Kristin gently placed her hand on top of Simon’s and promised she would do all she could for the maiden. She remembered everything she had seen of how difficult they were situated, those children who had a nobleman for a father and were conceived in adultery. Orm and Margret and Ulf Haldorss?n. She stroked Simon’s hand over and over.
“It’s not certain that you will die this time, you know, brother-in-law,” she said with a little smile. A glimmer of the sweet and tender smile of a maiden could still pass over her thin, stern woman’s face. You sweet, young Kristin.
Simon’s fever was not as high that evening, and he said the pain was less. When Kristin changed the bandage on his arm, it was not as swollen, but his skin was darker, and when she cautiously pressed it, the marks from her fingers stayed for a moment.
Kristin sent the servants off to bed. She allowed Jon Daalk, who insisted on keeping watch over his master, to lie down on a bench in the room. She moved the chest with the carved back over next to the bed and sat down, leaning against the corner. Simon dozed and slept. Once when he woke up, he noticed that she had found a spindle. She was sitting erect, having stuck the distaff with the wool under her left arm, and her fingers were twining the yarn as the spindle dropped lower and lower beside her long, slender lap. Then she rolled up the yarn and began spinning again as the spindle dropped. He fell asleep watching her.
When he awoke again, toward morning, she was sitting in the same position, spinning. The light from the candle, which she had placed so the bed hangings would shield him, fell directly on her face. It was so pale and still. Her full, soft lips were narrow and pressed tight; she was sitting with her eyes lowered as she spun. She couldn’t see that he was lying awake and staring at her in the shadow of the bed hangings. She looked so full of despair that Simon felt as if his heart were bleeding inside him as he lay there looking at her.
She stood up and went over to tend the fire. Without a sound. When she came back, she peeked behind the bed hangings and met his open eyes in the dark.
“How are you feeling now, Simon?” she asked gently.
“I feel fine . . . now.”
But he seemed to notice that it felt tender under his left arm too, and under his chin when he moved his head. No, it must be just something he imagined.
Oh, she would never think that she had lost anything by rejecting his love; for that matter, he might as well tell her about it. It wasn’t possible for that to make her any more melancholy. He wanted to say it to her before he died—at least once: I have loved you all these years.
His fever rose again. And his left arm was hurting after all.
“You must try to sleep some more, Simon. Perhaps you will soon feel better,” she said softly.
“I’ve slept a great deal tonight.” He began talking about his children again: the three he had and loved so dearly and the one who was still unborn. Then he fell silent; the pain returned much worse. “Lie down for a while, Kristin. Surely Jon can sit with me for a time if you think it necessary for someone to keep watch.”
In the morning, when she took off the bandage, Simon replied calmly to her desperate expression: “Oh no, Kristin, there was already too much festering and poison in my arm, and I was chilled through before I came into your hands. I told you that I didn’t think you could heal me. Don’t be so sad about it, Kristin.”
“You shouldn’t have made such a long journey,” she said faintly.
“No man lives longer than he is meant to live,” replied Simon in the same voice. “I wanted to come home. There are things we must discuss: how everything is to be arranged after I’m gone.”
He chuckled. “All fires burn out sooner or later.”
Kristin gazed at him, her eyes shiny with tears. He had always had so many proverbs on his lips. She looked down at his flushed red face. The heavy cheeks and the folds under his chin seemed to have sunk, lying in deep furrows. His eyes seemed both dull and glistening, but then clarity and intent returned to them. He looked up at her with the steady, searching glance that had been the most constant expression in his small, sharp, steel-gray eyes.
When daylight filled the room, Kristin saw that Simon’s face had grown pinched around the nose. A white streak stretched downward on either side to the corners of his mouth.
She walked over to the little glass-paned window and stood there, swallowing her tears. A golden-green light sparkled and gleamed in the thick coating of frost on the window. Outside, it was no doubt as beautiful a day as the whole week had been.