“God send to you, oh Dane-Queen,
So many a good night,
As in the high heavens
Are stars alight.
“God send to you, oh Dane-King,
So many ill years
As be leaves on the linden—
Or the hind hath hairs.”
Know ye not Ivar Sir Alfsön?
It was far on in the night, and the fires were but heaps of embers growing more and more black. Kristin and Erlend stood hand in hand under the trees by the garden fence. Behind them the noise of the revellers was hushed—a few young lads were hopping round the glowing mounds singing softly, but the fiddlers had sought their resting-places and most of the people were gone. One or two wives went round seeking their husbands, who were lying somewhere out of doors overcome by the beer.
“Where think you I can have laid my cloak?” whispered Kristin. Erlend put his arm about her waist and drew his mantle round them both. Close pressed to one another they went into the herb-garden.
A lingering breath of the day’s warm spicy scents, deadened and damp with the chill of the dew, met them in there. The night was very dark, the sky overcast, with murky grey clouds close down upon the treetops. But they could tell that there were other folks in the garden. Once Erlend pressed the maiden close to him and asked in a whisper:
“Are you not afraid, Kristin?”
In her mind she caught a faint glimpse of the world outside this night—and knew that this was madness. But a blessed strengthlessness was upon her. She leaned closer to the man and whispered softly—she herself knew not what.
They came to the end of the path; a stone wall divided them from the woods. Erlend helped her up. As she jumped down on the other side, he caught her and held her lifted in his arms a moment before he set her on the grass.
She stood with upturned face to take his kiss. He held her head between his hands—it was so sweet to her to feel his fingers sink into her hair—she felt she must repay him, and so she clasped his head and sought to kiss him, as he had kissed her.
When he put his hands upon her breast, she felt as though he drew her heart from out her bosom; he parted the folds of silk ever so little and laid a kiss betwixt them—it sent a glow into her inmost soul.
“You I could never harm,” whispered Erlend. “You should never shed a tear through fault of mine. Never had I dreamed a maid might be so good as you, my Kristin—”
He drew her down into the grass beneath the bushes; they sat with their backs against the wall. Kristin said naught, but when he ceased from caressing her, she put up her hand and touched his face.
In a while Erlend asked: “Are you not weary, my dear one?” And when Kristin nestled in to his breast, he folded his arms around her and whispered: “Sleep, sleep, Kristin, here in my arms—”
She slipped deeper and deeper into darkness and warmth and happiness upon his breast.
When she came to herself again, she was lying outstretched in the grass with her cheek upon the soft brown silk above his knees. Erlend was sitting as before with his back to the stone wall, his face looked grey in the grey twilight, but his wide opened eyes were marvellously clear and fair. She saw he had wrapped his cloak all about her—her feet were so warm and snug with the fur lining around them.
“Now have you slept in my lap,” said he smiling faintly. “May God bless you, Kristin—you slept as safe as a child in its mother’s arms—”
“Have you not slept, Sir Erlend?” asked Kristin, and he smiled down into her fresh-opened eyes:
“Maybe the night will come when you and I may lie down to sleep together—I know not what you will think when you have weighed all things.—I have watched by you tonight—there is still so much betwixt us two that ’tis more than if there had lain a naked sword between you and me. Tell me if you will hold me dear, when this night is past?”
“I will hold you dear, Sir Erlend,” said Kristin, “I will hold you dear, so long as you will—and thereafter I will love none other—”
“Then,” said Erlend slowly, “may God forsake me if any maid or woman, come to my arms ere I may make you mine in law and honour. Say you this too,” he prayed. Kristin said:
“May God forsake me if I take any other man to my arms so long as I live on earth.”
“We must go now,” said Erlend a little after, “before folk waken.”
They passed along without the wall among the bushes.
“Have you bethought you,” asked Erlend, “what further must be done in this?”
“ ’Tis for you to say what we must do, Erlend,” answered Kristin.
“Your father,” he asked in a little, “they say at Gerdarud he is a mild and a righteous man. Think you he will be so exceeding loth to go back from what he hath agreed with Andres Darre?”
“Father has said so often, he would never force us, his daughters,” said Kristin. “The chief thing is that our lands and Simon’s lie so fitly together. But I trow father would not that I should miss all my gladness in this world for the sake of that.” A fear stirred within her that so simple as this perhaps it might not prove to be—but she fought it down.
“Then maybe ’twill be less hard than I deemed in the night,” said Erlend. “God help me, Kristin—methinks I cannot lose you now—unless I win you now, never can I be glad again.”
They parted among the trees, and in the dawning light Kristin found her way to the guest-chamber where the women from Nonneseter were to lie. All the beds were full, but she threw a cloak upon some straw on the floor and laid her down in all her clothes.
When she awoke,
