Erlend awoke, raised himself up on one elbow, and stared down at her face. His eyes were coal-black after his slumber.
“I thought . . .” He threw himself down beside her again; a deep, wild tremor rushed through her at the sound of joy and anguish in his voice. “I thought I was dreaming again.”
She opened her lips to his mouth and wrapped her arms around his neck. Never, never had it felt so blessed.
Later that afternoon, when the sunshine was already golden and the shadows lay stretched out across the green courtyard, they set off to get water from the creek. Erlend was carrying the two large buckets. Kristin walked at his side, lithe, straight-backed, and slender. Her wimple had slipped back and lay around her shoulders; her uncovered hair was a gleaming brown in the sun. She could feel it herself as she closed her eyes and lifted her face to the light. Her cheeks had turned red; the features of her face had softened. Each time she glanced over at him she would lower her gaze, overwhelmed, when she saw in Erlend’s face how young she was.
Erlend decided that he wanted to bathe. As he walked farther down, Kristin sat on the thick carpet of grass, leaning her back against a rock. The murmuring and gurgling of the mountain stream lulled her into a doze; now and then, when mosquitoes or flies touched her skin, she would open her eyes briefly and swat them away with her hand. Down among the willow thickets, near the deep pool, she caught sight of Erlend’s white body. He was standing with one foot up on a rock, scrubbing himself with tufts of grass. Then she closed her eyes again and smiled, weary but happy. She was just as powerless against him as ever.
Her husband came back and threw himself down on the grass in front of her, his hair wet, his red lips cold from the water as he pressed them to her hand. He had shaved and put on a better shirt, although it was not particularly grand either. Laughing, he pointed to his armpit, where the fabric was torn.
“You could have brought me a shirt when you finally decided to come north.”
“I’ll start sewing a shirt for you as soon as I get home, Erlend,” she replied with a smile, caressing his forehead with her hand.
He grabbed hold of it. “Never will you leave here again, my Kristin.”
She merely smiled without replying. Erlend pushed himself away so that he could lie down on his stomach. Under the bushes, in a damp, shady spot, grew a cluster of small, white, star-shaped flowers. Their petals had blue veins like a woman’s breast, and in the center of each blossom sat a tiny brownish-blue bud. Erlend picked every one of them.
“You who are so clever about such things, Kristin—surely you must know what these flowers are called.”
“They’re called Friggja grass. No, Erlend . . .” She blushed and pushed away his hand as he tried to slip the flowers into her bodice.
Erlend laughed and gently bit the white petals, one after the other. Then he put all the flowers into her open hands and closed her fingers around them.
“Do you remember when we walked in the garden at Hofvin Hospice, and you gave me a rose?”
Kristin slowly shook her head as she gave him a little smile. “No. But you took a rose from my hand.”
“And you let me take it. Just as you let me take you, Kristin. As gentle and pious as a rose. Later on you sometimes scratched me bloody, my sweet.” He flung himself into her lap and put his arms around her waist. “Last night, Kristin . . . it did no good. You weren’t allowed to sit there demurely and wait.”
Kristin bent her head and hid her face against his shoulder.
On the fourth day they had taken refuge up in the birch woods among the foothills across from the farm, for on that day the tenant was bringing in the hay. Without discussing it, Kristin and Erlend had agreed that no one needed to know that she was visiting him. He went down to the buildings a few times to get food and drink, but she stayed among the alpine birches, sitting in the heather. From where they sat, they could see the man and woman toiling to carry home the hay bundles on their backs.
“Do you remember,” asked Erlend, “the time you promised me that if I ended up on a smallholder’s farm in the mountains, you would come and keep house for me? You wanted to have two cows and some sheep.”
Kristin laughed a little and tugged at his hair. “What do you think our boys would think about that, Erlend? If their mother ran away and left them behind in that manner?”
“I think they would be happy to manage J?rundgaard on their own,” said Erlend, laughing. “They’re old enough now. Gaute is a capable farmer, even as young as he is. And Naakkve is almost a man.”