“You take the front,” he said. “It may be a little heavier, but you won’t notice the stench as much. Throw the torch away; we’ll see better without it. And don’t stumble, Kristin; I would rather not have to touch this poor corpse again.”
The raging pain in her breast seemed to rise up in protest when she lifted the poles of the litter over her shoulders; her chest refused to bear the weight. But she clenched her teeth. As long as they walked along the shore, where the wind blew, she hardly noticed the smell of the body.
“I’d better climb up first and pull the litter up after me,” said Ulf when they reached the slope where they had come down.
“We can go a little farther,” said Kristin. “Over to the place where they bring down the seaweed sledges; it’s not as steep.”
The man could hear that her voice sounded calm and composed. And now that it was over, he started sweating and shivering; he had thought she was going to lose her wits that night.
They struggled onward over the sandy path that led across the clearing to the pine forest. The wind blew freely but not as strongly as it had on the shore, and as they walked farther and farther away from the roar of the tide flats, she felt as if it was a journey home from the uttermost terrors of darkness. The land was pale on both sides of the path—a field of grain, but there had been no one to harvest it. The smell of the grain and the sight of the withering straw welcomed her back home, and her eyes filled with the tears of sisterly compassion. Out of her own desperate terror and need she had come home to the community of the living and the dead.
From time to time the dreadful stink of decay would wash over her if the wind blew at her back, but it wasn’t as foul as when she was standing inside the hut. Here the air was full of the fresh, wet, and cold purity of the breeze.
And stronger than the feeling that she was carrying something gruesome on the litter behind her was the sense that Ulf Hal dorss?n was walking along, protecting her back against the living and black horror they had left behind; its crashing sound became fainter and fainter.
When they reached the outskirts of the pine forest, they noticed lights. “They’re coming to meet us,” said Ulf.
A moment later they were met by an entire throng of men carrying torches, a couple of lanterns, and a bier covered with a shroud. Sira Eiliv was with them, and Kristin was surprised to see that the group included several men who had been in the cemetery earlier that night; many of them were weeping. When they lifted the burden from her shoulders, she nearly collapsed. Sira Eiliv was about to catch her when she said quickly, “Don’t touch me. Don’t come near me. I can feel that I have the plague myself.”
But Sira Eiliv put his hand under her arm all the same.
“Then it should be of comfort for you to remember, woman, what Our Lord has said: That which you have done unto one of my poorest brothers or sisters, you have also done unto me.”
Kristin stared at the priest. Then she shifted her glance to the men, who were moving the body to the bier from the litter Ulf had made. Ulf’s cape fell aside; the tip of a worn shoe gleamed, dark with rain in the light of the torches.
Kristin went over, knelt down between the poles of the litter, and kissed the shoe.
“May God bless you, sister. May God bathe your soul in His light. May God have mercy on all of us here in the darkness.”
Then she thought it was life itself working its way out of her—an unthinkable, piercing pain as if something inside, firmly rooted to the utmost ends of her limbs, had been torn loose. All that was contained within her breast was ripped out; she felt it fill her throat. Her mouth filled with blood that tasted of salt and filthy copper; a moment later her entire robe was covered with glistening, dark wetness. Jesus, can there be so much blood in an old woman? she thought.
Ulf Haldorss?n lifted her up in his arms and carried her.
In the convent portal the nuns met the procession, carrying lighted tapers in their hands. Kristin no longer had her full wits about her, but she sensed that she was half carried, half supported through the doorway. The white-plastered vaulted room was filled with flickering light from yellow candle flames and red pinewood torches, and the stomping of feet roared like the sea—but for the dying woman it was like a mirror of her own sinking life flame, and the footsteps on the flagstones seemed to be the crash of death’s current, rising up toward her.
Then the glow of light spread outward to a larger space; she was once again under a dark, open sky—out in the courtyard. The light played over a gray stone wall with heavy pillars and tall windows: the church. Someone was carrying her—it was Ulf again—but now he became one with all those who had ever carried her. When she put her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek against his prickly bearded neck, she felt like a child again, with her father, but she also felt as if she were taking a child in her own arms. Behind his dark head there were red lights, and they seemed to be shining from the fire that nourishes all love.