“Yes,” he replied, although he had no idea how he would manage it.
Erlend lay still for a moment with his eyes closed. Then he said with a sort of smile, “I was thinking last night . . . about the time she gave birth to our eldest son. She was no better off than I am now—judging by how she wailed. And if she could bear it seven times . . . for the sake of our pleasure . . . then surely I can too.”
Simon was silent. The involuntary qualms he felt about life revealing to him its last secrets of suffering and desire seemed not to trouble Erlend in the least. He wrestled with the worst and with the sweetest, as innocently as a naive young boy whose friends have taken him to a house of sin, drunken and full of curiosity.
Erlend rolled his head back and forth impatiently.
“These flies are the worst . . . I think they’re the Devil himself.”
Simon took off his cap and swatted vigorously at the swarms of blue-black flies so that they rose up in great clouds, buzzing noisily. And all those that were knocked senseless to the floor, he furiously trampled in the dirt. It wouldn’t help much because the window hole in the wall stood wide open. The previous winter there had been a wooden shutter with a skin-covered opening. But it had made the room very dark.
He was still busily flailing at the flies when Olav Kyrning came back with a priest who was carrying a drinking goblet. The priest put his hand under Erlend’s head to support him as he drank. Much of the liquid ran down into his beard and along his neck, but he lay as calm and unconcerned as a child when the priest wiped him off with a rag.
Simon felt as if his whole body was in ferment—his blood was pulsing hard in his neck beneath his ears, and his heart was pounding in an odd and restless fashion. He stood in the doorway for a moment, staring at the tall body stretched out under the cape. A feverish flush was now passing in waves over Erlend’s face. He lay there with his eyes half-open and glittering, but he gave his brother-in-law a smile, a shadow of his peculiar, boyish smile.
The following day, as Stig Haakonss?n of Mandvik was sitting at the breakfast table with his guests, Sir Erling Vidkunss?n and his son Bjarne, they heard the hoofbeats of a lone horse out in the courtyard. A moment later the door of the building was flung open and Simon Andress?n stepped swiftly toward them. He wiped his face on his sleeve; he was spattered with mud all the way up to his neck after the ride.
The three men sitting at the table rose to their feet to greet the new arrival with small exclamations that were part welcome and part surprise. Simon didn’t greet them but stood there leaning on the hilt of his sword with both hands. He said, “I bring you strange news—they have taken Erlend Nikulauss?n and stretched him on the rack—some foreigners that the king has sent to interrogate him. . . .”
The men shouted and then crowded around Simon Andress?n. Stig pounded a fist into the palm of his other hand. “What did he tell them?”
At the same time both he and Bjarne Erlingss?n involuntarily turned to face Sir Erling. Simon burst into laughter; he roared and roared.
Then he sank down onto the chair that Bjarne Erlingss?n pulled out for him, accepted the ale bowl the young man offered him, and drank greedily.
“Why are you laughing?” asked Sir Erling sternly.
“I was laughing at Stig.” Simon was leaning slightly forward, with his hands resting on the thighs of his mud-covered breeches. He gave a few more bursts of laughter. “I had thought . . . All of us here are the sons of great chieftains . . . I expected you to be so angry that such a thing could be done to one of our peers that your first response would be to ask how this could possibly happen.
“I can’t say that I know exactly what the law is about such matters. Ever since my lord King Haakon died, I’ve been content with the idea that I owed his successor my service if he should ask for it, both in war and in peace; otherwise I’ve lived quietly on my manor. But now I can only think that this case against Erlend Nikulauss?n has been unlawfully handled. His fellow noblemen have passed judgment on him, but I don’t know by what right they condemned him to death. Then a reprieve and safe conduct were granted to him until he could meet with his kinsman, King Magnus, to see whether the king might allow Erlend to be reconciled with him. But since then the man has been imprisoned in the tower at Akers Castle for nearly a year, and the king has been abroad almost all that time. Letters have been dispatched, but nothing has come of it. And now he sends over these louts, who are neither Norwegian nor the king’s retainers, and who attempt to interrogate Erlend with conduct that is unheard of toward any Norwegian man with the rights of a royal retainer—while peace reigns in the land, and Erlend’s kinsmen and peers are gathering in Tunsberg to celebrate the royal wedding. . . .