She couldn’t figure out what it was the boy was pondering so deeply. He was skilled enough in sports and the use of weapons, but he was much less zealous than her other sons had been about such things, and he never went out hunting alone, although he was pleased whenever Gaute asked him to go along on a hunt. And he never seemed to notice that women cast tender eyes on this fair young boy. He had no interest in book learning, and the youngest son paid little attention to all the older boys’ talk of their plans to enter a monastery. Kristin couldn’t see that the boy had given any thought to his future, other than that he would continue to stay there at home all his days and help Gaute with the farm work, as he did now.
Sometimes this strange, aloof creature reminded Kristin Lavransdatter a bit of his father. But Erlend’s soft, languid manner had often given way to a boisterous wildness, and Lavrans had none of his father’s quick, hot disposition. Erlend had never been far removed from what was going on around him.
Lavrans was now the youngest. Munan had long ago been laid to rest in the grave beside his father and little brother. He died early in the spring, the year after Erlend was killed.
After her husband’s death the widow had behaved as if she neither heard nor saw a thing. Stronger than pain or sorrow was the feeling she had of a numbing chill and a dull lassitude in both her body and soul, as if she herself were bleeding to death from his mortal wounds.
Her whole life had resided in his arms ever since that thunder-laden midday hour in the barn at Skog when she gave herself to Erlend Nikulauss?n for the first time. Back then she was so young and inexperienced; she understood so little about what she was doing but strove to hide that she was close to tears because he was hurting her. She smiled, for she thought she was giving her lover the most precious of gifts. And whether or not it was a good gift, she had given him herself, completely and forever. Her maidenly life, which God had mercifully adorned with beauty and health when He allowed her to be born into secure and honorable circumstances, which her parents had protected during all those years as they brought her up with the most loving strictness: With both hands she had given all this to Erlend, and ever since she had lived within his embrace.
So many times in the years that followed she had received his caresses, and stony and cold with anger, she had obediently complied with her husband’s will, while she felt on the verge of collapse, ravaged by weariness. She had felt a sort of resentful pleasure when she looked at Erlend’s lovely face and healthy, graceful body—at least that could no longer blind her to the man’s faults. Yes, he was just as young and just as handsome; he could still overwhelm her with caresses that were as ardent as they had been in the days when she too was young. But she had aged, she thought, feeling a rush of triumphant pride. It was easy for someone to stay young if he refused to learn, refused to adapt to his lot in life, and refused to fight to change his circumstances in accordance with his will.
And yet even when she received his kisses with her lips pressed tight, when she turned her whole being away from him in order to fight for the future of her sons, she sensed that she threw herself into this effort with the same fiery passion this man had once ignited in her blood. She thought the years had cooled her ardor because she no longer felt desire whenever Erlend had that old glint in his eyes or that deep tone to his voice, which had made her swoon, helpless and powerless with joy, the first time she met him. But just as she had once longed to ease the heavy burden of separation and the anguish of her heart in her meetings with Erlend, she now felt a dull but fervent longing for a goal that would one day be reached when she, at long last, was a white-haired old woman and saw her sons well provided for and secure. Now it was for Erlend’s sons that she endured the old fear of the uncertainty that lay ahead. And yet she was tormented with a longing that was like a hunger and a burning thirst—she must see her sons flourish.
And just as she had once given herself to Erlend, she later surrendered herself to the world that had sprung up around their life together. She threw herself into fulfilling every demand that had to be met; she lent a hand with every task that needed to be done in order to ensure the well-being of Erlend and his children. She began to understand that Erlend was always with her when she sat at Husaby and studied the documents in her husband’s chest along with their priest, or when she talked to his leaseholders and laborers, or worked alongside her maids in the living quarters and cookhouse, or sat in the horse pasture with the foster mothers and kept an eye on her children on those lovely summer days. She came to realize that she turned her anger on Erlend whenever anything went wrong in the house and whenever the children disobeyed her will; but it was also toward him that her great joy streamed whenever they brought the hay in dry during the summer or had a good harvest of grain in the fall, or whenever her calves were thriving, and whenever she heard her boys shouting and laughing in the courtyard. The knowledge that she belonged to him blazed deep within her heart whenever she laid aside the last of the Sabbath clothes she had sewn for her seven sons and stood rejoicing over the pile of lovely, carefully stitched work she had done that winter. He was the one she was sick and tired of one spring evening when she walked home with her maids from the river. They had been washing wool from the last shearing, boiling water in a kettle on the shore and rinsing the wool in the current. And the mistress herself felt a great strain in her back, and her arms were coal-black with dung; the smell of sheep and dirty fat had soaked into her clothes until she thought her body would never be clean, even after three visits to the bathhouse.