“The cuckoo in the east is the cuckoo of sorrow,” said Orm Er lendss?n quietly. “Husaby seems to me the fairest manor in the world.”
The priest placed his hands on his nephew’s narrow shoulders for a moment.
“I thought so too, kinsman. It was my father’s estate for me too. The youngest son stands no closer to inheriting the ancestral farm than you do, dear Orm!”
“When Father was living with my mother, you were the closest heir,” said the young boy in the same quiet voice.
“We’re not to blame, Orm—my children and I,” said Kristin sorrowfully.
“You must have noticed that I bear you no rancor,” he replied softly.
“It’s such an open, wide landscape,” said Kristin after a moment. “You can see so far from Husaby, and the sky is so . . . so vast. Where I come from, the sky is like a roof above the mountain slopes. The valley lies sheltered, round and green and fresh. The world seems just the right size—neither too big nor too small.” She sighed and her hands began fidgeting in her lap.
“Was his home there—the man your father wanted you to marry?” asked the priest, and Kristin nodded.
“Do you ever regret that you refused to have him?” he then asked, and she shook her head.
Gunnulf went over and pulled a book from the shelf. He sat down near the fire again, opened the clasps, and began turning the pages. But he didn’t read; he sat with the open book on his lap.
“When Adam and his wife had defied God’s will, then they felt in their own flesh a power that defied their will. God had created them, man and woman, young and beautiful, so that they would live together in marriage and give birth to other heirs who would receive the gifts of His goodness: the beauty of the Garden of Eden, the fruit of the tree of life, and eternal happiness. They didn’t need to be ashamed of their bodies because as long as they were obedient to God, their whole body and all of their limbs were under the command of their will, just as a hand or a foot is.”
Blushing blood-red, Kristin folded her hands under her breast. The priest bent toward her slightly; she felt his strong amber eyes on her lowered face.
“Eve stole what belonged to God, and her husband accepted it when she gave him what rightfully was the property of their Father and Creator. They wanted to be His equal—and they noticed that the first way in which they became His equal was this: Just as they had betrayed His dominion over the great world, so too was their dominion betrayed over the small world, the soul’s house of flesh. Just as they had forsaken their Lord God, the body would now forsake its master, the soul.
“Then these bodies seemed to them so hideous and hateful that they made clothes to cover them. First a short apron of fig leaves. But as they became more and more familiar with their own carnal nature, they drew the clothes up over their heart and their back, which is unwilling to bend. Until today, when men dress themselves in steel all the way to their fingertips and toes and hide their faces behind the grids of their helmets. In this way unrest and deceit have grown in the world.”
“Help me, Gunnulf,” begged Kristin. She was white to the very edge of her lips. “I don’t know my own will.”
“Then say: Thy will be done,” replied the priest softly. “You know you must open your heart to His love. Then you must love Him once more with all the power of your soul.”
Kristin abruptly turned to face her brother-in-law.
“You can’t know how much I loved Erlend. And my children!”
“Dear sister—all other love is merely a reflection of the heavens in the puddles of a muddy road. You will become sullied too if you allow yourself to sink into it. But if you always remember that it’s a reflection of the light from that other home, then you will rejoice at its beauty and take good care that you do not destroy it by churning up the mire at the bottom.”
“Yes, but as a priest, Gunnulf, you have promised God that you would shun these . . . difficulties.”
“As you have too, Kristin—when you promised to forsake the Devil and his work. The Devil’s work is what begins in sweet desire and ends with two people becoming like the snake and the toad, snapping at each other. That’s what Eve learned, when she tried to give her husband and her descendants what belonged to God. She brought them nothing but banishment and the shame of blood and death, which entered the world when brother killed brother in that first small field, where thorns and thistles grew among the heaps of stones around the patches of land.”