Then Kristin replied, and her voice was shrill and wild. “We’re drinking to each other, your two mistresses.”
He grabbed her wrist and snatched away the horn. “Be quiet,” he said harshly. “You shall not drink with her.”
“Why not?” said Kristin in the same voice as before. “She was just as pure as I was when you seduced her.”
“She’s said that so often that she believes it herself,” replied Erlend. “Do you remember when you made me go to Sigurd with that lie, Eline, and he produced witnesses that he had caught you with another man?”
Pale with disgust, Kristin turned away. Eline’s face had flushed dark red. Then she said spitefully, “Even so, that girl isn’t going to turn into a leper if she drinks with me.”
Furious, Erlend turned toward Etine—and then his face suddenly grew rigid and the man gasped in horror.
“Jesus!” he said almost inaudibly. He grabbed Eline by the arm.
“Then drink to her,” he said, his voice harsh and quavering. “Drink first, and then she’ll drink with you.”
Eline wrenched herself away with a gasp. She fled backward across the room, the man after her.
“Drink,” he said. He pulled his dagger out of his belt and followed her with it in his hand. “Taste the drink you’ve made for Kristin.” He grabbed Eline by the arm, dragged her over to the table, and forced her to bend toward the horn.
Eline screamed once and hid her face in her arm.
Erlend released her and stood there shaking.
“It was a hell with Sigurd,” shrieked Eline. “You … you promised—but you’ve treated me even worse, Erlend!”
Then Kristin stepped forward and grabbed the horn. “One of us must drink—you can’t keep both of us.”
Erlend took the horn from her and flung her across the room so she fell to the floor over by Fru Aashild’s bed. He forced the drink to Eline Ormsdatter’s mouth. Standing with one knee on the bench next to her and his hand on her head, he tried to force her to drink.
She fumbled under his arm, snatched the dagger from the table, and stabbed at the man. The blow didn’t seem to cut much but his clothes. Then she turned the point on herself, and immediately fell sideways into his arms.
Kristin got up and came over to them. Erlend was holding Eline; her head hung back over his arm. The death rattle came almost at once; she had blood in her throat and it was running out of her mouth. She spat out a great quantity and said, “I had intended … that drink … for you … for all the times … you betrayed me.”
“Go get Aunt Aashild,” said Erlend in a low voice. Kristin stood motionless.
“She’s dying,” said Erlend.
“Then she’ll fare better than we will,” replied Kristin. Erlend looked at her, and the despair in his eyes softened her. She left the room.
“What is it?” asked Fru Aashild when Kristin called her away from the cookhouse.
“We’ve killed Eline Ormsdatter,” said Kristin. “She’s dying.”
Fru Aashild set off at a run. But Eline breathed her last as she stepped through the door.
Fru Aashild had laid out the dead woman on the bench; she wiped the blood from her face and covered it with a linen cloth. Erlend stood leaning against the wall behind the body.
“Do you realize,” said Fru Aashild, “that this was the worst thing that could have happened?”
She had put branches and kindling into the fireplace; now she placed the horn in the middle and blew on it till it flared up.
“Can you trust your men?” she asked.
“Ulv and Haftor, I think I can. I don’t know Jon very well, or the man who came with Eline.”
“You realize,” said Fru Aashild, “that if it comes out that you and Kristin were here together, and that you were alone with Eline when she died, then you might as well have let Kristin drink Eline’s brew. And if there’s any talk of poison, people will remember what I have been accused of in the past. Did she have any kinsmen or friends?”
“No,” said Erlend in a subdued voice. “She had no one but me.”
“Even so,” said Fru Aashild, “it’ll be difficult to cover this up and remove the body without the deepest suspicion falling on you.”
“She must be buried in consecrated ground,” said Erlend, “if it costs me Husaby to do it. What do you say, Kristin?”
Kristin nodded.
Fru Aashild sat in silence. The more she thought about it, the more impossible it seemed to find a solution. In the cookhouse sat four men; could Erlend bribe all of them to keep quiet? Could any of them, could Eline’s man, be paid to leave the country? That would always be risky. And at J?rundgaard they knew that Kristin had been here. If Lavrans found out about it, she couldn’t imagine what he might do. They would have to take the body away. The mountain road to the west was unthinkable now; there was the road to Raumsdal or across the mountain to Nidaros or south down the valley. And if the truth came out, it would never be believed—even if it were accepted.