In a flash the memory came back to her; she recognized the bishop. A winter’s day at sunset . . . a red, rearing colt in the courtyard and a priest with a fringe of black hair around his flaming red face. Hanging on to the halter, splattered with froth, he was trying to tame the wild animal and climb on to its back without a saddle. Groups of drunken, laughing Christmas guests were crowding around, her father among them, red-faced from liquor and the cold, shouting loudly and merrily.
She turned toward Kolbein Jonss?n.
“Kolbein! You who have known me ever since I wore a child’s cap, you who knew me and my sisters back home with my father and mother . . . I know that you were so fond of my father that you . . . Kolbein, do you believe such a thing of me?”
The farmer Kolbein looked at her, his face stern and sorrowful. “Fond of your father, you say . . . Yes, we who were his men, poor servants and commoners who loved Lavrans of J?rundgaard and thought he was the kind of man that God wanted a chieftain to be . . .
“Don’t ask us, Kristin Lavransdatter, we who saw how your father loved you and how you rewarded his love, what we think you might be capable of doing!”
Kristin bowed her head to her breast. The bishop couldn’t get another word out of her; she would no longer answer his questions.
Then Lord Halvard stood up. Next to the high altar was a small door which led to the enclosed section of the gallery behind the apse of the choir. Part of it was used as the sacristy, and part of it was furnished with several little hatches through which the lepers could receive the Host when they stood out there and listened to the mass, separated from the rest of the congregation. But no one in the parish had suffered from leprosy for many years.
“Perhaps it would be best if you waited out there, Kristin, until everyone has come inside for the service. I want to talk to you later, but in the meantime you may go home to your family.”
Kristin curtsied before the bishop. “I would rather go home now, venerable Lord, with your permission.”
“As you please, Mistress Lavransdatter. May God protect you, Kristin. If you are guilty, then they will plead your defense: God Himself and His martyrs who are the lords of the church here: Saint Olav and Saint Thomas, who died for the sake of righteousness.”
Kristin curtsied once more before the bishop. Then she went through the priest’s door out into the cemetery.
A small boy wearing a new red tunic stood there all alone, his bearing stiff and erect. Munan tilted his pale child’s face up toward his mother for a moment, his eyes big and frightened.
Her sons . . . She hadn’t thought about them before. In a flash she saw her flock of boys: the way they had stood at the periphery of her life during the past years, crowding together like a herd of horses in a thunderstorm, alert and wary, far away from her as she struggled through the final death throes of her love. What had they understood, what had they thought, what had they endured as she wrestled with her passion? What would become of them now?
She held Munan’s small, scrubbed fist in her hand. The child stared straight ahead; his lips quivered slightly, but he held his head high.
Hand in hand Kristin Lavransdatter and her son walked across the churchyard and out onto the hillside. She thought about her sons, and she felt as if she would break down and collapse on the ground. The throngs of people moved toward the church door, as the bells rang from the nearby bell tower.
She had once heard a saga about a murdered man who couldn’t fall to the ground because he had so many spears in his body. She couldn’t fall as she walked along because of all the eyes piercing through her.
Mother and child entered the high loft room. Her sons were huddled around Bj?rgulf, who was sitting at the table. Naakkve straightened up and stood over his brothers, with one hand on the shoulder of the half-blind boy. Kristin looked at the narrow, dark, blue-eyed visage of her firstborn son, with the soft, downy black beard around his mouth.
“You know about it?” she asked calmly, walking over to the group.
“Yes.” Naakkve spoke for all of them. “Gunhild was at church.”
Kristin paused for a moment. The other boys turned back to their eldest brother, until their mother asked, “Did any of you know that such things were being said in the countryside—about Ulf and me?”
Then Ivar Erlendss?n abruptly turned to face her. “Don’t you think you would have heard the clamor of our actions if we had? I know I couldn’t have sat still and let my mother be branded an adulteress—not even if I knew it was true that she was!”