Once in a while Kristin would think of her own family—her sons, who were spread so far and wide, the grandchildren she would never see; little Erlend’s golden neck would hover before her eyes. But they seemed to grow distant and faded. Now it almost seemed as if all people were equally close and distant to each other in this time of great need. And she had her hands full all day long; it now served her well that she was used to all sorts of work. While she sat and did the milking, starving little children whom she had never seen before would suddenly appear beside her, and she seldom even thought to ask where they were from or how things were back home. She gave them food and took them into the chapter hall or some other room where a fire was lit or tucked them into bed in the dormitory.
With a feeling of wonder she noticed that in this time of great misfortune, when it was more necessary than ever for everyone to attend to their prayers with vigilance, she never had time to collect her thoughts to pray. She would sink to her knees in front of the tabernacle in the church whenever she had a free moment, but she could manage nothing more than wordless sighs and dully murmured Pater nosters and Ave Marias. She wasn’t aware of it herself, but the nunlike demeanor and manners she had assumed over the past two years swiftly began to fall away; she again became like the mistress she had been in the past, as the flock of nuns diminished, the routines of the convent were abandoned, and the abbess still lay in bed, weak and with her tongue partially paralyzed. And the work mounted for the few who were left to tend to everything.
One day she happened to hear that Skule was still in Nidaros. The members of his crew had either died or fled, and he hadn’t been able to find new men. He was well, but he had cast himself into a wild life, just as many young people, out of despair, had done. They said that whoever was afraid would be sure to die, and so they blunted their fear with carousing and drinking, playing cards, dancing, and carrying on with women. Even the wives of honorable townsmen and young daughters from the best of families ran off from their homes during these evil times. In the company of wanton women they would revel in the alehouses and taverns among the dissolute men. God forgive them, thought Kristin, but she felt as if her heart was too weary to grieve over these things properly.
And apparently even in the villages there was plenty of sin and depravity. They heard little about it at the convent because there they had no time to waste on such talk. But Sira Eiliv, who went everywhere, ceaselessly and tirelessly tending to the sick and dying, told Kristin one day that the agony of people’s souls was worse than that of their bodies.
Then one evening they were sitting around the fireplace in the convent hall, the little group of people left alive at Rein Convent. Huddled around the fire were four nuns and two lay sisters, an old beggar and a half-grown boy, two women who received alms from the convent, and several children. On the high seat bench, above which a large crucifix could be glimpsed in the dusk hanging on the light-colored wall, lay the abbess with Sister Kristin and Sister Turid sitting at her head and feet.
It was nine days since the last death had occurred among the sisters and five days since anyone had died in the convent or the nearest houses. The plague seemed to be waning throughout the countryside as well, said Sira Eiliv. For the first time in three months a glimmer of peace and security and comfort fell over the silent, weary people sitting there. Old Sister Torunn Marta let her rosary sink into her lap and took the hand of the little girl standing at her knee.
“What do you think she could mean? Well, child, now we seem to be seeing that Mary, the Mother of God, never withdraws her mercy from her children for long.”
“No, it’s not the Virgin Mary, Sister Torunn. It’s Hel. She’ll leave the parish, taking her rakes and brooms, when they sacrifice an innocent man at the gate of the cemetery. By tomorrow she’ll be far away.”
“What can she mean?” asked the nun, again uneasy. “Shame on you, Magnhild, for spreading such loathsome, heathen gossip. You deserve to taste the rod for that. . . .”
“Tell us what you mean, Magnhild. Don’t be afraid.” Sister Kristin was standing behind them; her voice sounded strained. She had suddenly remembered that in her youth she had heard Fru Aashild talk about dreadful, unmentionably sinful measures which the Devil tempted desperate men to try.
The children had been down in the grove near the parish church at twilight, and some of the boys had wandered over to a sod hut that stood there; they had spied on several men who were making plans. It seemed that these men had captured a small boy named Tore, the son of Steinunn from down by the shore. That night they were going to sacrifice him to Hel, the plague giantess. The children began talking eagerly, proud to have sparked the attention of the grown-ups. It didn’t seem to occur to them to feel pity for this poor Tore; he was a sort of outcast who roamed the countryside, begging, but never came near the convent. When Sira Eiliv or any of the abbess’s envoys went looking for his mother, she would flee or refuse to talk to them, no matter whether they spoke to her kindly or sternly. She had spent ten years living in the alleyways of Nidaros, but then she acquired a sickness that disfigured her so badly that finally she could no longer earn a living in the manner she had before. And so she had come to the parish and lived in a hovel out on the shore. Occasionally a beggar or the like would move in and share her hut for a time. Who the father of her boy might be, she herself didn’t know.