At last they came in sight of Finsbrekken, on the hillside beyond the Sil river. There were lights about the houses—in the middle of the courtyard pine-root torches had been planted in a heap of snow, and their glare lay red over the white slopes, but the black houses looked as though smeared with clotted blood. One of Arne’s little sisters stood outside and stamped her feet; she hugged her hands beneath her cloak. Kristin kissed the tear-stained, half-frozen child. Her heart was heavy as stone, and it seemed as though she had lead in her limbs, as she climbed the stairs to the loft-room where they had laid him.
The sound of singing and the glitter of many lighted candles met them in the doorway. In the middle of the room stood the coffin he had been brought home in, covered with a sheet; boards had been laid on trestles and the coffin placed upon them. At the head of the bier a young priest stood with a book in his hands, chanting; round about knelt the mourners with their faces hidden in their heavy cloaks.
Lavrans lit his candle at one of those already burning, set it firmly upon one of the boards of the bier and knelt down. Kristin tried to do the like, but could not get her candle to stand; so Simon took it and helped her. As long as the priest went on chanting, all stayed upon their knees and repeated his words in whispers, their breath hanging like steam about their mouths, in the bitter cold air of the room.
When the priest shut his book and the folk rose—there were many gathered in the death-chamber already—Lavrans went forward to Inga. She stared at Kristin, and seemed scarce to hear what Lavrans said; she stood holding the gifts he had handed to her as though she knew not she had aught in her hand.
“Are you come, too, Kristin,” she said in a strange, laboured voice. “Maybe you would see my son, so as he is come back to me?”
She pushed some of the candles aside, seized Kristin’s arm with a shaking hand, and with the other swept the napkin from the face of the dead.
It was greyish-yellow like clay, and the lips had the hue of lead; they had parted a little, so that the small, even, bone-white teeth showed through as in a mocking smile. Under the long eyelashes there was a gleam of the glassy eyes, and there were some livid stains below the temples, either marks of blows or the death-spots.
“Maybe you would kiss him?” asked Inga, as before; and Kristin bent forward at her bidding and pressed her lips upon the dead man’s cheek. It was clammy as with dew, and she thought she could feel the least breath of decay; the body had begun to thaw perhaps with the heat from all the tapers round.
Kristin stayed still, lying with her hands on the bier, for she could not rise. Inga drew the shroud further aside, so that the great gash above the collarbone came to sight. Then she turned towards the people and said with a shaking voice:
“They lie, I see, who say a dead man’s wounds will bleed when he is touched by him who wrought his death. He is colder now, my boy, and less comely, than when you met him last down there on the road. You care not much to kiss him now, I see—but I have heard you scorned not his lips then.”
“Inga,” said Lavrans, coming forward, “have you lost your wits—are you raving—”
“Oh, aye, you are all so fine, down at Jörundgaard—you were far too rich a man, you Lavrans Björgulfsön, for my son to dare think of courting your daughter with honour—and Kristin, too, she thought herself too good. But she was not too good to run after him on the highway at night and play with him in the thickets the night he left—ask her yourself and we will see if she dare deny it here, with Arne lying dead—and all through her lightness—”
Lavrans did not ask, he turned to Gyrd:
“Curb your wife, man—you see she has clean lost her wits—”
But Kristin lifted her white face and looked desperately about her:
“I went and met Arne the last evening because he begged me to. But naught of wrong passed between us.” And then, as she seemed to come to herself and to understand all, she cried out: “I know not what you mean, Inga—would you slander Arne, and he lying here—never did he tempt me nor lure me astray—”
But Inga laughed aloud:
“Nay, not Arne! but Bentein Priest—he did not let you play with him so—ask Gunhild, Lavrans, that washed the dirt off your daughter’s back; and ask each man who was in the Bishop’s henchmen’s hall on New Year’s Eve, when Bentein flouted Arne for that he had let her go, and leave him standing like a fool. She let Bentein walk homeward with her under her cloak and would have played the same game with him—”
Lavrans took her by the shoulder and laid his hand over her mouth:
“Take her away, Gyrd. Shameful it is that you should speak such words by this good youth’s body—but if all your children lay here dead, I would
