"You don't need to mock me about that, Skule," said Kristin, and Skule saw that his mother blushed, looking young and lovely.

Then he laughed even harder. "It's true, my mother. Gaute Er lendssn of Jrundgaard has become a powerful man in the northern valleys. He won quite a reputation for himself by abducting his bride." Skule bellowed with laughter; it didn't suit his ruined mouth. "People are singing a ballad about it; yes, they're even singing that he took the maiden with iron and steel and that he fought with her kinsmen for three long days up on the moors. And the banquet that Sir Sigurd held at Sundbu, making peace among kin with gold and silver: Gaute is given credit for that too in the ballad. But it doesn't seem to have caused any harm by being a lie. Gaute rules the entire parish and some distance beyond, and Jofrid rules Gaute."

Kristin shook her head with a sad little smile. But her face looked young as she gazed at Skule. Now she thought that he he looked most like his father; this young soldier with the ravaged face had so much of Erlend's lively courage. And the fact that he had been forced to take his own fate into his hands early on had given him a cool and steadfast spirit, which brought an odd sense of comfort to his mother's heart. With the words Sira Eiliv had spoken the day before still in her mind, she suddenly realized that as fearful as she had been for her reckless sons and as sternly as she had often admonished them because she was tormented with anguish for their sakes, she would have been less content with her children if they had been meek and timid. looked most like his father; this young soldier with the ravaged face had so much of Erlend's lively courage. And the fact that he had been forced to take his own fate into his hands early on had given him a cool and steadfast spirit, which brought an odd sense of comfort to his mother's heart. With the words Sira Eiliv had spoken the day before still in her mind, she suddenly realized that as fearful as she had been for her reckless sons and as sternly as she had often admonished them because she was tormented with anguish for their sakes, she would have been less content with her children if they had been meek and timid.

Then she asked again and again about her grandson, little Erlend, but Skule had not seen much of him; yes, he was healthy and handsome and used to having his own way at all times.

The uncanny fog, tinged like clotted blood, had faded, and darkness began to fall. The church bells started ringing; Kristin and her son rose to their feet. Then Skule took her hand.

"Mother," he said in a low voice, "do you remember that I once laid hands on you? I threw a wooden bat at you, and it struck you on the forehead. Do you remember? Mother, while we're alone, tell me that you've fully forgiven me for that!"

Kristin let out a deep breath. Yes, she remembered. She had asked the twins to go up to the mountain pastures for her, but when she came out to the courtyard, she found their horse still there, grazing and wearing the pack saddle, and her sons were running about, batting a ball. When she reprimanded them sternly, Skule threw the bat at her in fierce anger. What she remembered most was walking around with her eyelid so swollen that it seemed to have grown shut; her other sons would look at her and then at Skule and shun the boy as if he were a leper. First Naakkve had beat him mercilessly. And Skule had wandered around, boiling with defiance and shame behind his stony, scornful expression. But that evening, as she was undressing in the dark, he came creeping into the room. Without saying a word, he took her hand and kissed it. When she touched his shoulder, he threw his arms around her neck and pressed his cheek to hers. His skin felt cool and soft and slightly rounded-still a child's cheek, she realized. He was just a child, after all, this headstrong, quick-tempered boy.

"Yes, I have, Skule-so completely, that G.o.d alone can understand, for I can't tell you how completely I've forgiven you, my son!"

For a moment she stood with her hand on his shoulder. Then he seized her wrists and squeezed them so tight that she cried out; the next instant he put his arms around her, as tender and frightened and ashamed as he had been back then.

"My son . . . what is it?" whispered his mother in alarm.

In the dark she could feel the man shaking his head. Then he let her go, and they walked back up to the church.

During the ma.s.s Kristin happened to remember that she had once again forgotten about the cloak for the blind Fru Aasa when they were sitting on the bench outside the priest's door that morning. After the service she went around the church to get it.

In the archway stood Skule and Sira Eiliv, holding a lantern in his hand. "He died when we put in at the wharf," she heard Skule say, his voice full of a peculiar, wild despair.

"Who?"

Both men started violently when they saw her.

"One of my seamen," said Skule softly.

Kristin looked from one man to the other. In the glow of the lantern she caught sight of their faces, incomprehensibly strained, and she uttered a little involuntary cry of fear. The priest bit his lip; she saw that his chin was trembling faintly.

"It's just as well that you tell your mother, my son. It's better if we all prepare ourselves to bear it if it should be G.o.d's will for our people to be stricken with such a harsh-" But Skule merely moaned and refused to speak. Then the priest said, "A sickness has come to Bjrgvin, Kristin. The terrible pestilence we've heard rumors about, which is ravaging countries abroad."

"The black plague?" whispered Kristin.

"It would do no good if I tried to tell you how things were in Bjrgvin when I left there," said Skule. "No one could imagine it who hasn't seen it for himself. Sir Bjarne took stern measures at first to put out the fire where it broke out in the buildings around Saint Jon's Monastery. He wanted to cut off all of Nordnes with guardsmen from the castle, even though the monks at Saint Michael's Monastery threatened him with excommunication. An English ship had arrived with sick men on board, and he refused to allow them to unload their cargo or leave the ship. Every single man on that vessel perished, and then he had it scuttled. But some of the goods had already been brought ash.o.r.e, and some of the townsmen smuggled more off the ship one night, and the brothers of Saint Jon's Church demanded that the dying be given the last rites. When people started dying all over town, we realized it was hopeless. Now there's no one left in Bjrgvin except for the men carrying the corpses. Everyone has fled the town who could, but the sickness follows them."

"Oh, Jesus Christus!"

"Mother . . . Do you remember the last time there was a lemming year back home in Sil? The hordes that tumbled along all the roads and pathways . . . Do you remember how they lay dying in every bush, rotting and tainting every waterway with their stench and poison?" He clenched his fists. His mother shuddered.

"Lord, have mercy on us all. Praise be to G.o.d and the Virgin Mary that you were sent up here, my Skule."

The man gnashed his teeth in the dark.

"That's what we said too, my men and I, the morning we hoisted sail and set off for Vaag. When we came north to Mold sund, the first one fell ill. We tied stones to his feet and put a cross on his breast when he died, promising him a ma.s.s for his soul when we reached Nidaros; then we threw his body into the sea. May G.o.d forgive us. With the next two, we put into sh.o.r.e and gave them the last rites and burial in a proper grave. It's not possible to flee from fate after all. The fourth one died as we rowed into the river, and the fifth one died last night."

"Do you have to go back to town?" asked his mother a moment later. "Can't you stay here?"

Skule shook his head and laughed without mirth. "Oh, I think soon it won't matter where I am. It's useless to be frightened; fearful men are half dead already. But if only I was as old as you are, Mother!"

"No one knows what he has been spared by dying in his youth," said his mother quietly.

"Silence, Mother! Think about the time when you yourself were twenty-three years old. Would you have wanted to lose all the years you've lived since then?"

Fourteen days later Kristin saw for the first time someone who was ill with the plague. Rumors had reached Rissa that the scourge was laying waste to Nidaros and had spread to the countryside; how this had happened was difficult to say, for everyone was staying inside, and anyone who saw an unknown wayfarer on the road would flee into the woods or thickets. No one opened the door to strangers.

But one morning two fishermen came up to the convent, carrying between them a man in a sail. When they had gone down to their boats at dawn, they found an unfamiliar fishing vessel at the dock, and in the bottom lay this man, unconscious. He had managed to tie up his boat but could not climb out of it. The man had been born in a house belonging to the convent, but his family had since moved away from the region.

The dying man lay in the wet sail in the middle of the courtyard green; the fishermen stood at a distance, talking to Sira Eiliv. The lay sisters and servingwomen all had fled into the buildings, but the nuns-a flock of trembling, terrified, and bewildered old women-were cl.u.s.tered near the door to the convent hall.

Then Fru Ragnhild stepped forward. She was a short, thin old woman with a wide, flat face and a little, round red nose that looked like a b.u.t.ton. Her big light brown eyes were red-rimmed and always slightly teary.

"In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti," she said clearly, and then swallowed hard. "Bring him to the guesthouse." she said clearly, and then swallowed hard. "Bring him to the guesthouse."

Sister Agata, the oldest of the nuns, elbowed her way through the others and, unbidden, followed the abbess and the fishermen who carried the sick man.

Kristin went over there that night with a potion she had prepared in the pantry, and Sister Agata asked if she would stay and tend the fire.

She thought she would have been hardened, familiar as she was with birth and death; she had seen worse sights than this. She tried to recall the very worst she had ever witnessed. The plague patient sat bolt upright, for he was about to choke on the b.l.o.o.d.y vomit he coughed up with every spasm. Sister Agata had strapped him up with a harness across his gaunt, sallow red-haired chest; his head hung limply, and his face was a leaden grayish blue. All of a sudden he would start shaking with cold. But Sister Agata sat calmly, saying her prayers. When the fits of coughing seized hold of him, she would stand up, put one arm around his head, and hold a cup under his mouth. The ill man bellowed with pain, rolling his eyes terribly, and finally thrust a blackened tongue all the way out of his mouth as his terrible cries ended in a pitiful groan. The nun emptied the cup into the fire. As Kristin added more juniper and the wet branches first filled the room with a sharp yellow smoke and then made the flames crackle, she watched Sister Agata straighten the pillows and comforters behind the sick man's back and shoulders, swab his face and crusted brown lips with vinegar water, and pull the soiled coverlet up around his body. It would soon be over, she told Kristin. He was already cold; in the beginning he had been as hot as an ember. But Sira Eiliv had prepared him for his leave-taking. Then she sat down beside his bed, pushed the calamus root back into her cheek with her tongue, and continued praying.

Kristin tried to conquer the ghastly horror she felt. She had seen people die a more difficult death. But it was all in vain. This was the plague-G.o.d's punishment for the secret hardheartedness of every human being, which only G.o.d the Almighty could see. She felt dizzy, as if she were rocking on a sea where all the bitter and angry thoughts she had ever had in this world rose up like a single wave among thousands and broke into desperate anguish and lamenting. Lord, help us, we are perishing. . . .

Sira Eiliv came in later that night. He reprimanded Sister Agata sharply for not following his advice to tie a linen cloth, dipped in vinegar, around her mouth and nose. She murmured crossly that it would do no good, but now both she and Kristin had to do as he ordered.

The calm and steadfast manner of the priest gave Kristin courage, or perhaps it aroused a sense of shame; she ventured out of the juniper smoke to lend Sister Agata a helping hand. There was a suffocating stench surrounding the sick man which the smoke could not mask: excrement, blood, sour sweat, and a rotten odor coming from his throat. She thought of Skule's words about the swarms of lemmings; she still had a dreadful urge to flee, even though she knew there was nowhere to flee from this. But after she had finally persuaded herself to touch the dying man, the worst was over, and she helped as much as she could until he breathed his last. By then his face had turned completely black.

The nuns walked in procession carrying reliquaries, crosses, and burning tapers around the church and convent hill, and everyone in the parish who could crawl or walk went with them. But a few days later a woman died over by Strmmen, and then the pestilence broke out in earnest in every hamlet throughout the countryside.

Death and horror and suffering seemed to push people into a world without time. No more than a few weeks had pa.s.sed, if the days were to be counted, and yet it already seemed as if the world that had existed before the plague and death began wandering naked through the land had disappeared from everyone's memory-the way the coastline sinks away when a ship heads out to sea on a rushing wind. It was as if no living soul dared hold on to the memory that life and the progression of workdays had once seemed close, while death was far away; nor was anyone capable of imagining that things might be that way again, if all human beings did not perish. But "we are all going to die," said the men who brought their motherless children to the convent. Some of them spoke with dull or harsh voices; some of them wept and moaned. They said the same thing when they came to get the priest for the dying; they said it again when they carried the bodies to the parish church at the foot of the hill and to the cemetery at the convent church. Often they had to dig the graves themselves. Sira Eiliv had sent the men who were left among the lay servants out to the convent fields to bring in the grain, and wherever he went in the parish, he urged everyone to harvest the crops and help each other tend to the livestock so that those who remained wouldn't suffer from hunger after the scourge had spent its fury.

The nuns at the convent met the first trials with a sense of desperate composure. They moved into the convent hall for good, kept a fire going day and night in the big brick fireplace, and ate and slept in there. Sira Eiliv advised everyone to keep great fires burning in the courtyards and in all the houses, but the sisters were afraid of fire. The oldest sisters had told them so often about the blaze thirty years before. Mealtimes and work regimens were no longer adhered to, and the duties of the various sisters were no longer kept separate as children began to arrive, asking for food and help. The sick were brought inside; they were mostly wealthy people who could pay for gravesites and ma.s.ses for their souls in the convent, as well as those who were dest.i.tute and alone, who had no help at home. Those whose circ.u.mstances were somewhere in between stayed in their own beds and died at home. On some farms every single person perished. But in spite of everything, the nuns had still managed to keep to the schedule of prayers.

The first of the nuns to fall ill was Sister Inga, a woman Kristin's age, almost fifty, and yet she was so terrified of death that it was a horror to see and hear. The chills came over her in church during ma.s.s; shaking, her teeth chattering, she crawled on her hands and knees as she begged and implored G.o.d and the Virgin Mary to spare her life. A moment later she lay prostrate with a burning fever, in agony, with blood seeping out of her skin. Kristin's heart was filled with dread; no doubt she would be just as pitifully frightened when her turn came. It was not just the fact that death was certain, but it was the horrifying fear that accompanied death from the plague.

Then Fru Ragnhild herself fell ill. Kristin had sometimes wondered how this woman had come to be chosen for the high position of abbess. She was a quiet, slightly morose old woman, uneducated and apparently without great spiritual gifts. And yet when death placed its hand on her, she showed that she was a true bride of Christ. In her the illness erupted in boils. She refused to allow her spiritual daughters to unclothe her old body, but the swelling finally grew as big as an apple under one arm, and she had boils under her chin; they turned hard and blood-red, becoming black in the end. She endured unbearable agony from them and burned with fever, but each time her mind would clear, she lay in bed like an example of holy patience-sighing to G.o.d, asking forgiveness for her sins, and uttering beautiful, fervent prayers for her convent and her daughters, for all those who were sick and sorrowful, and for the peace of everyone's soul, who would now have to leave this life. Even Sira Eiliv wept after he had given her the viatic.u.m; his steadfast and tireless zeal in the midst of all the misery had otherwise been a thing of wonder. Fru Ragnhild had already surrendered her soul into G.o.d's hands many times and prayed that He would take the nuns under His protection when the boils on her body began to split open. But this turned out to be a turn toward life, and later others experienced the same thing: Those who were stricken with boils gradually recovered, while those stricken with b.l.o.o.d.y vomiting all died.

Because of the example of the abbess and because they had witnessed a plague victim who did not die, the nuns seemed to find new courage. They now had to do the milking and ch.o.r.es in the cowshed themselves; they cooked their own food, and they brought back juniper and fresh evergreen branches for the cleansing smoke. Everyone did whatever task needed doing. They nursed the sick as best they could and handed out healing remedies: their supplies of theriac and calamus root were gone, but they doled out ginger, pepper, saffron, and vinegar against the sickness, along with milk and food. When the bread ran out, they baked at night; when the spices were gone, people had to chew on juniper berries and pine needles against the sickness. One by one the sisters succ.u.mbed and died. Night and day the bells for the dead rang from the convent church and from the parish church in the heavy air, for the unnatural fog hung on; there seemed to be a secret bond between the haze and the pestilence. Sometimes it became a frosty mist, drizzling down needles of ice and half-frozen sleet, covering the fields with rime. Then mild weather would set in, and the fog returned. People took it as an evil omen that all the seabirds had suddenly disappeared. They usually flocked by the thousands along the stream that flows through the countryside from the fjord and resembles a river in the low stretches of meadow but widens into a lake with salt water north of Rein Convent. In their place came ravens in unheard-of numbers. On every stone along the water sat the black birds in the fog, uttering their hideous shrill cries, while flocks of crows more numerous than anyone had ever seen before settled in all the forests and groves and flew with loathsome shrieks over the wretched land.

Once in a while Kristin would think of her own family-her sons, who were spread so far and wide, the grandchildren she would never see; little Erlend's golden neck would hover before her eyes. But they seemed to grow distant and faded. Now it almost seemed as if all people were equally close and distant to each other in this time of great need. And she had her hands full all day long; it now served her well that she was used to all sorts of work. While she sat and did the milking, starving little children whom she had never seen before would suddenly appear beside her, and she seldom even thought to ask where they were from or how things were back home. She gave them food and took them into the chapter hall or some other room where a fire was lit or tucked them into bed in the dormitory.

With a feeling of wonder she noticed that in this time of great misfortune, when it was more necessary than ever for everyone to attend to their prayers with vigilance, she never had time to collect her thoughts to pray. She would sink to her knees in front of the tabernacle in the church whenever she had a free moment, but she could manage nothing more than wordless sighs and dully murmured Pater nosters Pater nosters and and Ave Marias Ave Marias. She wasn't aware of it herself, but the nunlike demeanor and manners she had a.s.sumed over the past two years swiftly began to fall away; she again became like the mistress she had been in the past, as the flock of nuns diminished, the routines of the convent were abandoned, and the abbess still lay in bed, weak and with her tongue partially paralyzed. And the work mounted for the few who were left to tend to everything.

One day she happened to hear that Skule was still in Nidaros. The members of his crew had either died or fled, and he hadn't been able to find new men. He was well, but he had cast himself into a wild life, just as many young people, out of despair, had done. They said that whoever was afraid would be sure to die, and so they blunted their fear with carousing and drinking, playing cards, dancing, and carrying on with women. Even the wives of honorable townsmen and young daughters from the best of families ran off from their homes during these evil times. In the company of wanton women they would revel in the alehouses and taverns among the dissolute men. G.o.d forgive them, thought Kristin, but she felt as if her heart was too weary to grieve over these things properly.

And apparently even in the villages there was plenty of sin and depravity. They heard little about it at the convent because there they had no time to waste on such talk. But Sira Eiliv, who went everywhere, ceaselessly and tirelessly tending to the sick and dying, told Kristin one day that the agony of people's souls was worse than that of their bodies.

Then one evening they were sitting around the fireplace in the convent hall, the little group of people left alive at Rein Convent. Huddled around the fire were four nuns and two lay sisters, an old beggar and a half-grown boy, two women who received alms from the convent, and several children. On the high seat bench, above which a large crucifix could be glimpsed in the dusk hanging on the light-colored wall, lay the abbess with Sister Kristin and Sister Turid sitting at her head and feet.

It was nine days since the last death had occurred among the sisters and five days since anyone had died in the convent or the nearest houses. The plague seemed to be waning throughout the countryside as well, said Sira Eiliv. For the first time in three months a glimmer of peace and security and comfort fell over the silent, weary people sitting there. Old Sister Torunn Marta let her rosary sink into her lap and took the hand of the little girl standing at her knee.

"What do you think she could mean? Well, child, now we seem to be seeing that Mary, the Mother of G.o.d, never withdraws her mercy from her children for long."

"No, it's not the Virgin Mary, Sister Torunn. It's Hel. She'll leave the parish, taking her rakes and brooms, when they sacrifice an innocent man at the gate of the cemetery. By tomorrow she'll be far away."

"What can she mean?" asked the nun, again uneasy. "Shame on you, Magnhild, for spreading such loathsome, heathen gossip. You deserve to taste the rod for that. . . ."

"Tell us what you mean, Magnhild. Don't be afraid." Sister Kristin was standing behind them; her voice sounded strained. She had suddenly remembered that in her youth she had heard Fru Aashild talk about dreadful, unmentionably sinful measures which the Devil tempted desperate men to try.

The children had been down in the grove near the parish church at twilight, and some of the boys had wandered over to a sod hut that stood there; they had spied on several men who were making plans. It seemed that these men had captured a small boy named Tore, the son of Steinunn from down by the sh.o.r.e. That night they were going to sacrifice him to Hel, the plague giantess. The children began talking eagerly, proud to have sparked the attention of the grown-ups. It didn't seem to occur to them to feel pity for this poor Tore; he was a sort of outcast who roamed the countryside, begging, but never came near the convent. When Sira Eiliv or any of the abbess's envoys went looking for his mother, she would flee or refuse to talk to them, no matter whether they spoke to her kindly or sternly. She had spent ten years living in the alleyways of Nidaros, but then she acquired a sickness that disfigured her so badly that finally she could no longer earn a living in the manner she had before. And so she had come to the parish and lived in a hovel out on the sh.o.r.e. Occasionally a beggar or the like would move in and share her hut for a time. Who the father of her boy might be, she herself didn't know.

"We must go out there," said Kristin. "We can't just sit here while Christian souls sell themselves to the Devil right on our doorstep."

The nuns whimpered. They were the worst men of the parish, coa.r.s.e, unG.o.dly fellows, and surely the latest calamity and despair must have turned them into regular demons. If only Sira Eiliv was home, they lamented. Ever since the onset of the plague, the priest's position had changed, and the sisters expected him to do everything.

Kristin wrung her hands. "If I have to go alone . . . Mother, may I have your permission to go out there myself?"

The abbess gripped her arm so tightly that she gave a little cry. The old woman, who was unable to speak, struggled to her feet; by gesturing she made them understand that she wanted to be dressed to go out. She demanded to be given the gold cross, the symbol of her office, and her staff. Then she held on to Kristin's arm since she was the youngest and strongest of the women. All the nuns stood up and followed.

Pa.s.sing through the door of the little room between the chapter hall and the church choir, they stepped out into the raw, cold winter night. Fru Ragnhild began shivering, and her teeth chattered. She still sweated incessantly from the illness, and the sores left by the plague boils were not fully healed; walking caused her great pain. But she snarled angrily and shook her head when the sisters implored her to turn around. She gripped Kristin's arm harder, and shaking with cold, she trudged ahead of them through the garden. As their eyes grew used to the dark, the women glimpsed light patches of withered leaves scattered beneath their feet and a pale sc.r.a.p of cloudy sky above the bare crowns of the trees. Drops of cold water trickled down, and gusts of wind murmured faintly. Sluggish and heavy, the drone of the fjord sighed against the sh.o.r.e beyond the cliffs.

At the bottom of the garden was a small gate; the sisters shuddered at the shriek of the rusted iron bolt as Kristin struggled to shove it open. Then they crept onward through the grove, down toward the parish church. They caught a glimpse of the tarred timber shape, darker against the night, and they saw the roof and ridge turret with its animal-head carvings and cross on the top against the pale gleam of the clouds above the slopes on the other side of the fjord.

Yes, there were people in the cemetery; they sensed their presence rather than saw or heard anything. Now a low, faint gleam of light appeared, as if from a lantern standing on the ground. Something moved in the darkness nearby.

The nuns huddled together, whimpering faintly under their whispered prayers; they took several steps forward, stopped to listen, and moved forward again. They had almost reached the cemetery gate.

Then out of the darkness they heard the shrill cry of a child's voice: "Hey, stop, you're getting dirt on my bread!"

Kristin let go of the abbess's arm and ran forward, through the churchyard gate. She pushed aside several shadowy men's backs, stumbled on piles of shoveled dirt, and came to the edge of the open grave. She fell to her knees, bent down, and pulled out the little boy who was standing in the bottom, still complaining because there was earth on the good piece of lefse lefse he had been given for sitting still in the pit. he had been given for sitting still in the pit.

The men were frightened out of their wits and ready to flee. Several were stomping in place; Kristin could see their feet in the light from the lantern on the ground. Then she thought that one of them seemed about to leap at her. At that moment the grayish-white habits of the nuns came into view, and the group of men stood there, in confusion.

Kristin still held the boy in her arms; he was crying for his lefse. lefse. She set him down, picked up the bread, and brushed it off. She set him down, picked up the bread, and brushed it off.

"Here, eat it. Now your bread is as good as ever. And you men should go on home." The quaver in her voice forced her to pause for a moment. "Go home and thank G.o.d that you were saved before you committed an act you might never be able to atone for." Now she spoke the way a mistress speaks to her servants: kindly, but as if it would never occur to her that they might disobey. Without thinking, several of the men turned toward the gate.

Then one of them shouted, "Wait a minute, don't you see it's a matter of life itself, maybe even all we own? Now that these overstuffed monks' wh.o.r.es have stuck their noses in it, we can't let them leave here to talk about what went on!"

None of the men moved, but Sister Agata began shrieking and yelling, with sobs in her voice, "Oh, sweet Jesus, my bridegroom. I thank you for allowing us, your servant maidens, to die for the glory of your name!"

Fru Ragnhild shoved her sternly aside, staggered forward, and picked up the lantern from the ground. No one raised a hand to stop her. When she lifted it up, the gold cross on her breast glittered. She stood leaning on her staff and slowly shone the light down the line, giving a slight nod to each man as she looked at him. Then she gestured to Kristin that she wished her to speak.

Kristin said, "Go home in peace, dear brothers. Have faith that the worthy Mother and these good sisters will be as merciful as G.o.d and the honor of His Church will allow them to be. But move aside now so that we might take away this child, and then each of you should return to your own home."

The men stood there, irresolute. Then one of them shouted in the greatest agitation, "Isn't it better to sacrifice one one than for all of us to perish? This boy here, who belongs to no one-" than for all of us to perish? This boy here, who belongs to no one-"

"He belongs to Christ. Better for all of us to perish than for us to harm one of his children."

But the man who had spoken first began yelling again. "Stop saying words like that or I'll stuff them back into your mouth with this." He waved his knife in the air. "Go home, go to bed, and ask your priest to comfort you, and keep silent about this-or I swear by the name of Satan that you'll find out it was the worst thing you've ever done, trying to meddle in our affairs."

"You don't have to shout so loudly for the one you mentioned to hear you, Arntor. Be a.s.sured that he isn't far away," said Kristin calmly. Several of the men seemed to grow fearful and involuntarily crept closer to the abbess holding the lantern. "The worst thing, for both us and for you, would have been if we had stayed home while you went about building your home in the hottest h.e.l.l."

But the man, Arntor, cursed and raged. Kristin knew that he hated the nuns because his father had mortgaged his farm to them in order to pay penalties for murder and blood guilt with his wife's niece. Now he continued slinging out the Fiend's most hateful lies about the sisters, accusing them of sins so black and unnatural that only the Devil himself could have put such thoughts into a man's mind.

The poor nuns, terrified and weeping, bowed under the vicious words, but they stood stalwartly around the old abbess, and she held the lantern in the air, shining it at the man and gazing calmly at his face as he raged.

But anger flared up inside Kristin like the flames of a newly lit fire.

"Silence! Have you lost your senses? Or has G.o.d struck you blind? Should we dare breathe a word under His admonishment? We who have seen His wedded brides stand up to the sword that was drawn for the sake of the world's sins? They kept vigil and prayed while we sinned and forgot our Creator every single day; they shut themselves inside the fortress of prayer while we roamed through the world, urged on by avarice for treasures, both great and small, for our own pleasure and our own anger. But they came out to us when the angel of death was sent among us; they gathered up the ill, the defenseless, and the poor. Twelve of our sisters have died from this sickness; all of you know this. Not one of them turned away, not one of them refused to pray for us all with sisterly love, until their tongues dried up in their mouths and their life blood ebbed out."

"How beautifully you speak about yourself and those like you-"

"I am like am like you, you," she screamed, beside herself. "I'm not one of the holy sisters. I am one of you."

"How submissive you've become, woman," said Arntor derisively. "I see that you're afraid. When the end comes, you'll be saying you're like her her, the mother of that boy."

"G.o.d must be the judge of that; he died for her as well as for me, and he knows us both. Where is she? Where is Steinunn?"

"Go out to her hovel, and I'm sure you'll find her there," replied Arntor.

"Yes, someone should send word to the poor woman that we have her boy here," said Kristin to the nuns. "We can go out to see her tomorrow."

Arntor snickered, but another man shouted reluctantly, "No, no . . . She's dead." He told Kristin, "Fourteen days ago Bjarne went out to her place and bolted the door shut. She was lying there, close to death."

"She was lying there?" Kristin gave the men a look of horror. "Didn't anyone bring a priest to her? Is . . . the body . . . still lying there? And no one has had enough mercy to put her into consecrated ground? And her child you were going to . . ."

Seeing her horror seemed to make the men lose their wits from fear and shame; they began shouting all at once.

Above all the other voices, one man cried out, "Go and get her yourself, sister!"