Erlend had walked over to the table. He leaned past Ulf, who was still sitting as he had before.
“Foster father,” said Erlend unhappily. He seemed to have completely forgotten his wife. Sir Baard sat and rocked his head back and forth, and the tears were dripping down his cheeks.
“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.”