Kristin saw at once from her father’s face that death was now very near. The skin around his nostrils was snowy white, but bluish under his eyes and at his lips; his hair had separated into sweaty strings lying on his broad, damp forehead. But he had his full wits about him and spoke clearly, although slowly and in a weak voice.
The servants approached the bed, one by one, and Lavrans gave his hand to each of them, thanking them for their service, telling them to live well and asking for forgiveness if he had ever offended them in any way; and he asked them to remember him with a prayer for his soul. Then he said goodbye to his kinsmen. He told his daughters to bend down so he could kiss them, and he asked God and all the saints to bless them. They wept bitterly, both of them; and young Ramborg threw herself into her sister’s arms. Holding on to each other, Lavrans’s two daughters went back to their place at the foot of their father’s bed, and the younger one continued to weep on Kristin’s breast.
Erlend’s face quivered and the tears ran down his face when he lifted Lavrans’s hand to kiss it, as he quietly asked his father-in-law to forgive him for the sorrows he had caused him over the years. Lavrans said he forgave him with all his heart, and he prayed that God might be with him all his days. There was a strange, pale light in Erlend’s handsome face when he silently moved away to stand at his wife’s side, hand in hand with her.
Simon Darre did not weep, but he knelt down as he took his father-in-law’s hand to kiss it, and he held on to it tightly as he stayed on his knees a moment longer. “Your hand feels warm and good, son-in-law,” said Lavrans with a faint smile. Ramborg turned to her husband when he went to her, and Simon put his arm around her thin, girlish shoulders.
Last of all, Lavrans said goodbye to his wife. They whispered a few words to each other that no one else could hear, and exchanged a kiss in everyone’s presence, as was now proper when death was in the room. Then Ragnfrid knelt in front of her husband’s bed, with her face turned toward him; she was pale, silent, and calm.
Sira Eirik stayed with them after he had anointed the dying man with oil and given him the viaticum. He sat near the headboard and prayed; Ragnfrid was now sitting on the bed. Several hours passed. Lavrans lay with his eyes half-closed. Now and then he would move his head restlessly on the pillow and pick at the covers with his hands, breathing heavily and groaning from time to time. They thought he had lost his voice, but there was no death struggle.
Dusk came early, and the priest lit a candle. Everyone sat quietly, watching the dying man and listening to the dripping and trickling of the rain outside the house. Then the sick man grew agitated, his body trembled, his face turned blue, and he seemed to be fighting for breath. Sira Eirik put his arm under Lavrans’s shoulders and lifted him into a sitting position as he supported his head against his chest and held up the cross before his face.
Lavrans opened his eyes, fixed his gaze on the crucifix in the priest’s hand, and said softly, but so clearly that almost everyone in the room could hear him:
“Exsurrexi, et adhuc sum tecum.”5
Several more tremors passed over his body, and his hands fumbled with the coverlet. Sira Eirik continued to hold him against his chest for a moment. Then he gently laid his friend’s body down on the bed, kissing his forehead and smoothing back his hair, before he pressed his eyelids and nostrils closed; then he stood up and began to say a prayer.
Kristin was allowed to join the vigil and keep watch over the body that night. They had laid Lavrans out on his bier in the high loft, since that was the biggest room and they expected many people to come to the death chamber.
Her father seemed to her inexpressibly beautiful as he lay in the glow of the candles, with his pale, golden face uncovered. They had folded down the cloth that hid his face so that it wouldn’t become soiled by the many people who came to view the body. Sira Eirik and the parish priest from Kvam were singing over him; the latter had arrived that evening to say his last farewell to Lavrans, but he had come too late.
By the following day guests already began riding into the courtyard, and then, for the sake of propriety, Kristin had to take to her bed since she had not yet been to church. Now it was her turn to have her bed adorned with silk coverlets and the finest pillows in the house. The cradle from Formo was borrowed, and there lay the young Lavrans; all day long people came in to see her and the child.
She heard that her father’s body continued to look beautiful—it had merely yellowed a bit. And no one had ever seen so many candles brought to a dead man’s bier.