“Are you going to bring that up again?” fretted Munan. “You know full well . . . I’ve told you so many times before . . . I would have let you go in peace if you had behaved properly and begged me to spare you, but you rushed at my face like a wildcat before I had even stepped inside the door.”
Ulf Haldorss?n chuckled to himself.
“And I’ve treated you well ever since,” said Munan. “I gave you everything you wanted . . . and our children . . . well, they’re in a better and more secure position than those poor sons of Kristin. May God protect the poor boys, the way Erlend has left things for his children! I think that must be more important to a mother’s heart than the name of wife—and you know how many times I wished that you had been highborn so that I might marry you—I’ve never liked any other woman as much as you, even though you were seldom gentle or kind to me . . . and the wife I did have, may God reward her. I’ve established an altar for my Katrin and me in our church, Kristin—I’ve thanked God and Our Lady every day for my marriage. . . . no man has had things better. . . .” He sniffed and began to cry.
A little later Ulf Haldorss?n said they would have to leave. He and Kristin didn’t exchange a single word on the way home. But outside the main door, she took Ulf’s hand.
“Ulf—my kinsman and my friend!”
“If it would help,” he said quietly, “I would gladly go to the gallows in Erlend’s place—for his sake and for yours.”
In the evening, a little before bedtime, Kristin was sitting alone in the room with Simon. Suddenly she began to tell him where she had been that day. She recounted the conversation they had had out there.
Simon was sitting on a small stool a short distance away. Bending forward slightly, with his arms resting on his thighs and his hands hanging down, he sat and gazed up at her with a peculiar, searching look in his small, sharp eyes. He didn’t say a word, and not a muscle twitched in his heavy, broad face.
Then Kristin mentioned that she had told her father everything, and what his response had been.
Simon sat in the same position, without moving. But after a while he said calmly, “That was the only request I have ever made of you in all the years we’ve known each other . . . if I remember right . . . that you should . . . but if you couldn’t keep that to yourself to spare Lavrans, then . . .”
Kristin’s body trembled violently. “Yes. But . . . Oh, Erlend, Erlend, Erlend!”
At her wild cries, the man leaped to his feet. Kristin had flung herself forward, and with her head in her arms she was rocking from side to side, calling to Erlend over and over in between the quavering, racking sobs that seemed to be wrung from her body, filling her mouth with moans that welled up and spilled out.
“Kristin, in the name of Jesus!”
When he grasped her arms and tried to console her, she threw her full weight against his chest and put her arms around his neck, as she continued to weep and call out her husband’s name.
“Kristin—calm yourself. . . .” He crushed her in his arms but saw that she took no notice; she was crying so hard that she couldn’t stand on her own. Then he lifted her in his arms—held her tight for a moment, and then carried her over to the bed and laid her down.
“Calm yourself,” he again implored, his voice stifled and almost threatening. He placed his hands over her face, and she took hold of his wrists and arms and then clung to him.
“Simon . . . Simon . . . oh, he must be saved. . . .”
“I’ll do what I can, Kristin. But now you must calm yourself!” Abruptly he turned away, walked to the door, and went out. He shouted so loudly that his voice echoed between the buildings; he called for the serving maid Kristin had hired in Oslo. She came running, and Simon told her to go in to her mistress. A moment later the girl came back out—her mistress wanted to be left alone, she fearfully told Simon; he hadn’t moved from the spot where he stood.
He nodded and went over to the stable, staying there until his servant Gunnar and Ulf Haldorss?n came out to give the horses their evening fodder. Simon began talking with them and then went with Ulf back to the main house.
Kristin saw little of her brother-in-law the following day. But after mid-afternoon prayers, as she sat and sewed on a garment she was going to take to her husband, Simon came dashing into the room. He didn’t speak to her or look at her; he merely threw open his traveling chest, filled his silver goblet with wine, and left. Kristin stood up and followed. Outside the main door stood a stranger, still holding the reins of his horse. Simon took a gold ring off his finger, tossed it into the goblet, and drank a toast to the messenger.