By Christmas she would have Erlend back home with her. When she sent word to him, he would have to return at once. The man wasn’t so rash that he would refuse to relent this time; he had to realize that she couldn’t possibly move up to Haugen, far from everyone, when she was no longer walking alone. But she would wait a little more before she sent word—even though it was certain enough—perhaps until she felt some sign of life. The second autumn that they lived at Jørundgaard, she had strayed from the road, as people called a miscarriage. But she had quickly taken solace. She was not afraid that it would happen again this time; it couldn’t possibly. And yet . . .
She felt as if she had to wrap her entire body protectively around this tiny, fragile life she carried under her heart, the way a person cups her hands like a shield around a little, newly lit flame.
One day late in the fall Ivar and Skule came and told her they wanted to ride up to see their father. It was fine weather up in the mountains, and they wanted to ask if they could stay with him and go hunting during these days of bare frost.
Naakkve and Bjørgulf were sitting at the chessboard. They paused to listen.
“I don’t know,” said Kristin. She hadn’t given any thought to who should carry her message. She looked at her two half-grown sons. She realized it was foolish, but she couldn’t manage to speak of it to them. She could tell them to take Lavrans along and then ask him to talk to his father alone. He was so young that he wouldn’t think it strange. And yet . . .
“Your father will soon be coming home,” she said. “You might end up delaying him. And soon I’ll be sending word to him myself.”
The twins sulked. Naakkve looked up from the chess game and said curtly, “Do as our mother says, boys.”
During Christmas she sent Naakkve north to Erlend. “You must tell him, son, that I am longing for him so greatly, as all of you must be too!” She didn’t mention the other news that had come about; she thought it likely that this grown lad would have noticed it. He would have to decide for himself whether he would speak of it to his father.
Naakkve returned without having seen his father. Erlend had gone to Raumsdal. He must have received word that his daughter and her husband were about to move to Bjørgvin, and that Margret wanted to meet with her father at Veøy.
That was reasonable enough. Kristin lay awake at night, now and then stroking Munan’s face as he slept at her side. She was sad that Erlend didn’t come for Christmas. But it was reasonable that he should want to see his daughter while he had the chance. She wiped away her tears as they slid down her cheeks. She was so quick to weep, just as she had been when she was young.
Just after Christmas, Sira Eirik died. Kristin had visited him at Romundgaard several times during the fall after he had taken to his bed, and she attended his funeral. Otherwise she never went out among people. She thought it a great loss that their old parish priest was gone.
At the funeral she heard that someone had met Erlend north at Lesja. He was on his way home to his farm. Surely he would come soon.
Several days later she sat on the bench under the little window, breathing on her hand mirror, which she had taken out, and rubbing it shiny so she could study her face.
She had been as suntanned as a peasant woman during the past few years, but now all trace of the sun had vanished. Her skin was white, with round, bright red roses on her cheeks, like in a painting. Her face had not been so lovely since she was a young maiden. Kristin sat and held her breath with wondrous joy.
At last they would have a daughter, as Erlend had wished for so dearly, if it turned out as the wise women said. Magnhild. They would have to break with custom this time and name her after his mother.
Part of a fairy tale she had once heard drifted through her mind. Seven sons who were driven high into the wilderness as outlaws because of an unborn little sister. Then she laughed at herself; she didn’t understand why she happened to think about that now.
She took from her sewing chest a shirt of the finest white linen, which she worked on whenever she was alone. She pulled out threads from the neckband and stitched birds and beasts on the loosely woven backing; it was years since she had done such fine embroidery. If only Erlend would come now, while it was still making her look beautiful: young and straight-backed, blushing and thriving.
Just after Saint Gregor’s Day the weather turned so lovely that it was almost like spring. The snow began to melt, gleaming like silver; there were already bare brown patches on the slopes facing south, and the mountains rose up from the blue haze.
Gaute was standing outside in the courtyard, repairing a sleigh that had fallen apart. Naakkve was leaning against the wall of the woodshed, watching his brother work. At that moment Kristin came from the cookhouse, carrying with both hands a large trough full of newly baked wheat bread.
Gaute glanced up at his mother. Then he threw the axe and wheel hubs into the sleigh, ran after her, and took the trough from her; he carried it over to the storehouse.
Kristin had stopped where she was, her cheeks red. When Gaute came back, she went over to her sons. “I think the two of you should ride up to your father in the next few days. Tell him that he is sorely needed here at home to take over the management from me. I have so little strength now, and I will be in bed in the middle of the spring farm work.”
The young boys listened to her, and they too blushed, but she could see that they were full of joy. Naakkve said, feigning nonchalance, “We might as well ride up there today, around midafternoon prayers. What do you think, brother?”
On the following day around noon Kristin heard horsemen out in the courtyard. It was Naakkve and Gaute; they were alone. They stood next to their horses, their eyes on the ground, not saying a word.
“What did your father say?” their mother asked.
Gaute stood leaning on his spear. He kept his eyes downcast.
Then Naakkve spoke. “Father asked us to tell you that he has been waiting for you to come to him every day this winter. And he said that you would be no less welcome than you were last time you saw him.”
The color came and went in Kristin’s face.
“Didn’t you mention to your father . . . that things are such with me that . . . it won’t be long before I have another child?”
Gaute replied without looking up, “Father didn’t seem to think that was any reason . . . that you shouldn’t be able to move to Haugen.”
Kristin stood there for a moment. “What did he say?” she then asked, her voice low and sharp.
Naakkve didn’t want to speak. Gaute lifted his hand slightly, casting a swift and beseeching glance at his brother. Then the older son spoke after all. “Father asked us to tell you this: You knew when the child was conceived how rich a man he was. And if he hasn’t grown any richer since, he hasn’t grown any poorer either.”
Kristin turned away from her sons and slowly walked back toward the main house. Heavy and weary, she sat down on the bench under the window from which the spring sun had already melted the ice and frost.
It was true. She had begged to sleep in his arms—at first. But it wasn’t kind of him to remind her of that now. She thought it wasn’t kind of Erlend to send her such a reply with their sons.
The spring weather held on. The wind blew from the south, and the rain lasted for a week. The river rose, becoming swollen and thunderous. It roared and rushed down the slopes; the snow plunged down the mountainsides. And then the sunshine returned.
Kristin was standing outside behind the buildings in the grayish blue of the evening. A great chorus of birdsong came from the thicket down in the field. Gaute and the twins had gone up to the mountain pastures; they were in search of blackcock. In the morning the clamor of the birds’ mating dance on the mountain slopes could be heard all the way down at the manor.
She clasped her hands under her breast. There was so little time left; she had to bear these last days with patience. She too had doubtless been stubborn and difficult to live with quite oft
en. Unreasonable in her worries about the children . . . For too long, as Erlend had said. Yet it seemed to her that he was being harsh now. But the day would soon arrive when he would have to come to her; surely he knew that too.
It was sunny and rainy by turns. One afternoon her sons called to her. All seven of them were standing out in the courtyard along with all the servants. Above the valley stretched three rainbows. The innermost one ended at the buildings of Formo; it was unbroken, with brilliant colors. The two outer ones were fainter and faded away at the top.
Even as they stood there, staring at this astonishing fair omen, the sky grew dark and overcast. From the south a blizzard of snow swept in. It began snowing so hard that soon the whole world had turned white.
That evening Kristin told Munan the story about King Snjo and his pretty white daughter, whose name was Mjøll, and about King Harald Luva, who was brought up by the Dovre giant inside the mountain north of Dovre. She thought with sorrow and remorse that it was years since she had sat and told stories to her children in this fashion. She felt sorry that she had offered Lavrans and Munan so little pleasure of this kind. And they would soon be big boys. While the others had been small, back home at Husaby, she had spent the evenings telling them stories—often, so often.
She saw that her older sons were listening too. She blushed bright red and came to a stop. Munan asked her to tell them more. Naakkve stood up and moved closer.
“Do you remember, Mother, the story about Torstein Uksafot and the trolls of Høiland Forest? Tell us that one!”
As she talked, a memory came back to her. They had lain down to rest and to have something to eat in the birch grove down by the river: her father and the hay harvesters, both men and women. Her father was lying on his stomach; she was sitting astride him, on the small of his back, and kicking him in the flanks with her heels. It was a hot day, and she had been given permission to go barefoot, just like the grown-up women. Her father was reeling off the members of the Høiland troll lineage: Jernskjold married Skjoldvor; their daughters were Skjolddis and Skjoldgjerd, whom Torstein Uksafot killed. Skjoldgjerd had been married to Skjoldketil, and their sons were Skjoldbjørn and Skjoldhedin and Valskjold, who wed Skjoldskjessa; they gave birth to Skjoldulf and Skjoldorm. Skjoldulf won Skjoldkatla, and together they conceived Skjold and Skjoldketil . . .
No, he had already used that name, cried Kolbjørn, laughing. For Lavrans had boasted that he would teach them two dozen troll names, but he hadn’t even made it through the first dozen. Lavrans laughed too. “Well, you have to understand that even trolls revive the names of their ancestors!” But the workers refused to give in; they fined him a drink of mead for them all. And you shall have it, said the master. In the evening, after they went back home. But they wanted to have it at once, and finally Tordis was sent off to get the mead.
They stood in a circle and passed the big drinking horn around. Then they picked up their scythes and rakes and went back to the hay harvesting. Kristin was sent home with the empty horn. She carried it in front of her in both hands as she ran barefoot through the sunshine on the green path, up toward the manor. Now and then she would stop, whenever a few drops of mead had collected in the curve of the horn. Then she would tilt it over her little face and lick the gilded rim inside and out, as well as her fingers, tasting the sweetness.
Kristin Lavransdatter sat still, staring straight ahead. Father! She remembered a tremor passing over his face, a paleness, the way a forest slope grows pale whenever a stormy gust turns the leaves of the trees upside down. An edge of cold, sharp derision in his voice, a gleam in his gray eyes, like the glint of a half-drawn sword. A brief moment, and then it would vanish—into cheerful, good-humored jest when he was young, but becoming more often a quiet, slightly melancholy gentleness as he grew older. Something other than deep, tender sweetness had resided in her father’s heart. She had learned to understand it over the years. Her father’s marvelous gentleness was not because he lacked a keen enough perception of the faults and wretchedness of others; it came from his constant searching of his own heart before God, crushing it in repentance over his own failings.
No, Father, I will not be impatient. I too have sinned greatly toward my husband.
On the evening of Holy Cross Day Kristin was sitting at the table with her house servants and seemed much the same as usual. But when her sons had gone up to the high loft to sleep, she quietly called Ulf Haldorssøn to her side. She asked him to go down to Isrid at the farm and ask her to come up to her mistress in the old weaving room.
Ulf said, “You must send word to Ranveig at Ulvsvold and to Haldis, the priest’s sister, Kristin. It would be most fitting if you sent for Astrid and Ingebjørg of Loptsgaard to take charge of the room.”
“There’s no time for that,” said Kristin. “I felt the first pangs just before midafternoon prayers. Do as I say, Ulf. I want only my own maids and Isrid at my side.”
“Kristin,” said Ulf somberly, “don’t you see what vile gossip may come of this if you creep into hiding tonight.”
Kristin let her arms fall heavily onto the table. She closed her eyes.
“Then let them talk, whoever wants to talk! I can’t bear to see the eyes of those other women around me tonight.”
The next morning her big sons sat in silence, their eyes lowered, as Munan talked on and on about the little brother he had seen in his mother’s arms over in the weaving room. Finally Bjørgulf said that he didn’t need to talk anymore about that.
Kristin lay in bed, merely listening; she felt as if she never slept so soundly that she wasn’t listening and waiting.
She got out of bed on the eighth day, but the women who were with her could tell that she wasn’t well. She was freezing, and then waves of heat would wash over her. On one day the milk would pour from her breasts and soak her clothes; the next day she didn’t have enough to give the child his fill. But she refused to go back to bed. She never let the child out of her arms; she never put him in the cradle. At night she would take him to bed with her; in the daytime she carried him around, sitting at the hearth with him, sitting on her bed, listening and waiting and staring at her son, although at times she didn’t seem to see him or to hear that he was crying. Then she would abruptly wake up. She would hold the boy in her arms and walk back and forth in the room with him. With her cheek pressed against his, she would hum softly to him, then sit down and place him to her breast, and sit there staring at him as she had before, her face as hard as stone.
One day when the boy was almost six weeks old, and the mother had not yet taken a single step across the threshold of the weaving room, Ulf Haldorssøn and Skule came in. They were dressed for travel.
“We’re riding north to Haugen now, Kristin,” said Ulf. “There has to be an end to this matter.”
Kristin sat mute and motionless, with the boy at her breast. At first she didn’t seem to comprehend. All of a sudden she jumped up, her face flushed blood red. “Do as you like. If you’re longing for your proper master, I won’t hold you back. It would be best if you drew your earnings now; then you won’t need to come back here for them later.”
Ulf began cursing fiercely. Then he looked at the woman standing there with the infant clutched to her bosom. He pressed his lips together and fell silent.
But Skule took a step forward. “Yes, Mother, I’m riding up to see Father now. If you’re forgetting that Ulf has been a foster father to all of us children, then you should at least remember that you can’t command and rule me as if I were a servant or an infant.”
“Can’t I?” Kristin struck him a blow to the ear so the boy staggered. “I think I can command and rule all of you as long as I give you food and clothing. Get out!” she shrieked, stomping her foot.
Skule was furious. But Ulf said quietly, “It’s better this way, my boy, better for her to be unreasonable and angry than to see her sitting and staring as if she had lost her wits to grief.”
Gunhild, her maid, came running after them. T
hey were to come at once to see her mistress in the weaving room. She wanted to talk to them and to all her sons. In a curt, sharp voice, Kristin asked Ulf to ride down to Breidin to speak with a man who had leased two cows from her. He should take the twins along with him, and there was no need to return home until the next day. She sent Naakkve and Gaute up to the mountain pastures. She wanted them to go to Illmanddal to see to the horse paddock there. And on their way up they were to stop by to see Bjørn, the tar-burner and Isrid’s son, and ask him to come to Jørundgaard that evening. It would do no good for them to object since tomorrow was the Sabbath.
The next morning, as the bells were ringing, the mistress left Jørundgaard, accompanied by Bjørn and Isrid, who carried the child. She had given them good and proper clothing, but for this first church visit after the birth Kristin herself was adorned with so much gold that everyone could see she was the mistress and the other two her servants.
Defiant and proud, she faced the indignant astonishment she felt directed at her from everyone on the church green. Oh yes, in the past she had come to church quite differently on such an occasion, accompanied by the most noble of women. Sira Solmund looked at her with unkind eyes as she stood before the church door with a taper in her hand, but he received her in his customary fashion.
Isrid had retreated into childhood by now and understood very little; Bjørn was an odd and taciturn man, who never interfered in anyone else’s affairs. These two were the godmother and godfather.
Isrid told the priest the child’s name. He gave a start. He hesitated. Then he pronounced it so loudly that it was heard by the people standing in the nave.
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