Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

  Impetuously she pulled him onto her lap. He was little, little, still so little, her youngest . . . not too big to be kissed and caressed by his mother. She winked one eye at him; he wanted to wink back, but try as he might, both his eyes kept winking. His mother laughed loudly, and then Munan laughed too, chortling as Kristin hugged him in her arms.

  Lavrans had been sitting with the dog on his lap. They both turned toward the woods to listen.

  “It’s Father!” First the dog and then the boy bounded down the steep slope.

  Kristin stayed where she was for a moment. Then she stood up and walked forward to the precipice. Now they appeared on the path below: Erlend, Naakkve, Ivar, and Skule. They shouted greetings up to her, merry and boisterous.

  Kristin greeted them in return. Were they on their way up to get the horses? No, Erlend replied. Ulf planned to send Sveinbjørn after them that evening. He and Naakkve were off to hunt reindeer, and the twins had wanted to come along to see her.

  She didn’t reply. She had realized this even before she asked. Naakkve had a dog on a tether; he and his father were dressed in gray-and-black dappled homespun tunics that were hard to see against the scree. All four were carrying bows.

  Kristin asked about news from the manor, and Erlend chatted as they climbed upward. Ulf was in the midst of the grain harvesting. He seemed pleased enough, but the hay was stunted, and the grain in the rest of the fields had ripened too early in the drought; it was falling off the stalks. And the oats would soon be ready to harvest; Ulf said they would have to work fast. Kristin walked along, nodding, without saying a word.

  She went to the cowshed herself to do the milking. She usually enjoyed the time she sat in the dark next to the bulging flank of the cow, smelling the sweet breath of the milk as it reached her nose. A spurting sound echoed from the darkness where the milkmaid and herdsman were milking. It created such a calm feeling: the strong, warm smell of the shed, the creaking sounds of the osier door hasps, horns butting against wood, a cow shifting her hooves in the soft muck of the floor and swatting her tail at the flies. The wagtails that had made their nests inside during the summer were gone now.

  The cows were restless tonight. Bluesides set her foot down in the milk pail. Kristin gave her a slap and scolded her. The next cow began acting refractory as soon as Kristin moved over to her side. She had sores on her udder. Kristin took off her wedding ring and milked the first spurts through the ring.

  She heard Ivar and Skule down by the gate. They were shouting and throwing stones at the strange bull that always followed her cows in the evening. They had offered to help Finn milk the goats in the pen, but they had soon grown bored.

  A little later, when Kristin walked up the hill, they were teasing the pretty white calf that she had given to Lavrans, who was standing nearby and whimpering. She put down her pails, seized the two boys by the shoulder and flung them aside. They should leave the calf alone if their brother, who was its owner, told them to do so.

  Erlend and Naakkve were sitting on the doorstep. They had a fresh cheese between them, and they were eating sliver after sliver as they fed some to Munan, who was standing between Naakkve’s knees. He had put her horsehair sieve on the little boy’s head, saying that now Munan would be invisible, because it wasn’t really a sieve but a wood nymph’s hat. All three of them laughed, but as soon as Naakkve saw his mother, he handed her the sieve, stood up, and took the milk pails from her.

  Kristin lingered in the dairy shed. The upper half of the door stood open to the outer room of the hut; they had put plenty of wood on the hearth. In the warm flickering glow, they sat around the fire and ate: Erlend, the children, her maid, and the three herdsmen.

  By the time she came in they had finished eating. She saw that the two youngest had been put to bed on the bench along the wall; they were already asleep. Erlend had crawled up into the bed. She stumbled over his outer garments and boots and picked them up as she walked past and then went outside.

  The sky was still light, with a red stripe above the mountains to the west. Several dark wisps of clouds hovered in the clear air. It looked as if they would have fair weather the next day too, since it was so calm and biting cold now that night had begun to fall. No wind, but an icy gust from the north, a steady breath from the bare gray slopes. Above the hills to the southeast the moon was rising, nearly full, huge, and still a pale crimson in the slight haze that always lingered over the marshes in that direction.

  Somewhere up on the plateau the strange ox was bellowing and carrying on. Otherwise it was so quiet that it hurt—only the roar of the river from below their pasture, the little trickling creek on the slope, and a languid murmuring in the woods—a rustling through the boughs as they moved, paused for a moment, and then moved again.

  She busied herself with some milk pans and trenchers that stood next to the wall of the hut. Naakkve and the twins came out, and their mother asked them where they were going.

  They were going to sleep in the barn; there was such a foul smell in the dairy shed from all the cheeses and butter and from the goats that slept inside.

  Naakkve didn’t go to the barn at once. His mother could still see his pale gray figure against the green darkness of the hayfield down at the edge of the woods. A little later the maid appeared in the doorway; she gave a start when she saw her mistress standing near the wall.

  “Shouldn’t you go to bed now, Astrid? It’s getting late.”

  The maid muttered that she just had to go behind the cowshed. Kristin waited until she saw the girl go back inside. Naakkve was now in his sixteenth year. It was some time ago that his mother had begun keeping an eye on the serving maids on the manor whenever they flirted with the handsome and lively young boy.

  Kristin walked down to the river and knelt on a rock protruding out over the water. Before her the river flowed almost black into a wide pool with only a few rings betraying the current, but a short distance above, it gushed white in the darkness with a great roar and cold gusts of air. By now the moon had risen so high that it shone brightly; it glittered here and there on a dewy leaf. Its rays caught on a ripple in the stream.

  Erlend called her name from right behind her. She hadn’t heard him come down the slope. Kristin dipped her arm in the icy water and fished up a couple of milk pans weighted with stones that were being rinsed by the river. She got to her feet and followed her husband back, with both her hands full. They didn’t speak as they clambered upward.

  Inside the hut Erlend undressed completely and climbed into bed. “Aren’t you coming to bed soon, Kristin?”

  “I’m just going to have a little food first.” She sat down on her stool next to the hearth with some bread and a slice of cheese in her lap. She ate slowly, staring at the embers, which gradually grew dark in the stone-rimmed hollow in the floor.

  “Are you asleep, Erlend?” she whispered as she stood up and shook out her skirt.

  “No.”

  Kristin went over and drank a ladleful of curdled milk from the basin in the corner. Then she went back to the hearth, lifted a stone, and laid it down flat, sprinkling the mullein blossoms on top to dry.

  But then she could find no more tasks to do. She undressed in the dark and lay down in the bed next to Erlend. When he put his arms around her, she felt weariness wash over her whole body like a cold wave; her head felt empty and heavy, as if everything inside it had sunk down and settled like a knot of pain in the back of her neck. But when he whispered to her, she dutifully put her arms around his neck.

  She woke up and didn’t know what time of night it was. But through the transparent hide2 stretched over the smoke vent she could see that the moon must still be high.

  The bed was short and cramped so they had to lie close to each other. Erlend was asleep, breathing quietly and evenly, his chest moving faintly as he slept. In the past she used to move closer to his warm, healthy body when she woke up in the night and grew frightened that he was breathing so silently. Back then she thought it so bl
issfully sweet to feel his breast rise and fall as he slept at her side.

  After a while she slipped out of bed, got dressed in the dark, and crept out the door.

  The moon was sailing high over the world. The moss glistened with water, and the rocky cliffs gleamed where streams had trickled during the day—now they had turned to ice. Up on the plateaus frost glittered. It was bitterly cold. Kristin crossed her arms over her breasts and stood still for a moment.

  Then she set off along the creek. It murmured and gurgled with the tiny sounds of ice crystals breaking apart.

  At the top of the meadow a huge boulder rose up out of the earth. No one ever went near it unless they had to, and then they would be certain to cross themselves. People poured cream under it whenever they went past. Otherwise she had never heard that anyone had ever witnessed anything there, but such had been the custom in that pasture ever since ancient times.

  She didn’t know what had come over her that she would leave the house this way, in the middle of the night. She stopped at the boulder and set her foot in a crevice. Her stomach clenched tight, her womb felt cold and empty with fear, but she refused to make the sign of the cross. Then she climbed up and sat on top of the rock.

  From up there she could see a long, long way. Far into the ugly bare mountains in the moonlight. The great dome near Dovre rose up, enormous and pale against the pale sky. Snowdrifts gleamed white in the pass on the Gray Peaks. The Boar Range glistened with new snow and blue clefts. The mountains in the moonlight were more hideous than she could have imagined; only a few stars shone here and there in the vast, icy sky. She was frozen to the very marrow and bone; terror and cold pressed in on her from all sides. But defiantly she stayed where she was.

  She refused to get down and lie in the pitch dark next to the warm, slumbering body of her husband. She could tell that for her there would be no more sleep that night.

  As sure as she was her father’s daughter, her husband would never hear his wife reproach his actions. For she remembered what she had promised when she beseeched the Almighty God and all the saints in heaven to spare Erlend’s life.

  That was why she had come out into this troll night to breathe when she felt about to suffocate.

  She sat there and let the old, bitter thoughts rise up like good friends, countering them with other old and familiar thoughts—in feigned justification of Erlend.

  He had certainly never demanded this of her. He had not asked her to bear any of the things she had taken upon her own shoulders. He had merely conceived seven sons with her. “I will provide for my seven sons, Arne.” God only knew what Erlend had meant by those words. Maybe he meant nothing; it was simply something he had said.

  Erlend hadn’t asked her to restore order to Husaby and his other estates. He hadn’t asked her to fight with her life to save him. He had borne it like a chieftain that his property would be dispersed, that his life was at stake, and that he would lose everything he owned. Stripped and empty-handed, with chieftainlike dignity and calm he had accepted the misfortune; with chieftainlike calm and dignity he lived on her father’s manor like a guest.

  And yet everything that was in her possession lawfully belonged to her sons. They lawfully owned her sweat and blood and all her strength. But then surely she and the estate had the right to make claims on them.

  She hadn’t needed to flee to the mountain pastures like some kind of poor leaseholder’s wife. But the situation was such at home that she felt pressed and hemmed in from all sides—until she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Then she had felt the need to prove to herself that she could do the work of a peasant woman. She had toiled and labored every hour and every day since she had arrived at the estate of Erlend Nikulaussøn as his bride—and realized that someone there would have to fight to protect the inheritance of the one she carried under her heart. If the father couldn’t do it, then she must. But now she needed to be certain. For that matter, she had demonstrated before to her nursemaids and servant women that there wasn’t any kind of work she wasn’t capable of doing with her own hands. It was a good day up here if she didn’t feel an ache in her flanks from standing and churning. It felt good in the morning when she would go along to let out the cattle; the animals had grown fat and glossy in the summer. The tight grip on her heart eased when she stood in the sunset and called to the cows coming home. She liked to see food growing under her own hands; it felt as if she were reaching down into the very foundation from which the future of her sons would be rebuilt.

  Jørundgaard was a good estate, but it was not as good as she had thought. And Ulf was a stranger here in the valley; he made mistakes, and he grew impatient. As people saw it in the region, they always had plenty of hay at Jørundgaard. They had the hay meadows along the river and out on the islands, but it wasn’t good hay, not the kind that Ulf was used to in Trøndelag. He wasn’t used to having to gather so much moss and foliage, heath and brushwood as they did here.

  Her father had known every patch of his land; he had possessed all the farmer’s knowledge about the whims of the seasons and the way each particular strip of field handled rain or drought, windy summers or hot summers; about livestock that he himself had bred, raised, foddered, and sold from, generation after generation—the very sort of knowledge that was needed here. She did not have that kind of knowledge of her estate. But she would acquire it, and her sons would too.

  And yet Erlend had never demanded this of her. He hadn’t married her in order to lead her into toil and travail. He had married her so she could sleep in his arms. Then, when her time came, the child lay at her side, demanding a place on her arm, at her breast, in her care.

  Kristin moaned through clenched teeth. She was shivering with cold and anger.

  “Pactum serva—in Norwegian it means ‘keep thy faith.’ ”

  That was back when Arne Gjavvaldssøn and his brother Leif of Holm had come to Husaby to take her possessions and the children’s belongings to Nidaros. This too Erlend had left for her to handle; he had taken lodgings at the monastery at Holm. She was staying at their residence in town—now owned by the monks—and Arne Gjavvaldssøn was with her, helping her in word and deed. Simon had sent him letters about it.

  Arne could not have been more zealous if he had been trying to salvage the goods for himself. On the evening he arrived in town with everything, he wanted both Kristin and Fru Gunna of Raasvold, who had come to Nidaros with the two small boys, to come out to the stable. Seven splendid horses—people wanted to be fair with Erlend Nikulaussøn, and they agreed to Arne’s claim that the five oldest boys each owned a horse and that one belonged to the mistress herself and one to her personal servant. He could testify that Erlend had given the Castilian, his Spanish stallion, to his son Nikulaus, even though this had been done mostly in jest. Not that Arne thought much of the long-legged animal, but he knew that Erlend was fond of the stallion.

  Arne thought it a shame to lose the magnificent armor with the great helmet and gold-chased sword; it was true that these things were of real use only in a tournament, but they were worth a great deal of money. But he had managed to keep Erlend’s coat of mail made of black silk with the embroidered red lion. And he had demanded his English armor for Nikulaus; it was so splendid that Arne didn’t think its equal could be found in all of Norway—at least to those who knew how to see—although it was in disrepair. Erlend had used his weapons far more than most sons of noblemen at the time. Arne caressed each piece: the helmet, shoulder collar, the leather arm and leg coverings, the steel gloves made of the finest plates, the corselet and skirt made of rings, so light and comfortable and yet so strong. And the sword . . . It had only a plain steel hilt, and the leather of the handle was worn, but the likes of such a blade were rarely seen.

  Kristin sat and held the sword across her lap. She knew that Erlend would embrace it like a much-loved betrothed; it was the only one he had used of all the swords he owned. He had inherited it in his early youth from Sigmund Torolfssøn, who had been h
is bedmate when he first joined the king’s retainers. Only once had Erlend ever mentioned this friend of his to Kristin. “If God had not been so hasty to take Sigmund away from this world, many things would have doubtless been different for me. After his death I was so unhappy at the royal palace that I managed to beg permission from King Haakon to go north with Gissur Galle that time. But then I might never have won you, my dear; then I probably would have been a married man for many years before you were a grown maiden.”

  From Munan Baardsøn she had heard that Erlend nursed his friend day and night, the way a mother cares for her child, getting no more sleep than short naps at the bedside of the ailing man during that last winter when Sigmund Torolfssøn lay vomiting up bits of his heart’s blood and lungs. And after Sigmund was buried at Halvard Church, Erlend had constantly visited his grave, lying prostrate on the gravestone to grieve. But to Kristin he had mentioned the man only once. She and Erlend had arranged to meet several times in Halvard Church during that sinful winter in Oslo. But he had never told her that his dearest friend from his youth lay buried there. She knew he had mourned his mother in the same way, and he had been quite frantic with grief when Orm died. But he never spoke of them. Kristin knew that he had gone into town to see Margret, but he never mentioned his daughter.

  Up near the hilt she noticed that some words had been etched into the blade. Most of them were runes, which she couldn’t read; nor could Arne. But the monk picked up the sword and studied it for a moment. “Pactum serva,” he said finally. “In Norwegian it means ‘keep thy faith.’ ”

  Arne and his brother Leif talked about the fact that a large part of Kristin’s properties in the north, Erlend’s wedding gifts to her, had been mortgaged and dispersed. They wondered whether there was any way to salvage part of them. But Kristin refused. Honor was the most important thing to salvage; she didn’t want to hear of any disputes over whether her husband’s dealings had been lawful. And she was deadly tired of Arne’s chatter, no matter how well intentioned it was. That evening, when he and the monk bade her good night and went to their sleeping chambers, Kristin had thrown herself to her knees before Fru Gunna and buried her head in her lap.