She gave a start and stood there trembling, unable to breathe, her heart pounding. In that bed over there, in the bed where that thing had lain when she was here last . . . Something was lying there now, covered with a length of homespun. She wasn’t sure what she thought. . . .
Then she clenched her teeth and forced herself to go over and lift up the cloth. It was only Erlend’s armor, with his helmet and shield. They were lying on the bare boards of the bed, covered up.
She glanced at the other bed. That’s where they had found Bj?rn and Aashild. That’s where Erlend now slept. No doubt she too would sleep there in the night.
How must it have been for him to live in this house, to sleep here? Once again all her other feelings were drowned in pity. She went over to the bed; it hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. The straw under the hide sheet had been pressed down until it was quite hard. There was nothing else but a few sheepskin blankets and a couple of pillows covered with homespun, so filthy that they stank. Dust and dirt scattered as she touched the bedding. Erlend’s bed was no better than that of a stableboy in a stall.
Erlend, who could never have enough splendor around him. Erlend, who would put on silk shirts, velvet, and fine furs if he could find the slightest excuse to do so; who resented having to let his children wear handwoven homespun on workdays; and who had never liked it when she nursed them herself or lent her maids a hand with the housework—like a leaseholder’s wife, he said.
Jesus, but he had brought this upon himself.
No, I won’t say a word. I will take back everything I said, Simon. You were right. He must not stay here . . . the father of my sons. I will offer him my hand and my lips and ask his forgiveness.
This isn’t easy, Simon. But you were right. She remembered his sharp gray eyes, his gaze just as steadfast, almost to the very end. In that wretched body which had begun to decay, his pure, bright spirit had shone from his eyes until his soul was drawn home, the way a blade is pulled back. She knew it was as Ramborg had said. He had loved her all these years.
Every single day in the months since his death she couldn’t help thinking about him, and now she saw that she had realized it even before Ramborg spoke. During this time she had been forced to mull over all the memories she had of him, for as far back as she had known Simon Darre. In all these years she had carried false memories of this man who had once been her betrothed; she had tampered with these memories the way a corrupt ruler tampers with the coin and mixes impure ore with the silver. When he released her and took upon himself the blame for the breach of promise, she told herself, and believed it, that Simon Andress?n had turned away from her with contempt as soon as he realized that her honor had been disgraced. She had forgotten that when he let her go, on that day in the nuns’ garden, he was certainly not thinking that she was no longer innocent or pure. Even back then he was willing to bear the shame for her inconstant and disobedient disposition; all he asked was that her father should be told that he was not the one who sought to break the agreement.
And there was something else she now knew. When he had learned the worst about her, he stood up to redeem for her a scrap of honor in the eyes of the world. If she could have given her heart to him then, Simon would have still taken her as his wife before the church door, and he would have tried to live with her so she would never feel that he concealed a memory of her shame.
But she still knew that she could never have loved him. She could never have loved Simon Andress?n. And yet . . . Everything that had enraged her about Erlend because he didn’t have particular traits—those were the traits that Simon did possess. But she was a pitiful woman who couldn’t help complaining.
Simon had given selflessly to the one he loved; no doubt she had believed that she did the same.
But when she received his gifts, without thought or thanks, Simon had merely smiled. Now she realized that he had often been melancholy when they were together. She now knew that he had concealed sorrow behind his strangely impassive demeanor. Then he would toss out some impertinent jest and push it aside, as ready as ever to protect and to help and to give.
She herself had raged, storing away and brooding over every grief, whenever she offered her gifts and Erlend paid them no mind.
Here, in this very room, she had stood and pronounced such bold words: “I was the one who took the wrong path, and I won’t complain about Erlend even if it leads me out over the scree.” That was what she had said to the woman whom she drove to her death in order to make room for her own love.