“She was lying there?” Kristin gave the men a look of horror. “Didn’t anyone bring a priest to her? Is . . . the body . . . still lying there? And no one has had enough mercy to put her into consecrated ground? And her child you were going to . . .”
Seeing her horror seemed to make the men lose their wits from fear and shame; they began shouting all at once.
Above all the other voices, one man cried out, “Go and get her yourself, sister!”
“Yes! Which of you will go with me?”
No one answered.
Arntor shouted, “You’ll have to go alone.”
“Tomorrow, as soon as it’s light, we will go to get her, Arntor. I myself will pay for her resting place and a mass for her soul.”
“Go out there now. Go there tonight. Then I’ll believe that you’re all full of holiness and virtue.”
Arntor had thrust his face close to hers. Kristin raised her clenched fist up before his eyes; she uttered a loud sob of fury and terror.
Fru Ragnhild came over and stood at Kristin’s side; she struggled to speak. The nuns cried that the next day the dead woman would be brought to her grave.
But the Devil seemed to have robbed Arntor of all reason; he kept on screaming, “Go now. Then we’ll believe in the mercy of God.”
Kristin straightened up; pale and rigid, she said, “I will go.”
She lifted up the child and put him into Sister Torunn’s arms; she shoved the men aside and began running swiftly toward the gate, stumbling over hillocks and heaps of earth, as the wailing nuns raced after her and Sister Agata yelled that she would go with her. The abbess shook her fists to say that Kristin should stop, but she seemed completely beside herself.
At that moment there was a great commotion in the darkness over by the cemetery gate. In the next instant Sira Eiliv’s voice asked: “Who is holding a ting here?” He stepped into the glow of the lantern; they saw that he was carrying an axe in his hand. The nuns crowded around him; the men made haste to disappear into the darkness, but at the gate they were met by a man holding a drawn sword in his hand. A tumult ensued, with the clang of weapons, and Sira Eiliv called out: “Woe to any man who breaks the peace of the cemetery.” Kristin heard someone say it was the mighty smith from Credoveit. A moment later a tall, broad-shouldered man with white hair appeared at her side. It was Ulf Haldorssøn.
The priest handed him the axe—he had borrowed it from Ulf—and then took the boy, Tore, from the nun as he said, “It’s already past midnight. All the same, it would be best if you all came back to the church. I want to tend to these matters tonight.”
No one had any other thought but to comply. But when they reached the road, one of the pale gray figures slipped away from the flock of women and headed for the path leading into the woods. The priest shouted, ordering her to come with the others.
Kristin’s voice replied from the dark; she was already a good way down the path: “I can’t come, Sira Eiliv, until I’ve kept my promise.”
The priest and several others set off running. She was leaning against the fence when Sira Eiliv reached her. He raised the lantern. Her face was dreadfully white, but when he looked into her eyes, he realized that she had not gone mad, as he first had feared.
“Come home, Kristin,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll go with you, several men. I will go with you myself.”
“I’ve given my word. I can’t go home, Sira Eiliv, until I have done as I promised.”
The priest stood in silence for a moment. Then he said softly, “Perhaps you are right. Go then, sister, in God’s name.”
Strangely shadowlike, Kristin slipped into the darkness, which swallowed up her gray-clad figure.
When Ulf Haldorssøn appeared at her side, she said in a halting and vehement voice, “Go back. I didn’t ask you to come with me.”
Ulf laughed quietly. “Kristin, my mistress, haven’t you learned yet that things can happen without your request or orders? And I see you still don’t realize, no matter how many times you’ve witnessed it, that you can’t always manage alone everything that you’ve taken on. But I will help you to undertake this burden.”
There was a rushing sound in the pine forest all around them, and the roar of the waves out on the shore grew louder and then fainter, carried on the gusts of wind. They were walking in pitch-darkness.
After a while Ulf said, “I’ve accompanied you before, Kristin, when you went out at night. I thought I could be of some help if I came with you this time as well.”
She was breathing hard in the dark. Once she stumbled over something, and Ulf grabbed hold of her. Then he took her hand and led the way. After a moment he noticed that she was weeping as she walked along, and he asked her what she was crying about.
“I’m crying because I was thinking that you’ve always been so kind and loyal toward us, Ulf. What can I say? I know that it was mostly for Erlend’s sake, but I almost think, kinsman . . . you’ve always judged me less harshly than you had the right to, after what you first saw of my actions.”
“I have always been fond of you, Kristin—no less than I was of him.” He fell silent. Kristin saw that he was overcome by great emotion. Then he continued, “That’s why it was so hard for me as I sailed over here today. I came to bring you news that I find difficult to tell you. May God give you strength, Kristin.”
“Is it Skule?” asked Kristin in a low voice after a moment. “Is Skule dead?”
“No, Skule was fine when I spoke to him yesterday, and now few people are dying in town. But I received news from Tautra this morning—” He heard her give a deep sigh, but she did not speak.
After a moment he said, “It’s already been ten days since they died. But there are only four brothers left alive at the monastery, and the island is almost swept clean of people.”
They had now reached the edge of the woods. Over the flat expanse of land before them came the roaring din of the wind and sea. Up ahead in the darkness shone a patch of white—sea swells in a small inlet, with a steep pale sand dune above.
“That’s where she lives,” said Kristin. Ulf noticed that slow, fitful tremors passed over her. He gripped her hand hard.
“You’ve chosen to take this burden upon yourself. Keep that in mind, and don’t lose your wits now.”
Kristin said in an oddly thin, pure voice, which the wind seized and carried off, “Now Bjørgulf’s dream will come true. I trust in the mercy of God and the Virgin Mary.”
Ulf tried to see her face, but it was too dark. They walked across the tide flats; several places were so narrow beneath the cliff that a wave or two surged all the way up to their feet. They made their way over tangled seaweed and large rocks. After a while they glimpsed a bulky dark shape against the sand dune.
“Stay here,” said Ulf curtly. He went over and threw himself against the door. She heard him hack away at the osier latches and then throw himself at the door again. She saw it fall inward, and he stepped inside the black cave.
It was not a particularly stormy night. But it was so dark that Kristin could see nothing but the sea, alive with tiny glints of foam rolling forward and then sliding back at once, and the gleam of the waves lapping along the shore of the inlet. She could also make out the dark shape against the hillside. She felt as if she were standing in a cavern of night, and it was the hiding place of death. The crash of the breaking waves and the trickle of water ebbing between the tidal rocks merged with the flush of blood inside her, although her body seemed to shatter, the way a keg splinters into slats. She had a throbbing in her breast, as if it would burst from within. Her head felt hollow and empty, as if it were leaking, and the gusts of wind swirled around her, blowing right through her. In a strangely listless way she realized that now she must be suffering from the plague herself—but she seemed to be waiting for the darkness to be split by a light that would roar and drown out the crash of the sea, and then she would succumb to terror. She pulled up her hood, which had been blown back, drew the black nun’s cloak
closer, and then stood there with her arms crossed underneath, but it didn’t occur to her to pray. Her soul had more than enough to do, working its way out of its collapsing house, and that was what made her breast ache as she breathed.
She saw a flame flare up inside the hovel. A moment later Ulf Haldorssøn called to her. “You must come here and light the way for me, Kristin.” He stood in the doorway and handed her a torch of charred wood.
The stench of the corpse nearly suffocated her, even though the hut was so drafty and the door was gone. Wide-eyed, with her lips parted—and her jaw and lips felt as rigid as wood—she looked for the dead woman. But she saw only a long bundle lying in the corner on the earthen floor. Wrapped around it was Ulf’s cape.
He had pulled loose several long boards from somewhere and placed the door on top. As he cursed the clumsy tools, he made notches and holes with his axe and dagger and struggled to bind the door to the boards. Several times he cast a quick glance up at her, and each time his dark gray-bearded face grew stonier.
“I wonder how you thought you would manage to do this all alone,” he said, bending over his work. He looked up, but the rigid, lifeless face in the red glow of the tarred torch remained unchanged—the face of a dead woman or a mad creature. “Can you tell me that, Kristin?” He laughed harshly, but it did no good. “I think it’s about time for you to say a few prayers.”
In the same stiff and listless tone she began to pray: “Pater noster qui es in celis. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua sicut in celo et in terra.” Then she came to a halt.
Ulf looked at her. Then he took up the prayer, “Panum nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie . . .” Swiftly and firmly he said the words of the Pater noster to the end, then went over and made the sign of the cross over the bundle; swiftly and firmly he picked it up and carried it over to the litter that he had made.
“You take the front,” he said. “It may be a little heavier, but you won’t notice the stench as much. Throw the torch away; we’ll see better without it. And don’t stumble, Kristin; I would rather not have to touch this poor corpse again.”
The raging pain in her breast seemed to rise up in protest when she lifted the poles of the litter over her shoulders; her chest refused to bear the weight. But she clenched her teeth. As long as they walked along the shore, where the wind blew, she hardly noticed the smell of the body.
“I’d better climb up first and pull the litter up after me,” said Ulf when they reached the slope where they had come down.
“We can go a little farther,” said Kristin. “Over to the place where they bring down the seaweed sledges; it’s not as steep.”
The man could hear that her voice sounded calm and composed. And now that it was over, he started sweating and shivering; he had thought she was going to lose her wits that night.
They struggled onward over the sandy path that led across the clearing to the pine forest. The wind blew freely but not as strongly as it had on the shore, and as they walked farther and farther away from the roar of the tide flats, she felt as if it was a journey home from the uttermost terrors of darkness. The land was pale on both sides of the path—a field of grain, but there had been no one to harvest it. The smell of the grain and the sight of the withering straw welcomed her back home, and her eyes filled with the tears of sisterly compassion. Out of her own desperate terror and need she had come home to the community of the living and the dead.
From time to time the dreadful stink of decay would wash over her if the wind blew at her back, but it wasn’t as foul as when she was standing inside the hut. Here the air was full of the fresh, wet, and cold purity of the breeze.
And stronger than the feeling that she was carrying something gruesome on the litter behind her was the sense that Ulf Hal dorssøn was walking along, protecting her back against the living and black horror they had left behind; its crashing sound became fainter and fainter.
When they reached the outskirts of the pine forest, they noticed lights. “They’re coming to meet us,” said Ulf.
A moment later they were met by an entire throng of men carrying torches, a couple of lanterns, and a bier covered with a shroud. Sira Eiliv was with them, and Kristin was surprised to see that the group included several men who had been in the cemetery earlier that night; many of them were weeping. When they lifted the burden from her shoulders, she nearly collapsed. Sira Eiliv was about to catch her when she said quickly, “Don’t touch me. Don’t come near me. I can feel that I have the plague myself.”
But Sira Eiliv put his hand under her arm all the same.
“Then it should be of comfort for you to remember, woman, what Our Lord has said: That which you have done unto one of my poorest brothers or sisters, you have also done unto me.”
Kristin stared at the priest. Then she shifted her glance to the men, who were moving the body to the bier from the litter Ulf had made. Ulf’s cape fell aside; the tip of a worn shoe gleamed, dark with rain in the light of the torches.
Kristin went over, knelt down between the poles of the litter, and kissed the shoe.
“May God bless you, sister. May God bathe your soul in His light. May God have mercy on all of us here in the darkness.”
Then she thought it was life itself working its way out of her—an unthinkable, piercing pain as if something inside, firmly rooted to the utmost ends of her limbs, had been torn loose. All that was contained within her breast was ripped out; she felt it fill her throat. Her mouth filled with blood that tasted of salt and filthy copper; a moment later her entire robe was covered with glistening, dark wetness. Jesus, can there be so much blood in an old woman? she thought.
Ulf Haldorssøn lifted her up in his arms and carried her.
In the convent portal the nuns met the procession, carrying lighted tapers in their hands. Kristin no longer had her full wits about her, but she sensed that she was half carried, half supported through the doorway. The white-plastered vaulted room was filled with flickering light from yellow candle flames and red pinewood torches, and the stomping of feet roared like the sea—but for the dying woman it was like a mirror of her own sinking life flame, and the footsteps on the flagstones seemed to be the crash of death’s current, rising up toward her.
Then the glow of light spread outward to a larger space; she was once again under a dark, open sky—out in the courtyard. The light played over a gray stone wall with heavy pillars and tall windows: the church. Someone was carrying her—it was Ulf again—but now he became one with all those who had ever carried her. When she put her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek against his prickly bearded neck, she felt like a child again, with her father, but she also felt as if she were taking a child in her own arms. Behind his dark head there were red lights, and they seemed to be shining from the fire that nourishes all love.
Some time later she opened her eyes and her mind was clear. She was sitting propped up in a bed in the dormitory; a nun stood leaning over her, wearing a linen cloth on the lower half of her face, and she noticed the smell of vinegar. It was Sister Agnes; she could tell by the eyes and the tiny red wart on her forehead. And it was daytime. A clear gray light entered the room through the little windowpane.
She was not suffering now, but she was soaked with sweat, terribly weak and tired, and she had a sharp, stabbing pain in her breast when she breathed. Greedily she drank a soothing potion that Sister Agnes held to her lips. But she was freezing.
Kristin leaned back against the pillows, and now she remembered everything that had happened the night before. The wild shimmer of a dream had vanished completely; she realized that she must have been slightly out of her wits. But it was good that she had done what she had: rescued the little boy and prevented those poor people from being burdened with such a misdeed. She knew she should be overjoyed that she had been fortunate enough to do this before she died, but she didn’t have the strength to rejoice as she ought to. She had more a sense of contentment, the way she felt lying in bed back home at Jørundgaard
, weary from a day’s work well done. And she had to thank Ulf. . . .
She had spoken his name, and he must have been sitting in the shadows near the door and heard her, for he crossed the room and stood before her bed. She stretched out her hand to him, and he took it, clasping it firmly and warmly in his.
Suddenly the dying woman grew uneasy; her hands fumbled under the folds of bedclothes around her neck.
“What is it, Kristin?” asked Ulf.
“The cross,” she whispered, and pulled out her father’s gilded cross. She recalled that she had promised the day before to offer a gift for the soul of poor Steinunn. But she had forgotten that she owned no more earthly possessions. She owned nothing more than this cross, which her father had given her, and her wedding ring. She still wore that on her finger.
She took it off and looked at it. It lay heavy in her hand, pure gold and set with large red stones. Erlend, she thought. And she realized that now she should give it away; she didn’t know why, but she felt that she should. She closed her eyes in pain and handed the ring to Ulf.
“Who do you want to leave it to?” he asked softly. When she didn’t reply, he said, “Should I give it to Skule?”
Kristin shook her head, keeping her eyes closed tight.
“Steinunn . . . I promised . . . masses for her. . . .”
She opened her eyes and looked at the ring lying in the dark palm of the smith. And her tears burst forth in torrents, for she felt as if she had never before fully understood what it signified. The life to which this ring had married her, over which she had complained and grumbled, raged and rebelled. And yet she had loved it so, rejoicing over it, with both the bad and the good, so that there was not a single day she would have given back to God without lament or a single sorrow she would have relinquished without regret.
Ulf and the nun exchanged a few words that she couldn’t hear, and he left the room. Kristin tried to lift her hand to wipe her eyes but didn’t have the strength; her hand remained lying on her breast. It hurt so terribly inside, her hand seemed so heavy, and she felt as if the ring were still on her finger. Her mind was becoming confused again; she must see if it was true that the ring was gone, that she hadn’t merely dreamed she’d given it away. She was also becoming uncertain. Everything that had happened in the night, the child in the grave, the black sea with the small, swift glimpses of the waves, the body she had carried . . . she didn’t know whether she had dreamed it all or been awake. And she didn’t have the strength to open her eyes.