Kristin bent her head to her breast.
After a moment Naakkve said in a low voice, “Have you forgotten, Mother, that you pushed me away—” He paused, as if he didn’t trust his own voice. But then he continued, “I wanted to kneel beside you at my father’s deathbed, but you told me to go away. Don’t you realize my heart wails in my chest whenever I think about that?”
Kristin whispered, almost inaudibly, “Is that why you’ve been so . . . cold . . . toward me during all these years I’ve been a widow?”
Her son was silent.
“I begin to understand . . . You’ve never forgiven me for that, have you, Naakkve?”
Naakkve looked away. “Sometimes . . . I have forgiven you, Mother,” he said, his voice faint.
“But not very often . . . Oh, Naakkve, Naakkve!” she cried bitterly. “Do you think I loved Bj?rgulf any less than you? I’m his mother. I’m mother to both of you! It was cruel of you to keep closing the door between him and me!”
Naakkve’s pale face turned even whiter. “Yes, Mother, I closed the door. Cruel, you say. May Jesus comfort you, but you don’t know . . .” His voice faded to a whisper, as if the boy’s strength were spent. “I didn’t think you should . . . We had to spare you.”
He turned on his heel, went to the door, and unbarred it. But then he paused and stood there with his back to Kristin. Finally she softly called out his name. He came back and stood before her with his head bowed.
“Mother . . . I know this isn’t . . . easy . . . for you.”
She placed her hands on his shoulders. He hid his eyes from her gaze, but he bent down and kissed her on the wrist. Kristin recalled that his father had once done the same, but she couldn’t remember when.
She stroked his sleeve, and then he lifted his hand and patted her on the cheek. They sat down again, both of them silent for a time.
“Mother,” said Naakkve after a while, his voice steady and quiet, “do you still have the cross that my brother Orm left to you?”
“Yes,” said Kristin. “He made me promise never to part with it.”
“I think if Orm had known about it, he would have consented to letting me have it. I too will now be without inheritance or lineage.”
Kristin pulled the little silver cross from her bodice. Naakkve accepted it; it was warm from his mother’s breast. Respectfully he kissed the reliquary in the center of the cross, fastened the thin chain around his neck, and hid the cross inside his clothing.
“Do you remember your brother Orm?” asked his mother.
“I’m not sure. I think I do . . . but perhaps that’s just because you always talked so much about him, back when I was little.”
Naakkve sat before his mother for a while longer. Then he stood up. “Good night, Mother!”
“May God bless you, Naakkve. Good night!”
He left her. Kristin folded up the wedding tunic for Ivar, put away her sewing things, and covered the hearth.
“May God bless you, may God bless you, my Naakkve.” Then she blew out the candle and left the old building.
Some time later Kristin happened to meet Tordis at a manor on the outskirts of the parish. The people there had fallen ill and hadn’t been able to bring in the hay, so the brothers and sisters of the Olav guild had gone to lend them a hand. That evening Kristin accompanied the girl part of the way home. She walked along slowly, as an old woman does, and chatted; little by little she turned the conversation so that Tordis found herself telling Naakkve’s mother all about what there had been between the two of them.
Yes, she had met with him in the paddock at home, and the summer before, when she was staying up in their mountain pastures, he had come to see her several times at night. But he had never tried to be too bold with her. She knew what people said about Naakkve, but he had never offended her, in either word or deed. But he had lain beside her on top of the bedcovers a few times, and they had talked. She once asked him if it was his intention to court her. He replied that he couldn’t; he had promised himself to the service of the Virgin Mary. He told her the same thing in the spring, when they happened to speak to each other. And then she decided that she would no longer resist the wishes of her grandfather and father.
“It would have brought great sorrow upon both of you if he had broken his promise and you had defied your kinsmen,” said Kristin. She stood leaning on her rake and looked at the young maiden. The child had a gentle, lovely round face, and a thick braid of the most beautiful fair hair. “God will surely bestow happiness on you, my Tordis. He seems a most intrepid and fine boy, your betrothed.”