But she obeyed him when he said calmly, “You must go downstairs now, Kristin. I want to speak to my daughter alone.” Gently she laid the girl down on the bed, pulled the covers up to her chin, and went down the ladder.
She did as Erlend had done and got properly dressed—there would be no more sleep at Husaby that night—and then she set about reassuring the frightened children and servants.
The next morning, in a snowstorm, Margret’s maid left the manor in tears, carrying her possessions in a sack on her back. The master had chased her out with the harshest words, threatening to flay her bloody because she had sold her mistress in such a fashion.
Then Erlend interrogated the other servants. Hadn’t any of the maids suspected anything when all autumn and winter Ingeleiv kept coming to sleep with them instead of with Margret in her chamber? And the dogs had been locked up with them too. But all of them denied it, which was only to be expected.
Finally, he took his wife aside to speak to her alone. Sick at heart and deathly tired, Kristin listened to him and tried to counter his injustice with meek replies. She didn’t deny that she had been worried; but she didn’t tell him that she had never spoken to him of her fears because she received nothing but ingratitude every time she attempted to counsel him or Margret about the maiden’s best interests. And she swore by God and the Virgin Mary that she had never realized or even imagined that this man might come to Margret up in the loft at night.
“You!” said Erlend scornfully. “You said yourself that you remember the time when you were no better than Margret. And the Lord God in Heaven knows that every day, in all these years we’ve lived together, you’ve made certain I would see how you remember the injustice I did to you—even though your desire was as keen as mine. And it was your father, not I, who caused much of the unhappiness when he refused to give you to me as my wife. I was willing enough to rectify the sin from the very outset. When you saw the Gimsar gold . . .” He grabbed his wife’s hand and held it up; the two rings glittered which Erlend had given her while they were together at Gerdarud. “Didn’t you know what it meant? When all these years you’ve worn the rings I gave you after you let me take your honor?”
Kristin was faint with weariness and sorrow; she whispered, “I wonder, Erlend, whether you even remember that time when you won my honor. . . .”
Then he covered his face with his hands and flung himself down on the bench, his body writhing and convulsing. Kristin sat down some distance away; she wished she could help her husband. She realized that this misfortune was even harder for him to bear because he himself had sinned against others in the same way as they had now sinned against him. And he, who had never wanted to take the blame for any trouble he might have caused, couldn’t possibly bear the blame for this unhappiness—and there was no one else but her for him to fault. But she wasn’t angry as much as she was sad and afraid of what might happen next.
Every once in a while she would go up to see to Margret. The girl lay in bed, motionless and pale and staring straight ahead. She had still not asked about Haakon’s fate. Kristin didn’t know if this was because she didn’t dare or because she had grown numb from her own misery.
That afternoon Kristin saw Erlend and Kl?ng the Icelander walking together through the snowdrifts over to the armory. But only a short time later Erlend returned alone. Kristin glanced up for a moment when he came into the light and walked past her—but then she didn’t dare turn her gaze toward the corner of the room where he had retreated. She had seen that he was a broken man.
Later, when she went over to the storeroom to get something, Ivar and Skule came running to tell their mother that Kl?ng the Icelander was going to leave that evening. The boys were sad, because the scribe was their good friend. He was packing up his things right now; he wanted to reach Birgsi by nightfall.
Kristin could guess what had happened. Erlend had offered his daughter to the scribe, but he didn’t want a maiden who had been seduced. What this conversation must have been like for Erlend . . . she felt dizzy and ill and refused to think any more about it.
The following day a message came from the parsonage. Haakon Eindridess?n wanted to speak to Erlend. Erlend sent back a reply that he had nothing more to say to Haakon. Sira Eiliv told Kristin that if Haakon lived, he would be greatly crippled. In addition to losing his hand, he had also gravely injured his back and hips when he fell from the roof of the servants’ hall. But he wanted to go home, even in this condition, and the priest had promised to find a sleigh for him. Haakon now regretted his sin with all his heart. He said that the actions of Margret’s father were fully justified, no matter what the law might say; but he hoped that everyone would do their best to hush up the incident so that his guilt and Margret’s shame might be concealed as much as possible. That afternoon he was carried out to the sleigh, which Sira Eiliv had borrowed at Repstad, and the priest rode with him to Gauldal.