The Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter #1)(109)

“Oh, I don’t know. You should curse me—strike me ...”

“It’s a little late for that now,” replied her husband; there was the shadow of a scornful smile in his voice.

Ragnfrid wept again. “No, I didn’t think I was deceiving you, so deceived and betrayed did I feel myself. No one spared me. They brought you... I saw you only three times before we were married. I thought you were only a boy, so pink and white... so young and childish.”

“That I was,” said Lavrans, and his voice seemed to acquire more resonance. “And that’s why I would have thought that you, who were a woman, you would have been more afraid of ... of deceiving someone who was so young that he didn’t realize...”

“I began to think that way later on,” said Ragnfrid, weeping. “After I came to know you. Soon the time came when I would have given my soul twenty times over if I could have been without blame toward you.”

Lavrans sat silent and motionless.

Then his wife continued, “You’re not going to ask me anything?”

“What good would that do now? It was the man who ... we met his funeral procession at Feginsbrekka, when we were carrying Ulvhild to Nidaros.”

“Yes,” said Ragnfrid. “We had to step off the road, into the meadow. I watched them carry his bier past, with priests and monks and armed men. I heard that he had been granted a good death—reconciled with God. As we stood there with Ulvhild’s litter between us I prayed that my sin and my sorrow might be placed at his feet on that last day.”

“Yes, no doubt you did,” said Lavrans, and there was that same shadow of scorn in his quiet voice.

“You don’t know everything,” said Ragnfrid, cold with despair. “Do you remember when he came out to visit us at Skog that first winter after we were married?”

“Yes,” said her husband.

“When Bj?rgulf was struggling with death... Oh, no one had spared me. He was drunk when he did it to me—later he said that he had never loved me, he didn’t want me, he told me to forget about it. My father didn’t know about it; he didn’t deceive you—you must never believe that. But Trond ... my brother and I were the dearest of friends back then, and I complained to him. He tried to threaten the man into marrying me—but he was only a boy, so he lost the fight. Later he advised me not to speak of it and to take you....”

She sat in silence for a moment.

“When he came out to Skog ... a year had passed, and I didn’t think much about it anymore. But he came to visit. He said that he regretted what he had done, that he would have taken me then if I hadn’t been married, that he was fond of me. So he said. God must judge whether he spoke the truth. After he left ... I didn’t dare go out on the fjord; I didn’t dare because of the sin, not with the child. And by then I had ... by then I had begun to love you so!” She uttered a cry, as if in the wildest torment. Her husband turned his head toward her.

“When Bj?rgulf was born,” Ragnfrid went on, “oh, I thought I loved him more than my own life. When he lay there, struggling with death, I thought: If he perishes, I will perish too. But I did not ask God to spare the boy’s life.”

Lavrans sat for a long time before he asked, his voice heavy and dead, “Was it because I wasn’t his father?”

“I didn’t know whether you were or not,” said Ragnfrid, stiffening.

For a long time both of them sat there, as still as death.

Then the husband said fervently, “In the name of Jesus, Ragnfrid, why are you telling me this—now?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She wrung her hands so hard that her knuckles cracked. “So that you can take vengeance on me. Chase me away from your manor . . .”

“Do you think that would help me?” His voice was shaking with scorn. “What about our daughters?” he said quietly. “Kristin, and the little one?”

Ragnfrid said nothing for a moment.

“I remember how you judged Erlend Nikulauss?n,” she murmured. “So how will you judge me?”

A long icy shiver rippled through the man’s body, releasing some of his stiffness.

“You have now... we have now lived together... for almost twenty-seven years. It’s not the same thing as with a man who’s a stranger. I can see that you have suffered the greatest anguish.”

Ragnfrid collapsed into sobs at his words. She tried to reach out for his hand. He didn’t move, but sat as still as a dead man. Then she wept louder and louder, but her husband sat motionless, staring at the gray light around the door. Finally she lay there as if all her tears had run out. Then he gave her arm a fleeting caress. And she began to cry again.

“Do you remember,” she said in between her sobs, “that man who once visited us while we were at Skog? The one who knew the old ballads? Do you remember the one about a dead man who had come back from the land of torment and told his son the legend of what he had seen? He said that a great clamor was heard from the depths of Hell, and unfaithful wives ground up earth for their husbands’ food. Bloody were the stones that they turned, bloody hung their hearts from their breasts...”

Lavrans said nothing. “For all these years I have thought of those words,” said Ragnfrid. “Each day I felt as if my heart were bleeding, for I felt as if I were grinding up earth for your food.”