Kristin went over to them and stood with one hand on her husband’s shoulder, watching the game. Erlend was a much less skilled chess player than his father-in-law, so he was most often the loser when they took out the board in the evening, but he bore this with gentle equanimity. This evening he was playing especially badly. Kristin stood there castigating him, and not in a particularly kind or sweet way.
Finally Lavrans said rather harshly, “Erlend can’t keep his thoughts on the game when you’re standing here bothering him. What do you want, anyway, Kristin? You’ve never understood board games!”
“No, you don’t seem to think I understand much at all.”
“There’s one thing I see that you don’t understand,” said her father sharply, “and that’s the proper way for a wife to speak to her husband. It would be better if you went and reined in your sons—they’re behaving worse than a pack of Christmas trolls.”
Kristin went over and set her children in a row on a bench and then sat down next to them.
“Be quiet now, my sons,” she said. “Your grandfather doesn’t want you to play in here.”
Lavrans glanced at his daughter but didn’t speak. A little later the foster mothers came in, and Kristin left with her maids and Margret to put the children to bed.
Erlend said after a moment, when he and Lavrans were alone, “I would have wished, Father-in-law, that you hadn’t reprimanded Kristin in that way. If it gives her some comfort to carp at me when she’s in a bad temper, then . . . It does no good to talk to her, and she won’t stand for anyone saying a word against her children.”
“And what about you?” said Lavrans. “Do you intend to allow your sons to grow up so ill-behaved? Where were the maids who are supposed to watch and tend to the children?”
“In the servants’ house with your men, I would think,” said Erlend, laughing and stretching. “But I don’t dare say a word to Kristin about her serving maids. Then she flies into a fury and tells me that she and I have never been examples for anyone.”
The following day Kristin was picking strawberries in the meadow south of the farm when her father called to her from the smithy door and asked her to come over to him.
Kristin went, though rather reluctantly. It was probably Naakkve again—that morning he had left a gate open, and the cows had wandered into a barley field.
Lavrans pulled a glowing iron from the forge and set it on the anvil. His daughter sat down to wait, and for a long time there was no sound other than the pounding of the hammer against the glowing piece of iron and the ringing reply of the anvil. Finally Kristin asked her father what he wanted to say to her.
The iron was now cold. Lavrans put down his tongs and hammer and came over to Kristin. With soot on his face and hair, his clothing and hands blackened, and garbed as he was in the big leather apron, Lavrans looked much sterner than usual.
“I called you over here, my daughter, because I want to tell you this. Here on my estate you will show your husband the respect that is proper for a wife. I refuse to hear my daughter speaking the way you did to Erlend last night.”
“This is something new, Father, for you to think Erlend is a man worthy of people’s respect.”
“He’s your husband,” said Lavrans. “I didn’t force you to arrange this marriage. You should remember that.”
“You’re such warm friends,” replied Kristin. “If you had known him back then the way you know him now, then you might well have done so.”
Lavrans looked down at her, his face somber and sad.
“Now you’re speaking rashly, Kristin, and saying things that are untrue. I didn’t try to force you when you wanted to cast off the man to whom you were lawfully betrothed, even though you know I was very fond of Simon.”
“No, but Simon didn’t want me either.”
“Oh, he was much too high-minded to demand his rights when you were unwilling. But I don’t know whether he would have been so against it in his heart if I had done as Andres Darre wanted. He said we should pay no attention to the whims of you two young people. And I wonder whether the knight might have been right—now that I see you can’t live in a seemly fashion with the husband you insisted on winning.”
Kristin gave a loud and ugly laugh.
“Simon! You would never have been able to threaten Simon into marrying the woman he had found with another man in such a house.”
Lavrans gasped for air. “House?” he repeated involuntarily.