son. While she herself had seven! Shouldn’t she try
everything
to save her sister’s only son?

All the thoughts she had had during the night—they were merely ramblings of the night. She had done it only because she couldn’t stand to see this child die in her hands.

Simon—the man who had never failed her. The one who had been loyal and good toward every child she had ever known and most of all toward herself and her own. And this son whom he loved above all else—shouldn’t she use every measure to save the boy’s life? Even if it was a sin?

Yes, it was sinful, but let the punishment fall on me, God. That poor, beautiful, innocent son of Simon and Ramborg. God would not allow Andres to be punished.

She went back and leaned over the bed, breathing on the tiny, waxen hand. She didn’t dare kiss it; he mustn’t be wakened.

So fair and blameless.

It was during the nights of terror when they were left alone at Haugen that Fru Aashild had told her about it—told her about her own errand to the cemetery at Kongunahelle. “That, Kristin, was surely the most difficult task I have ever undertaken.” But Bjørn Gunnarssøn was not an innocent child when he lay there after Aashild Gautesdatter’s cousins had come too close to his heart with their swords. He had slain one man before he was brought down himself, and the other man never regained his vigor after the day he exchanged blows with Herr Bjørn.