Kristin Lavransdatter (25 page)

She told herself that this separation from her home and family and Christianity was only temporary. But Erlend would have to lead her back by the hand. When Lavrans consented to the love between her and Erlend, then she would be able to go to her father as she had before; and after she and Erlend were married, they would make confession and atone for their offense.

She began looking for evidence that other people, like herself, were not without sin. She paid more attention to gossip, and she took note of all the little things around her which indicated that not even the sisters in the convent were completely holy and unworldly. There were only small things—under Fru Groa’s guidance Nonneseter was, in the eyes of the outside world, exactly as a holy order of nuns ought to be. The nuns were zealous in their service to God, diligent, and attentive to the poor and the sick. Confinement to the cloister was not so strictly enforced that the sisters could not receive visits from their friends and kinsmen in the parlatory; nor were they prevented from returning these visits in the town if the occasion so warranted. But no nun had ever brought shame upon the order through her actions in all the years that Fru Groa had been in charge.

Kristin had now developed an alert ear for all the small disturbances within the convent’s walls: little complaints and jealousies and vanities. Other than nursing, no nun would lend a hand with the rough housework; they all wanted to be learned and skilled women. Each one tried to outshine the other, and those sisters who did not have talent for such refined occupations gave up and drifted through the hours as if in a daze.

Fru Groa herself was both learned and wise. She kept a vigilant eye on the conduct and industry of her spiritual daughters, but she paid little heed to the welfare of their souls. She had always been friendly and kind toward Kristin and seemed to favor her above the other young daughters, but that was because Kristin was well trained in book learning and needlework and was diligent and quiet. Fru Groa never expected replies from the sisters. On the other hand, she enjoyed talking to men. They came and went in her parlatory: landholders and envoys associated with the convent, predicant brothers from the bishop, and representatives from the cloister at Hovedø, with which she was involved in a legal matter. She had her hands full tending to the convent’s large estates, the accounts, sending out clerical garb, and taking in and then sending off books to be copied. Not even the most ill-tempered person could find anything improper about Fru Groa’s behavior. She simply liked to talk about those things that women seldom knew anything about.

The prior, who lived in a separate building north of the church, seemed to have no more will than the reed pen or switch of the abbess. Sister Potentia, for the most part, ruled the house. She was primarily intent on maintaining the customs that she had observed in the distinguished German convents where she had lived during her novitiate. Her former name was Sigrid Ragnvaldsdatter, but she had changed her name when she assumed the habit of the order, as was the custom in other countries. She was also the one who had decided that the pupils who were only at Nonneseter for a short time should also wear the attire of young novices.

Sister Cecilia Baardsdatter was not like the other nuns. She walked around in silence, her eyes downcast. She always replied meekly and humbly, acted as everyone’s maidservant, preferred to take on the roughest tasks, and fasted more often than was prescribed—as much as Fru Groa would allow. And in church she would kneel for hours after the evening hymn or go there long before matins.

But one evening, after she had spent the whole day at the creek washing clothes along with two lay sisters, she suddenly began to sob loudly at the supper table. She threw herself onto the stone floor, crawled on her knees among the sisters, and beat her breast. With burning cheeks and streaming tears she begged them to forgive her. She was the worst sinner of them all—she had been stone-hard with arrogance all her days. It was arrogance and not humility or gratitude for the death of Christ the Savior that had sustained her when she was tempted in the world; she had fled to the convent not because she loved a man’s soul but because she had loved her own pride. She had served her sisters with arrogance, she had drunk vanity from her water goblet, and she had spread her bare bread thick with conceit while the sisters drank ale and ate butter on their bread.

From all this Kristin understood that not even Cecilia Baardsdatter was completely pure of heart. An unlit tallow candle that has hung from the ceiling and turned filthy with soot and cobwebs—that was how she compared her loveless chastity.

Fru Groa herself went over and lifted up the sobbing young woman. Sternly she said that as punishment for her outburst Cecilia would move from the sisters’ dormitory into the abbess’s own bed and stay there until she had recovered from this fever.

“And then, Sister Cecilia, you will sit in my chair for eight days. We will ask your advice in spiritual matters and show you such respect because of your godly conduct that you will grow sated from the tribute of sinful people. Then you must judge whether this is worth so much struggle, and decide either to live by the rules as the rest of us do or to continue the trials that no one demands of you. Then you can contemplate whether all the things that you say you do now so that we might look up to you, hence-forward you will do out of love of God and so that He might look upon you with mercy.”

And so it was. Sister Cecilia lay in the abbess’s room for two weeks; she had a high fever, and Fru Groa nursed the nun herself. When she had recovered, for eight days she had to sit at the abbess’s side in the place of honor both in church and at home, and everyone served her. She wept the whole time, as if she were being beaten. Afterward she was much gentler and happier. She continued to live in almost the same manner as before, but she would blush like a bride if anyone looked at her, whether she was sweeping the floor or walking alone to church.

 

This episode with Sister Cecilia aroused in Kristin a strong yearning for peace and reconciliation with everything from which she had come to feel herself cut off. She thought about Brother Edvin, and one day she gathered her courage and asked Fru Groa for permission to visit the barefoot friars to see a friend of hers there.

She could tell that Fru Groa was not pleased; there was little friendship between the Minorites and the other cloisters of the diocese. And the abbess was no more favorably disposed when she heard who Kristin’s friend was. She said that this Brother Edvin was an unreliable man of God, always roaming about the country seeking alms in other dioceses. In many places the peasantry considered him a holy man, but he didn’t seem to realize that the first duty of a Franciscan monk was obedience to his superiors. He had heard the confessions of outlaws and those who had been excommunicated; he had baptized their children and sung them into their graves without asking for permission. And yet his sin was as much due to lack of understanding as it was to defiance, and he had patiently borne the reprimands which had been imposed on him because of these matters. The Church had treated him with forbearance because he was skilled at his craft; but even in the execution of his art he had come into conflict with others. The bishop’s master painters in Bergen refused to allow him to work in their diocese.

Kristin was bold enough to ask where this monk with the un-Norwegian name had come from. Fru Groa was in a mood to talk. She said that he was born in Oslo, but his father was an Englishman, Rikard the Armormaster, who had married a farmer’s daughter from the Skogheim district, and they had taken up residence in Oslo. Two of Edvin’s brothers were respected armorers in town. But Edvin, the eldest of the armormaster’s sons, had been a restless soul all his days. He had no doubt felt an attraction for the monastic life since early childhood; he had joined the gray monks at Hovedø as soon as he reached the proper age. They sent him to a cloister in France to be educated; he had excellent abilities. From there he managed to win permission to leave the Cistercian order and enter the order of the Minorites instead. And when the brothers arbitrarily decided to build their church out in the fields to the east, against the orders of the bishop,
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Brother Edvin had been one of the worst and most obstinate among them—he had even used a hammer to strike one of the men sent by the bishop to stop the work and had almost killed him.

It had been a long time since anyone had talked at such length with Kristin. When Fru Groa dismissed her, the young maiden bent down and kissed the abbess’s hand, respectfully and fervently, and tears sprang at once into her eyes. But Fru Groa, who saw that Kristin was crying, thought it was from sorrow—and so she said that perhaps one day she would be allowed to go out to visit Brother Edvin after all.

And several days later Kristin was told that some of the convent’s servants had to go over to the king’s castle, so at the same time they could accompany her out to the brothers in the fields.

Brother Edvin was home. Kristin had not imagined that she would be so happy to see anyone other than Erlend. The old man sat and stroked her hand as they talked, thanking her for coming. No, he hadn’t been to her part of the country since that night he had stayed at Jørundgaard, but he had heard that she was to marry, and he offered her his congratulations. Then Kristin asked him to go over to the church with her.

They had to go out of the cloister and around to the main entrance; Brother Edvin didn’t dare lead her across the courtyard. He seemed in general quite timid and afraid to do anything that might offend. He had grown terribly old, thought Kristin.

And when she had placed her offering on the altar for the priest of the church and then asked Edvin to hear her confession, he grew quite frightened. He didn’t dare; he had been strictly forbidden to listen to confessions.

“Perhaps you’ve heard about it,” he said. “I didn’t think that I could deny these poor souls the gifts that God has bestowed on me so freely. But I was supposed to exhort them to seek reconciliation at the proper place. . . . Well then. But you, Kristin, you will have to confess to the prior at the convent.”

“There is something that I cannot confess to the prior,” said Kristin.

“Do you think it would benefit you if you confess to me something that you wish to conceal from your proper confessor?” said the monk more sternly.

“If you cannot hear my confession,” said Kristin, “then you can let me talk to you and ask your advice about what is on my mind.”

The monk looked around. The church was empty at the moment. He sat down on a chest that stood in the corner. “You must remember that I cannot absolve you, but I will advise you and I will keep silent as if you had spoken in confession.”

Kristin stood before him and said, “You see, I cannot become Simon Darre’s wife.”

“As to this matter, you know I cannot advise you otherwise than the prior would,” said Brother Edvin. “Disobedient children bring God no joy, and your father has done his best for you—you must realize that.”

“I don’t know what your advice will be when you hear the rest,” said Kristin. “The situation is such that Simon is too good to gnaw on the bare branch from which another man has broken off the blossom.”

She looked directly at the monk. But when she met his eye and noticed how the dry, wrinkled old face suddenly changed and became filled with grief and horror, something seemed to break inside her; the tears poured out, and she tried to throw herself to her knees. But Edvin pulled her vehemently back.

“No, no, sit down here on the chest with me. I cannot hear your confession.” He moved aside to make room for her.

Kristin continued to cry.

He stroked her hand and said softly, “Do you remember that morning, Kristin, when I saw you for the first time on the stairs of Hamar Cathedral? I once heard a legend, when I was abroad, about a monk who could not believe that God loved all of us wretched, sinful souls. An angel came and touched his sight so that he saw a stone at the bottom of the sea, and under the stone lived a blind, white, naked creature. And the monk stared at the creature until he began to love it because it was so small and pitiful. When I saw you sitting there, so tiny and pitiful inside that huge stone building, then I thought it was reasonable that God should love someone like you. You were lovely and pure, and yet you needed protection and help. I thought I saw the whole church, with you inside it, lying in the hand of God.”

Kristin said softly, “We have bound ourselves to each other with the most solemn of oaths—and I have heard that such an agreement consecrates us before God just as much as if our parents had given us to each other.”

But the monk replied with despair, “I see, Kristin, that someone has been telling you of the canonical law without fully understanding it. You could not promise yourself to this man without sinning against your parents; God placed them above you before you met him. And won’t it also be a sorrow and a shame for this man’s kinsmen if they learn that he has seduced the daughter of a man who has carried his shield with honor all these years? And you were also betrothed. I see that you do not think you have sinned so greatly—and yet you dare not confess this to your parish priest. And if you think you are as good as married to this man, why don’t you wear the linen wimple instead of going around bareheaded among the young maidens, with whom you have so little in common now? For now your thoughts must be on other things than theirs are.”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking about,” said Kristin wearily. “It’s true that all my thoughts are with this man, whom I yearn for. If it weren’t for Father and Mother, then I would gladly pin up my hair on this very day—I wouldn’t care if they called me a paramour, if only I could be called his.”

“Do you know whether this man’s intentions are such that you might be his with honor someday?” asked Brother Edvin.