Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

  “I don’t know, Mother,” replied her son. A moment later he added, “It has been a hard struggle for Bjørgulf to submit to his cross and serve God. And it seemed to worry him when he heard you were here, that too many thoughts might be torn open.”

  Afterward she felt only deadly despair as she sat and looked at Nikulaus while he talked. His face was very sunburned, and his hands were worn with toil; he mentioned with a little smile that he had been forced to learn after all to guide a plow and use a sickle and scythe. She didn’t sleep that night in the hostel, and she hurried to church when the bells rang for matins. But the monks were standing so that she could see only a few faces, and her sons were not among them.

  The following day she walked in the garden with a lay brother who worked there, and he showed her all the rare plants and trees for which it was renowned. As they wandered, the clouds scattered, the sun emerged, and a fragrance of celery, onion, and thyme rose up; the large shrubs of yellow lilies and blue columbine that adorned the corners of the beds glittered, weighted down with raindrops. Then her sons appeared; both of them came out of the little arched doorway in the stone building. Kristin felt as if she had been given a foretaste of the joys of paradise when she saw the two tall brothers, dressed in light-colored attire, coming toward her along the path beneath the apple trees.

  But they didn’t talk much with each other; Bjørgulf said almost nothing the entire time. He had become an enormous man, now that he was full-grown. And it was as if the long separation had sharpened Kristin’s sight. For the first time she understood what this son of hers had had to struggle with and was doubtless still struggling with as he grew so big and strong in body, and his inner astuteness grew, but he felt his eyesight failing.

  Once he asked about his foster mother, Frida Styrkaarsdatter. Kristin told him that she was now married.

  “May God bless her,” said the monk. “She was a good woman; toward me she was a good and faithful foster mother.”

  “Yes, I think she was more of a mother to you than I was,” said Kristin sadly. “You felt little trace of my mother’s heart when such harsh trials were placed upon you in your youth.”

  Bjørgulf answered in a low voice, “And yet I thank God that the Devil never managed to bend me to such unmanliness that I should test your mother’s heart in such a manner, even though I was close to it. . . . But I saw that you were carrying much too heavy a burden, and aside from God it was Nikulaus here who saved me those times when I was about to fall to temptation.”

  No more was said about that, or about how they were faring at the monastery or that they had acted badly and brought disfavor upon themselves. But they seemed quite pleased when they heard of their mother’s intention to join the convent at Rein.

  After her morning prayers, when Kristin walked back through the dormitory and looked at the sisters, sleeping on the beds, two to each straw mattress, and wearing their robes, which they never took off, she would think how unlike these women she must be, since from their youth they had devoted themselves solely to serving their Creator. The world was a master from whom it was difficult to flee once a person had submitted to its power. Surely she would not have fled either, but she had been cast out, the way a harsh master chases a used-up vassal out the door. Now she had been taken in here, the way a merciful master takes in an old servant and out of compassion gives her a little work while he houses and feeds the worn-out and friendless old soul.

  From the nuns’ dormitory a covered gallery led to the weaving room. Kristin sat there alone, spinning. The sisters of Rein were famous for their flax. Those days during the summer and fall when all the sisters and lay sisters went out to work in the flax fields were like feast days at the convent, especially when they pulled up the ripe plants. Preparing, spinning, and weaving the flax and then sewing the cloth into clerical garments were the main activities of the nuns during their work hours. None of them copied or illustrated books as the sisters in Oslo had done with such great skill under the guidance of Fru Groa Guttormsdatter, nor did they practice much the artful work of embroidering with silk and gold threads.

  After some time Kristin was pleased to hear the sounds of the estate waking up. The lay sisters would go over to the cookhouse to prepare food for the servants; the nuns never touched food or drink until after the morning mass unless they were ill. When the bells rang for prime, Kristin would go over to the infirmary if anyone was sick, to relieve Sister Agata or one of the other nuns. Sister Turid, poor thing, often lay there.

  Then she would begin looking forward to breakfast, which was served after the third hour of prayer and the mass for the convent’s servants. Each day, with equal joy, Kristin would look forward to this noble and solemn meal. The refectory was built of wood, but it was a handsome hall, and all the women of the convent ate there together. The nuns sat at the highest table, where the abbess occupied the high seat, along with the three old women besides Kristin who were corrodians. The lay sisters were seated farther down. When the prayer was over, food and drink were brought in and everyone ate and drank in silence, with quiet and proper manners. While one of the sisters read aloud from a book, Kristin would think that if people out in the world could enjoy their meals with such propriety, it would be much clearer to them that food and drink are gifts from God, and they would be more generous toward their fellow Christians and think less about hoarding things for themselves and their own. But she herself had felt quite different back when she set out food for her flock of spirited and boisterous men who laughed and roared, while the dogs sniffed around under the table, sticking up their snouts to receive bones or blows, depending on what humor the boys were in.

  Visitors seldom came to Rein. An occasional ship with people from the noble estates might put in when they were sailing into or out of the fjord, and then men and their wives, with children and youths, would walk up to the cloister to bring greetings to a kinswoman among the sisters. There were also the envoys from the convent’s farms and fishing villages, and now and then messengers from Tautra. On the feast days that were celebrated with the most splendor—the feast days of the Virgin Mary, Corpus Christi Day, and the Feast of the Apostle Saint Andreas—people from the nearest villages on both sides of the fjord would come to the nuns’ church. Otherwise only the convent’s tenants and workers who lived close by would attend mass. They took up very little space in the vast church.

  And then there were the poor—the regular charity cases who received ale and drink on specific days when masses were said for the souls of the dead, as provided for in the testaments of wealthy people—and others who came up to Rein almost every day. They would sit against the cookhouse wall to eat and seek out the nuns when they came into the courtyard, telling the sisters about their sorrows and troubles. The ill, the crippled, and the leprous were always coming and going. There were many who suffered from leprosy, but Fru Ragnhild said that was always true of villages near the sea. Leaseholders came to ask for reductions or deferments in their payments, and then they always had much to report about setbacks and difficulties. The more wretched and unhappy the people were, the more openly and freely they talked to the sisters about their circumstances, although they usually gave others the blame for their misfortunes, and they spoke in the most pious of terms. It was no wonder that when the nuns rested or while they worked in the weaving room, their conversation should turn to the lives of these people. Yes, Sister Turid even told Kristin that when the nuns in the convent were supposed to deliberate about trade and the like, the discussion would often slip into talk about the people who were involved in the cases. Kristin could tell from the sisters’ words that they knew little more about what they were discussing than what they had heard from the people themselves or from the lay servants who had been out in the parish. They were very trusting, whether their subordinates spoke well of themselves or ill of their neighbors. And then Kristin would think with indignation about all the times she had heard ungodly lay people, yes, even a mendicant monk such a
s Brother Arngrim, accuse the convents of being nests of gossip and the sisters of swallowing greedily all rumors and unseemly talk. Even the very people who came moaning to Fru Ragnhild or any of the sisters who would speak to them, filling their ears with gossip, would berate the nuns because they discussed the cries that reached them from the outside world, which they themselves had renounced. She thought it was the same thing with gossip about the comfortable life of convent women; it stemmed from people who had often received an early breakfast from the sisters’ hands, while God’s servants fasted, kept vigil, prayed, and worked before they all gathered for the first solemn meal in the refectory.

  Kristin served the nuns with loving reverence during the time before her admittance to the order. She didn’t think she would ever be a good nun—she had squandered her abilities for edification and piety too much for that—but she would be as humble and faithful as God would allow her to be. It was late in the summer of A.D. 1349, she had been at Rein Convent for two years, and she was to take the vows of a nun before Christmas. She received the joyous message that both her sons would come to her ordination as part of Abbot Johannes’s entourage.

  Brother Bjørgulf had said, when he heard of his mother’s intention, “Now my dream will be realized. I’ve dreamed twice this year that before Christmas we both would see her, although it won’t be exactly as it was revealed to me, since in my dream I actually saw her.”

  Brother Nikulaus was also overjoyed. But at the same time Kristin heard other news about him that was not as good. He had laid hands on several farmers over by Steinker; they were in the midst of a dispute with the monastery about some fishing rights. When the monks came upon them one night as they were proceeding to destroy the monastery’s salmon pens, Brother Nikulaus had given one man a beating and thrown another into the river, at the same time sinning gravely with his cursing.

  CHAPTER 7

  A FEW DAYS later Kristin went to the spruce forest with several of the nuns and lay sisters to gather moss for green dye. This moss was rather rare, growing mostly on toppled trees and dry branches. The women soon scattered through the forest and lost sight of each other in the fog.

  This strange weather had already lasted for several days: no wind, a thick haze with a peculiar leaden blue color that could be seen out over the sea and toward the mountains whenever it lifted enough so that a little of the countryside became visible. Now and then it would grow denser, becoming a downpour; now and then it would disperse so much that a whitish patch would appear where the sun hovered amid the shrouded peaks. But an odd heavy bathhouse heat hung on, quite unusual for that region down by the fjord and particularly at that time of year. It was two days before the Feast of the Birth of Mary. Everyone was talking about the weather and wondering what it could mean.

  Kristin was sweating in the dead, damp heat, and the thought of the news she had heard about Naakkve was making her chest ache. She had reached the outskirts of the woods and come to the rough fence along the road to the sea; as she stood there, scraping moss off the rails, Sira Eiliv came riding toward home in the fog. He reined in his horse, said a few words about the weather, and they fell to talking. Then she asked the priest whether he knew anything about the incident with Naakkve, even though she knew it was futile. Sira Eiliv always pretended to know nothing about the private matters of the monastery at Tautra.

  “I don’t think you need to worry that he won’t come to Rein this winter because of that, Kristin,” said the priest. “For surely that’s what you fear?”

  “It’s more than that, Sira Eiliv. I fear that Naakkve was never meant to be a monk.”

  “Do you mean you would presume to judge about such things?” asked the priest with a frown. Then he got down from his horse, tied the reins to the fence, and bent down to slip under the railing as he gave the woman a steady, searching glance.

  Kristin said, “I fear that Naakkve finds it most difficult to submit to the discipline of the order. And he was so young when he entered the monastery; he didn’t realize what he was giving up or know his own mind. But everything that happened during his youth—losing his father’s inheritance and the discord that he saw between his father and mother, which ended with Erlend’s death—all this caused him to lose his desire to live in this world. But I never noticed that it made him pious.”

  “You didn’t? It may well be that Nikulaus has found it as difficult to submit to the discipline of the order as many a good monk has. He’s hot-tempered and a young man, perhaps too young for him to have realized, before he turned away from this world, that the world is just as harsh a taskmaster as any other lord, and in the end it’s a lord without mercy. Of that I think you yourself can judge, sister.

  “And if it’s true that Naakkve entered the monastery more for his brother’s sake than out of love for his Creator . . . Even so, I don’t think God will let it go unrewarded that he took up the cross on his brother’s behalf. Mary, the Mother of God, whom I know Naakkve has honored and loved from the time he was a little boy, will doubtless show him clearly one day that her son came down to this earth to be his brother and to carry the cross for him.

  “No . . .” The horse snuffled against the priest’s chest. He stroked the animal as he murmured, as if to himself, “Ever since he was a child, my Nikulaus has had remarkable capacities for love and suffering; I think he has the makings of a fine priest.

  “But you, Kristin,” he said, turning toward her. “It seems to me that you should have seen so much by now that you would put more trust in God the Almighty. Haven’t you realized yet that He will hold up each soul as long as that soul clings to Him? Do you think—child that you still are in your old age—that God would punish the sin when you must reap sorrow and humiliation because you followed your desire and your pride along pathways God has forbidden His children to tread? Will you say that you punished your children if they scalded their hands when they picked up the boiling kettle you had forbidden them to touch? Or the slippery ice broke beneath them when you had warned them not to go out there? Haven’t you noticed when the brittle ice broke beneath you? You were drawn under each time you let go of God’s hand, and you were rescued from the depths each time you called out to Him. Even when you defied your father and set your willfulness against his will, wasn’t the love that was the bond of flesh between you and your father consolation and balm for the heart when you had to reap the fruit of your disobedience to him?

  “Haven’t you realized yet, sister, that God has helped you each time you prayed, even when you prayed with half a heart or with little faith, and He gave you much more than you asked for. You loved God the way you loved your father: not as much as you loved your own will, but still enough that you always grieved when you had to part from him. And then you were blessed with having good grow from the bad which you had to reap from the seed of your stubborn will.

  “Your sons . . . Two of them He took when they were innocent children; for them you need never fear. And the others have turned out well—even if they haven’t turned out the way you would have liked. No doubt Lavrans thought the same about you.

  “And your husband, Kristin . . . May God protect his soul. I know you have chastised him in your heart both night and day because of his reckless folly. It seems to me that it must have been much harder for a proud woman to remember that Erlend Niku laussøn had taken you with him through shame and betrayal and blood guilt if you had seen even once that the man could act with cold intent. And yet I believe it was because you were as faithful in anger and harshness as in love that you were able to hold on to Erlend as long as you both lived. For him it was out of sight, out of mind with everything except you. May God help Erlend. I fear he never had the wits to feel true remorse for his sins, but the sins that your husband committed against you—those he did regret and grieve over. That was a lesson we dare to believe has served Erlend well after death.”

  Kristin stood motionless, without speaking, and Sira Eiliv said no more. He untied his reins and said, �
��May peace be with you.” Then he mounted his horse and rode away.

  Later, when Kristin arrived back at the convent, Sister Ingrid met her at the gate with the message that one of her sons had come to see her; he called himself Skule, and he was waiting at the speaking gate.

  He was conversing with his fellow seamen but leaped to his feet when his mother came to the door. Oh, she recognized her son by his agile movements: his small head, held high on his broad shoulders, and his long-limbed, slender figure. Beaming, she stepped forward to greet him, but she stopped abruptly and caught her breath when she saw his face. Oh, who had done such a thing to her handsome son?

  His upper lip was completely flattened; a blow must have crushed it, and then it had grown back flat and long and ruined, striped with shiny white scar tissue. It had pulled his mouth askew, so he looked as if he were always sneering scornfully. And his nose had been broken and then healed crooked. He lisped slightly when he spoke; he was missing a front tooth, and another one was blue-black and dead.

  Skule blushed under his mother’s gaze. “Could it be that you don’t know me, Mother?” He chuckled and touched a finger to his lip, not necessarily to point out his injury; it might simply have been an involuntary gesture.

  “We haven’t been parted so many years, my son, that your mother wouldn’t recognize you,” replied Kristin calmly, smiling without restraint.

  Skule Erlendssøn had arrived on a swift sailing ship from Bjørgvin two days before with letters from Bjarne Erlingssøn for the archbishop and the royal treasurer in Nidaros. Later that day mother and son walked down to the garden beneath the apple trees, and when they could finally talk to each other alone, Skule told his mother news of his brothers.

  Lavrans was still in Iceland; Kristin hadn’t even known that he’d gone there. Oh yes, said Skule, he had met his youngest brother in Oslo the previous winter at a meeting of the nobles; he was there with Jammaelt Halvardssøn. But the boy had always had a desire to go out and see the world, and so he had entered the service of the bishop of Skaalholt and left Norway.