“No,” said Erlend in a low voice. “She had none but me.”
“Yet,” said Lady Aashild again, “it may well be a hard matter to cover up this thing and hide the body away, without the ugliest of misthought falling on you.”
“She shall rest in hallowed ground,” said Erlend, “if it cost me Husaby. What say you, Kristin?”
Kristin nodded.
Lady Aashild sat silent. The more she thought, the more hopeless it seemed to her to find any way out. In the kitchen-house were four men—even if Erlend could bribe them all to keep silence, even if some of them, if Eline’s man, could be bribed to leave the country—still, sure they could never be. And ’twas known at Jörundgaard that Kristin had been here—if Lavrans heard of this, she feared to think what he would do. And how to bear the dead woman hence. The mountain path to the west was not to be thought of now—there was the road to Romsdal, or over the hills to Trondheim, or south down the Dale. And should the truth come out, it would never be believed—even if folk let it pass for true.
“I must take counsel with Björn in this matter,” she said, and rose and went out to call him.
Björn Gunnarsön listened to his wife’s story without moving a muscle and without withdrawing his eyes from Erlend’s face.
“Björn,” said Aashild desperately. “There is naught for it but that one must swear he saw her lay hands upon herself.”
Björn’s dead eyes grew slowly dark, as life came into them; he looked at his wife, and his mouth drew aside into a crooked smile:
“And you mean that I should be the one?”
Lady Aashild crushed her hands together and lifted them towards him:
“Björn, you know well what it means for these two—”
“And you think that, whether or no, ’tis all over with me?” he said slowly. “Or think you there is so much left of the man I once was that I dare be forsworn to save that boy there from going down to ruin? I that was dragged down myself—all those years ago. Dragged down, I say,” he repeated.
“You say it because I am old now,” whispered Aashild.
Kristin burst out into such weeping that the piercing sound filled the room. She had sat in the corner by Aashild’s bed, stark and silent. Now she began weeping wildly and loud. It was as though Lady Aashild’s voice had torn her heart open. The voice had been heavy with the memories of the sweetness of love; it was as though its sound had made her understand for the first time what her love and Erlend’s had been. The memory of hot and passionate happiness swept over all else—swept away the hard despair and hatred of last night. All she knew of now was her love and her will to hold out.
They looked at her—all three. Then Sir Björn went across and lifted her chin with his hand and looked at her:
“Say you, Kristin, she did it herself?”
“Every word you have heard is true,” said Kristin firmly. “We threatened her till she did it.”
“She had meant Kristin should suffer a worse fate,” said Aashild.
Sir Björn let go the girl. He went over to the body, lifted it up into the bed where Eline had lain the night before, and laid it close to the wall, drawing up the coverings well over it:
“Jon and the man you do not know you must send home to Husaby, with word that Eline is journeying south with you. Let them ride at midday. Say that the women are asleep in the hall; they must take their food in the kitchen. Afterward you must speak with Ulf and Haftor. Hath she threatened before to do this? So that you can bring witness to it, if such question should be asked?”
“Every soul that was at Husaby the last years we lived together there,” said Erlend wearily, “can witness that she threatened to take her own life—and mine too sometimes—when I spoke of parting from her.”
Björn laughed harshly:
“I thought as much. Tonight we must clothe her in her riding-coats and set her in the sleigh. You must sit beside her—”
Erlend swayed on his feet where he stood:
“I cannot!”
“God knows how much manhood will be left in you when you have gone your own gait twenty years more,” said Björn. “Think you, then, you can drive the sleigh? For then will I sit beside her. We must travel by night and by lonely paths, till we are come down to Fron. In this cold none can know how long she has been dead. We will drive in to the monk’s hospice at Roaldstad. There will you and I bear witness that you two were together in the sleigh, and it came to bitter words betwixt you. There is witness enough that you would not live with her since the ban was taken off you, and that you have made suit for a maiden of birth that fits your own. Ulf and Haftor must hold themselves aloof the whole way, so they can swear, if need be, she was alive when last they saw her. You can bring them to do so much, I trow? At the monastery you can have the monks lay her in her coffin—and afterward you must bargain with the priests for grave-peace for her and soul’s peace for yourself—
“—Aye, a fair deed it is not. But so as you have guided things, no fairer can it be. Stand not there like a breeding woman ready to swoon away. God help you, boy, a man can see you have not proved before what ’tis to feel the knife-edge at your throat.”
A biting blast came
