Kristin Lavransdatter (17 page)

And now she finally seemed to realize that he was dead and gone, and that she would never see his brave, handsome face or feel his warm hands again. She had been so childish and heartless that it had never occurred to her how he would feel about losing her. She wept in despair and thought she deserved her own unhappiness. But then she started thinking again about everything that still awaited her, and she wept because she thought the punishment that would befall her was too severe.

Simon was the one who told Ragnfrid about what had happened at the vigil at Brekken the night before. He made no more of the matter than was necessary. But Kristin was so dazed from grief and a sleepless night that she felt a purely unreasonable bitterness toward him, because he could speak of it as if it were not so terrible after all. She also felt a great displeasure at the way her parents let Simon act as if he were the master of the house.

“So you don’t think anything of it, Simon?” asked Ragnfrid anxiously.

“No,” replied Simon. “And I don’t think anyone else will either; they know you and her and they know this Bentein. But there’s not much to talk about in this remote village; it’s perfectly reasonable for people to help themselves to this juicy tidbit. Now we’ll have to teach them that Kristin’s reputation is too rich a diet for the peasants around here. But it’s too bad that she was so frightened by his coarseness that she didn’t come to you at once, or go to Sira Eirik himself. I think that whorehouse priest would have gladly testified that he had meant no more than some innocent teasing if you had spoken to him, Lavrans.”

Both parents agreed that Simon was right. But Kristin gave a shriek and stamped her foot.

“But he knocked me to the ground. I hardly know what he did to me. I was out of my senses; I no longer remember a thing. For all I know, it might be as Inga says. I haven’t been well or happy for a single day since. . . .”

Ragnfrid gave a cry and pressed her hands together; Lavrans leaped to his feet. Even Simon’s face changed expression; he gave Kristin a sharp look, went over to her, and put his hand under her chin. Then he laughed.

“God bless you, Kristin. You would have remembered it if he had done you any harm. It’s no wonder she’s been feeling melancholy and unwell since that unlucky evening when she was given such a fright—she who has never met with anything but kindness and goodwill before,” he said to the others. “Anyone can see from her eyes, which bear no ill intent and would rather believe in good than evil, that she is a maiden and not a woman.”

Kristin looked up into the small, steady eyes of her betrothed. She raised her arms halfway up; she wanted to place them around his neck.

Then Simon went on. “You mustn’t think, Kristin, that you won’t forget all about this. I don’t intend for us to settle at Formo right away and never allow you to leave this valley. ‘No one has the same color of hair or temperament in the rain as in the sun,’ said old King Sverre when they accused his ‘Birch-Leg’ followers
²
of growing arrogant with success.”

Lavrans and Ragnfrid smiled. It amused them to hear the young man speak as if he were a wise old bishop.

Simon continued. “It would not be proper for me to admonish you, the man who is to be my father-in-law, but perhaps I might say this much: we were dealt with more strictly, my siblings and I. We were not allowed to move so freely among the servants as I see it is Kristin’s custom. My mother used to say that if you play with the cottager’s children, in the long run you’ll end up with lice in your hair; and there is some truth to that.”

Lavrans and Ragnfrid said nothing to this. But Kristin turned away, and the desire she had felt for a moment to put her arms around Simon Darre’s neck had vanished completely.

 

Around midday Lavrans and Simon put on their skis and went off to tend to several traps up on the ridge. Outdoors it was now beautiful weather, sunny and not nearly as bitter cold. Both men were relieved to slip away from all the sorrow and tears at home, so they skied a great distance, all the way up to the bare rock.

They lay in the sun under a steep cliff and drank and ate. Then Lavrans talked a little about Arne; he had been very fond of the boy. Simon joined in, praising the dead man, and said that he didn’t find it strange that Kristin should grieve for her foster brother. Then Lavrans mentioned that perhaps they should not pressure her so much, but give her a little more time to regain her composure before they celebrated the betrothal ale. She had said that she would like to go to a cloister for a while.

Simon sat up suddenly and gave a long whistle.

“You don’t care for the idea?” asked Lavrans.

“Oh, yes, yes,” replied the other man hastily. “This seems to be the best counsel, dear father-in-law. Send her to the sisters in Oslo for a year; then she’ll learn how people talk about each other out in the world. I happen to know a little about several of the maidens who are there,” he said and laughed. “They wouldn’t lie down and die of grief over two mad boys tearing each other apart for their sake. Not that I would want such a maiden for my wife, but I don’t think it would do Kristin any harm to meet some new people.”

Lavrans put the rest of the food in the knapsack and said, without looking at the young man, “You are fond of Kristin, I think.”

Simon laughed a little but did not look at Lavrans.

“You must know that I have great affection for her—and for you, as well,” Simon said brusquely, and then he stood up and put on his skis. “I have never met any maiden I would rather marry.”

Right before Easter, while it was still possible to drive a sleigh down the valley and across Lake Mjøsa, Kristin made her second journey to the south. Simon came to escort her to the cloister. So this time she traveled with her father and her betrothed, sitting in the sleigh, wrapped in furs. And accompanying them were servants and sleighs full of her chests of clothing and gifts of food and furs for the abbess and the sisters of Nonneseter.

PART II

THE WREATH

EARLY ONE SUNDAY morning at the end of April, Aasmund Bjørg ulfsøn’s church boat glided past the point on the island of Hovedø as the bells rang in the cloister church, and bells from the town chimed their reply out across the bay, sounding louder, then fainter as the wind carried the notes.

The sky was clear and pale blue, with light fluted clouds drifting across it, and the sun was glinting restlessly on the rippling water. It seemed quite springlike along the shore; the fields were almost bare of snow, and there were bluish shadows and a yellowish sheen on the leafy thickets. But snow was visible in the spruce forest atop the ridges framing the settlements of Aker, and to the west, on the distant blue mountains beyond the fjord, many streaks of white still gleamed.

Kristin was standing in the bow of the boat with her father and Gyrid, Aasmund’s wife. She turned her gaze toward the town, with all of its light-colored churches and stone buildings rising up above the multitudes of grayish-brown wooden houses and the bare crowns of the trees. The wind ruffled the edges of her cloak and tousled her hair beneath her hood.

They had let the livestock out to pasture at Skog the day before, and Kristin had suddenly felt such a homesickness for Jørundgaard. It would be a long time before they could let out the cattle back home. She felt a tender and sympathetic longing for the winter-gaunt cattle in the dark stalls; they would have to wait and endure for many days yet. She missed everyone so—her mother, Ulvhild, who had slept in her arms every night for all these years, little Ramborg. She longed for all the people back home and for the horses and dogs; for Kortelin, whom Ulvhild would take care of while she was gone; and for her father’s hawks, sitting on their perches with hoods over their heads. Next to them hung the gloves made of horsehide, which had to be worn when handling them, and the ivory sticks used to scratch them.

All the terrible events of the winter now seemed so far away, and she only remembered her home as it had been before. They had also told her that no one in the village thought ill of her. Nor did Sira Eirik; he was angry and aggrieved by what Bentein had done. Bentein had escaped from Hamar, and it was said that he had run off to Sweden. So things had not been as unpleasant between her family and the people of the neighboring farm as Kristin had feared.

On their way south they had stayed at Simon’s home, and she had met his mother and siblings; Sir Andres was still in Sweden. She had not felt at ease there, and her dislike of the family at Dyfrin was all the greater because she knew of no reasonable explanation for it. During the entire journey she had told herself that they had no reason to be haughty or to consider themselves better than her ancestors—no one had ever heard of Reidar Darre, the Birch-Leg, until King Sverre found the widow of the baron at Dyfrin for him to wed.

But they turned out not to be haughty at all, and Simon even spoke of his ancestor one evening. “I have now found out for certain that he was supposed to have been a comb maker—so you will truly be joining a royal lineage, Kristin,” he said.

“Guard your tongue, my boy,” said his mother, but they all laughed.

Kristin felt so oddly distressed when she thought of her father. He laughed a great deal whenever Simon gave him the least reason to do so. The thought occurred to her that perhaps her father would have liked to laugh more often in his life. But she didn’t like it that he was so fond of Simon.

During Easter they were all at Skog. Kristin noticed that her Uncle Aasmund was a stern master toward his tenants and servants. She met a few people who asked after her mother and who spoke affectionately of Lavrans; they had enjoyed better days when he was living there. Aasmund’s mother, who was Lavrans’s stepmother, lived on the farm in her own house. She was not particularly old, but she was sickly and feeble. Lavrans seldom spoke of her at home. Once when Kristin asked her father whether he had had a quarrelsome stepmother, he had replied, “She has never done much for me, good or bad.”

Kristin reached for her father’s hand, and he squeezed hers in return.

“I know you’ll be happy with the worthy sisters, my daughter. There you’ll have other things to think about than yearning for us back home.”

 

They sailed so close to the town that the smell of tar and salt fish drifted out to them from the docks. Gyrid pointed out the churches and farms and roads that stretched upward from the water’s edge. Kristin recognized nothing from the last time she had been there except for the ponderous towers of Halvard’s Cathedral. They sailed west, around the entire town, and then put in at the nuns’ dock.

Kristin walked between her father and her uncle past a cluster of warehouses and then reached the road, which led uphill past the fields. Gyrid followed after them, escorted by Simon. The servants stayed behind to help several men from the cloister load the trunks onto a cart.

The convent Nonneseter and all of Leiran lay inside the town’s boundaries, but there were only a few houses clustered here and there along the road. The larks were chirping overhead in the pale blue sky, and tiny yellow Michaelmas daisies teemed on the sallow dirt hills, but along the fences the roots of the grass were green.

As they went through the gate and entered the colonnade, all the nuns came walking toward them in a procession from church, with music and song streaming after them from the open doorway.

Kristin stared uneasily at the many black-clad women with white wimples framing their faces. She sank into a curtsey, and the men bowed with their hats pressed to their chests. Following the nuns came a group of young maidens—some of them were children—wearing dresses of undyed homespun, with black-and-white belts made of twisted cord around their waists. Their hair was pulled back from their faces and braided tightly with the same kind of black-and-white cord. Kristin unconsciously put on a haughty expression for the young maidens because she felt shy, and she was afraid that they would think she looked unrefined and foolish.

The convent was so magnificent that she was completely overwhelmed. All the buildings surrounding the inner courtyard were made of gray stone. On the north side the long wall of the church loomed above the other buildings; it had a two-tiered roof and a tower at the west end. The surface of the courtyard was paved with flagstones, and the entire area was enclosed by a covered arcade supported by stately pillars. In the center of the square stood a stone statue of
Mater Misericordiae
, spreading her cloak over a group of kneeling people.

A lay sister came forward and asked them to follow her to the parlatory, the abbess’s reception room. Abbess Groa Guttormsdatter was a tall, stout old woman. She would have been good-looking if she hadn’t had so many stubbly hairs around her mouth. Her voice was deep and made her sound like a man. But she had a pleasant manner, and she reminded Lavrans that she had known his parents, and then asked after his wife and their other children. At last she turned kindly to Kristin.