Outside it stormed and rained so hard that water gushed down the slopes. Erlend came out of the armory later in the day and heard Gaute screaming and crying from somewhere in the courtyard. He found his small sons in the narrow passageway between two of the buildings, sitting directly under the dripping eaves. Naakkve was clutching the youngest boy while Bj?rgulf was trying to force-feed him a worm—he had a whole fistful of pink worms, twisting and squirming.
The boys looked crestfallen as their father scolded them. It was Old Aan, they said, who had mentioned that Gaute’s teeth would come in with no trouble if they could get him to take a bite of a live worm.
They were soaked through from head to toe, all three of them. Erlend bellowed for the nursemaids, who came rushing out—one from the workroom and the other from the stable. Their master cursed them roundly, stuffed Gaute under his arm like a piglet, and then chased the other two ahead of him into the hall.
A little while later, dry and content in their best blue tunics, the boys sat in a row on the step of their mother’s bed. Erlend had brought a stool over, and he chattered nonsense and fussed over his sons, hugging them close and laughing in order to drive out the remnants of the nighttime terror from his mind. But Kristin smiled happily because Erlend was playing with their children. Erlend told them that he had a Finnish witch; she was two hundred winters old, and so wizened that she was no bigger than this. He kept her in a leather pouch in the big chest that stood in his boathouse. Oh yes, he gave her food, all right; every Christmas he gave her the thigh of a Christian man—that was enough to last her the whole year. And if they weren’t nice and quiet and didn’t stop plaguing their mother, who was ill, then he would put them in the pouch too.
“Mother is sick because she’s carrying our sister,” said Naakkve, proud that he knew about such matters.
Erlend pulled the boy by the ears down onto his knee.
“Yes, and after she’s born, this sister of yours, I’m going to let my old Finnish woman work her magic on all three of you and turn you into polar bears so you can go padding around in the wild forest, but my daughter will inherit all that I own.”
The children shrieked and tumbled into their mother’s bed. Gaute didn’t understand, but he yelled and scrambled up there too, after his brothers. Kristin complained—Erlend shouldn’t tease them so horribly. But Naakkve toppled off the bed again; in an ecstasy of laughter and fright he rushed at his father, hung on to his belt, and bit at Erlend’s hands, while he shouted and cheered.
Erlend didn’t get the daughter he had wished for this time, either. His wife gave birth to two big, handsome sons, but they almost cost Kristin her life.
Erlend had them baptized; one of them was named after Ivar Gjesling and the other after King Skule. His name had otherwise not been continued in their family; Fru Ragnrid had said that her father was a man fated to misfortune, and no one should be named for him. But Erlend swore that none of his sons bore a prouder name than the youngest.
It was now so late in the autumn that Erlend had to journey north as soon as Kristin was out of the worst danger. And he felt in his heart that it was just as well that he left before she was out of bed again. Five sons in five years—that should be enough, and he didn’t want to have to worry that she would die in childbirth while he sat up north at Varg?y.
He could see that Kristin had thought much the same. She no longer complained that he was going to leave her behind. She had accepted each child that came as a precious gift from God, and the suffering as something to which she had to submit. But this time the experience had been so appallingly difficult that Erlend could tell that all courage seemed to have been stripped from her. She lay in bed listlessly, her face yellow as clay, staring at the two little bundles at her side; and her eyes were not as happy as they had been with the others.
Erlend sat beside her and went over the entire trip north in his mind. It would doubtless be a hard sea voyage so late in the fall—and strange to arrive there for the long nights. But he felt such an unspeakable yearning. This last bout of fear for his wife had completely broken all resistance in his soul—helplessly he surrendered to his own longing to flee from home.
CHAPTER 4
ERLEND NIKULAUSS?N SERVED as the king’s military commander and chieftain at the fortress of Varg?y for almost two years. In all that time he never ventured farther south than to Bjark?y, when he and Sir Erling Vidkunss?n once arranged a meeting there. During the second summer Erlend was away, Heming Alfss?n finally died, and Erlend was appointed sheriff of Orkd?la county in his place. Haftor Graut traveled north to succeed him at Varg?y.