The Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter #1)(87)

“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.

“Do you still dare stand by me, Kristin?”

“Yes, I still do,” she said, and after a moment, “We both bear the blame for this deed. I urged you on because I wanted her dead.”

Fru Aashild and Kristin stood and watched them go. The sleigh dipped down and rose up over the drifts. It vanished in a hollow, to appear farther down on a white meadow. But then the men passed into the shadow of a slope and disappeared for good.



The two women were sitting in front of the fireplace, their backs to the empty bed; Fru Aashild had taken out the bedclothes and straw. They both knew that it was standing there empty, gaping at them.

“Do you want us to sleep in the cookhouse tonight?” Fru Aashild asked.

“It makes no difference where we sleep,” said Kristin.

Fru Aashild went outside to look at the weather.

“No, it doesn’t matter whether a storm blows in or a thaw comes; they won’t get far before the truth comes out,” said Kristin.

“It always blows here at Haugen,” replied Fru Aashild. “There’s no sign of a break in the weather.”

Then they sat in silence again.

“You mustn’t forget what fate she had intended for the two of you,” said Fru Aashild.

Kristin said softly, “I keep thinking that in her place I might have wanted to do the same.”

“You would never have wanted to cause another person to become a leper,” said Fru Aashild staunchly.

“Do you remember, Aunt, you once told me that it’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.”

“You didn’t dare because it was a sin,” said Fru Aashild.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Kristin. “I’ve done many things that I thought I would never dare do because they were sins. But I didn’t realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people.”

“Erlend wanted to mend his ways long before he met you,” replied Aashild vehemently. “It was over between those two.”

“I know that,” said Kristin, “but she probably never had reason to believe that Erlend’s plans were so firm that she wouldn’t be able to change them.”

“Kristin,” pleaded Fru Aashild fearfully, “you won’t give up Erlend now, will you? The two of you can’t be saved unless you save each other.”

“That’s hardly what a priest would say,” said Kristin, smiling coldly. “But I know that I won’t let go of Eriend—even if I have to trample on my own father.”

Fru Aashild stood up.

“We might as well keep ourselves busy instead of sitting here like this,” she said. “It would probably be useless for us to try to go to bed.”

She brought the butter churn from the storeroom, carried in some basins of milk, and filled it up; then she took up her position to churn.

“Let me do that,” begged Kristin. “I have a younger back.”

They worked without talking. Kristin stood near the storeroom door and churned, and Aashild carded wool over by the hearth. Not until Kristin had strained out the churn and was forming the butter did she suddenly say, “Aunt Aashild—aren’t you ever afraid of the day when you have to face God’s judgment?”