Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

  The year before, toward the end of winter, the regent had come to Nidaros, and he had brought the young king along with him. Kristin attended the grand feast at the king’s palace. With quiet dignity, wearing a silk wimple and with all her best jewelry adorning her red bridal gown, she had sat there among the most high born women at the banquet. With alert eyes she studied her husband’s conduct among the men, watching and listening and pondering—just as she watched and listened and pondered wherever she went with Erlend, and wherever she noticed that people were talking about him.

  And she had learned several things. Sir Erling Vidkunssøn was willing to risk every effort to assert the right of the Norwegian Crown north to the Gandvik Sea, to defend and protect Haalogaland. But the Council and the knights opposed him and were reluctant to support any endeavor that might help. The archbishop himself and the clergy of the archdiocese were not unwilling to offer financial support—this she knew from Gunnulf—but otherwise the men of the Church all over the country were opposed to the war, even though it was against the enemies of God: heretics and heathens. And the noblemen were working against the regent, at least here in Trøndelag. They had grown accustomed to disregarding the words of the law books and the rights of the Crown, and they were not pleased that Sir Erling so sternly invoked the spirit of his blessed kinsman King Haakon in these matters. But it was not for these reasons that Erlend refused to allow himself to be used, as Kristin now understood that the regent had intended to use her husband. For Erlend it was simply because the other man’s somber and dignified demeanor bored him, so he took revenge by lightly ridiculing his powerful kinsman.

  Kristin now thought she understood Sir Erling’s attitude toward Erlend. On the one hand, he had felt a certain affection for Erlend ever since their youth; no doubt he thought that if he could win the support of the noble and fearless master of Husaby, who also had some experience in the art of war from the days when he served Earl Jacob—at any rate more than most of the other men who had stayed at home—then it would be of benefit to both Erling Vidkunssøn’s plans and to Erlend’s welfare. But that’s not how things had turned out.

  For two summers Erlend had stayed out at sea until late autumn, patrolling the waters off the long northern coast and chasing off pirate vessels with the four small ships that bore his banner. One day he had arrived in search of fresh provisions at a new Norwegian settlement far north in Tana just as the Karelians1 were in the process of plundering it. With the handful of men he had brought ashore, he captured eighteen of the pirates and hanged them from the roof beam in the half-burned barn. He cut down a troop of Russians attempting to flee into the mountains; he vanquished and burned several enemy ships somewhere out among the distant skerries. Rumors of his speed and boldness spread through the north; his men from Outer Trøndelag and Møre loved their chieftain for his toughness and his willingness to share in all the toil and travails of his crew. He had won friends among the peasants and the young sons on the estates of the chieftains up north in Haalogaland, where people had almost grown accustomed to having to defend their own coasts alone.

  But even so, Erlend was of no help to the regent and his plans for a great crusade north. In Trøndelag people boasted of Erlend’s exploits in the Russian campaign—if talk turned to this subject, they would point out that he was one of their own. Yes, it had turned out that the young boys from the fjord possessed a fair share of good old-fashioned valor. But no matter what Erlend of Husaby said or did, it was not enough to impress grown-up and sensible men.

  Kristin saw that Erlend continued to be counted among the young, even though he was a year older than the regent. She realized that this suited many, because then his words and actions could be disparaged as those of a young and reckless man. People liked him, humored him, and boasted of him—but he was never considered a fully entitled man. And she saw how willingly he accepted the role that his peers wanted him to play.

  He spoke in favor of the Russian war; he talked about the Swedes who shared the Norwegian king. But they refused to acknowledge the Norwegian lords and knights as noblemen, equal with their own. In other countries, for as long as the world had existed, had anyone ever heard of demanding payment of war levies from noblemen in any other form than having them ride their own horses and bear their own shields into battle? Kristin knew this was much the same thing her father had said that time at the ting in Vaage, and Lavrans had also mentioned it to Erlend when his son-in-law had not wanted to oppose Munan Baardsøn’s plans. No, Erlend now said—and he would allude to his father-in-law’s powerful kinsmen in Sweden—he knew full well how the Swedish noblemen regarded the Norwegians. “And if we don’t show them what we’re capable of, we’ll soon be considered nothing more than wards of the Swedes.”

  And people agreed that there was some truth to this. But then they would go back to talking about the regent. Sir Erling had his own reasons for lamenting what went on in the north. One year the Karelians had burned down Bjarkøy in defiance of his overseer and persecuted his leaseholders. But Erlend would change his tone and jest—Erling Vidkunssøn wasn’t thinking of his own affairs, he was sure of that. Sir Erling was such a noble and refined and distinguished knight; they couldn’t have found a better man to serve as leader for all of them. By God, Erling was as honorable and venerable as the most beautiful golden initial capital at the beginning of the book of law. People laughed, less impressed with Erlend’s praise of the regent’s integrity than with Erlend’s comparing him to a gilded letter.

  No, they didn’t take Erlend seriously—not now, when he was in some ways respected. But back in the days when he was young and stubborn and desperate, when he lived with his concubine and refused to send her away in spite of the king’s command and excommunication from the Church—back then they did take him seriously, turning away from him in bitter fury at his ungodly and disgraceful life. Now it was all forgiven and forgotten, and Kristin realized that it was partly out of gratitude for this that her husband so willingly acquiesced and behaved in the way people wanted him to behave. He must have suffered bitterly during that time when he was banished from the company of his peers in Norway. But the problem was, it made her think of her father, when he released incompetent men from their obligations or debts with a mere shrug of his shoulders. It was a Christian duty to bear with those who could not conduct themselves properly. Was it in this manner that Erlend had been forgiven the sins of his youth?

  But Erlend had paid the consequences for his actions when he was living with Eline. He had answered for his sins right up until the moment when he met Kristin and she eagerly followed him into new sin. Was she then the one who . . .

  No. Now she was afraid of her own thoughts.

  And she tried to block out of her mind all the worries about things she could not change. She wanted only to think about matters in which she could do something with her compassion. Everything else she would have to place in God’s hands. God had helped her in every instance when her own hard work could do some good. Husaby had now been transformed into a prosperous farm, as it had been in the past—in spite of the bad years. Three healthy and handsome sons He had given her, and each year He had granted her new life whenever she was faced with death in childbirth. He had allowed her to recover her full health after each convalescence. She had been permitted to keep all three of her small sons the year before, when illness took the lives of so many fair children in the region. And Gaute—Gaute would regain his health, that she firmly believed.

  It must be as Erlend had said: It was necessary for him to lead his life and maintain his estates in as costly a fashion as he did. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to assert himself among his peers and win the rights and revenues that were his birthright under the Crown. She would have to believe that he understood this better than she did.

  It was senseless to think that things might have been better in some ways for him—and even for her—back when he was living tangled up in sin with that other woman. In glimpses of memory
she saw his face from that time, ravaged with sorrow, contorted with passion. No, no, things were fine as they were now. He was merely a little too carefree and thoughtless.

  Erlend returned home just before Michaelmas. He had hoped to find Kristin confined to bed, but she was still on her feet. She came to meet him out on the road. Her gait was terribly cumbersome this time—but she had Gaute in her arms, as usual; the two older sons came running ahead of her.

  Erlend jumped down from his horse and lifted the boys onto the saddle. Then he took his youngest son from his wife so he could carry him. Kristin’s pale, worn face lit up when Gaute wasn’t frightened by his father; he must have recognized him, after all. She asked nothing about her husband’s travels, but talked only about Gaute’s four new teeth which had made him so sick.

  Then the boy started to scream; he had scraped his cheek bloody on the filigree brooch on his father’s chest. He wanted to go back to his mother, and she wanted to take him, no matter how much Erlend protested.

  Not until evening, when they were sitting alone in the hall and the children were asleep, did Kristin ask her husband about his journey to Bjørgvin—as if she only then happened to think about it.

  Erlend glanced furtively at Kristin. His poor wife—she looked so miserable. He began to tell her all kinds of news. Erling had asked him to send his greetings and give her this—it was a bronze dagger, corroded with verdigris. They had found it in a heap of stones out at Giske; it was supposed to be beneficial to place such a thing in the cradle in case it was rickets that had stricken Gaute.

  Kristin wrapped up the dagger again, awkwardly rose from her chair, and went over to the cradle. She put the bundle under the bedclothes with everything else that lay there: a stone axe found buried in the ground, the musk gland of a beaver, a cross made from daphne twigs, old silver, flint, roots of a Mariahand orchid, and an Olav’s Beard fern.

  “Lie down now, dear Kristin,” Erlend said tenderly. He came over and pulled off her shoes and stockings. All the while he talked.

  Haakon Ogmundssøn had come back, and peace with the Russians and Karelians had been concluded and sealed. Erlend himself would have to travel north this fall. For it was certain that calm would not be restored at once, and a man was needed at Vargøy who knew the region. He would be given full authority as the king’s officer in command at the fortress up there, which had to be better secured so that peace could be defended at the new border markers.

  Erlend looked up into his wife’s face with excitement. She seemed a bit alarmed—but she didn’t ask many questions, and it was clear that she had little understanding of what his news meant. He saw how tired she was, so he spoke no more about this matter but remained sitting on the edge of her bed for a while.

  He understood the gravity of what he had taken on. Erlend laughed quietly to himself as he took his time undressing. There would be no sitting back with his silver belt around his belly, holding feasts for friends and kinsmen, and filing his nails straight and clean as he dispatched his vassals and lieutenants here and there—the way the king’s commanders of the castles did here in the south of Norway. And the castle at Vargøy was quite a different sort of fortress.

  Finns, Russians, Karelians, and mixed breeds of all kinds—troll rabble, conjurers, heathen dogs, the Devil’s own precious lambs who had to be taught to pay taxes to the Norwegian emissaries and to leave the Norwegian settlements in peace, which were spread out with as much distance between each other as from Husaby all the way to Møre. Peace—perhaps the king’s peace would be possible up there someday, but in his lifetime there would be peace only when the Devil attended mass. And he would have his own roughnecks to keep in check too. Especially toward the spring, when they began to grow despondent from the darkness and the cold and the hellish roar of the sea—when the flour and butter and liquor were in short supply, and they began fighting over their women, and life on the island grew unbearable. Erlend had witnessed some of this when he was there as a young boy with Gissur Galle. No, he wouldn’t be lying about idle!

  Ingolf Peit, who was now in charge, was able enough. But Erling was right: A man from the knighthood should take control of things up there—not until then would anyone realize that it was the Norwegian king’s firm intention to assert his power over the land. Ha, ha—in that territory he would be like a needle in a coverlet. Not a single Norwegian settlement until as far south as Malang.

  Ingolf was a capable fellow, but only as long as he had someone in command over him. He would put Ingolf in charge of his ship Hugrekken. Margygren was the most splendid of ships; that much he had now learned. Erlend laughed softly and happily. He had told Kristin so often before, this was one mistress she would have to put up with.

  He was awakened by one of the children crying in the dark. Over by the bed on the opposite wall, he could hear Kristin stirring and speaking gently—it was Bjørgulf who was complaining. Sometimes the boy woke up in the night and couldn’t open his festering eyes; then his mother would moisten them with her tongue. Erlend had always been repelled by the sight of this.

  Kristin was softly humming. The thin, weak sound of her voice annoyed him.

  Erlend remembered what he had been dreaming. He was walking along a shore somewhere; it was low tide, and he was leaping from stone to stone. In the distance the sea was glistening and pale, lapping at the seaweed; it was like a silent, cloudy summer evening, with no sun. At the mouth of the silvery fjord he saw the ship anchored, black and sleek, rocking gently on the waves. There was an ungodly, delicious smell of sea and kelp.

  His heart grew sick with longing. Now in the darkness of the night, as he lay here in the guest bed and listened to the monotonous sound of the lullaby gnawing at his ear, he felt how strong his longing was. To be away from this house and the swarms of children who filled it, away from talk of farming matters and servants and tenants and children—and from his anguished concern for her, who was always ill and whom he always had to pity.

  Erlend clasped his hands over his heart. It felt as if it had stopped; it merely lay there, shivering with fright inside his breast. He longed to be away from her. When he thought about what she would have to endure, as weak and frail as she now was—and he knew that it could happen at any hour—he felt as if he would suffocate from fear. But if he should lose Kristin . . . He didn’t know how he would be able to live without her. But he didn’t feel able to live with her, either, not now. He wanted to flee from everything and breathe freely—as if it were a matter of life itself for him.

  Jesus, my Savior—oh, what kind of man was he! He realized it now, tonight. Kristin, my sweet, my dearest wife—the only time he had known deep, heartfelt joy with her was when he was leading her astray.

  He who had been so convinced on that day when he was given Kristin to have and to hold before God and man that everything bad would be driven from his life so completely that he would forget it had ever existed.

  He must be the kind of man who couldn’t tolerate anything truly good or pure to be near him. Because Kristin . . . Ever since she had emerged from the sin and impurity into which he had led her, she had been like an angel from God’s heaven. Kind and faithful, gentle, capable, deserving of respect. She had returned honor to Husaby. She had become once again the person she had been on that summer night, when the pure young maiden had crept under his cape there in the convent garden; and he had thought when he felt that slender young body against his side: The Devil himself wouldn’t dare harm this child or cause her sorrow.

  Tears streamed down Erlend’s face.

  It must be true, what the priests had told him, that sin ate up a man’s soul like rust—for he could find no rest or peace here with his sweet beloved. He longed to be away from her and everything that was hers.

  He had wept himself almost to sleep when he sensed that she was up and pacing the floor, quietly humming and singing.

  Erlend sprang out of bed, stumbled in the dark over a child’s shoes on the floor, and went right over to hi
s wife and took Gaute from her. The boy started screaming, and Kristin said crossly, “I had almost lulled him to sleep!”

  The father shook the crying child, gave him a few slaps on the bottom—and when the boy shrieked even louder, he hushed him so harshly that Gaute fell silent with fear. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before.

  “It’s time for you to use what good sense you have, Kristin.” His fury robbed him of all power as he stood there, startled and naked and freezing in the pitch-dark room with a sobbing child in his arms. “There has to be an end to this, I tell you—what do you have nursemaids for? The children will sleep with them; you can’t keep on this way.”

  “Won’t you allow me to have my children with me during the time I have left?” replied his wife, her voice low and plaintive.

  Erlend refused to acknowledge what she meant.

  “During the time you have left, you need rest. Go to bed now, Kristin,” he implored her more calmly.

  He took Gaute with him to bed. He hummed to him for a while, and in the dark he found his belt lying on the step of the bed. The little silver medallions adorning it clinked and clattered as the boy played with the belt.

  “The dagger isn’t in it, is it?” asked Kristin anxiously from her bed, and Gaute began howling again when he heard his mother’s voice. Erlend hushed him and made the belt clink—at last the child stopped crying and grew calm.