The Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter #1)(65)
It was so cold in the loft that they could see their own breath like a cloud of smoke in front of the little candle standing on the table. But there were plenty of blankets and furs on the bed, covered by a great bearskin, which they pulled all the way up over their faces.
She didn’t know how long she had lain like that in his arms when Erlend said, “Now we must talk about those things that have to be discussed, my Kristin. I don’t dare keep you here long.”
“I’ll stay here the whole night if you want me to,” whispered Kristin.
Erlend pressed his cheek to hers.
“Then I would not be much of a friend to you. Things are bad enough already, but I won’t have people gossiping about you because of me.”
Kristin didn’t reply, but she felt a twinge of pain. She didn’t understand how he could say such a thing, since he was the one who had brought her here to Brynhild Fluga’s house. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she realized that this was not a good place. And he had expected that everything would proceed just as it did, for he had a cup of mead standing inside the bed drapes.
“I’ve been thinking,” continued Erlend, “that if there’s no other alternative, then I’ll have to take you away by force, to Sweden. Duchess Ingebjorg received me kindly this autumn and spoke of the kinship between us. But now I’m paying for my sins—I’ve fled the country before, you know—and I don’t want you to be mentioned as that other one’s equal.”
“Take me home to Husaby with you,” said Kristin quietly. “I can’t bear to be separated from you and to live with the maidens in the convent. Surely both your kinsmen and mine will be reasonable enough that they’ll allow us to be together and become reconciled with them.”
Erlend hugged her tight and moaned, “I can’t take you to Husaby, Kristin.”
“Why can’t you?” she asked in a whisper.
“Eline came back this fall,” he said after a moment. “I can’t make her leave the farm,” he continued angrily, “not unless I carry her by force out to the sleigh and drive her away myself. And I don’t think I could do that—she brought both of our children home with her.”
Kristin felt as if she were sinking deeper and deeper. In a voice that was brittle with fear she said, “I thought you had parted from her.”
“I thought so too,” replied Erlend curtly. “But she apparently heard in ?sterdal, where she was living, that I was thinking of marriage. You saw the man I was with at the Christmas banquet—that was my foster father, Baard Peters?n of Hestn?s. I went to him when I returned from Sweden; I visited my kinsman, Heming Alvs?n, in Saltvik too. I told them that I wanted to get married now and asked them to help me. That must be what Eline heard.
“I told her to demand whatever she wanted for herself and the children. But they don’t expect Sigurd, her husband, to survive the winter, and then no one can prevent us from living together.
“I slept in the stables with Haftor and Ulv, and Eline slept in the house in my bed. I think my men had a good laugh behind my back.”
Kristin couldn’t say a word.
After a moment Erlend went on, “You know, on the day when our betrothal is formally celebrated, she’ll have to realize that it will do her no good—that she has no power over me any longer.
“But it will be bad for the children. I hadn’t seen them in a year—they’re good-looking children—and there’s little I can do to secure their situation. It wouldn’t have helped them much even if I had been able to marry their mother.”
Tears began to slide down Kristin’s cheeks.
Then Erlend said, “Did you hear what I said? That I have spoken to my kinsmen? And they were pleased that I want to marry. Then I told them that it was you I wanted and no one else.”
“And weren’t they pleased about that?” asked Kristin at last, timidly.
“Don’t you see,” said Erlend gloomily, “that there was only one thing they could say? They cannot and they will not ride with me to speak with your father until this agreement between you and Simon Andress?n has been dissolved. It hasn’t made things any easier for us, Kristin, that you have celebrated Christmas with the Dyfrin people.”
Kristin broke down completely and began to sob quietly. She had no doubt felt that there was something unwise and ignoble about her love, and now she realized that the blame was hers.
She shivered with cold as she got out of bed a short time later and Erlend wrapped both cloaks around her. It was now completely dark outside, and Erlend accompanied her to Clement’s churchyard; then Brynhild escorted her the rest of the way to Nonneseter.
CHAPTER 7
THE FOLLOWING WEEK Brynhild Fluga came with word that the cloak was now finished, and Kristin went with her and was with Erlend in the loft room as before.
When they parted he gave her a cloak, “so you have something to show at the convent,” he said. It was made of blue velvet interwoven with red silk, and Erlend asked her whether she noticed that they were the same colors as the dress she had worn on that day in the forest. Kristin was surprised that she could be so happy over what he said; she felt as if he had never given her greater joy than with those words.
But now they could no longer use this excuse to meet, and it was not easy to think of something else. Erlend went to vespers at the convent church, and several times after the service Kristin went on an errand up to the corrodians’ farms; they stole a few words with each other up along the fences in the dark of the winter evening.