Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

  “Mother used to come up here with us,” said Erlend softly. “Often. But she would always sit and stare off to the south, toward the Dovre Range. I suppose she was always yearning, night and day, to be far away from Husaby. Or she would turn toward the north and gaze out at the gap in the slopes—there where you can see blue in the distance; those are the mountains on the other side of the fjord. Not once did she look at the farm.”

  Erlend’s voice was tender and beseeching. But Kristin neither spoke nor looked at him. Then he went over and kicked at the frozen heath.

  “No, there’s probably nothing left here of Gunnulf’s and my fortress. And it was a long time ago, after all, that we played up here, Gunnulf and I.”

  He received no answer. Right below where they stood was a small frozen pond. Erlend picked up a stone and threw it. The hollow was frozen solid so that only a tiny white star appeared on the black mirror. Erlend picked up another stone and threw it harder—then another and another. Now he was throwing them in utter fury, and in the end he would have splintered the ice with a vengeance. But then he caught sight of his wife’s face—she stood there, her eyes dark with contempt, smiling scornfully at his childishness.

  Erlend spun around, but all at once Kristin grew deathly pale and her eyes fell shut. She stood there with her hands stretched out and groping, swaying as if she were about to faint—then she grabbed hold of a tree trunk.

  “Kristin—what is it?” Erlend asked in fear.

  She didn’t answer but stood as if she were listening to something. Her gaze was remote and strange.

  Now she felt it again. Deep within her womb it felt as if a fish was flicking its tail. And again the whole world seemed to reel around her, and she felt dizzy and weak, but not as much as the first time.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Erlend.

  She had waited so long for this—she hardly dared to acknowledge the great fear in her soul. She could not speak of it—not now, when they had been fighting all day long. Then he said it.

  “Was it the child moving inside you?” he asked gently, touching her shoulder.

  Then she cast off all her anger toward him, pressed herself against the father of her child, and hid her face on his chest.

  Some time later they walked back down to the place where their horses were tied. The short day was almost over; behind them in the southwest the sun was sinking behind the treetops, red and dull in the frosty haze.

  Erlend carefully tested the buckles and straps of the saddle before he lifted his wife up onto her horse. Then he went over and untied his own. He reached under his belt for the gloves he had put there, but he found only one. He looked around on the ground.

  Then Kristin couldn’t resist and said, “It will do you no good to look for your glove here, Erlend.”

  “You might have said something to me if you saw me lose it—no matter how angry you were with me,” he replied. They were the gloves that Kristin had sewn for him and given to him as one of his betrothal presents.

  “It fell out of your belt when you hit me,” said Kristin very quietly, her eyes downcast.

  Erlend stood next to his horse with his hand on the saddlebow. He looked embarrassed and unhappy. But then he burst out laughing.

  “Never would I have believed, Kristin—during all the time I was courting you, rushing around and begging my kinsmen to speak on my behalf and making myself so meek and pitiful in order to win you—that you could be such a witch!”

  Then Kristin laughed too.

  “No, then you probably would have given up long ago—and it certainly would have been in your own best interest.”

  Erlend took a few steps toward her and placed his hand on her knee.

  “Jesus help me, Kristin—have you ever heard it said of me that I did anything that was in my own best interest?”

  He pressed his face down in her lap and then looked up with sparkling eyes into his wife’s face. Flushed and happy, Kristin bowed her head, trying to hide her smile and her eyes from Erlend.

  He grabbed hold of her horse’s harness and let his own horse follow behind; and in this manner he escorted her until they reached the bottom of the ridge. Every time they looked at each other he would laugh and she would turn her face away to hide that she was laughing too.

  “So,” he said merrily as they came out onto the road again, “now we’ll ride home to Husaby, my Kristin, and be as happy as two thieves!”

  CHAPTER 2

  ON CHRISTMAS EVE the rain poured down and the wind blew hard. It was impossible to use sleighs, and so Kristin had to stay home when Erlend and the servants rode off for the evening mass at Birgsi Church.

  She stood in the doorway of the main house and watched them go. The pine torches they carried shone red against the dark old buildings, reflected in the icy surface of the courtyard. The wind seized the flames and flattened them out sideways. Kristin stood there as long she could hear the faint sound of their passage in the night.

  Inside the hall there were candles burning on the table. The remains of the evening meal were scattered about—lumps of porridge in dishes, half-eaten pieces of bread, and fishbones floating in puddles of spilt ale. The serving maids who were to stay at home had all fallen asleep on the straw spread out on the floor. Kristin was alone with them at the manor, along with an old man named Aan. He had served at Husaby since the time of Erlend’s grandfather; now he lived in a little hut down by the lake but he liked to come up to the farm in the daytime to putter around, in the belief that he was working very hard. Aan had fallen asleep at the table that evening, and Erlend and Ulf had laughingly carried him over to a corner and spread a blanket over him.

  Back home at Jørundgaard the floor would now be thickly strewn with rushes, for the entire household would sleep together in the main house during the holiday nights. Before they left for church they used to clear away the remains of the meal eaten after their fast, and Kristin’s mother and the maids would set the table as beautifully as they could with butter and cheeses, heaps of thin, light bread, chunks of glistening bacon, and the thickest joints of cured mutton. The silver pitchers and horns of mead stood there gleaming. And her father himself would place the ale cask on the bench.

  Kristin turned her chair around to face the hearth—she didn’t want to look at the loathsome table. One of the maids was snoring so loudly that it was awful to hear.

  That was also one of the things that she didn’t care for about Erlend. At home on his estate he ate in a manner that was so repugnant and slovenly, pawing through the dishes for good bits of food, hardly bothering to wash his hands before he came to the table. And he let the dogs jump up onto his lap and gulp down food along with him while everyone ate. So it was only to be expected that the servants had no table manners. Back home she had been constrained to eat delicately and slowly. It would not be proper, said her mother, for the master’s family to wait while the servants ate, and those who had toiled and labored should have time to eat their fill.

  “Here, Gunna,” Kristin called softly to the big yellow bitch that lay with a whole cluster of pups against the draft stone by the hearth. She was such an ill-tempered animal, and that’s why Erlend had named her after the old mistress of Raasvold.

  “You poor wretch,” whispered Kristin, petting the dog who had come over and put her head on Kristin’s knee. Her backbone was as sharp as a scythe, and her teats almost swept the floor. The pups were literally eating their mother up. “Oh, yes, my poor wretch.”

  Kristin leaned her head against the back of the chair and looked up at the soot-covered rafters. She was tired.

  No, she had not had an easy time of it these past few months that she had spent at Husaby. She had talked with Erlend a little on the evening of the day they had gone to Medalby. Then she realized that he thought she was angry with him because he had brought this upon her.

  “I do remember,” he said in a low voice, “that day in the spring when we went walking in the woods north of the church. I do remem
ber that you asked me to leave you alone. . . .”

  Kristin was pleased that he had told her this. Otherwise she often wondered about all the things that Erlend seemed to have forgotten.

  But then he said, “And yet I would not have believed it of you, Kristin, that you could walk around bearing such a secret rancor toward me, and still act so gentle and happy. For you must have known long ago how things stood with you. And I believed that you were as bright and honest as the rays of the sun.”

  “Oh, Erlend,” she said sadly. “You of all people in the world should know best that I have followed forbidden paths and acted falsely toward those who have trusted me most.” But she wanted so much for him to understand. “I don’t know whether you recall, my dear, but in the past you have behaved toward me in a manner that some might not call proper. And God and the Virgin Mary know that I didn’t bear you any grudge, nor did I love you any less.”

  Erlend’s face grew tender.

  “So I thought,” he said quietly. “But you know too that I have striven all these years to rectify the harm I have done. I consoled myself that in the end I would be able to reward you, for you were so faithful and patient.”

  Then she said to him, “No doubt you have heard about my grandfather’s brother and the maiden Bengta, who fled from Sweden against the wishes of her kinsmen. God punished them by refusing to give the couple a child. Haven’t you ever feared, during all these years, that He might punish us in that way too?”

  She added, her voice quavering and soft, “You can understand, my Erlend, that I was not very happy this summer when I first became aware of it. And yet I thought . . . I thought that if you should die before we were married, I would rather be left behind with your child than alone. I thought that if I should die in childbirth . . . it was still better than if you had no lawful son who could take your high seat after you, when you must leave this earth.”

  Erlend replied vehemently, “Then I would think my son was too dearly bought if he should cost you your life. Don’t talk like that, Kristin.” A little later he said, “Husaby is not so dear to me. Especially since I realized that Orm can never inherit my ancestral property after me.”1

  “Do you care more for her son than for mine?” Kristin then asked.

  “Your son . . . ,” Erlend gave a laugh. “Of him I know nothing more than that he will arrive half a year or so before he should. Orm I have loved for twelve years.”

  Some time later Kristin asked, “Do you ever long for these children of yours?”

  “Yes,” said her husband. “In the past I often went over to see them in Østerdal, where they are living.”

  “You could go there now, during Advent,” said Kristin quietly.

  “You wouldn’t be averse to it?” asked Erlend happily.

  Kristin said that she would find it reasonable. Then he asked whether she would be against it if he brought the children back home for Christmas. “You will have to see them sometime, after all.” And again she had replied that this too seemed reasonable to her.

  While Erlend was away, Kristin worked hard to prepare for Christmas. It distressed her greatly to be living among these unfamiliar men and servant women now—she had to take a firm grip on herself whenever she dressed or undressed in the presence of the two maids, whom Erlend had ordered to sleep with her in the hall. She had to remind herself that she would never have dared to sleep alone in the large house—where another had slept with Erlend before her.

  The serving women on the estate were no better than could be expected. Those farmers who kept close watch over their daughters did not send them to serve on an estate where the master had lived openly with a concubine and had placed such a woman in charge. The maids were lazy and not in the habit of obeying their mistress. But some of them soon came to like the fact that Kristin was putting the house in good order and personally lent a hand with their work. They grew talkative and joyful when she listened to them and answered them gently and cheerfully. And each day Kristin showed her house servants a kind and calm demeanor. She reprimanded no one, but if a maid refused her orders, then the mistress would act as if the girl did not understand what was asked of her and would quietly show her how the work was to be done. This was how Kristin had seen her father behave toward new servants who grumbled, and no man had tried twice to disobey Lavrans of Jørundgaard.

  In this manner they would have to make it through the winter. Later she would see about getting rid of those women she disliked or could not bring around.

  There was one type of work that Kristin didn’t dare take up unless she was free from the eyes of these strangers. But in the morning, when she was alone in the hall, she would sew the clothing for her child—swaddling clothes of soft homespun, ribbons of red and green fabric from town, and white linen for the christening garments. As she sat there with her sewing, her thoughts would tumble between fear and then faith in the holy friends of humankind, to whom she had prayed for intercession. It was true that the child lived and moved inside her so that she had no peace, night or day. But she had heard about children who were born with a pelt where they should have had a face, with their heads turned around backwards, or their toes where their heels should have been. And she pictured Svein, who was purple over half his face because his mother had inadvertently looked at a fire.2

  Then Kristin would cast aside her sewing and go over to kneel before the image of the Virgin Mary and say seven Ave Marias. Brother Edvin had said that the Mother of God felt an equal joy every time she heard the angel’s greeting, even if it came from the lips of the most wretched sinner. And it was the words Dominus tecum that most cheered Mary’s heart; that was why Kristin always said them three times.

  This always helped her for a while. She knew of many people, both men and women, who paid scant honor to God or to His Mother and who kept the commandments poorly—but she hadn’t seen that they gave birth to misshapen children because of it. Often God was so merciful that He did not visit the sins of the parents upon their poor children, although every once in a while He had to show people a sign that He could not perpetually tolerate their evil. But surely it would not be her child . . .

  Then she called in her heart upon Saint Olav.3 He was the one she had heard so much about that it was as though she had known him while he lived in Norway and had seen him here on this earth. He was not tall, quite stout, but straight-backed and fair, with the gold crown and shining halo on his golden curls, and a curly red beard on his firm, weatherbeaten, and intrepid face. But his deep-set and blazing eyes looked straight through everyone; those who had strayed did not dare look into them. Kristin didn’t dare either. She lowered her gaze before his eyes, but she was not afraid. It was more as if she were a child and had to lower her eyes before her father’s glance when she had done something wrong. Saint Olav looked at her, sternly but not harshly—she had promised to better her life, after all. She longed so fervently to go to Nidaros4 and kneel down before his shrine: Erlend had promised her this, when they came north—that they would go there very soon. But the journey had been postponed. And now Kristin realized that he was reluctant to travel with her; he was ashamed and afraid of gossip.

  One evening when she was sitting at the table with her servants, one of the maids, a young girl who helped in the house, said, “I was wondering, Mistress, whether it wouldn’t be better if we started sewing swaddling clothes and infant garments before we set up the loom that you’re talking about. . . .”

  Kristin pretended not to hear and kept on talking about wool dyeing.

  Then the girl continued, “But perhaps you have brought such garments from home?”

  Kristin smiled faintly and then turned back to the others. When she glanced at the maid a little while later, she was sitting there bright red in the face and peering anxiously at her mistress. Kristin smiled again and spoke to Ulf across the table. Then the young girl began to weep. Kristin laughed a bit, and the maid cried harder and harder until she was sniffing and snuffling.

&
nbsp; “Stop that now, Frida,” Kristin finally said calmly. “You hired on here as a grown-up serving maid; you shouldn’t behave as if you were a little child.”

  The maid whimpered. She hadn’t meant to be impertinent, and Kristin mustn’t be angry.

  “No,” said Kristin, smiling again. “Eat your food now and stop crying. The rest of us have no more sense, either, than what God has granted us.”

  Frida jumped up and ran out, sobbing loudly.

  Later, when Ulf Haldorssøn stood talking to Kristin about the work that had to be done the next day, he laughed and said, “Erlend should have married you ten years ago, Kristin. Then his affairs would have been in a better state today, in every respect.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked, smiling as before. “Back then I was nine winters old. Do you think Erlend would have been capable of waiting for a child bride for years on end?”

  Ulf laughed and went out.

  But at night Kristin would lie in bed and weep with loneliness and humiliation.

  Then Erlend came home during the week before Christmas, and Orm, his son, rode at his father’s side. Kristin felt a stab in her heart when Erlend led the boy forward and told him to greet his stepmother.

  He was the most handsome child. This was how she had thought he would look, the son that she carried. Sometimes, when she dared to be happy, to believe that her child would be born healthy and well-formed, and to think ahead about the boy who would grow up at her knee, then it was like this she pictured him—just like his father.

  Orm was perhaps a little small for his age, and slight, but handsomely built, with fine limbs and a lovely face, his complexion and hair dark, but with big blue eyes and a soft red mouth. He greeted his stepmother courteously, but his expression was hard and cold. Kristin had not had the chance to talk with the boy further. But she sensed his eyes on her, wherever she walked or stood, and she felt as if her body and gait grew even more heavy and clumsy when she knew the boy was staring at her.