“How may that be, sir?” asked Kristin. “Mayhap you are wedded?” But then it came into her head that had he been a wedded man, to have made tryst with her thus would have been no fair deed of him. On that she tried to mend her speech, saying: “Maybe, you have lost your betrothed maid or your wife?”
Erlend turned quickly and looked on her with strange eyes:
“Hath not Lady Aashild—? Why grew you so red when you heard who I was that evening,” he asked a little after.
Kristin flushed red once more, but did not answer; then Erlend asked again:
“I would fain know what my mother’s sister said to you of me.”
“Naught else,” said Kristin quickly, “but in your praise. She said you were so comely and so great of kin that—she said that beside such as you and her kin we were of no such great account—my folk and I—”
“Doth she still talk thus, living the life she lives,” said Erlend, and laughed bitterly. “Aye, aye—if it comfort her—Said she naught else of me?”
“What should she have said?” asked Kristin—she knew not why she was grown so strangely heavyhearted.
“Oh, she might have said”—he spoke in a low voice, looking down, “she might have said that I had been under the Church’s ban, and had to pay dear for peace and atonement—”
Kristin was silent a long time. Then she said softly:
“There is many a man who is not master of his own fortunes—so have I heard said. ’Tis little I have seen of the world—but I will never believe of you, Erlend, that ’twas for any—dishonourable—deed.”
“May God reward you for those words, Kristin,” said Erlend, and bent his head and kissed her wrist so vehemently that the horse gave a bound beneath them. When Erlend had it in hand again, he said earnestly: “Dance with me tonight then, Kristin. Afterwards I will tell how things are with me—will tell you all—but tonight we will be happy together?”
Kristin answered: “Aye,” and they rode a while in silence.
But ere long Erlend began to ask of Lady Aashild, and Kristin told all she knew of her; she praised her much.
“Then all doors are not barred against Björn and Aashild?” asked Erlend.
Kristin said they were thought much of, and that her father and many with him deemed that most of the tales about these two were untrue.
“How liked you my kinsman, Munan Baardsön?” asked Erlend, laughing slyly.
“I looked not much upon him,” said Kristin, “and methought, too, he was not much to look on.”
“Knew you not,” asked Erlend, “that he is her son?”
“Son to Lady Aashild!” said Kristin, in great wonder.
“Aye, her children could not take their mother’s fair looks, though they took all else,” said Erlend.
“I have never known her first husband’s name,” said Kristin.
“They were two brothers who wedded two sisters,” said Erlend. “Baard and Nikulaus Munansön. My father was the elder, my mother was his second wife, but he had no children by his first. Baard, whom Aashild wedded, was not young either, nor, I trow, did they ever live happily together—aye, I was a little child when all this befell, they hid from me as much as they could—But she fled the land with Sir Björn and married him against the will of her kin—when Baard was dead. Then folk would have had the wedding set aside—they made out that Björn had sought her bed while her first husband was still living and that they had plotted together to put away my father’s brother. ’Tis clear they could not bring this home to them, since they had to leave them together in wedlock. But to make amends, they had to forfeit all their estate—Björn had killed their sister’s son too—my mother’s and Aashild’s, I mean—”
Kristin’s heart beat hard. At home her father and mother had kept strict watch that no unclean talk should come to the ears of their children or of young folk—but still things had happened in their own parish and Kristin had heard of them—a man had lived in adultery with a wedded woman. That was whoredom, one of the worst of sins; ’twas said they plotted the husband’s death, and that brought with it outlawry and the Church’s ban. Lavrans had said no woman was bound to stay with her husband, if he had had to do with another’s wife; the state of a child gotten in adultery could never be mended, not even though its father and mother were free to wed afterward. A man might bring into his family and make his heir his child by any wanton or strolling beggar woman, but not the child of his adultery—not if its mother came to be a knight’s lady—She thought of the misliking she had ever felt for Sir Björn with his bleached face and fat, yet shrunken body. She could not think how Lady Aashild could be so good and yielding at all times to the man who had led her away into such shame; how such a gracious woman could have let herself be beguiled by him. He was not even good to her; he let her toil and moil with all the farm work; Björn did naught but drink beer. Yet Aashild was ever mild and gentle when she spoke with her husband. Kristin wondered if her father could know all this, since he had asked Sir Björn to their home. Now she came to think, too, it seemed strange Erlend should think fit to tell such tales of his near kin. But like enough he deemed she knew of it already.
“I would like well,” said Erlend in a while, “to visit her, Moster Aashild, some day—when I journey northwards. Is he comely still, Björn, my kinsman?”
“No,” said Kristin. “He looks like hay that has lain the winter through upon the
