She had lit a candle and placed it on the table. Erlend felt an odd, cold shiver of fear pass through him when he saw her standing there with the lone candle in the empty house. Only the built-in furniture remained in the room, and the glow of the flame shimmered over the worn wood, unadorned and bare. The hearth was cold and swept clean, except for the torch, which had been tossed into it, still smoldering. They never used this building, Erlend and Kristin, and it must have been almost half a year since a fire had been lit inside. The air was strangely oppressive; missing was the vital blend of smells from people living there and coming and going; the smoke vent and doors had not been opened in all that time. The place also smelled of wool and hides; several rolled-up skins and sacks, which Kristin had taken from among the goods in the storeroom, were piled up on the empty bed that had belonged to Lavrans and Ragnfrid.
On the table lay a heap of small skeins of thread and yarn—linen and wool to be used for mending—which Kristin had set aside when she did the dyeing. She was going through them now, setting them in order.
Erlend sat down in the high seat at the end of the table. It seemed oddly spacious for the slender man, now that it had been stripped of its cushions and coverings. The two Olav warriors, with their helmets and shields bearing the sign of the cross, that Lavrans had carved into the armrests of the high seat scowled glumly and morosely under Erlend’s slim tan hands. No man could carve foliage and animals more beautifully than Lavrans, but he had never been very skilled at capturing human likenesses.
The silence between them was so complete that not a sound was heard except for the hollow thudding out on the green, where the horses were plodding around in the summer night.
“Aren’t you going to bed soon, Kristin?” he finally asked.
“Aren’t you?”
“I thought I would wait for you,” said her husband.
“I don’t want to go yet. . . . I can’t sleep.”
After a moment he asked, “What is weighing so heavily on your heart, Kristin, that you don’t think you’ll be able to sleep?”
Kristin straightened up. She stood holding a skein of heather-green wool in her hands, tugging and pulling on it with her fingers.
“What was it you said to Naakkve today?” She swallowed a couple of times; her throat felt so parched. “Some piece of advice . . . He didn’t think it was much good for him . . . but the two of you talked about Ivar and Skule. . . .”
“Oh . . . that!” Erlend gave a little smile. “I just told the boy . . . I do have a son-in-law, now that I think of it. Although Gerlak wouldn’t be as eager to kiss my hands or carry my cape and sword as he used to be. But he has a ship on the sea and wealthy kin both in Bremen and in Lynn. Surely the man must realize that he’s obliged to help his wife’s brothers. I didn’t stint on my gifts when I was a rich man and married my daughter to Gerlak Tiedekenss?n.”
Kristin did not reply.
At last Erlend exclaimed vehemently, “Jesus, Kristin, don’t just stand there staring like that, as if you had turned to stone.”
“I never thought, when we were first married, that our children would have to roam the world, begging food from the manors of strangers.”
“No, and the Devil take me, I don’t mean for them to beg! But if all seven of them have to grow their own food here on your estates, then it will be a peasant’s diet, my Kristin. And I don’t think my sons are suited to that. Ivar and Skule look like they’ll turn out to be daredevils, and out in the world there is both wheat bread and cake for the man willing to slice his food with a sword.”
“You intend your sons to become hired soldiers and mercenaries?”
“I hired on myself when I was young and served Earl Jacob. May God bless him, I say. I learned a few things back then that a man can never learn at home in this country, whether he’s sitting in splendor in his high seat with a silver belt around his belly and swilling down ale or he’s walking behind a plow and breathing in the farts of the farm horse. I lived a robust life in the earl’s service; I say that even though I ended up with that stump chained to my foot when I was no older than Naakkve. But I was allowed to enjoy some of my youth.”
“Silence!” Kristin’s eyes grew dark. “Wouldn’t you think it the most unbearable sorrow if your sons should be lured into such sin and misfortune?”
“Yes, may God protect them from that. But surely it shouldn’t be necessary for them to copy all the follies of their father. It is possible, Kristin, to serve a noble lord without being saddled with such a burden.”