Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

His wife’s lips moved, but not a word came.

  Erlend rose to his feet. “Do you mean that? For if you do, then as surely as God is above us both, I will never sit here again.

  “Answer me,” he insisted when she remained standing in silence. A long shudder passed through his wife’s body.

  “He was . . . a better husband . . . the man who sat there before you.” Her words were barely audible.

  “Guard your tongue now, Kristin!” Erlend took a few steps toward her.

  She straightened up with a start. “Go ahead and strike me. I’ve endured it before, and I can bear it now.”

  “I had no intention of . . . striking you.” He stood leaning on the table. Again they stared at each other, and his face had that oddly unfamiliar calm she had seen only a few times before. Now it drove her into a rage. She knew she was in the right; what Erlend had said was foolish and irresponsible, but that expression of his made her feel as if she were utterly wrong.

  She gazed at him, and feeling sick with anguish at her own words, she said, “I fear that it won’t be my sons that will thrive once more among your lineage in Trøndelag.”

  Erlend turned blood red.

  “You couldn’t resist reminding me of Sunniva Olavsdatter, I see.”

  “I wasn’t the one to mention her name. You did.”

  Erlend blushed even more.

  “Haven’t you ever thought, Kristin, that you weren’t entirely without blame in that . . . misfortune? Do you remember that evening in Nidaros? I came and stood by your bed. I was terribly meek and sad about having grieved you, my wife. I came to beg your forgiveness for my wrong. You answered me by saying that I should go to bed where I had slept the night before.”

  “How could I know that you had slept with the wife of your kinsman?”

  Erlend was silent for a moment. His face turned white and then red again. Abruptly he turned on his heel and left the room without a word.

  Kristin didn’t move. For a long time she stood there motionless, with her hands clasped under her chin, staring at the candle.

  Suddenly she lifted her head and let out a long breath. For once he had been forced to listen.

  Then she became aware of the sound of horse hooves out in the courtyard. She could tell from its gait that a horse was being led out of the stable. She crept over to the door and out onto the gallery and peered from behind the post.

  The night had already turned a pale gray. Out in the courtyard stood Erlend and Ulf Haldorssøn. Erlend was holding his horse, and she saw that the animal was saddled and her husband was dressed for travel. The two men talked for a moment, but she couldn’t make out a single word. Then Erlend swung himself up into the saddle and began riding north, at a walking pace, toward the manor gate. He didn’t look back but seemed to be talking to Ulf, who was striding along next to the horse.

  When they had disappeared between the fences, she tiptoed out, ran as soundlessly as she could up to the gate, and stood there listening. Now she could hear that Erlend had let Soten begin trotting along the main road.

  A little later Ulf came walking back. He stopped abruptly when he caught sight of Kristin at the gate. For a moment they stood and stared at each other in the gray light. Ulf had bare feet in his shoes and was wearing a linen tunic under his cape.

  “What is it?” his mistress asked heatedly.

  “Surely you must know, for I have no idea.”

  “Where was he riding off to?” she asked.

  “To Haugen.” Ulf paused. “Erlend came in and woke me. He said he wanted to ride there tonight, and he seemed in a great hurry. He asked me to see to it that certain things were sent to him up there later on.”

  Kristin fell silent for a long time.

  “He was angry?”

  “He was calm.” After a moment Ulf said quietly, “I fear, Kristin . . . I wonder if you might have said what should have been best left unspoken.”

  “Surely Erlend for once should be able to stand hearing me speak to him as if he were a sensible man,” said Kristin vehemently.

  They walked slowly down the hill. Ulf turned toward his own house, but she followed him.

  “Ulf, kinsman,” she implored him anxiously. “In the past you were the one who told me morning and night that for the sake of my sons I had to steel myself and speak to Erlend.”

  “Yes, but I’ve grown wiser over the years, Kristin. You haven’t,” he replied in the same tone of voice.

  “You offer me such solace now,” she said bitterly.

  He placed his hand heavily on the woman’s shoulder, but at first he didn’t speak. As they stood there, it was so quiet they could both hear the endless roar of the river, which they usually didn’t notice. Out across the countryside the roosters were crowing, and the cry of Kristin’s own rooster echoed from the stable.

  “Yes, I’ve had to learn to ration out the solace sparingly, Kristin. There’s been a cruel shortage of it for several years now. We have to save it up because we don’t know how long it might have to last.”

  She tore herself away from his hand. With her teeth biting her lower lip, she turned her face away. And then she fled back to the hearth house.

  The morning was icy cold. She wrapped her cloak tightly around her and pulled the hood up over her head. With her dew-drenched shoes tucked up under her skirts and her crossed arms resting on her knees, she huddled at the edge of the cold hearth to think. Now and then a tremor passed over her face, but she did not cry.

  She must have fallen asleep. She started up with an aching back, her body frozen through and stiff. The door stood ajar. She saw that sunlight filled the courtyard.

  Kristin went out onto the gallery. The sun was already high; from the fenced pasture below she could hear the bell of the horse that had gone lame. She looked toward the new storehouse. Then she noticed that Munan was standing up on the loft gallery, peering out from between the posts.

  Her sons. It raced through her mind. What had they thought when they woke up and saw their parents’ bed untouched?

  She ran across the courtyard and up to the child. Munan was wearing only his shirt. As soon as his mother reached him, he put his hand in hers, as if he were afraid.

  Inside the loft none of the boys was fully dressed; she realized that no one had woken them. All of them looked quickly at their mother and then glanced away. She picked up Munan’s leggings and began helping him to put them on.

  “Where’s Father?” asked Lavrans in surprise.

  “Your father rode north to Haugen early this morning,” she replied. She saw that the older boys were listening as she said, “You know he’s been talking about it so long, that he wanted to go up there to see to his manor.”

  The two youngest sons looked up into their mother’s face with wide, atonished eyes, but the five older brothers hid their gaze from her as they left the loft.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE DAYS PASSED. At first Kristin wasn’t worried. She didn’t want to ponder over what Erlend might have meant by his behavior—fleeing from home like that in the middle of the night in a fit of rage—or how long he intended to stay north on his upland farm, punishing her with his absence. She was furious at her husband, but perhaps most furious because she couldn’t deny that she too had been wrong and had said things she sincerely wished had not been said.

  Certainly she had been wrong many times before, and in anger she had often spoken mean and vile words to her husband. But what offended her most bitterly was that Erlend would never offer to forget and forgive unless she first humbled herself and asked him meekly to do so. She didn’t think she had let her temper get the better of her very often; couldn’t he see that it was usually when she was tired and worn out with sorrows and anguish, which she had tried to bear alone? That was when she could easily lose mastery over her feelings. She thought Erlend might have remembered, after all the years of worry she had borne about the future of their sons, that during the past summer she had twice endured a terrible agony over Naakkve. Her e
yes had been opened to the fact that after the burdens and toil of a young mother comes a new kind of fear and concern for the aging mother. Erlend’s carefree chatter about having no fear for the future of his sons had angered her until she felt like a wild she-bear or like a bitch with pups. Erlend could go ahead and say that she was like a female dog with her children. She would always be alert and vigilant over them for as long as she had breath in her body.

  If, for that reason, he chose to forget that she had stood by him every time it mattered, with all her strength, and that she had been both reasonable and fair, in spite of her anger, when he struck her and when he betrayed her with that hateful, loose woman from Lensvik, then she could do nothing to stop him. Even now, when she thought about it, she couldn’t feel much anger or bitterness toward Erlend over the worst of the wrongs he had done her. Whenever she turned on him to complain about that, it was because she knew that he regretted it himself; he knew it was a great offense. But she had never been so angry with Erlend—nor was she now—that she didn’t feel sorrow for the man himself when she remembered how he struck her or betrayed her, with everything that followed afterward. She always felt that with these outbursts of his unruly spirit he had sinned more against himself and the well-being of his own soul than he had against her.

  What continued to vex her were all the small wounds he had caused her with his cruel nonchalance, his childish lack of patience, and even the wild and thoughtless kind of love he gave her whenever he showed that he did indeed love her. And during all those years when her heart was young and tender, when she realized that neither her health nor her strength of will would be sufficient—as she sat with her arms full of such defenseless little children—if their father, her husband, didn’t show that he was both capable and loving enough to protect her and the young sons in her arms. It had been such torment to feel her body so weak, her mind so ignorant and inexperienced, and yet not dare rely on the wisdom and strength of her husband. She felt as if she had suffered deep wounds back then, which would never heal. Even the sweet pleasure of lifting up her infant, placing his loving mouth to her breast, and feeling his warm, soft little body in her arms was soured by fear and uneasiness. So small, so defenseless you are, and your father doesn’t seem to remember that above all else he needs to keep you safe.

  Now that her children had gained marrow in their bones and mettle in their spirits but still lacked the full wisdom of men, now he was luring them away from her. They were whirling away from her, both her husband and all her sons, with that strange, boyish playfulness which she seemed to have glimpsed in all the men she had ever met and in which a somber, fretful woman could never participate.

  For her own sake then she felt only sorrow and anger when ever she thought about Erlend. But she grew fearful when she wondered what her sons were thinking.

  Ulf had gone up to Dovre with two packhorses and taken Erlend the things he had sent for: clothing and a good many weapons, all four of his bows, sacks of arrowpoints and iron bolts, and three of his dogs. Munan and Lavrans wept loudly when Ulf took the small, short-haired female with the silky soft, drooping ears. It was a splendid foreign animal which the abbot of Holm had given to Erlend. That their father should own such a rare dog seemed, more than anything else, to elevate him above all other men in the eyes of the two young boys. And their father had promised that when the dog had pups, they would each be allowed to choose one from the litter.

  When Ulf Haldorssøn returned, Kristin asked him whether Erlend had mentioned when he intended to come back home.

  “No,” said Ulf. “It looks like he means to settle in up there.”

  Ulf volunteered little else about his journey to Haugen. And Kristin had no desire to ask.

  In the fall, when they moved from the new storeroom into other quarters, her oldest sons said that this winter they wanted to sleep upstairs in the high loft. Kristin granted them permission to do so; she would sleep alone with the two youngest boys in the main room below. On the first evening she said that now Lavrans could sleep in her bed as well.

  The boy lay in bed, rolling around with delight and burrowing into the ticking. The children were used to having their beds made up on a bench, with leather sacks filled with straw and furs to wrap around them. But in the beds there was blue ticking to lie on and fine coverlets as well as furs, and their parents had white linen cases on their pillows.

  “Is it just until Father comes home that I can sleep here?” asked Lavrans. “Then we’ll have to move back to the bench, won’t we, Mother?”

  “Then you can sleep in the bed with Naakkve and Bjørgulf,” replied his mother. “If the boys don’t change their minds, that is, and move back downstairs when the weather turns cold.” There was a little brick fireplace up in the loft, but it produced more smoke than heat, and the wind and cold were felt much more in the upper story.

  As the fall wore on, an uncertain fear crept over Kristin; it grew from day to day, and the strain was difficult to bear. No one seemed to have heard from Erlend or seen him.

  During the long, dark autumn nights she would lie awake, listening to the even breathing of the two little boys, noting the swirl of the wind around the corners of the house, and thinking about Erlend. If only he wasn’t staying at that particular farm.

  She hadn’t been pleased when the two cousins had begun talking about Haugen. Munan Baardsøn was visiting them at the hostel in Oslo on one of the last evenings before their departure. Back then Munan had inherited sole ownership of the small manor of Haugen from his mother. Both he and Erlend had been quite drunk and boisterous, and while she sat there feeling tormented by their talk of that place of misfortune, Munan suddenly gave Erlend the farm—so that he wouldn’t be entirely bereft of land in Norway. This happened amid much bantering and laughter; they even jested about the rumors that no one could live at Haugen because of the ghosts. The horror that Sir Munan Baardsøn had harbored in his heart ever since the violent death of his mother and her husband up there now seemed to have eased somewhat.

  He ended up giving Erlend the deed and documents to Haugen. Kristin couldn’t hide her displeasure that he had become the owner of that ignominious place.

  But Erlend merely jested, “It’s unlikely that either you or I will ever set foot in those buildings—if they’re still standing, that is, and haven’t collapsed. And surely neither Aunt Aashild nor Herr Bjørn will bring us the land rent themselves. So it shouldn’t matter to us if it’s true what people say, that they still haunt the place.”

  The year came to an end, and Kristin’s thoughts were always circling around one thing: How was Erlend doing up north at Haugen? She grew so reticent that she barely spoke a word to her children or the servants except when she had to answer their questions. And they were reluctant to address their mistress unless it was absolutely necessary, for she gave such curt and impatient replies when they interrupted and disturbed her restless, anxious brooding. She was so unaware of this herself that when she finally noticed that the two youngest children had stopped asking her about their father or talking about him, she sighed and concluded that children forget so quickly. But she didn’t realize how often she had scared them away with her impatient words when she told them to keep quiet and stop plaguing her.

  To her oldest sons she said very little.

  As long as the hard frost lasted, she could still tell strangers who passed by the manor and asked for her husband that he was up in the mountains trying his luck at hunting. But then a great snowfall descended upon both the countryside and the mountains during the first week of Advent.

  Early in the morning on the day before Saint Lucia’s Day, while it was still pitch-dark outside and the stars were bright, Kristin came out of the cowshed. She saw by the light of a pine torch stuck in a mound of snow that three of her sons were putting on their skis outside the door of the main house. And a short distance away stood Gaute’s gelding with snowshoes under its feet and packs on its back. She guessed where they were headed, so s
he did-n’t dare say a word until she noticed that one of the boys was Bjør-gulf; the other two were Naakkve and Gaute.

  “Are you going out skiing, Bjørgulf? But it’s going to be clear today, son!”

  “As you can see, Mother, I am.”

  “Perhaps you’ll all be home before the holy day?” she asked helplessly. Bjørgulf was a very poor skier. He couldn’t tolerate the brilliance of the snow in his eyes and spent most of the winter indoors. But Naakkve replied that they might be gone for several days.

  Kristin went home feeling fearful and uneasy. The twins were cross and sullen, so she realized that they had wanted to go along but their older brothers had refused to take them.

  Early on the fifth day, around breakfast time, the three boys returned. They had left before dawn for Bjørgulf’s sake, said Naakkve, in order to reach home before the sun came up. The two of them went straight up to the high loft; Bjørgulf looked dead tired. But Gaute carried the bags and packs into the house. He had two handsome pups for the small boys, who at once forgot all about their questions and grievances. Gaute seemed embarrassed but tried not to show it.

  “And this,” he said as he took something out of a sack, “this Father asked me to give to you.”

  Fourteen marten pelts, exceedingly beautiful. Kristin took them, greatly confused; she couldn’t utter a single word in reply. There were far too many things she wanted to ask, but she was afraid of being overwhelmed if she opened even the smallest part of her heart. And Gaute was so young.

  She could only manage to say, “They’ve already turned white, I see. Yes, we’re deep into the winter half of the year now.”

  When Naakkve came downstairs and he and Gaute sat down to the porridge bowl, Kristin quickly told Frida that she would take food to Bjørgulf up in the loft herself. It occurred to her that she might be able to talk about things with the taciturn boy, who she knew was much more mature in spirit than his brothers.