On the Sunday, just after sunset, the bridal train rode back to Jörundgaard. Through the first falling folds of darkness the bonfires shone out red from the courtyard of the bridal-house. Minstrels and fiddlers were singing and making drums and fiddles speak as the crowd of riders drew near to the warm red glare of the fires.
Kristin came near to falling her length on the ground when Erlend lifted her from her horse beneath the balcony of the upper hall.
“Twas so cold upon the hills,” she whispered—“I am so weary—” She stood for a moment—and when she climbed the stairs to the loft-room she swayed and tottered at each step.
Up in the hall the half-frozen wedding-guests were soon warmed up again. The many candles burning in the room gave out heat; smoking hot dishes of food were borne around, and wine, mead and strong ale circled about. The loud hum of voices, and the noise of many eating sounded like a far off roaring in Kristin’s ears.
It seemed as she sat there she would never be warm through again. In a while her cheeks began to burn, but her feet were still unthawed, and shudders of cold ran down her back. All the heavy gold that was on her head and body forced her to lean forward as she sat in the high-seat by Erlend’s side.
Every time her bridegroom drank to her, she could not keep her eyes from the red stains and patches that stood out on his face so sharply as he began to grow warm after his ride in the cold. They were the marks left by the burns of last summer.
The horror had come upon her last evening, when they sat over the supper-board at Sundbu, and she met Björn Gunnarsön’s lightless eyes fixed on her and Erlend—unwinking, unwavering eyes. They had dressed up Sir Björn in knightly raiment—he looked like a dead man brought to life by an evil spell.
At night she had lain with Lady Aashild—the bridegroom’s nearest kinswoman in the wedding company.
“What is amiss with you, Kristin?” said Lady Aashild, a little sharply. “Now is the time for you to bear up stiffly to the end—not give way thus.”
“I am thinking,” said Kristin, cold with dread, “on all them we have brought to sorrow, that we might see this day.”
“ ’Tis not joy alone, I trow, that you two have had,” said Lady Aashild. “Not Erlend at the least. And methinks it has been worse still for you.”
“I am thinking on his helpless children,” said the bride again. “I am wondering if they know their father is drinking today at his wedding feast.—”
“Think on your own child,” said the Lady. “Be glad that you are drinking at your wedding with him who is its father.”
Kristin lay awhile, weak and giddy. ’Twas so strange to hear that named, that had filled her heart and mind each day for three months and more, and whereof yet she had not dared speak a word to a living soul. It was but for a little though, that this helped her.
“I am thinking of her who had to pay with her life, because she held Erlend dear,” she whispered, shivering.
“Well if you come not to pay with your life yourself, ere you are half a year older,” said Lady Aashild harshly. “Be glad while you may—
“What shall I say to you, Kristin?” said the old woman in a while, despairingly. “Have you clean lost courage this day of all days? Soon enough will it be required of you twain that you shall pay for all you have done amiss—have no fear that it will not be so.”
But Kristin felt as though all things in her soul were slipping, slipping—as though all were toppling down that she had built up since that day of horror at Haugen, in that first time when, wild and blind with fear, she had thought but of holding out one day more, and one day more. And she had held out till her load grew lighter—and at last grew even light, when she had thrown off all thought but this one thought: that now their wedding-day was coming at last, Erlend’s wedding-day at last.
But, when she and Erlend knelt together in the wedding-mass, all around her seemed but some trickery of the sight—the tapers, the pictures, the glittering vessels, the priests in their copes and white gowns. All those who had known her where she had lived before—they seemed like visions of a dream, standing there, close-packed in the church in their unwonted garments. But Sir Björn stood against a pillar, looking at those two with his dead eyes, and it seemed to her that that other who was dead must needs have come back with him, on his arm.
She tried to look up at Saint Olav’s picture—he stood there red and white and comely, leaning on his axe, treading his own sinful human nature underfoot—but her glance would ever go back to Sir Björn; and nigh to him she saw Eline Ormsdatter’s dead face, looking unmoved upon her and Erlend. They had trampled her underfoot that they might come hither—and she grudged it not to them.
The dead woman had arisen and flung off her all the great stones that Kristin had striven to heap up above her. Erlend’s wasted youth, his honour and his welfare, his friends’ good graces, his soul’s health. The dead woman had shaken herself free of them all. He would have me and I would have
