Erlend’s voice was tender and beseeching. But Kristin neither spoke nor looked at him. Then he went over and kicked at the frozen heath.
“No, there’s probably nothing left here of Gunnulf’s and my fortress. And it was a long time ago, after all, that we played up here, Gunnulf and I.”
He received no answer. Right below where they stood was a small frozen pond. Erlend picked up a stone and threw it. The hollow was frozen solid so that only a tiny white star appeared on the black mirror. Erlend picked up another stone and threw it harder—then another and another. Now he was throwing them in utter fury, and in the end he would have splintered the ice with a vengeance. But then he caught sight of his wife’s face—she stood there, her eyes dark with contempt, smiling scornfully at his childishness.
Erlend spun around, but all at once Kristin grew deathly pale and her eyes fell shut. She stood there with her hands stretched out and groping, swaying as if she were about to faint—then she grabbed hold of a tree trunk.
“Kristin—what is it?” Erlend asked in fear.
She didn’t answer but stood as if she were listening to something. Her gaze was remote and strange.
Now she felt it again. Deep within her womb it felt as if a fish was flicking its tail. And again the whole world seemed to reel around her, and she felt dizzy and weak, but not as much as the first time.
“What’s the matter?” asked Erlend.
She had waited so long for this—she hardly dared to acknowledge the great fear in her soul. She could not speak of it—not now, when they had been fighting all day long. Then he said it.
“Was it the child moving inside you?” he asked gently, touching her shoulder.
Then she cast off all her anger toward him, pressed herself against the father of her child, and hid her face on his chest.
Some time later they walked back down to the place where their horses were tied. The short day was almost over; behind them in the southwest the sun was sinking behind the treetops, red and dull in the frosty haze.
Erlend carefully tested the buckles and straps of the saddle before he lifted his wife up onto her horse. Then he went over and untied his own. He reached under his belt for the gloves he had put there, but he found only one. He looked around on the ground.
Then Kristin couldn’t resist and said, “It will do you no good to look for your glove here, Erlend.”
“You might have said something to me if you saw me lose it—no matter how angry you were with me,” he replied. They were the gloves that Kristin had sewn for him and given to him as one of his betrothal presents.
“It fell out of your belt when you hit me,” said Kristin very quietly, her eyes downcast.
Erlend stood next to his horse with his hand on the saddlebow. He looked embarrassed and unhappy. But then he burst out laughing.
“Never would I have believed, Kristin—during all the time I was courting you, rushing around and begging my kinsmen to speak on my behalf and making myself so meek and pitiful in order to win you—that you could be such a witch!”
Then Kristin laughed too.
“No, then you probably would have given up long ago—and it certainly would have been in your own best interest.”
Erlend took a few steps toward her and placed his hand on her knee.
“Jesus help me, Kristin—have you ever heard it said of me that I did anything that was in my own best interest?”
He pressed his face down in her lap and then looked up with sparkling eyes into his wife’s face. Flushed and happy, Kristin bowed her head, trying to hide her smile and her eyes from Erlend.
He grabbed hold of her horse’s harness and let his own horse follow behind; and in this manner he escorted her until they reached the bottom of the ridge. Every time they looked at each other he would laugh and she would turn her face away to hide that she was laughing too.
“So,” he said merrily as they came out onto the road again, “now we’ll ride home to Husaby, my Kristin, and be as happy as two thieves!”
CHAPTER 2
ON CHRISTMAS EVE the rain poured down and the wind blew hard. It was impossible to use sleighs, and so Kristin had to stay home when Erlend and the servants rode off for the evening mass at Birgsi Church.
She stood in the doorway of the main house and watched them go. The pine torches they carried shone red against the dark old buildings, reflected in the icy surface of the courtyard. The wind seized the flames and flattened them out sideways. Kristin stood there as long she could hear the faint sound of their passage in the night.