Halfrid didn’t mention the matter until a year later; then she asked Simon one day whether he knew that Jorunn was to be married over at Borg. Simon knew this quite well, since he himself had given her a dowry. Where was the child to live? his wife wanted to know. With the mother’s parents, where she now was, replied Simon.
Then Halfrid said, “It seems to me that it would be more proper for your daughter to grow up here on your manor.”
“On your manor, you mean?” asked Simon.
A slight tremor flickered across his wife’s face.
“You know full well, dear husband, that as long as we both live, you are the one who rules here at Mandvik,” she said.
Simon went over and placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders.
“If it’s true, Halfrid, that you think you can stand to see that child here with us, then I owe you great thanks for your generosity.”
But he didn’t like it. Simon had seen the girl several times—she was a rather unattractive child, and he couldn’t see that she looked like him or anyone else in his family. He was even less inclined to believe that he was the father. And he had resented it deeply when he heard that Jorunn had the child baptized Arngjerd, after his mother, without asking his permission. But he would have to let Halfrid do as she wished. She brought the child to Mandvik, found a foster mother for her, and saw to it that the girl lacked for nothing. If she caught sight of the child, she would often take her onto her lap and chat with her, kindly and lovingly. And gradually, as Simon saw more of the child, he grew fond of the little maiden—he had great affection for children. Now he also thought he could see some resemblance between Arngjerd and his father. It was possible that Jorunn had been wise enough to restrain herself after the master had come too close to her. If so, then Arngjerd was indeed his daughter, and what Halfrid had persuaded him to do was honorable and right.
After they had been married for five years, Halfrid bore her husband a fully formed son. She was radiant with joy, but soon after the birth she fell ill, and it quickly became clear to everyone that she would die. And yet she was without fear, the last time that she had her full wits about her for a moment. “Now you will sit here, Simon, master of Mandvik, and rule over the estate for your lineage and mine,” she told her husband.
After that her fever rose so sharply that she was no longer aware of anything, and so she did not have to suffer the grief, while she was still in this world, of hearing that the boy had died one day before his mother. And no doubt in that other home she would not feel sorrow over such things, but would be glad that she had their Erling with her, thought Simon.
Later, Simon remembered that on the night when the two bodies were laid out in the loft, he had stood leaning over the fence next to a field down by the sea. It was just before Midsummer, and the night was so bright that the glow of the full moon was barely visible. The water was gleaming and pale, rippling and lapping along the shore. Simon had slept no more than an hour at a time, off and on, since the night the boy was born. That seemed to him very long ago now, and he was so tired that he scarcely felt able to grieve.
He was then twenty-seven years old.
In the middle of the summer, after the inheritance had been settled, 1 Simon turned over Mandvik to Stig Haakonss?n, Halfrid’s cousin. He left for Dyfrin and stayed there all winter.
Old Sir Andres lay in bed, suffering from dropsy and numerous ailments and pains; he was approaching the end now, and he complained a great deal. Life had not been so easy for him in the long run, either. Things had not gone as he had wished and expected for his handsome and promising children. Simon sat with his father and tried hard to adopt the calm and lighthearted tone from the past, but the old man moaned incessantly. Helga Saksesdatter, whom Gyrd had married, was so refined that there was no end to the unreasonable demands she could dream up—Gyrd didn’t even dare belch in his own manor without asking his wife for permission. And then there was Torgrim, who was always whining about his stomach. Sir Andres would never have given his daughter to Torgrim if he had known the man was so loathsome that he was incapable of either living or dying. Astrid would have no joy from her youth or her wealth as long as her husband was alive. Sigrid wandered around the estate, broken and grieving—all smiles and merriment had deserted her, that good daughter of his. And she had borne that child, while Simon had none. Sir Andres wept, miserable and old and ill. Gudmund had refused all of the marriages suggested by his father, who had grown so old and frail that he had let the boy wear him down.