Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

  Simon stayed where he was, feeling strangely numb. Erlend came back after a moment. “Let’s go now,” he said as he headed for the stable.

  “Is he dead?” asked Simon.

  “Yes. And Alf and Toralde and Vidar all have wounds, but none is serious. Holmgeir’s hair was singed off the back of his head.” Erlend had spoken in a somber voice, but now he abruptly burst out laughing. “Now it certainly smells like a damn roasted thrush in there, you’d better believe me! How the Devil could all of you get into such a quarrel in such a short time?” he asked in astonishment.

  A half-grown boy was holding their horses. Neither of the men had brought his own servant along on this journey.

  Both were still carrying their swords. Erlend picked up a handful of hay and wiped the blood from his. Simon did the same. When he had rubbed off the worst of it, he stuck his sword back in its sheath. Erlend cleaned his sword very thoroughly and then polished it with the hem of his cape. Then he made several playful little thrusts into the air and smiled, fleetingly, as if at a memory. He tossed the sword high up, caught it by the hilt, and stuck it back in its sheath.

  “Your wounds . . . We should go up to the house, and I’ll bandage them for you.”

  Simon said they were nothing. “But you’re bleeding too, Erlend!”

  “It’s nothing dangerous, and my skin heals fast. I’ve noticed that heavyset people always take longer to heal. And with this cold . . . and we have such a long way to ride.”

  Erlend got some salve and cloths from the tenant farmer and carefully tended to the other man’s wounds. Simon had two flesh wounds right next to each other on the left side of his chest; they bled a great deal at first, but they weren’t serious. Erlend had been slashed on the thigh by Bjørn’s spear. That would make it painful to ride, said Simon, but his brother-in-law laughed. It had barely made a scratch through his leather hose. He dabbed at it a bit and then wrapped it tightly against the frost.

  It was bitterly cold. Before they reached the bottom of the hill on which the farm stood, their horses were covered with rime and the fur trim on the men’s hoods had turned white.

  “Brrr.” Erlend shivered. “If only we were home! We’ll have to ride over to the manor down here and report the slaying.”

  “Is that necessary?” asked Simon. “I spoke to Vidar and the others after all . . .”

  “It would be better if you did so,” said Erlend. “You should report the news yourself. Don’t let them have anything to hold against you.”

  The sun had slipped behind the ridge now; the evening was a pale grayish blue but still light. They rode along a creek, beneath the branches of birch trees that were even more shaggy with frost than the rest of the forest. There was a stink of raw, icy fog in the air, which could make a man’s breath stick in his throat. Erlend grumbled impatiently about the long period of cold they had had and about the chill ride that lay before them.

  “You’re not getting frostbite on your face, are you, brother-in-law?” He peered anxiously under Simon’s hood. Simon rubbed his hand over his face; it wasn’t frostbitten, but he had grown quite pale as he rode. It didn’t suit him, because his large, portly face was weather-beaten and ruddy, and the paleness appeared in gray blotches, which made his complexion look unclean.

  “Have you ever seen a man spreading manure with his sword the way Alf did?” asked Erlend. He burst out laughing at the memory and leaned forward in his saddle to imitate the gesture. “What a splendid envoy he is! You should have seen Ulf playing with his sword, Simon—Jesus, Maria!”

  Playing . . . Well, now he’d seen Erlend Nikulaussøn playing at that game. Over and over again he saw himself and the other men tumbling around the hearth, the way farmers chop wood or toss hay. And Erlend’s slender, lightning-swift figure among them, his gaze alert and his wrist steady as he danced with them, quick-witted and an expert swordsman.

  More than twenty years ago he himself had been considered one of the foremost swordsmen among the youth of the royal retainers, when they practiced out on the green. But since then he hadn’t had much opportunity to use his knightly skills.

  And here he was now, riding along and feeling sick at heart because he had killed a man. He kept seeing Holmgeir’s body as it fell from his sword and sank into the fire; he heard the man’s abrupt, strangled death cry in his ears and saw, again and again, images of the brief, furious battle that followed. He felt dejected, pained, and confused; they had turned on him suddenly, all those men with whom he had sat and felt a sense of belonging. And then Erlend had come to his aid.

  He had never thought himself a coward. He had hunted down six bears during the years he had lived at Formo, and twice he had put his life at risk in the most reckless manner. With only the thin trunk of a pine tree between him and a raging, wounded female, with no other weapon than his spearpoint on a shaft a scant hand’s breadth long . . . The tenseness of the game had not disturbed his steadiness of thought, action, or instinct. But now, in that outbuilding . . . he didn’t know if he had been afraid, but he certainly had been confused, unable to think clearly.

  When he was back home after the bear hunt, with his clothes thrown on haphazardly, with his arm in a sling, feverish, his shoulder stiff and torn, he had merely felt an overwhelming joy. Things might have gone worse; how much worse, he didn’t dwell on. But now he kept thinking about it, ceaselessly: how everything might have ended if Erlend hadn’t come to his aid just in time. He hadn’t been afraid, but he had such a peculiar feeling. It was the expressions on the faces of the other men . . . and Holmgeir’s dying body.

  He had never killed a man before.

  Except for the Swedish horseman he had felled . . . It was during the year when King Haakon led an incursion into Sweden to avenge the murder of the dukes.4 Simon had been sent out on a scouting mission; he had taken along three men, and he was to be their chieftain. How bold and cocky he was. Simon remembered that his sword had gotten stuck in the steel helmet of the horseman so that he had to pry and wriggle it loose. There was a nick in the blade when he looked at it the next morning. He had always thought about that incident with pride, and there had been eight Swedes. He had gotten a taste of war at any rate, and that wasn’t the lot of everyone who joined the king’s men that year. When daylight came, he saw that blood and brains had splattered over his coat of mail; he tried to look modest and not boastful as he washed it off.

  But it did no good to think about that poor devil of a horseman now. No, that was not the same thing. He couldn’t get rid of a terrible feeling of remorse about Holmgeir Moisessøn.

  There was also the fact that he owed Erlend his life. He didn’t yet know what import this would have, but he felt as if everything would be different, now that he and Erlend were even.

  In that way they were even at least.

  The brothers-in-law had been riding in near silence. Once Erlend said, “It was foolish of you, Simon, not to think of getting out right from the start.”

  “Why is that?” asked Simon rather brusquely. “Because you were outside?”

  “No . . .” There was the hint of a smile in Erlend’s voice. “Well, because of that too. I hadn’t thought about that. But through that narrow door they couldn’t follow you more than one at a time. And it’s always astounding how quickly people regain their senses when they come out under the open sky. It seems to me a miracle that there weren’t more deaths.”

  A few times Erlend inquired about his brother-in-law’s wounds. Simon said he hardly noticed them, even though they were throbbing terribly.

  They reached Formo late that evening, and Erlend went inside with his brother-in-law. He had advised Simon to send the sheriff a report of the incident the very next day in order to arrange for a letter of reprieve5 as soon as possible. Erlend would gladly compose the letter for Simon that night since the wounds on his chest would no doubt hamper his writing hand. “And tomorrow you must keep to your bed; you may have a little wound fever.”

  Ramborg and
Arngjerd were waiting up for them. Because of the cold, they had settled on the bench on the warm side of the hearth, tucking their legs underneath them. A board game lay between them; they looked like a couple of children.

  Simon had barely uttered a few words about what had happened before his young wife flew to his side and threw her arms around his neck. She pulled his face down to hers and pressed her cheek against his. And she crushed Erlend’s hands so tightly that he laughingly said he had never thought Ramborg could have such strong fingers.

  She begged her husband to spend the night in the main house so that she could keep watch over him. She implored him, almost in tears, until Erlend offered to stay and sleep with Simon if she would send a man north to Jørundgaard to take word. It was too late for him to ride home anyway, “and a shame for Kristin to sit up so late in this cold. She waits up for me too; you’re both good wives, you daughters of Lavrans.”

  While the men ate and drank, Ramborg sat close to her husband. Simon patted her arm and hand; he was both a little embarrassed and greatly touched that she showed so much concern and love for him. Simon was sleeping in the Saemund house during Lent, and when the men went over there, Ramborg went with them and put a large kettle of honey-ale to warm near the hearthstone.

  The Saemund house was an ancient little hearth building, warm and snug; the timbers were so roughly hewn that there were only four beams to each wall. Right now it was cold, but Simon threw a great armful of resinous pine onto the fire and chased his dog up into the bed. The animal could lie there and warm it up for them. They pulled the log chair and the high-backed bench all the way up to the hearth and made themselves comfortable, for they were frozen to the bone after their ride, and the meal in the main house had only partially thawed them.

  Erlend wrote the letter for Simon. Then they proceeded to undress. Simon’s wound began to bleed again when he moved his arms too much, so his brother-in-law helped him pull the outer tunic over his head and take off his boots. Erlend limped a bit from his wounded leg; it was stiff and tender after the ride, he said, but it was nothing. Then they sat down near the fire again, half dressed. The room had grown pleasantly warm, and there was still plenty of ale in the kettle.

  “I can see that you’re taking this much too hard,” Erlend said once. They had been dozing and staring into the fire. “He was no great loss to the world, that Holmgeir.”

  “That’s not what Sira Moises will think,” said Simon quietly. “He’s an old man and a good priest.”

  Erlend nodded somberly.

  “It’s a bad thing to have made enemies with such a man. Especially since he lives so near. And you know that I often have business in that parish.”

  “Yes, well . . . This kind of thing can happen so easily—to any of us. They’ll probably sentence you to a fine of ten or twelve marks of gold. And you know that Bishop Halvard is a stern master when he has to hear the confession of an assailant, and the boy’s father is one of his priests. But you’ll get through whatever is required.”

  Simon did not reply.

  Erlend continued. “No doubt I’ll have to pay fines for the injuries.” He smiled to himself. “And I own no other piece of Norwegian land than the farm at Dovre.”

  “How big of a farm is Haugen?” asked Simon.

  “I don’t remember exactly; it says in the deed. But the people who work the land harvest only a small amount of hay. No one wants to live there; I’ve heard that the buildings are in great disrepair. You know what people say: that the dead spirits of my aunt and Herr Bjørn haunt the place.

  “But I know that I will win thanks from my wife for what I did today. Kristin is fond of you, Simon—as if you were her own brother.”

  Simon’s smile was almost imperceptible as he sat there in the shadows. He had pushed the log chair back a bit and had put his hand up to shield his eyes from the heat of the flames. But Erlend was as happy as a cat in the heat. He sat close to the hearth, leaning against a corner of the bench, with one arm resting along its back and his wounded leg propped up on the opposite side.

  “Yes, she had such charming words to say about it one day this past fall,” said Simon after a moment. There was an almost mocking ring to his voice.

  “When our son was ill, she showed that she was a loyal sister,” he said somberly, but then that slightly jesting tone was back. “Well, Erlend, we have kept faith with each other the way we swore to do when we gave our hands to Lavrans and vowed to stand by each other as brothers.”

  Yes,” said Erlend, unsuspecting. “I’m glad for what I did to day too, Simon, my brother-in-law.” They both fell silent for a while. Then Erlend hesitantly stretched out his hand to the other man. Simon took it. They clasped each other’s fingers tightly, then let go and huddled back in their seats, a little embarrassed.

  Finally Erlend broke the silence. For a long time he had been sitting with his chin in his hand, staring into the hearth, where only a tiny flame now flickered, flaring up, dancing a bit, and playing over the charred pieces of wood, which broke apart and collapsed with brittle little sighs. Soon there would be only black coals and glowing embers left of the fire.

  Erlend said quite softly, “You have treated me so magnanimously, Simon Darre, that I think few men are your equal. I . . . I haven’t forgotten . . .”

  “Silence! You don’t know, Erlend . . . Only God in Heaven knows everything that resides in a man’s mind,” whispered Simon, frightened and distraught.

  “That’s true,” said Erlend in the same quiet and somber tone of voice. “We all need Him to judge us . . . with mercy. But a man must judge a man by what he does. And I . . . I . . . May God reward you, brother-in-law!”

  Then they sat in dead silence, not daring to move for fear of being shamed.

  Suddenly Erlend let his hand fall to his knee. A fiery blue ray of light flashed from the stone on the ring he wore on his right index finger. Simon knew that Kristin had given it to Erlend when he was released from the prison tower.

  “But you must remember, Simon,” he said in a low voice, “the old saying: Many a man is given what was intended for another, but no one is given another man’s fate.”

  Simon raised his head sharply. Slowly his face flushed blood red; the veins at his temples stood out like dark, twisted cords.

  Erlend glanced at him for a moment but quickly withdrew his eyes. Then he too turned crimson. A strangely delicate and girlish blush spread over his tan skin. He sat motionless, embarrassed and confused, with his little, childish mouth open.

  Simon stood up abruptly and went over to the bed.

  “You’ll want to take the outside edge, I presume.” He tried to speak calmly and with nonchalance, but his voice quavered.

  “No, I’ll let you decide,” said Erlend numbly. He got to his feet. “The fire?” he asked, flustered. “Should I cover the ashes?” He began raking the hearth.

  “Finish that and then come to bed,” said Simon in the same tone. His heart was pounding so hard that he could barely talk.

  In the dark Erlend, soundless as a shadow, slipped under the covers on the outer edge of the bed and lay down, as quiet as a forest creature. Simon thought he would suffocate from having the other man in his bed.

  CHAPTER 6

  EVERY YEAR DURING Easter week Simon Andressøn held an ale feast for the people of the village. They came to Formo on the third day after mass and stayed until Thursday.

  Kristin had never particularly enjoyed these banquets with their bantering and pleasantry. Both Simon and Ramborg seemed to think that the more commotion and noise there was, the better. Simon always invited his guests to bring along their children, their servants, and the children of their servants—as many as could be spared from home. On the first day everything proceeded in a quiet and orderly manner; only the gentry and the elders would converse, while the youth listened and ate and drank, and the little children kept mostly to a different building. But on the second day, from early in the morning on, the host would urge the live
ly young people and the children to drink and make merry, and before long the teasing would grow so wild and unrestrained that the women and maidens would slip away to the corners and stand there in clusters, giggling and ready to flee. But many of the more high-standing wives would seek out Ramborg’s women’s house, which was already occupied by the mothers who had rescued the youngest children from the tumult of the main building.

  One game that was a favorite among the men was pretending to hold a ting. They would read summons documents, present grievances, proclaim new laws and modify old ones, but they always twisted the words around and said them backward. Audun Tor bergssøn could recite King Haakon’s letter to the merchants of Bjørgvin:1 what they could charge for men’s hose and for leather soles on a woman’s shoes, about the men who made swords and big and small shields. But he would mix up the words until they were all jumbled and sheer babble. This game always ended with the men not having any idea what they were saying. Kristin remembered from her childhood that her father would never allow the jesting to turn to ridicule of anything related to the Church or divine services. But otherwise Lavrans thought it great fun when he and his guests would compete by jumping up on the tables and benches while they merrily shouted all manner of coarse and unseemly nonsense.

  Simon was usually most fond of games in which a man was blindfolded and had to search through the ashes for a knife, or two people had to bob for pieces of gingerbread in a big bowl of ale. The other guests would try to make them laugh, and the ale would spray all around. Or they were supposed to use their teeth to dig a ring out of a flour bin. The hall would soon take on the look of a pigsty.

  But this year they had such surprisingly glorious spring weather for Easter. On Wednesday by early morning it was already sunny and warm, and right after breakfast everyone went out to the courtyard. Instead of making a noisy ruckus, the young people played with balls, or shot at targets or had tugs-of-war with a rope. Later they played the stag game or the woodpile dance,2 and afterward they persuaded Geirmund of Kruke to sing and play his harp. Soon everyone, both young and old, had joined the dance. Snow still covered the fields, but the alder trees were brown with buds, and the sun shone warm and lovely on all the bare slopes. When the guests came outside after supper, there were birds singing everywhere. Then they made a bonfire in the field beyond the smithy, and they sang and danced until late into the night. The next morning everyone stayed in bed a long time and left the banquet manor much later than usual. The guests from Jørundgaard were normally the last to depart, but this time Simon persuaded Erlend and Kristin to stay until the following day. Those from Kruke were to stay at Formo until the end of the week.