“Why is that, sir?” asked Kristin. “Is it because you are married?” But then it occurred to her that if he were a married man, it would not have been seemly for him to arrange this rendezvous with her. So she corrected herself and said, “Perhaps you have lost your betrothed or your wife?”
Erlend turned around abruptly and gave her a peculiar look.
“Me? Hasn’t Fru Aashild …” After a moment he asked, “Why did you blush when you heard who I was that evening?”
Kristin blushed again but did not reply.
Then Erlend went on. “I would like to know what my aunt has told you about me.”
“Nothing more than that she praised you,” said Kristin hastily. “She said you were handsome and so highborn that … she said that compared to a lineage such as yours and hers, we were of little consequence, my ancestors and I.”
“Is she still talking about such things, there, where she now resides?” said Erlend with a bitter laugh. “Well, well, if it comforts her … And she has said nothing else about me?”
“What else would she say?” asked Kristin. She didn’t know why she felt so strange and anxious.
“Oh, she might have said … ,” replied Erlend in a low voice, his head bowed, “she might have said that I had been excommunicated and had to pay dearly for peace and reconciliation.”
Kristin said nothing for a long time. Then she said quietly, “I’ve heard it said that there are many men who are not masters of their fortunes. I’ve seen so little of the world. But I would never believe of you, Erlend, that it was for any … ignoble … matter.”
“God bless you for such words, Kristin,” said Erlend. He bent his head and kissed her wrist so fervently that the horse gave a start beneath them. When the animal was once again walking calmly, he said with great ardor, “Won’t you dance with me tonight, Kristin? Later I’ll tell you everything about my circumstances—but tonight let’s be happy together.”
Kristin agreed, and they rode for a while in silence.
But a short time later Erlend began asking about Fru Aashild, and Kristin told him everything she knew; she had much praise for her.
“Then all doors are not closed to Bj?rn and Aashild?” asked Erlend.
Kristin replied that they were well liked and that her father and many others thought that most of what had been said of the couple was untrue.
“What did you think of my kinsman, Munan Baards?n?” asked Erlend with a chuckle.
“I didn’t pay much heed to him,” said Kristin, “and it didn’t seem to me that he was much worth looking at anyway.”
“Didn’t you know that he’s her son?” asked Erlend.
“Fru Aashild’s son?” said Kristin in astonishment.
“Yes, the children couldn’t take their mother’s fair looks, since they took everything else,” said Erlend.
“I didn’t even know the name of her first husband,” said Kristin.
“They were two brothers who married two sisters,” said Erlend. “Baard and Nikulaus Munans?n. My father was the older one; Mother was his second wife, but he had no children by his first wife. Baard, who married Aashild, wasn’t a young man either, and apparently they never got on well. I was a child when it all happened, and they kept as much from me as they could. But she left the country with Herr Bj?rn and married him without the counsel of her kinsmen—after Baard was dead. Then people wanted to annul their marriage. They claimed that Bj?rn had slept with her while her first husband was still alive and that they conspired together to get rid of my father’s brother. But they couldn’t find any proof of this, and they had to let the marriage stand. But they had to give up all their possessions. Bj?rn had killed their nephew too—the nephew of my mother and Aashild, I mean.”
Kristin’s heart was pounding. At home her parents had taken strict precautions to keep the children from hearing impure talk. But things had occurred in their village, too, that Kristin had heard about—a man who lived in concubinage with a married woman. That was adultery, one of the worst of sins. They were also to blame for the husband’s violent death, and then it was a case for excommunication and banishment. Lavrans had said that no woman had to stay with her husband if he had been with another man’s wife. And the lot of offspring from adultery could never be improved, even if the parents were later free to marry. A man could pass on his inheritance and name to his child by a prostitute or a wandering beggar woman, but not to his child from adultery—not even if the mother was the wife of a knight.