Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

  Then the men started discussing whether they should see about sending word back south to Dyfrin once they reached Roaldstad. But Simon had his objections. He didn’t want to worry his wife with such a message when it might be unnecessary; a sleigh ride in this bitter cold would be ill advised. Perhaps, when they were home at Formo . . . They should wait and see. He tried to smile at Sigurd to cheer up the young servant, who looked quite frightened and distressed.

  “But you can send word to Kristin at Jørundgaard as soon as we reach home. She’s so skilled at healing.” His tongue felt as thick and stiff as wood as he spoke.

  Kiss me, Kristin, my betrothed! At first she would think he was speaking in delirium. No, Kristin. Then she would be surprised.

  Erlend had understood. Ramborg had understood. But Kristin . . . She sat there with her sorrow and rancor, and yet as angry and bitter as she now felt toward that man Erlend, she still had no thoughts for anyone else but him. You’ve never cherished me enough, Kristin, my beloved, that you might consider how difficult it would be for me when I had to be a brother to the woman who was once meant to be my wife.

  He hadn’t realized it himself back then, when he parted from her outside the convent gate in Oslo: that he would continue to think about her in this way. That he would end up feeling as if nothing he had acquired afterward in life were an equal replacement for what he had lost back then. For the maiden who had been promised to him in his youth.

  She would hear this before he died. She would give him one kiss.

  I am the one who loved you and who loves you still.

  He had once heard those words, and he had never been able to forget them. They were from the Virgin Mary’s book of miracles, a saga about a nun who fled from her convent with a knight. The Virgin saved them in the end and forgave them in spite of their sin. If it was a sin that he said this to his wife’s sister before he died, then God’s Mother would grant him forgiveness for this as well. He had so seldom troubled her by asking for anything. . . .

  I didn’t believe it myself back then: that I would never feel truly happy or merry again . . .

  “No, Simon, it’s too great a burden for Sokka if she has to carry both of us . . . considering how far she has had to travel tonight,” he said to the person who had climbed up behind him on the horse and was supporting him. “I can see that it’s you, Sigurd, but I thought it was someone else.”

  Toward morning they reached the pilgrims’ hostel, and the two monks who were in charge tended to the ill man. After he had revived a little under their care and the feverish daze had abated, Simon Andressøn insisted on borrowing a sleigh to continue northward.

  The roads were in good condition; they changed horses along the way, journeyed all night, and arrived at Formo the following morning, at dawn. Simon had lain and dozed under all the covers that someone had spread over him. He felt so weighted down—sometimes he felt as if he were being crushed under heavy boulders—and his head ached terribly. Now and then he seemed to slip away. Then the pain would begin raging inside him again; it felt as if his body were swelling up more and more, growing unimaginably big and about to burst. There was a constant throbbing in his arm.

  He tried to walk from the sleigh to the house, with his good arm around Jon’s shoulder and Sigurd walking behind to support him. Simon sensed that the faces of the men were gray and grimy with weariness; they had spent two nights in a row in the saddle. He wanted to say something to them about it, but his tongue refused to obey him. He stumbled over the threshold and fell full length into the room—with a roar of pain as his swollen and misshapen arm struck against something. The sweat poured off him as he choked back the moans that rose up as he was undressed and helped into bed.

  Not long afterward he noticed that Kristin Lavransdatter was standing next to the fireplace, grinding something with a pestle in a wooden bowl. The sound kept thudding right through his head. She poured something from a small pot into a goblet and added several drops from a glass vial that she took out of a chest. Then she emptied the crushed substance from the bowl into the pot and set it next to the fire. Such a quiet and competent manner she had.

  She came over to the bed with the goblet in her hand. She walked with such ease. She was just as straight-backed and lovely as she had been as a maiden—this slender woman with the thin, somber face beneath the linen wimple. The back of his neck was also swollen, and it hurt when she slipped one arm under his shoulders to lift him up. She supported his head against her breast as she held the goblet to his lips with her left hand.

  Simon smiled a little, and as she cautiously let his head slip back down to the pillow, he seized hold of her hand with his good one. Her fine, slim woman’s hand was no longer soft or white.

  “I suppose you can’t sew silk with these fingers of yours anymore,” said Simon. “But they’re good and light—and how pleasantly cool your hand is, Kristin.” He placed it on his forehead. Kristin remained standing there until she felt her palm grow warm; then she removed it and gently pressed her other hand against his burning brow, up along the hairline.

  “Your arm has a nasty wound, Simon,” she said, “but with God’s help it will mend.”

  “I’m afraid that you won’t be able to heal me, Kristin, no matter how skilled you are with medicines,” said Simon. But his expression was almost cheerful. The potion began to take effect; he felt the pain much less. But his eyes felt so strange, as if he had no control over them. He thought he must be lying there with each eye squinting in opposite directions.

  “No doubt things will go with me as they must,” he said in the same tone of voice.

  Kristin went back to her pots; she spread a paste on some linen cloths and then came over and wrapped the hot bandages around his arm, from the tips of his fingers all the way around his back and across his chest, where the swelling splayed out in red stripes from his armpit. It hurt at first, but soon the discomfort eased. She spread a woolen blanket on top and placed soft down pillows under his arm. Simon asked her what she had put on the bandages.

  “Oh, various things—mostly comfrey and swallowwort,” said Kristin. “If only it was summer, I could have picked them fresh from my herb garden. But I had a plentiful supply; thanks be to God I haven’t needed them earlier this winter.”

  “What was it you once told me about swallowwort? You heard it from the abbess when you were at the convent . . . something about the name.”

  “Do you mean that in all languages it has a name that means ‘swallow,’ all the way from the Greek sea up to the northern lands?”

  “Yes, because it blossoms everywhere when the swallows awake from their winter slumber.” Simon pressed his lips together more firmly. By then he would have been in the ground for a long time.

  “I want my resting place to be here, at the church, if I should die, Kristin,” he said. “I’m such a rich man by now that someday Andres will most likely possess considerable power here at Formo. I wonder if Ramborg will have a son after I’m gone, in the spring. I would have liked to live long enough to see two sons on my estate.”

  Kristin told him she had sent word south to Dyfrin that he was gravely ill—with Gaute, who had ridden off that morning.

  “You didn’t send that child off alone, did you?” asked Simon with alarm.

  There was no one at hand whom she thought could manage to keep up with Gaute riding Rauden, she told him. Simon said it would surely be a difficult journey for Ramborg; if only she wouldn’t travel any faster than she could bear. “But I would like to see my children . . .”

  Sometime later he began talking about his children again. He mentioned Arngjerd, wondering whether he might have been wrong not to accept the offer from the people of Eiken. But the man seemed too old to him, and he had been afraid that Grunde could turn out to be violent when he was drunk. He had always wanted to place Arngjerd in the most secure of circumstances. Now it would be Gyrd and Gudmund who would decide on her marriage. “Tell my brothers, Kristin, that I sent them m
y greetings and that they should tend to this matter with care. If you would take her back to Jørundgaard for a while, I would be most grateful, as I lie in my grave. And if Ramborg should remarry before Arngjerd’s place is assured, then you must take her in, Kristin. You mustn’t think that Ramborg has been anything but kind toward her, but if she should end up with both a stepmother and a stepfather, I’m afraid she would be regarded more as a servant girl than a . . . You remember that I was married to Halfrid when I became her father.”

  Kristin gently placed her hand on top of Simon’s and promised she would do all she could for the maiden. She remembered everything she had seen of how difficult they were situated, those children who had a nobleman for a father and were conceived in adultery. Orm and Margret and Ulf Haldorssøn. She stroked Simon’s hand over and over.

  “It’s not certain that you will die this time, you know, brother-in-law,” she said with a little smile. A glimmer of the sweet and tender smile of a maiden could still pass over her thin, stern woman’s face. You sweet, young Kristin.

  Simon’s fever was not as high that evening, and he said the pain was less. When Kristin changed the bandage on his arm, it was not as swollen, but his skin was darker, and when she cautiously pressed it, the marks from her fingers stayed for a moment.

  Kristin sent the servants off to bed. She allowed Jon Daalk, who insisted on keeping watch over his master, to lie down on a bench in the room. She moved the chest with the carved back over next to the bed and sat down, leaning against the corner. Simon dozed and slept. Once when he woke up, he noticed that she had found a spindle. She was sitting erect, having stuck the distaff with the wool under her left arm, and her fingers were twining the yarn as the spindle dropped lower and lower beside her long, slender lap. Then she rolled up the yarn and began spinning again as the spindle dropped. He fell asleep watching her.

  When he awoke again, toward morning, she was sitting in the same position, spinning. The light from the candle, which she had placed so the bed hangings would shield him, fell directly on her face. It was so pale and still. Her full, soft lips were narrow and pressed tight; she was sitting with her eyes lowered as she spun. She couldn’t see that he was lying awake and staring at her in the shadow of the bed hangings. She looked so full of despair that Simon felt as if his heart were bleeding inside him as he lay there looking at her.

  She stood up and went over to tend the fire. Without a sound. When she came back, she peeked behind the bed hangings and met his open eyes in the dark.

  “How are you feeling now, Simon?” she asked gently.

  “I feel fine . . . now.”

  But he seemed to notice that it felt tender under his left arm too, and under his chin when he moved his head. No, it must be just something he imagined.

  Oh, she would never think that she had lost anything by rejecting his love; for that matter, he might as well tell her about it. It wasn’t possible for that to make her any more melancholy. He wanted to say it to her before he died—at least once: I have loved you all these years.

  His fever rose again. And his left arm was hurting after all.

  “You must try to sleep some more, Simon. Perhaps you will soon feel better,” she said softly.

  “I’ve slept a great deal tonight.” He began talking about his children again: the three he had and loved so dearly and the one who was still unborn. Then he fell silent; the pain returned much worse. “Lie down for a while, Kristin. Surely Jon can sit with me for a time if you think it necessary for someone to keep watch.”

  In the morning, when she took off the bandage, Simon replied calmly to her desperate expression: “Oh no, Kristin, there was already too much festering and poison in my arm, and I was chilled through before I came into your hands. I told you that I didn’t think you could heal me. Don’t be so sad about it, Kristin.”

  “You shouldn’t have made such a long journey,” she said faintly.

  “No man lives longer than he is meant to live,” replied Simon in the same voice. “I wanted to come home. There are things we must discuss: how everything is to be arranged after I’m gone.”

  He chuckled. “All fires burn out sooner or later.”

  Kristin gazed at him, her eyes shiny with tears. He had always had so many proverbs on his lips. She looked down at his flushed red face. The heavy cheeks and the folds under his chin seemed to have sunk, lying in deep furrows. His eyes seemed both dull and glistening, but then clarity and intent returned to them. He looked up at her with the steady, searching glance that had been the most constant expression in his small, sharp, steel-gray eyes.

  When daylight filled the room, Kristin saw that Simon’s face had grown pinched around the nose. A white streak stretched downward on either side to the corners of his mouth.

  She walked over to the little glass-paned window and stood there, swallowing her tears. A golden-green light sparkled and gleamed in the thick coating of frost on the window. Outside, it was no doubt as beautiful a day as the whole week had been.

  It was the mark of death. . . . She knew that.

  She went back and slid her hand under the coverlet. His ankles were swollen all the way up to his calves.

  “Do you want me—do you want me to send for Sira Eirik now?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Yes, tonight,” replied Simon.

  He had to speak of it before he confessed and received the last rites. Afterward he must try to turn his thoughts in another direction.

  “It’s odd that you should be the one who will probably have to tend to my body,” said Simon. “And I’m afraid I won’t be a particularly handsome corpse.”

  Kristin forced back a sob. She moved away to prepare another soothing potion.

  But Simon said, “I don’t like these potions of yours, Kristin. They make my thoughts so muddled.”

  After a while he asked her to give him a little all the same. “But don’t put so much in it that it will make me drowsy. I have to talk to you about something.”

  He took a sip and then lay waiting for the pain to ease enough that he would have the strength to talk to her clearly and calmly.

  “Don’t you want us to bring Sira Eirik to you, so he can speak the words that might give you comfort?”

  “Yes, soon. But there is something I must say to you first.”

  He lay in silence for a while. Then he said, “Tell Erlend Niku laussøn that the words I spoke to him the last time we parted—those words I have regretted every day since. I behaved in a petty and unmanly fashion toward my brother-in-law that night. Give him my greetings and tell him . . . beg him to forgive me.”

  Kristin sat with her head bowed. Simon saw that she had turned blood red under her wimple.

  “You will give this message to your husband, won’t you?” he asked.

  She gave a small nod.

  Then Simon went on. “If Erlend doesn’t come to my funeral, you must seek him out, Kristin, and tell him this.”

  Kristin sat mutely, her face dark red.

  “You wouldn’t refuse to do what I ask of you, now that I’m about to die, would you?” asked Simon Andressøn.

  “No,” she whispered. “I will . . . do it.”

  “It’s not good for your sons, Kristin, that there is enmity between their father and mother,” Simon continued. “I wonder whether you’ve noticed how much it torments them. It’s hard for those lively boys, knowing that their parents are the subject of gossip in the countryside.”

  Kristin replied in a harsh, low voice, “Erlend left our sons—not I. First my sons lost their foothold in the regions where they were born into noble lineage and property. If they now have to bear having gossip spread about them here in the valley, which is my home, I am not to blame.”

  Simon lay in silence for a moment. Then he said, “I haven’t forgotten that, Kristin. There is much you have a right to complain about. Erlend has managed poorly for his children. But you must remember, if that plan of his had been carried out, his sons would now be well prov
ided for, and he himself would be among the most powerful knights in the realm. The man who fails in such a venture is called a traitor to his king, but if he succeeds, people speak quite differently. Half of Norway thought as Erlend did back then: that we were poorly served by sharing a king with the Swedes and that the son of Knut Porse was probably made of stronger stuff than that coddled boy, if we could have won over Prince Haakon in his tender years. Many men stood behind Erlend at the time and tugged on the rope along with him; my own brothers did so, and many others who are now called good knights and men with coats of arms. Erlend alone had to fall. And back then, Kristin, your husband showed that he was a splendid and courageous man, even though he may have acted otherwise, both before and since.”

  Kristin sat in silence, trembling.

  “I think, Kristin, that if this is the reason you’ve said bitter words to your husband, then you must take them back. You should be able to do it, Kristin. Once you held firmly enough to Erlend; you refused to listen to a word of truth about his behavior toward you when he acted in a way I never thought an honorable man would act, much less a highborn gentleman and a chivalrous retainer of the king. Do you remember where I found the two of you in Oslo? You could forgive Erlend for that, both at the time and later on.”

  Kristin replied quietly, “I had cast my lot with his by then. What would have become of me afterward if I had parted my life from Erlend’s?”

  “Look at me, Kristin,” said Simon Darre, “and answer me truthfully. If I had held your father to his promise and chosen to take you as you were . . . If I had told you that I would never remind you of your shame, but I would not release you . . . What would you have done then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Simon laughed harshly. “If I had forced you to celebrate a wedding with me, you would never have taken me willingly into your arms, Kristin, my fair one.”