“Yes, I have, Skule—so completely, that God alone can understand, for I can’t tell you how completely I’ve forgiven you, my son!”
For a moment she stood with her hand on his shoulder. Then he seized her wrists and squeezed them so tight that she cried out; the next instant he put his arms around her, as tender and frightened and ashamed as he had been back then.
“My son . . . what is it?” whispered his mother in alarm.
In the dark she could feel the man shaking his head. Then he let her go, and they walked back up to the church.
During the mass Kristin happened to remember that she had once again forgotten about the cloak for the blind Fru Aasa when they were sitting on the bench outside the priest’s door that morning. After the service she went around the church to get it.
In the archway stood Skule and Sira Eiliv, holding a lantern in his hand. “He died when we put in at the wharf,” she heard Skule say, his voice full of a peculiar, wild despair.
“Who?”
Both men started violently when they saw her.
“One of my seamen,” said Skule softly.
Kristin looked from one man to the other. In the glow of the lantern she caught sight of their faces, incomprehensibly strained, and she uttered a little involuntary cry of fear. The priest bit his lip; she saw that his chin was trembling faintly.
“It’s just as well that you tell your mother, my son. It’s better if we all prepare ourselves to bear it if it should be God’s will for our people to be stricken with such a harsh—” But Skule merely moaned and refused to speak. Then the priest said, “A sickness has come to Bj?rgvin, Kristin. The terrible pestilence we’ve heard rumors about, which is ravaging countries abroad.”
“The black plague?” whispered Kristin.
“It would do no good if I tried to tell you how things were in Bj?rgvin when I left there,” said Skule. “No one could imagine it who hasn’t seen it for himself. Sir Bjarne took stern measures at first to put out the fire where it broke out in the buildings around Saint Jon’s Monastery. He wanted to cut off all of Nordnes with guardsmen from the castle, even though the monks at Saint Michael’s Monastery threatened him with excommunication. An English ship had arrived with sick men on board, and he refused to allow them to unload their cargo or leave the ship. Every single man on that vessel perished, and then he had it scuttled. But some of the goods had already been brought ashore, and some of the townsmen smuggled more off the ship one night, and the brothers of Saint Jon’s Church demanded that the dying be given the last rites. When people started dying all over town, we realized it was hopeless. Now there’s no one left in Bj?rgvin except for the men carrying the corpses. Everyone has fled the town who could, but the sickness follows them.”
“Oh, Jesus Christus!”
“Mother . . . Do you remember the last time there was a lemming year back home in Sil? The hordes that tumbled along all the roads and pathways . . . Do you remember how they lay dying in every bush, rotting and tainting every waterway with their stench and poison?” He clenched his fists. His mother shuddered.
“Lord, have mercy on us all. Praise be to God and the Virgin Mary that you were sent up here, my Skule.”
The man gnashed his teeth in the dark.
“That’s what we said too, my men and I, the morning we hoisted sail and set off for Vaag. When we came north to Mold? sund, the first one fell ill. We tied stones to his feet and put a cross on his breast when he died, promising him a mass for his soul when we reached Nidaros; then we threw his body into the sea. May God forgive us. With the next two, we put into shore and gave them the last rites and burial in a proper grave. It’s not possible to flee from fate after all. The fourth one died as we rowed into the river, and the fifth one died last night.”
“Do you have to go back to town?” asked his mother a moment later. “Can’t you stay here?”
Skule shook his head and laughed without mirth. “Oh, I think soon it won’t matter where I am. It’s useless to be frightened; fearful men are half dead already. But if only I was as old as you are, Mother!”
“No one knows what he has been spared by dying in his youth,” said his mother quietly.
“Silence, Mother! Think about the time when you yourself were twenty-three years old. Would you have wanted to lose all the years you’ve lived since then?”
Fourteen days later Kristin saw for the first time someone who was ill with the plague. Rumors had reached Rissa that the scourge was laying waste to Nidaros and had spread to the countryside; how this had happened was difficult to say, for everyone was staying inside, and anyone who saw an unknown wayfarer on the road would flee into the woods or thickets. No one opened the door to strangers.