Kristin Lavransdatter Part 85

Gaute stared at his mother, open-mouthed. "Mother . . ." Then he burst into tears and leaned against his horse, shaking with sobs.

But Kristin stood her ground; her voice revealed nothing except amazement and maternal kindness.

"My Gaute, you are young, and you've been my little lamb all your days, as your father used to say. But you must not carry on like this, son. Now you're the master back home, and a grown man. If I were setting off for Romaborg or Jorsal, well . . . But it's unlikely that I will encounter any great dangers on this journey. I will find others to keep me company, you know; if not before, then when I reach Toftar. From there groups of pilgrims leave every morning during this time."

"Mother, Mother, don't leave us! Now that we've taken all power and authority out of your hands, pushed you aside into a corner . . ."

Kristin shook her head with a little smile. "I'm afraid my children seem to think I have an overbearing desire to take charge."

Gaute turned to face her. She took one of his hands in hers and placed her other hand on his shoulder as she implored him to believe that she was not ungrateful toward him or Jofrid; she asked G.o.d to be with him. Then she turned him toward his horse, and with a laugh she gave him a thump between his shoulders for good luck.

She stood gazing after him until he disappeared beneath the cliff. How handsome he looked riding the big blue-black horse.

She felt so strange. She sensed everything around her with such unusual clarity: the sun-sated air, the hot fragrance of the pine forest, the chittering of tiny sparrows in the gra.s.s. At the same time she was looking inside herself, seeing pictures the way someone with a high fever may believe she is peering at inner images. Inside her there was an empty house, completely silent, dimly lit, and with a smell of desolation. The scene s.h.i.+fted: a tidal sh.o.r.e from which the sea had retreated far away; rounded, light-colored stones, heaps of dark, lifeless seaweed, all sorts of flotsam.

Then she s.h.i.+fted her travel bag to a more comfortable position, picked up her staff, and set off down toward the valley. If she was not meant to come back, then it was G.o.d's will and useless to be frightened. But more likely it was because she was old. . . . She made the sign of the cross and strode faster, longing just the same to reach the hillside where the road pa.s.sed among farms.

Only for one short section of the public road was it possible to see the buildings of Haugen high on the mountain crest. Her heart began hammering at the mere thought.

As she had predicted, she met more pilgrims when she reached Toftar late in the day. The next morning she was joined by several others as they all set off into the mountains.

A priest and his servant, along with two women, his mother and sister, were on horseback, and they soon pulled far ahead of those on foot. Kristin felt a pang in her heart as she gazed after another woman riding between her two children.

In her group there were two older peasants from a little farm in Dovre. There were also two younger men from Oslo, laborers from the town, and a farmer with his daughter and son-in-law, both of them quite young. They were traveling with the young couple's child, a tiny maiden about eighteen months old, and they had a horse, which they took turns riding. These three were from a parish far to the south called Andabu; Kristin didn't know exactly where it lay. On the first evening Kristin offered to take a look at the child because she was incessantly crying and moaning; she looked so pitiful with her big, bald head and tiny, limp body. She couldn't yet talk or sit up on her own. The mother seemed ashamed of her daughter. The next morning when Kristin offered to carry the child for a while, she was left in her care, and the other woman strode on ahead; she seemed a most neglectful mother. But they were so young, both she and her husband, hardly more than eighteen years old, and she must be weary of carrying the heavy child, who was always whining and weeping. The grandfather was an ugly, sullen, and cross middle-aged man, but he was the one who had urged this journey to Nidaros with his granddaughter, so he seemed to have some affection for her. Kristin walked at the back of the group with him and the two Franciscan monks, and it vexed her that the man from Andabu never offered to let the monks borrow his horse. Anyone could see that the younger monk was terribly ill.

The older one, Brother Arngrim, was a rotund little man with a round, red, freckled face, alert brown eyes, and a fox-red fringe of hair around his skull. He talked incessantly, mostly about the poverty of their daily life-the friars of Skidan. The order had recently acquired an estate in that town, but they were so impoverished that they were barely able to keep up the services, and the church they intended to erect would probably never be built. He placed the blame on the wealthy nuns in Gimsy, who persecuted the poor friars with rancor and malice, and they had now brought a lawsuit against them. He spoke effusively about all their worst traits. Kristin wasn't pleased to hear the monk talk in this manner, and she didn't believe his claims that the abbess had not been chosen in accordance with Church law or that the nuns slept through their daily prayers, gossiped, and carried on unseemly conversations at the table in the refectory. Yes, he even said bluntly that people thought one of the sisters had not remained pure. But Kristin saw that Brother Arngrim was otherwise a good-hearted and kindly man. He carried the ill child for long stretches of the way whenever he saw that Kristin's arms were growing weary. If the girl began to howl too fiercely, he would set off running across the plain, with his robes lifted high so the juniper bushes scratched his dark, hairy legs and the mud splashed up from the marshy hollows, shouting and hollering for the mother to stop because the child was thirsty. Then he would hurry back to the ill man, Brother Torgils; toward him he was the most tender and loving father.

The sick monk made it impossible to reach Hjerdkinn that night, but the two men from Dovre knew of a stone hut in a field a little to the south, near a lake, and so the pilgrims headed that way. The evening had turned cold. The sh.o.r.es of the lake were miry, and white mist swirled up from the marshes so the birch forest was dripping with dew. A slender crescent moon hung in the west above the mountain domes, almost as pale yellow and dull as the sky. More and more often Brother Torgils had to stop; he coughed so badly that it was terrible to hear. Brother Arngrim would support him and then wipe his face and mouth afterward, showing Kristin his hand with a shake of his head; it was b.l.o.o.d.y from the other man's spit.

They found the hut, but it had fallen in. Then they looked for a sheltered spot and made a fire. But the poor folks from the south hadn't expected that a night in the mountains would be so icy cold. Kristin pulled from her travel bag the cape Gaute had urged her to take because it was especially lightweight and warm, made from bought fabric and lined with beaver fur. When she wrapped it around Brother Torgils, he whispered-he was so hoa.r.s.e that he could barely manage to speak-that the child should be allowed to lie next to him. And so she was placed beside him. She fretted, and the monk coughed, but now and then they both slept for a while.

Part of the night Kristin kept watch and tended the fire along with one of the Dovre men and Brother Arngrim. The pale yellow glimmer moved northward-the mountain lake lay white and still; fish rose up, rippling the surface-but beneath the towering dome on the opposite side, the water mirrored a deep blackness. Once they heard a hideous snarling shriek from the far sh.o.r.e; the monk cringed and grabbed the other two by the arm. Kristin and the farmer thought it must be some beast; then they heard stones falling, as if someone were walking across the scree over there, and another cry, like the coa.r.s.e voice of a man. The monk began praying loudly: "Jesus Kristus, Soter," "Jesus Kristus, Soter," Kristin heard. And Kristin heard. And "vicit leo de tribu Juda." "vicit leo de tribu Juda."1 Then they heard a door slam somewhere on the slope. Then they heard a door slam somewhere on the slope.

The gray light of dawn began rising. The scree on the other side and the cl.u.s.ters of birch trees emerged. Then the other Dovre farmer and the man from Oslo relieved them. The last thing Kristin thought about before she fell asleep next to the fire was that if they made such little progress during the day-and she would have to give the friars a gift of money when they parted-then she would soon have to beg food from the farms when they reached Gauldal.

The sun was already high and the morning wind was darkening the lake with small swells when the frozen pilgrims gathered around Brother Arngrim as he said the morning prayers. Brother Torgils sat huddled on the ground, his teeth chattering, and tried to keep from coughing while he murmured along. When Kristin looked at the two ash-gray monk's cowls lit by the morning sun, she remembered she had been dreaming of Brother Edvin. She couldn't recall what it was about, but she kissed the hands of the kneeling monks and asked them to bless her companions.

Because of the beaver fur cape, the other pilgrims realized that Kristin was not a commoner. And when she happened to mention that she had traveled the king's road over the Dovre Range twice before, she became a sort of guide for the group. The men from Dovre had never been farther north than Hjerdkinn, and those from Vikvaer did not know this region at all.

They reached Hjerdkinn just before vespers, and after the service in the chapel Kristin went out into the hills alone. She wanted to find the path she had taken with her father and the place beside the creek where she had sat with him. She didn't find the spot, but she thought she did find the slope she had climbed up in order to watch as he rode away. And yet the small, rocky hills along that stretch of path all looked much the same.

She knelt down among the bearberries at the top of the ridge. The light of the summer evening was fading. The birch-covered slopes of the low-lying hills, the gray scree, and the brown, marshy patches all melded together, but above the expanse of mountain plateaus arched the fathomless, clear bowl of the evening sky. It was mirrored white in all the puddles of water; scattered and paler was the mirrored s.h.i.+mmer of the sky in a little mountain stream, which raced briskly and restlessly over rocks and then trickled out onto the sandy bank of a small lake in the marsh.

Again it came upon her, that peculiar feverlike inner vision. The river seemed to be showing her a picture of her own life: She too had restlessly rushed through the wilderness of her earthly days, rising up with an agitated roar at every rock she had to pa.s.s over. Faint and scattered and pale was the only way the eternal light had been mirrored in her life. But it dimly occurred to the mother that in her anguish and sorrow and love, each time the fruit of sin had ripened to sorrow, that was when her earthbound and willful soul managed to capture a trace of the heavenly light.

Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus, who gave his sweat and blood for our sake . . .

As she said five Ave Marias Ave Marias in memory of the painful mysteries of the Redemption, she felt that it was with her sorrows that she dared to seek shelter under the cloak of the Mother of G.o.d. With her grief over the children she had lost, with the heavier sorrows over all the fateful blows that had struck her sons without her being able to ward them off. Mary, the perfection of purity, of humility, of obedience to the will of her Father-she had grieved more than any other mother, and her mercy would see the weak and pale glimmer in a sinful woman's heart, which had burned with a fiery and ravaging pa.s.sion, and all the sins that belong to the nature of love: spite and defiance, hardened relentlessness, obstinacy, and pride. And yet it was still a mother's heart. in memory of the painful mysteries of the Redemption, she felt that it was with her sorrows that she dared to seek shelter under the cloak of the Mother of G.o.d. With her grief over the children she had lost, with the heavier sorrows over all the fateful blows that had struck her sons without her being able to ward them off. Mary, the perfection of purity, of humility, of obedience to the will of her Father-she had grieved more than any other mother, and her mercy would see the weak and pale glimmer in a sinful woman's heart, which had burned with a fiery and ravaging pa.s.sion, and all the sins that belong to the nature of love: spite and defiance, hardened relentlessness, obstinacy, and pride. And yet it was still a mother's heart.

Kristin hid her face in her hands. For a moment it seemed more than she could bear: that now she had parted with all of them, all her sons.

Then she said her last Pater noster Pater noster. She remembered the leave-taking with her father in this place so many years in the past, and her leave-taking with Gaute only two days ago. Out of childish thoughtlessness her sons had offended her, and yet she knew that even if they had offended her as she had offended her father, with her sinful will, it would never have altered her heart toward them. It was easy to forgive her children.

Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, she prayed, and kissed the cross she had once been given by her father, humbly grateful to feel that in spite of everything, in spite of her willfulness, her restless heart had managed to capture a pale glimpse of the love that she had seen mirrored in her father's soul, clear and still, just as the bright sky now s.h.i.+mmered in the great mountain lake in the distance. she prayed, and kissed the cross she had once been given by her father, humbly grateful to feel that in spite of everything, in spite of her willfulness, her restless heart had managed to capture a pale glimpse of the love that she had seen mirrored in her father's soul, clear and still, just as the bright sky now s.h.i.+mmered in the great mountain lake in the distance.

The next day the weather was so overcast, with such a cold wind and fog and showers, that Kristin was reluctant to continue on with the ill child and Brother Torgils. But the monk was the most eager of them all; she saw that he was afraid he would die before he reached Nidaros. So they set off over the heights, but now and then the rain was so heavy that Kristin didn't dare head down the steep paths with the sheer cliffs both above and below, which she recalled lay all the way to the hostel at Drivdal. They made a fire when they had climbed to the top of the pa.s.s and settled in for the night. After evening prayers Brother Arngrim told a splendid saga about a s.h.i.+p in distress that was saved through the intercession of an abbess who prayed to the Virgin Mary, who made the morning star appear over the sea.

The monk seemed to have developed a fondness for Kristin. As she sat near the fire and rocked the child so the others could sleep, he moved closer to her and in a whisper began talking about himself. He was the son of a poor fisherman, and when he was fourteen years old, he lost his father and brother at sea one winter night, but he was rescued by another boat. This seemed to him a miracle, and besides, he had acquired a fear of the sea; that was how he happened to decide that he would become a monk. But for three more years he had to stay at home with his mother, and they toiled arduously and went hungry, and he was always afraid in the boat. Then his sister was wed, and her husband took over the house and share of the fis.h.i.+ng boat, and he could go to the Minorites in Tunsberg. At first he was subjected to scorn for his low birth, but the guardian was kind and took him under his protection. And ever since Brother Torgils Olavssn had entered the brotherhood, all the monks had become more pious and peaceful, for he was so pious and humble, even though he came from the best lineage of any of them, from a wealthy farming family over in Slagn. And his mother and sisters were very generous toward the monastery. But after they had come to Skidan, and after Brother Torgils had fallen ill, everything had once again become difficult. Brother Arngrim let Kristin understand that he wondered how Christ and the Virgin Mary could allow the road to be so full of stones for his poor brothers.

"They too chose poverty while they lived on this earth," said Kristin.

"That's easy for you to say, being the wealthy woman that you surely must be," replied the monk indignantly. "You've never had to go without food. . . ." And Kristin had to agree that this was true.

When they made their way down to the countryside and wandered through Updal and Soknadal, Brother Torgils was allowed to ride part of the way, but he grew weaker and weaker, and Kristin's companions changed steadily, as people left them and new pilgrims took their place. When she reached Staurin, no one remained from the group she had traveled across the mountain with except the two monks. And in the morning Brother Arngrim came to her, weeping, and said that Brother Torgils had coughed up a great deal of blood in the night; he could not go on. Now they would doubtless arrive in Nidaros too late to see the celebration.

Kristin thanked the brothers for their companions.h.i.+p, their spiritual guidance, and their help on her journey. Brother Arngrim seemed surprised by the richness of her farewell gift, for his face lit up. He wanted to give her something in return. He pulled from his bag a box containing several doc.u.ments. Each of them was a lovely prayer followed by all the names of G.o.d; a s.p.a.ce had been left on the parchment in which the supplicant's name could be printed.

Kristin realized that it was unreasonable to expect the monk to know anything about her: the name of her husband or his fate, even if she mentioned her family name. And so she simply asked him to write "the widow Kristin."

Walking down through Gauldal, she took the paths on the outskirts of the villages, for she thought if she met people from the large estates, it might turn out that they recognized the former mistress of Husaby. She didn't fully know why, but she was reluctant for this to happen. The following day she set off along the paths through the woods on the mountain ridge to the little church at Vatsfjeld, which had been consecrated to John the Baptist, although the people called it Saint Edvin's Church.

The chapel stood in a clearing in dense forest; both the building and the mountain behind were mirrored in a pond from which a curative spring flowed. A wooden cross stood near the creek, and all around lay crutches and walking sticks, and on the bushes hung shreds of old bandages.

There was a small fence around the church, but the gate was locked. Kristin knelt down outside and thought about the time she had sat inside with Gaute on her lap. Back then she was dressed in silk, one of the group of magnificently attired n.o.blemen and women from the surrounding parishes. Sira Eiliv stood nearby, holding Naakkve and Bjrgulf firmly by the hand; among the crowd outside were her maids and servants. Then she had prayed so fervently that if this suffering child would be given his wits and health, she would ask for nothing more, not even to be freed from the terrible pain in her back which had plagued her ever since the birth of the twins.

She thought about Gaute, so stalwart and handsome he looked on his huge blue-black horse. And about herself. Not many women her age, now close to half a century, enjoyed such good health; that was something she had noticed on her way through the mountains. Lord, if only you would give me this and this and this, then I will thank you and ask for nothing more except for this and this and this. . . .

Surely she had never asked G.o.d for anything except that He should let her have her will. And every time she had been granted what she asked for-for the most part. Now here she sat with a contrite heart-not because she had sinned against G.o.d but because she was unhappy that she had been allowed to follow her will to the road's end.

She had not come to G.o.d with her wreath or with her sins and sorrows, not as long as the world still possessed a drop of sweetness to add to her goblet. But now she had come, after she had learned that the world is like an alehouse: The person who has no more to spend is thrown outside the door.

She felt no joy at her decision, but it seemed to Kristin that she herself had not made the choice. The poor beggars who had entered her house had come to invite her away. A will that was not her own had put her among that group of impoverished and ill people and invited her to go with them, away from the home she had managed as the mistress and ruled as the mother of men. And when she had consented without much protest, she knew that she did so because she saw that Gaute would thrive better if she left the estate. She had bent fate to her will; she had obtained the circ.u.mstances she wanted. Her sons she could not shape according to her will; they were the way G.o.d had created them, and their obstinacy drove them. With them she could never win. Gaute was a good farmer, a good husband, and a faithful father, a capable man and as honorable as most people. But he did not have the makings of a chieftain, nor did he have the inclination to long for what she had desired on his behalf. Yet he loved her enough to feel tormented because he knew she expected something else of him. That was why she now intended to beg for food and shelter, even though it hurt her pride to arrive so impoverished; she had nothing to give.

But she realized that she had had to come. The spruce forest covering the slopes stood drinking in the seeping sunlight and swayed softly; the little church sat silent and closed, sweating an odor of tar. With longing Kristin thought about the dead monk who had taken her hand and led her into the light emanating from the cloak of G.o.d's love when she was an innocent child, who had reached out his hand to lead her home, time after time, from the paths on which she had strayed. Suddenly she remembered so clearly her dream about him the night before, up in the mountains: to come. The spruce forest covering the slopes stood drinking in the seeping sunlight and swayed softly; the little church sat silent and closed, sweating an odor of tar. With longing Kristin thought about the dead monk who had taken her hand and led her into the light emanating from the cloak of G.o.d's love when she was an innocent child, who had reached out his hand to lead her home, time after time, from the paths on which she had strayed. Suddenly she remembered so clearly her dream about him the night before, up in the mountains: She dreamed that she was standing in the suns.h.i.+ne in a courtyard of some grand estate, and Brother Edvin was walking toward her from the doorway to the main house. His hands were full of bread, and when he reached her, she saw that she had been forced to do as she envisioned, to ask for alms when she came to the villages. But somehow she had arrived in the company of Brother Edvin, and the two of them were traveling together and begging. But at the same time she knew that her dream had a double meaning; the estate was not merely a n.o.ble manor, but it seemed to her to signify a holy place, and Brother Edvin belonged to the servants there, and the bread which he offered her was not simply flatbread the way it looked; it signified the Host, panis angelorum panis angelorum, and she accepted the food of angels from his hand. And now she gave her promise into Brother Edvin's hands.

CHAPTER 5.

FINALLY SHE HAD arrived. Kristin Lavransdatter sat and rested in a haystack on the road beneath Sion Castle. The sun was s.h.i.+ning, and the wind was blowing; the part of the field that had not yet been cut undulated with blossoming straw, red and s.h.i.+ny like silk. Only the fields of Trndelag were ever that color red. At the bottom of the slope she could see a glimpse of the fjord, dark blue and dotted with foam; fresh white sea swells crashed against the cliffs of the sh.o.r.e for as far as she could see below the green-forested promontory of the town.

Kristin let out a long breath. All the same, it was good to be back here, good even though it was also strange to know that she would never leave here again. The gray-clad sisters out at Rein followed the same rules, Saint Bernard's rules, as the brothers of Tautra. When she rose before dawn and went to church, she knew that Naakkve and Bjrgulf would also be taking their places in the monks' choir. So she would end up living out her old age with some of her sons after all, although not in the way she might have imagined.

She took off her hose and shoes to wash her feet in the creek. She would walk to Nidaros barefoot.

Behind her on the path leading up over the castle's summit several boys now appeared, gathering around the portal to see if they could find a way into the fortress ruins. When they caught sight of Kristin, they began shouting crude words at her while they laughed and hooted. She pretended not to hear until a small boy-he couldn't have been more than eight-happened to roll down the steep incline and nearly rammed into her, uttering several loathsome words he had boldly learned from the older ones.

Kristin turned around and said with a little laugh, "You don't need to scream for me to know you're a troll child; I can see that by the tumbling pants that you're wearing."

When the boys noticed the woman was speaking, they came bounding down, the whole pack of them. But they fell silent and grew shamefaced when they saw she was an older woman wearing pilgrim's garb. She didn't scold them for their coa.r.s.e words but sat there looking at them with big, clear, calm eyes and a secretive smile on her lips. She had a round, thin face with a broad forehead and a small, curving chin. She was sunburned and had many wrinkles under her eyes, yet she didn't look particularly old.

Then the most fearless of the boys started talking and asking questions in order to conceal the confusion of the others. Kristin felt so merry. These boys seemed to her much like her own daredevils, the twins, when they were small, although she hoped to G.o.d that her her sons had never had such filthy mouths. These boys seemed to be the children of smallholders from town. sons had never had such filthy mouths. These boys seemed to be the children of smallholders from town.

When the moment came that she had longed for during the whole journey, when she stood beneath the cross on Feginsbrekka and looked down at Nidaros, she wasn't able to muster her soul for prayers and devotion. All the bells of the town began pealing at once, summoning everyone to vespers, and the boys all started talking at once, eager to point out to her everything in sight.

She couldn't see Tautra because a squall was blowing across the fjord toward Frosta, bringing fog and torrents of rain.

Surrounded by the group of boys, she made her way down the steep paths through the Steinberg cliffs, as cowbells began ringing and herders shouted from all sides. The cows were heading home from the town pastures. At the gate in the town ramparts near Nidareid, Kristin and her young companions had to wait while the livestock was driven through. The herders hooted and yelled and scolded, the oxen b.u.t.ted, the cows jostled each other, and the boys told her who owned each and every bull. When they finally went through the gate and walked toward the fenced lanes, Kristin had more than enough to do watching where she set her bare feet between the cow dung in the churned-up track.

Without asking, a few of the boys followed her all the way to Christ Church. And when she stood amid the dim forest of pillars and looked toward the candles and gold of the choir, the boys kept tugging at Kristin to show her things: from the colored patches of light that the sun on the rose window cast through the arches, to the gravestones on the floor, to the canopies of costly cloth above the altars-all things that were most likely to catch a child's eye. Kristin had no peace to collect her thoughts, but every word the boys uttered aroused a dull, deep longing in her heart: for her sons, above all else, but also for the manor, the houses, the outbuildings, the livestock. A mother's toil and a mother's domain.

She was still feeling reluctant to be recognized by people who might have been friends with Erlend or her in the past. They always used to spend the feast days at their town estate and have guests staying with them. She dreaded running into a whole entourage. She would have to seek out Ulf Haldorssn, for he had been acting as her envoy with regard to the property shares she still owned up here in the north and that she now wanted to give to the Rein Convent in exchange for a corrody.1But she knew that a man who had served as one of Erlend's guardsmen while he was sheriff was supposed to be living on a small farm out near Bratr; he fished for white-sided dolphins and porpoises in the fjord and kept a hostel for seafarers.

All the lodgings were full, she was told, but then Aamunde, the owner himself, appeared and recognized her at once. It was strange to hear him call out her old name.

"If I'm not mistaken . . . aren't you Erlend Nikulaussn's wife from Husaby? Greetings, Kristin. How is it that you've come to my house?"

He was more than happy if she would accept such lodgings for the night as he could offer, and he promised that he himself would sail to Tautra with her on the day after the feast.

Late into the night she sat outside in the courtyard, talking with her host, and she was greatly moved when she saw that Erlend's former subordinate still loved and esteemed the memory of his young chieftain. Aamunde used that word about him several times: young. They had heard from Ulf Haldorssn about his unfortunate death, and Aamunde said that he never met any of his old companions from the Husaby days without drinking a toast to the memory of their intrepid master. Twice some of them had collected money and paid for a ma.s.s to be said for his soul on the anniversary of his death. Aamunde asked many questions about Erlend's sons, and Kristin in turn asked about old acquaintances. It was midnight before she went to bed, lying down beside Aamunde's wife. He had wanted both of them to give up their bed for her, and in the end she had to agree to take at least his half.

The next day was the Vigil of Saint Olav. Early in the morning Kristin went down to the skerries to watch the bustle along the wharves. Her heart began pounding when she saw the lord abbot of Tautra come ash.o.r.e, but the monks who accompanied him were all older men.

Just before midafternoon prayers the crowds began heading toward Christ Church, carrying and supporting the ill and the lame, to find room for them in the nave so they would be close to the shrine when it was carried past in procession the following day after high ma.s.s.

When Kristin made her way up to the stalls that had been put up near the cemetery wall-they were mostly selling food and drink, wax candles, and cus.h.i.+ons woven from reeds or birch twigs to kneel on inside the church-she happened to meet the people from Andabu again. Kristin held the child while the young mother went to get a drink of local ale. At that moment a procession of English pilgrims appeared, singing and carrying banners and lighted tapers. In the confusion that ensued as they pa.s.sed through the great crowds around the stalls, Kristin lost sight of the people from Andabu, and afterward she couldn't find them.

For a long time she wandered back and forth on the outskirts of the throngs, hus.h.i.+ng the screaming child. When she pressed the girl's face against her throat, caressing and consoling her, the child would put her lips to Kristin's skin and try to suckle. She could tell the child was thirsty, but she didn't know what to do. It would be futile to search for the mother; she would have to go into the streets and see if she could find some milk. But when she reached Upper Langstraete and tried to turn north, there was again a great crush of people. An entourage of hors.e.m.e.n was coming from the south, and at the same time a procession of guardsmen from the king's palace had entered the square between the church and the residence of the Brothers of the Cross. Kristin was pressed back into the nearest alleyway, but there too people on horseback and on foot were streaming toward the church, and the crowds grew so fierce that she finally had to save herself by climbing up onto a stone wall.

The air above her was filled with the clanging of bells; from the cathedral the nona hora nona hora2 was rung. At the sound the child stopped screaming; she looked up at the sky, and a glimmer of understanding appeared in her dull eyes; she smiled a bit. Touched, the old mother bent down and kissed the poor little thing. Then she noticed that she was sitting on the stone wall surrounding the hops garden of Nikulaus Manor, their old town estate. was rung. At the sound the child stopped screaming; she looked up at the sky, and a glimmer of understanding appeared in her dull eyes; she smiled a bit. Touched, the old mother bent down and kissed the poor little thing. Then she noticed that she was sitting on the stone wall surrounding the hops garden of Nikulaus Manor, their old town estate.

She should have recognized the brick chimney rising up from the sod roof, which was at the back of their house. Closest to her stood the buildings of the hospital, which had vexed Erlend so much because it had shared the rights to their garden.

She hugged the stranger's child to her breast, kissing her over and over. Then someone touched her knee.

A monk wearing the white robes and black cowl of a friar. She looked down into the sallow, lined visage of an old man, with a thin, sunken mouth and two big amber eyes set deep in his face.

"Could it be . . . is that you, Kristin Lavransdatter?" The monk placed his crossed arms atop the stone wall and buried his face in them. "Are you here?"

"Gunnulf!"

Then he moved his head so that he touched her knee as she sat there. "Do you think it so strange that I should be here?"

She remembered that she was sitting on the wall of the manor that had been his first home and later her own house, and she had to agree that it was rather odd after all.

"But what child is this you're holding on your knee? Surely this couldn't be Gaute's son?"

"No . . ." At the thought of little Erlend's healthy, sweet face and strong, well-formed body, she pressed the tiny child close, overcome with pity. "This is the daughter of a woman who traveled with me over the mountains."

But then she suddenly recalled what Andres Simonssn had said in his childish wisdom. Filled with reverence, she looked down at the pitiful creature who lay in her arms.

Now the child was crying again, and the first thing Kristin had to do was ask the monk if he could tell her where she might find some milk. Gunnulf led her east, around the church to the friars' residence and brought her some milk in a bowl. While Kristin fed her foster child, they talked, but the conversation seemed to halt along rather strangely.

"So much time has pa.s.sed and so much has happened since we last met," she said sadly. "And no doubt the news was hard to bear when you heard about your brother."

"May G.o.d have mercy on his poor soul," whispered Brother Gunnulf, sounding shaken.

Not until she asked about her sons at Tautra did Gunnulf become more talkative. With heartfelt joy the monastery had welcomed the two novices who belonged to one of the land's best lineages. Nikulaus seemed to have such splendid spiritual talents and made such progress in his learning and devotions that the abbot was reminded of his glorious ancestor, the gifted defender of the Church, Nikulaus Arnessn. That was in the beginning. But after the brothers had donned cloister attire, Nikulaus had started behaving quite badly, and he had caused great unrest in the monastery. Gunnulf wasn't sure of all the reasons, but one was that Abbot Johannes would not allow young brothers to become ordained as priests until they were thirty, and he refused to make an exception to this rule for Nikulaus. And because the venerable father thought that Nikulaus prayed and brooded more than he was spiritually prepared for and was thereby ruining his health with his pious exercises, he wanted to send the young man to one of the cloister's farms on the island of Inder; there, under the supervision of several older monks, he was to plant an apple orchard. Then Nikulaus had apparently openly disobeyed the abbot's orders, accusing his brothers of depleting the cloister's property through extravagant living, of indolence in their service to G.o.d, and of unseemly talk. Most of this incident was never reported beyond the monastery walls, Gunnulf said, but Nikulaus had evidently also rebelled against the brother appointed by the abbot to reprimand him. Gunnulf knew that for a period of time he had been locked in a cell, but at last he had been chastened when the abbot threatened to separate him from his brother Bjrg ulf and send one of them to Munkabu; it was no doubt the blind brother who had urged him to do this. Then Nikulaus had grown contrite and meek.

"It's their father's temperament in them," said Gunnulf bitterly. "Nothing else could have been expected but that my brother's sons would have a difficult time learning obedience and would show inconstancy in a G.o.dly endeavor."

"It could just as well be their mother's inheritance," replied Kristin sorrowfully. "Disobedience is my gravest sin, Gunnulf, and I was inconstant too. All my days I have longed equally to travel the right road and to take my own errant path."

"Erlend's errant paths, you mean," said the monk gloomily. "It was not just once that my brother led you astray, Kristin; I think he led you astray every day you lived with him. He made you forgetful, so you wouldn't notice when you had thoughts that should have made you blush, because from G.o.d the Almighty you could not hide what you were thinking."

Kristin stared straight ahead.

"I don't know whether you're right, Gunnulf. I don't know whether I've ever forgotten that G.o.d could see into my heart, and so my sin may be even greater. And yet it was not, as you might think, that I needed to blush the most over my shameful boldness or my weakness, but rather over my thoughts that my husband was many times more poisonous than the venom of snakes. But surely the latter has to follow the former. You were the one who once told me that those who have loved each other with the most ardent desire are the ones who will end up like two snakes, biting each other's tails.

"But it has been my consolation over these past few years, Gunnulf, that as often as I thought about Erlend meeting G.o.d's judgment, unconfessed and without receiving the sacraments, struck down with anger in his heart and blood on his hands, he he never became what you said or what I myself became. He never held on to anger or injustice any more than he held on to anything else. Gunnulf, he was so handsome, and he looked at peace when I laid out his body. I'm certain that G.o.d the Almighty knows that Erlend never harbored rancor toward any man, for any reason." never became what you said or what I myself became. He never held on to anger or injustice any more than he held on to anything else. Gunnulf, he was so handsome, and he looked at peace when I laid out his body. I'm certain that G.o.d the Almighty knows that Erlend never harbored rancor toward any man, for any reason."