The door above them opened again; the guests came swarming out, and Kristin was with them; her maid carried the lantern.
“Well, it’s getting late,” teased Munan Baards?n, “and I think these two must be longing for bed. . . .”
“Erlend. Erlend. Erlend.” Kristin had flung herself into his arms as soon as they were alone inside the loft. She clung tightly to him. “Erlend, you look sad,” she whispered fearfully, with her half-parted lips against his mouth. “Erlend?” She pressed both of her hands to his temples.
He stood there for a moment with his arms limply clasped around her. Then, with a soft moaning sound in his throat, he crushed her to him.
Simon walked over to the stable; he was going to tell Jon something, but halfway there he forgot what it was. For a moment he stood in front of the stable door and looked up at the hazy moonlight and the snow drifting down—now bigger flakes were beginning to fall. Jon and Ulf came out and closed the door behind them, and then the three men walked together over to the building where they would sleep.
III: THE CROSS
PART I
HONOR AMONG KIN
CHAPTER 1
DURING THE SECOND year that Erlend Nikulauss?n and Kristin Lavransdatter lived at J?rundgaard, Kristin decided to spend the summer up in the mountain pastures.
She had been thinking about this ever since winter. At Skjenne it had long been the custom for the mistress herself to stay in the mountain pastures; in the past a daughter from the manor had once been lured into the hills, and afterward her mother insisted on living in the mountains each summer. But in many ways they had their own customs at Skjenne; people in the region were used to it and expected as much.
But elsewhere it wasn’t customary for the women of the gentry on the large estates to go up to the pastures. Kristin knew that if she did so, people would be surprised and would gossip about it.
In God’s name, then, let them talk. No doubt they were already talking about her and her family.
Audun Torbergss?n owned nothing more than his weapons and the clothes on his back when he was wed to Ingebj?rg Nikulaus-datter of Loptsgaard. He had been a groom for the bishop of Hamar. It was back when the bishop came north to consecrate the new church that Ingebj?rg suffered the misfortune. Nikulaus Sigurds s?n took it hard at first, swearing by God and man that a stableboy would never be his son-in-law. But Ingebj?rg gave birth to twins, and people said with a laugh that Nikulaus evidently thought it would be too much to support them on his own. He allowed his daughter to marry Audun.
This happened two years after Kristin’s wedding. It had not been forgotten, and people probably still thought of Audun as a stranger to the region; he was from Hadland, of good family, but his lineage had become quite impoverished. And the man himself was not well liked in Sil; he was obstinate, hardheaded, and slow to forget either bad or good, but he was a most enterprising farmer, with a fair knowledge of the law. In many ways Audun Torbergss?n was now a respected man in the parish and a man with whom people were loath to become foes.
Kristin thought about Audun’s broad, tanned face with the thick, curly red hair and beard and those sharp, small blue eyes of his. He looked like many other men she had seen; she had seen such faces among their servants at Husaby, among Erlend’s men and ship’s crew.
She sighed. It must be easier for such a man to assert himself as he sat there on his wife’s ancestral estate since he had never ruled over anything else.
All winter and spring Kristin spent time talking to Frida Styrkaarsdatter, who had come with them from Tr?ndelag and was in charge of all her other maids. Again and again she would tell the woman that such and such was the way they did things here in the valley during the summer, this was what the haymakers were used to getting, and this was how things were done at harvest time. Surely Frida must remember how Kristin had done things the year before. For she wanted everything on the manor to be just as it was during Ragnfrid Ivarsdatter’s time.
But to come right out and say that she would not be there on the farm during the summer, that was hard for her to do. She had been the mistress of J?rundgaard for two winters and a summer, and she knew that if she went up to the mountain pastures now, it would be the same as running away.
She realized that Erlend was in a terribly difficult position. Ever since the days when he sat on his foster mother’s knee, he had never known anything other than that he was born to command and rule over everything and everyone around him. And if the man had allowed himself to be ruled and commanded by others, at least he had never been aware of this himself.