Kristin sat down with her in the doorway to the smithy, and Arne brought water in a wooden bowl. Together they began to wash Ulvhild’s face. She had also scraped the skin on her knees. Kristin bent tenderly over the small, thin legs.
Ulvhild’s wailing soon stopped and she whimpered softly, the way children do who are used to suffering pain. Kristin pressed Ulvhild’s head against her breast and rocked her gently.
Then the bell up in Olav’s church began ringing for vespers.
Arne spoke to Kristin, but she sat there as if she neither heard nor sensed what he said as she bent over her sister. Then he grew frightened and asked her whether she thought the injuries were serious. Kristin shook her head but refused to look at him.
A little later she stood up and started walking toward the farm, carrying Ulvhild in her arms. Arne followed, silent and confused. Kristin looked so preoccupied that her face was completely rigid. As she walked, the bell continued to toll across the meadows and valley; it was still ringing as she went into the house.
She placed Ulvhild on the bed which the sisters had shared ever since Kristin had grown too old to sleep with her parents. Then she took off her own shoes and lay down next to the little one. She lay there and listened for the bell long after it had stopped ringing and the child was asleep.
It had occurred to her, as the bell began to peal, while she sat with Ulvhild’s little bloodied face in her hands, that perhaps this was an omen for her. If she would take her sister’s place—if she would promise herself to the service of God and the Virgin Mary—then maybe God would grant the child renewed vigor and good health.
Kristin remembered Brother Edvin saying that these days parents offered to God only the crippled and lame children or those for whom they could not arrange good marriages. She knew her parents were pious people, and yet she had never heard them say anything except that she would marry. But when they realized that Ulvhild would be ill all her days, they at once proposed that she should enter a convent.
But Kristin didn’t want to do it; she resisted the idea that God would perform a miracle for Ulvhild if she became a nun. She clung to Sira Eirik’s words that so few miracles occurred nowadays. And yet she had the feeling this evening that it was as Brother Edvin had said—that if someone had enough faith, then he could indeed work miracles. But she did not want that kind of faith; she did not love God and His Mother and the saints in that way. She would never love them in that way. She loved the world and longed for the world.
Kristin pressed her lips to Ulvhild’s soft, silky hair. The child slept soundly, but the elder sister sat up, restless, and then lay down again. Her heart was bleeding with sorrow and shame, but she knew that she could not believe in miracles because she was unwilling to give up her inheritance of health and beauty and love.
Then she tried to console herself with the thought that her parents would never give her permission to do such a thing. Nor would they ever believe that it would do any good. She was already betrothed, after all, and they would undoubtedly be loath to lose Simon, whom they liked so much. She felt betrayed because they seemed to find this son-in-law so splendid. She suddenly thought with displeasure of Simon’s round, red face and his small, laughing eyes, of his leaping gait—it occurred to her all of a sudden that he bounced like a ball—and of his teasing manner of speaking, which made her feel awkward and stupid. And it was not such a splendid thing, either, to be given to him and then move only as far as Formo. And yet she would rather have him than be sent to a convent. But what about the world beyond the mountains? The king’s castle, and the counts and the knights that Fru Aashild had talked about, a handsome man with melancholy eyes who would follow her in and out and never grow tired. . . . She remembered Arne on that summer day long ago when he lay on his side and slept with his shiny brown hair spread out on the heath—she had loved him as if he were her own brother back then. It wasn’t proper for him to speak to her the way he had today, when he knew they could never have each other.
Word was sent from Laugarbru that her mother would stay there overnight. Kristin got up to undress and get ready for bed. She began to unlace her dress, but then she put her shoes back on, wrapped her cloak around her, and went out.
The night sky, bright and green, stretched above the mountain crests. It was almost time for the moon to rise, and at the spot where it waited below the ridge, small clouds drifted past, gleaming like silver underneath; the sky grew lighter and lighter, like metal gathering dew.
Kristin ran between the fences, across the road, and up the hill toward the church. It was asleep, black and locked, but she went over to the cross that stood nearby—a memorial to the time when Saint Olav once rested there as he was fleeing from his enemies.