“I have to discuss this with Bj?rn,” she said, standing up and going out.
Bj?rn Gunnars?n listened to his wife’s account without changing expression and without taking his eyes off Erlend.
“Bj?rn,” said Aashild desperately, “someone has to swear that he saw her lay hands on herself.”
The life slowly darkened in Bj?rn’s eyes; he looked at his wife, and his mouth twisted into a crooked smile.
“You mean that someone should be me?”
Fru Aashild clasped her hands and raised them toward him. “Bj?rn, you know what it means for these two…”
“And you think it’s all over for me anyway?” he asked slowly. “Or do you think there’s enough left of the man I once was that I’ll dare to swear falsely to save this boy from going under? I, who was dragged under myself … all those years ago. Dragged under, I say,” he repeated.
“You say this because I’m old now,” whispered Aashild.
Kristin burst into sobs that cut through the room. Rigid and silent, she had been sitting in the corner near Aashild’s bed. Now she began to weep out loud. It was as if Fru Aashild’s voice had torn open her heart. This voice, heavy with memories of the sweetness of love, seemed to make Kristin fully realize for the first time what the love between her and Erlend had been. The memory of burning, passionate happiness washed over everything else, washed away the cruel despairing hatred from the night before. She felt only her love and her will to survive.
All three of them looked at her. Then Herr Bj?rn went over, put his hand under her chin, and gazed down at her. “Kristin, do you say that she did it herself?”
“Every word you’ve heard is true,” said Kristin firmly. “We threatened her until she did it.”
“She had planned a worse fate for Kristin,” said Aashild.
Herr Bj?rn let go of the girl. He went over to the body, lifted it onto the bed where Eline had slept the night before, and laid it close to the wall with the blankets pulled over it.
“You must send Jon and the man you don’t know back to Husaby with the message that Eline will accompany you to the south. Have them ride off around noon. Tell them that the women are asleep in here; they’ll have to eat in the cookhouse. Then speak to Ulv and Haftor. Has she threatened to do this before? Can you bring witnesses forward if anyone asks about this?”
“Everyone who has been at Husaby during the last years we lived together,” said Erlend wearily, “can testify that she threatened to take her own life—and sometimes mine too—whenever I talked about leaving her.”
Bj?rn laughed harshly. “I thought so. Tonight we’ll dress her in traveling clothes and put her in the sleigh. You’ll have to sit next to her—”
Erlend swayed where he stood. “I can’t do that.”
“God only knows how much of a man there will be left of you when you take stock of yourself twenty years from now,” said Bj?rn. “Do you think you can drive the sleigh, then? I’ll sit next to her. We’ll have to travel by night and on back roads until we reach Fron. In this cold no one will know how long she’s been dead. We’ll drive to the monks’ hostel at Roaldstad. There you and I will testify that the two of you came to words in the back of the sleigh. It’s well attested that you haven’t wanted to live with her since the ban was lifted from you and that you have asked for the hand of a maiden who is your equal. Ulv and Haftor must keep their distance during the whole journey so that they can swear, if necessary, that she was alive the last time they saw her. You can get them to do that, can’t you? At the monks’ hostel you can have her placed in a casket; and then you must negotiate with the priests for peace in the grave for her and peace of the soul for yourself.
“I know it’s not pleasant, but you haven’t handled matters so that it could be pleasant. Don’t stand there like a child bride who’s about to swoon away. God help you, my boy—I suppose you’ve never tried feeling the edge of a knife at your throat, have you?”
A biting wind was coming down off the mountain. Snow was blowing, fine and silvery, from the drifts up toward the moon-blue sky as the men prepared to set off.
Two horses were hitched up, one in front of the other. Erlend sat in the front of the sleigh. Kristin went over to him.
“This time, Erlend, you must take the trouble to send me word about how the journey goes and where you end up.”
He squeezed her hand so hard she thought the blood would burst from her fingernails.