No. Now she was afraid of her own thoughts.
And she tried to block out of her mind all the worries about things she could not change. She wanted only to think about matters in which she could do something with her compassion. Everything else she would have to place in God’s hands. God had helped her in every instance when her own hard work could do some good. Husaby had now been transformed into a prosperous farm, as it had been in the past—in spite of the bad years. Three healthy and handsome sons He had given her, and each year He had granted her new life whenever she was faced with death in childbirth. He had allowed her to recover her full health after each convalescence. She had been permitted to keep all three of her small sons the year before, when illness took the lives of so many fair children in the region. And Gaute—Gaute would regain his health, that she firmly believed.
It must be as Erlend had said: It was necessary for him to lead his life and maintain his estates in as costly a fashion as he did. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to assert himself among his peers and win the rights and revenues that were his birthright under the Crown. She would have to believe that he understood this better than she did.
It was senseless to think that things might have been better in some ways for him—and even for her—back when he was living tangled up in sin with that other woman. In glimpses of memory she saw his face from that time, ravaged with sorrow, contorted with passion. No, no, things were fine as they were now. He was merely a little too carefree and thoughtless.
Erlend returned home just before Michaelmas. He had hoped to find Kristin confined to bed, but she was still on her feet. She came to meet him out on the road. Her gait was terribly cumbersome this time—but she had Gaute in her arms, as usual; the two older sons came running ahead of her.
Erlend jumped down from his horse and lifted the boys onto the saddle. Then he took his youngest son from his wife so he could carry him. Kristin’s pale, worn face lit up when Gaute wasn’t frightened by his father; he must have recognized him, after all. She asked nothing about her husband’s travels, but talked only about Gaute’s four new teeth which had made him so sick.
Then the boy started to scream; he had scraped his cheek bloody on the filigree brooch on his father’s chest. He wanted to go back to his mother, and she wanted to take him, no matter how much Erlend protested.
Not until evening, when they were sitting alone in the hall and the children were asleep, did Kristin ask her husband about his journey to Bj?rgvin—as if she only then happened to think about it.
Erlend glanced furtively at Kristin. His poor wife—she looked so miserable. He began to tell her all kinds of news. Erling had asked him to send his greetings and give her this—it was a bronze dagger, corroded with verdigris. They had found it in a heap of stones out at Giske; it was supposed to be beneficial to place such a thing in the cradle in case it was rickets that had stricken Gaute.
Kristin wrapped up the dagger again, awkwardly rose from her chair, and went over to the cradle. She put the bundle under the bedclothes with everything else that lay there: a stone axe found buried in the ground, the musk gland of a beaver, a cross made from daphne twigs, old silver, flint, roots of a Mariahand orchid, and an Olav’s Beard fern.
“Lie down now, dear Kristin,” Erlend said tenderly. He came over and pulled off her shoes and stockings. All the while he talked.
Haakon Ogmundss?n had come back, and peace with the Russians and Karelians had been concluded and sealed. Erlend himself would have to travel north this fall. For it was certain that calm would not be restored at once, and a man was needed at Varg?y who knew the region. He would be given full authority as the king’s officer in command at the fortress up there, which had to be better secured so that peace could be defended at the new border markers.
Erlend looked up into his wife’s face with excitement. She seemed a bit alarmed—but she didn’t ask many questions, and it was clear that she had little understanding of what his news meant. He saw how tired she was, so he spoke no more about this matter but remained sitting on the edge of her bed for a while.
He understood the gravity of what he had taken on. Erlend laughed quietly to himself as he took his time undressing. There would be no sitting back with his silver belt around his belly, holding feasts for friends and kinsmen, and filing his nails straight and clean as he dispatched his vassals and lieutenants here and there—the way the king’s commanders of the castles did here in the south of Norway. And the castle at Varg?y was quite a different sort of fortress.