I did not believe that to be true, though. I would make him do what was right, even if I had to force him. It was the two of us together, after all, who had caused this to happen in the first place. I had not been alone in the barn after dark, deep in the musty hay. He had been there too, and I said as much to Gurine, who had sunk down on a stone slab that served as a step to the storehouse.
“Oh, but the world doesn’t work like that,” she said as another peal of laughter rose from the group of men by the barn. “You know it doesn’t, Little Brynhild. If he were a lesser man he might do you right, but that one”—she nodded in the barn’s direction—“he is heir to all of this and won’t bother with a girl like you.” She paused to spit gristle down in the grass. “If you are lucky, he will slip you some money or set you up with a tenant, but I don’t think he’ll do even that.” Her face took on a thoughtful expression. “He is spoiled, that one . . . he won’t care.”
I could tell that she felt sorry for me, and that hurt more than any words. I never did well with pity.
“Hansteen will set it right,” I insisted as a pounding at my temples warned me that a headache was coming on.
“The priest won’t lift a finger.” Gurine squinted up at me as I stood there beside her, wringing the gray, worn apron between my clammy hands. I hated how sure she sounded. I hated that she might be right. Cold sweat broke out all over my body and my heart raced when I thought that I might not get my way. This was a long departure from the giddiness I had felt when I first caught his eyes after Christmas. I had thought it all so easy then. I had thought it was the beginning of something. I always believed I could do better than porridge and toil, that my hard work and diligence would earn me a reward. And for a while, I had thought that he might come to care for me, and that one day, I would cross the yard in front of me not as a maid in threadbare shoes but as the mistress of it all—and him.
I never told Gurine about those hopes of love, but I did tell her about my plan to force him. I confided in her the same night that I knocked on Anders’s door and found him drunk in his room. I had prepared every word I was to say to him. I had meant for him to feel remorseful of how our time together had left me in such trouble.
“How do you know it’s mine?” he asked instead, sitting on the lip of his red pullout bed. His eyes were glassy from drinking. “I’m not the first man you have tricked into the barn.”
“But you are,” I protested. “There hasn’t been anyone else.”
“No?” He emptied the tin cup in his hand. “That’s not what they say.”
I felt confused. Who were they and what did they say? “Well, they lie. There never was anyone else.”
He shrugged. The light from the candle he kept on the table chased shadows across his handsome face, and on the timbered walls. “I don’t see what you want from me.” His gaze met mine across the small room; the air was stale in there, warm and musty. I could hear the crackling of fire coming from the small black oven in the corner. There was no warmth in his eyes, though; they were much like dark pebbles in the flickering light. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Why?” I could not believe my own ears. “Because you should do right by me. We ought to go to the priest.”
The corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. “What for, Brynhild? Why should you and I go to the priest?”
“To marry,” I replied, and my voice did not quiver when I said it. It was the right thing to do, after all. He might not care for me as I hoped he would, but he had gotten me with child. Outside the window, between the plaid curtains, I could see the birch trees moving with the wind, black silhouettes against a dark blue sky. I felt like they laughed at me all of a sudden, as if they were chuckling so hard they could not stand still.
“Marry you?” Anders laughed as well. “Are you mad or slow, or as shrewd as your father? Do you really think you can trick me like that?” Anders’s brow glistened when he lifted the bottle from the floor and filled his cup to the brim. “I should never have sullied my hands with the likes of you.” He put down the bottle and lay back on the bed, still with the cup. I had changed that bed just the other day, beaten the pillows and smoothed down the sheets while saying a quick little prayer. Not that it seemed to do me much good.
“You are drunk,” I decided, and straightened my pose. “You aren’t thinking clearly. Tomorrow you will see things differently.”
“Oh Brynhild.” He flung his arm across his eyes and gave a little laugh; the liquor in his cup danced and escaped, landed on his shirt, and created dark stains. “Don’t you see? I would never, ever marry you.” He spat the last word as if it were repulsive.
“I will go if you’re with me or not.” I forced my voice not to quiver. “Hansteen will see to it that things are set right between us.”
He removed his arm so I could see his face. Something hard had settled on his features. He did not look so handsome just then but reminded me of my father. “Are you threatening me, Brynhild?”
“I just want what’s right—and I’m sure the priest will agree. He never liked a sinner.” This was not how I had wanted things to go between us, but what else could I do but stand my ground? The child was there, in my belly, growing and thriving. “Surely it’s God’s will for us to marry now,” I tried. “He wouldn’t have sent me this child if it weren’t.”
He glanced at me. “I think it’s your will that’s at work here, and that has nothing to do with the Lord.”
“The priest might see it differently.”
He chuckled down in the bed. “Oh, you wouldn’t dare.”
“I would! And then the shame would be all on you.”
“Oh, I think some shame would drip on you as well, and Hansteen can’t make me do anything.” His lips twisted up and made him look ugly. Outside the birches laughed and laughed.
“You wouldn’t like it if he banned you from church—your father wouldn’t be happy, that’s for sure. Maybe he’d even take the farm.” I tried my very best to come up with things to change his mind.
“Go!” he suddenly shouted from the bed, so loud that I was sure his parents would hear it. He had dropped the cup down in the bed, and the rest of the liquor soaked through the hay.
It scared me, though, that outcry. Enough that I tiptoed back downstairs to the bed I shared with Gurine behind the kitchen. I crawled in under the woolen blankets, shivering from it all. Her arms came to hold me then, fragile as they were. “There, there, Little Brynhild.” She made soothing sounds in the darkness. “Why is the young master shouting at you in the middle of the night?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I will see the priest about it.”