Simon sat gazing out across the silvery white brilliance of the crowns of the trees on the hillside and the sparkling gleam of the river. Surprised, he thought that yes, in a way it was true, what Gyrd had said.
“Except that right now we are foes, Erlend and I,” he said. “It’s been a long time since we last spoke.”
“It seems to me that you’ve grown quite quarrelsome over the years, Simon,” said Gyrd with a laugh.
After a moment he continued, “Haven’t you ever thought of moving away from these valleys? We kinsmen could support each other more if we lived closer to each other.”
“How can you even think of such a thing? Formo is my ancestral estate . . .”
“Aasmund of Eiken owns part of the manor through inherited rights. And I know that he would not be unwilling to exchange one ancestral property for another. He hasn’t yet given up the idea that if he could win your Arngjerd for his Grunde on the terms that he mentioned . . .”
Simon shook his head. “The lineage of our father’s mother has resided on this estate ever since Norway was a heathen land. And it is here that I intend for Andres to live when I’m gone. I don’t think you have your wits about you, brother. How could I give up Formo!”
“No, that’s understandable.” Gyrd blushed a little. “I merely thought that perhaps . . . Most of your kinsmen are at Raumarike, along with the friends from your youth; perhaps you might find that you’d thrive better there.”
“I’m thriving here.” Simon had also turned red. “This is the place where I can give the boy a secure seat.” He looked at Gyrd, and his brother’s fine, furrowed face took on an embarrassed expression. Gyrd’s hair was now almost white, but his body was still just as slender and lithe as ever. He shifted rather uneasily; several stones rolled out from the pile of rocks and tumbled down the slope and into the grain.
“Are you going to send the whole scree down into my field?” asked Simon in a stern voice as he laughed. Gyrd leaped to his feet, light and agile, reaching out a hand to his brother, who moved more slowly.
Simon gripped his brother’s hand for a moment after he got to his feet. Then he placed his arm around his brother’s shoulder. Gyrd did the same, and with their arms loosely resting around each other’s shoulders, the brothers slowly walked over the hills toward the manor.
They sat together in the S?mund house that night; Simon would share a bed with his brother. They had said their evening prayers, but they wanted to empty the ale keg before they went to bed.
“Benedictus tu in muliebris . . . mulieribus . . . Do you remember that?” Simon laughed suddenly.
“Yes. It cost me a few blows across the back before Sira Magnus wrung our grandmother’s misteachings out of my head.” Gyrd smiled at the memory. “And he had a devilishly hard hand too. Do you remember, brother, that time when he sat and scratched the calves of his legs, and he had lifted up the hem of his robe? You whispered to me that if you had had such misshapen calves as Magnus Ketilss?n, you would have become a priest too and always worn full-length surcoats.”
Simon smiled. Suddenly he seemed to see the boyish face of his brother, about to burst with stifled laughter, his eyes pitifully miserable. They weren’t very old back then, and Sira Magnus was cruelly hard-handed whenever he had to reprimand them.
Gyrd had not been terribly clever when they were children. And it wasn’t because Gyrd was a particularly wise man that Simon loved him now. But he felt warm with gratitude and tenderness toward his brother as he sat there: for every day of their kinship during almost forty years and for Gyrd, just the way he was—the most loyal and forthright of men.
It seemed to Simon that winning back his brother Gyrd was like gaining a firm foundation for at least one foot. And for such a long time his life had been so unreasonably disjointed and complicated.
He felt a warmth inside every time he thought about Gyrd, who had come to him to make amends for something that Simon himself had provoked when he rode to his brother’s estate in anger and with curses. His heart overflowed with gratitude; he had to thank more than Gyrd.
A man such as Lavrans . . . He knew quite well how he would have handled such an event. He could follow his father-in-law as far as he was able, by giving out alms and the like. But he wasn’t capable of such things as true contrition or contemplation of the wounds of the Lord, unless he stared zealously at the crucifix—and that was not what Lavrans had intended. Simon couldn’t bring forth tears of remorse; he hadn’t wept more than two or three times since he was a child, and never when he needed to most, those times when he had committed the worst of sins: with Arngjerd’s mother while he was a married man and that killing the previous year. And yet he had felt great regret; he thought that he always sincerely regretted his sins, taking pains to confess and to atone as the priest commanded. He was always diligent in saying his prayers and saw to it that he gave the proper tithes and abundant alms—with particular generosity in honor of the apostle Saint Simon, Saint Olav, Saint Michael, and the Virgin Mary. Otherwise he was content with what Sira Eirik had said: that salvation was to be found in the cross alone and how a man faced or fought with the Fiend was something for God to decide and not the man himself.