Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

  The first of the nuns to fall ill was Sister Inga, a woman Kristin’s age, almost fifty, and yet she was so terrified of death that it was a horror to see and hear. The chills came over her in church during mass; shaking, her teeth chattering, she crawled on her hands and knees as she begged and implored God and the Virgin Mary to spare her life. A moment later she lay prostrate with a burning fever, in agony, with blood seeping out of her skin. Kristin’s heart was filled with dread; no doubt she would be just as pitifully frightened when her turn came. It was not just the fact that death was certain, but it was the horrifying fear that accompanied death from the plague.

  Then Fru Ragnhild herself fell ill. Kristin had sometimes wondered how this woman had come to be chosen for the high position of abbess. She was a quiet, slightly morose old woman, uneducated and apparently without great spiritual gifts. And yet when death placed its hand on her, she showed that she was a true bride of Christ. In her the illness erupted in boils. She refused to allow her spiritual daughters to unclothe her old body, but the swelling finally grew as big as an apple under one arm, and she had boils under her chin; they turned hard and blood-red, becoming black in the end. She endured unbearable agony from them and burned with fever, but each time her mind would clear, she lay in bed like an example of holy patience—sighing to God, asking forgiveness for her sins, and uttering beautiful, fervent prayers for her convent and her daughters, for all those who were sick and sorrowful, and for the peace of everyone’s soul, who would now have to leave this life. Even Sira Eiliv wept after he had given her the viaticum; his steadfast and tireless zeal in the midst of all the misery had otherwise been a thing of wonder. Fru Ragnhild had already surrendered her soul into God’s hands many times and prayed that He would take the nuns under His protection when the boils on her body began to split open. But this turned out to be a turn toward life, and later others experienced the same thing: Those who were stricken with boils gradually recovered, while those stricken with bloody vomiting all died.

  Because of the example of the abbess and because they had witnessed a plague victim who did not die, the nuns seemed to find new courage. They now had to do the milking and chores in the cowshed themselves; they cooked their own food, and they brought back juniper and fresh evergreen branches for the cleansing smoke. Everyone did whatever task needed doing. They nursed the sick as best they could and handed out healing remedies: their supplies of theriac and calamus root were gone, but they doled out ginger, pepper, saffron, and vinegar against the sickness, along with milk and food. When the bread ran out, they baked at night; when the spices were gone, people had to chew on juniper berries and pine needles against the sickness. One by one the sisters succumbed and died. Night and day the bells for the dead rang from the convent church and from the parish church in the heavy air, for the unnatural fog hung on; there seemed to be a secret bond between the haze and the pestilence. Sometimes it became a frosty mist, drizzling down needles of ice and half-frozen sleet, covering the fields with rime. Then mild weather would set in, and the fog returned. People took it as an evil omen that all the seabirds had suddenly disappeared. They usually flocked by the thousands along the stream that flows through the countryside from the fjord and resembles a river in the low stretches of meadow but widens into a lake with salt water north of Rein Convent. In their place came ravens in unheard-of numbers. On every stone along the water sat the black birds in the fog, uttering their hideous shrill cries, while flocks of crows more numerous than anyone had ever seen before settled in all the forests and groves and flew with loathsome shrieks over the wretched land.

  Once in a while Kristin would think of her own family—her sons, who were spread so far and wide, the grandchildren she would never see; little Erlend’s golden neck would hover before her eyes. But they seemed to grow distant and faded. Now it almost seemed as if all people were equally close and distant to each other in this time of great need. And she had her hands full all day long; it now served her well that she was used to all sorts of work. While she sat and did the milking, starving little children whom she had never seen before would suddenly appear beside her, and she seldom even thought to ask where they were from or how things were back home. She gave them food and took them into the chapter hall or some other room where a fire was lit or tucked them into bed in the dormitory.

  With a feeling of wonder she noticed that in this time of great misfortune, when it was more necessary than ever for everyone to attend to their prayers with vigilance, she never had time to collect her thoughts to pray. She would sink to her knees in front of the tabernacle in the church whenever she had a free moment, but she could manage nothing more than wordless sighs and dully murmured Pater nosters and Ave Marias. She wasn’t aware of it herself, but the nunlike demeanor and manners she had assumed over the past two years swiftly began to fall away; she again became like the mistress she had been in the past, as the flock of nuns diminished, the routines of the convent were abandoned, and the abbess still lay in bed, weak and with her tongue partially paralyzed. And the work mounted for the few who were left to tend to everything.

  One day she happened to hear that Skule was still in Nidaros. The members of his crew had either died or fled, and he hadn’t been able to find new men. He was well, but he had cast himself into a wild life, just as many young people, out of despair, had done. They said that whoever was afraid would be sure to die, and so they blunted their fear with carousing and drinking, playing cards, dancing, and carrying on with women. Even the wives of honorable townsmen and young daughters from the best of families ran off from their homes during these evil times. In the company of wanton women they would revel in the alehouses and taverns among the dissolute men. God forgive them, thought Kristin, but she felt as if her heart was too weary to grieve over these things properly.

  And apparently even in the villages there was plenty of sin and depravity. They heard little about it at the convent because there they had no time to waste on such talk. But Sira Eiliv, who went everywhere, ceaselessly and tirelessly tending to the sick and dying, told Kristin one day that the agony of people’s souls was worse than that of their bodies.

  Then one evening they were sitting around the fireplace in the convent hall, the little group of people left alive at Rein Convent. Huddled around the fire were four nuns and two lay sisters, an old beggar and a half-grown boy, two women who received alms from the convent, and several children. On the high seat bench, above which a large crucifix could be glimpsed in the dusk hanging on the light-colored wall, lay the abbess with Sister Kristin and Sister Turid sitting at her head and feet.

  It was nine days since the last death had occurred among the sisters and five days since anyone had died in the convent or the nearest houses. The plague seemed to be waning throughout the countryside as well, said Sira Eiliv. For the first time in three months a glimmer of peace and security and comfort fell over the silent, weary people sitting there. Old Sister Torunn Marta let her rosary sink into her lap and took the hand of the little girl standing at her knee.

  “What do you think she could mean? Well, child, now we seem to be seeing that Mary, the Mother of God, never withdraws her mercy from her children for long.”

  “No, it’s not the Virgin Mary, Sister Torunn. It’s Hel. She’ll leave the parish, taking her rakes and brooms, when they sacrifice an innocent man at the gate of the cemetery. By tomorrow she’ll be far away.”

  “What can she mean?” asked the nun, again uneasy. “Shame on you, Magnhild, for spreading such loathsome, heathen gossip. You deserve to taste the rod for that. . . .”

  “Tell us what you mean, Magnhild. Don’t be afraid.” Sister Kristin was standing behind them; her voice sounded strained. She had suddenly remembered that in her youth she had heard Fru Aashild talk about dreadful, unmentionably sinful measures which the Devil tempted desperate men to try.

  The children had been down in the grove near the parish church at twilight, and some of the boys had wandered over to a sod h
ut that stood there; they had spied on several men who were making plans. It seemed that these men had captured a small boy named Tore, the son of Steinunn from down by the shore. That night they were going to sacrifice him to Hel, the plague giantess. The children began talking eagerly, proud to have sparked the attention of the grown-ups. It didn’t seem to occur to them to feel pity for this poor Tore; he was a sort of outcast who roamed the countryside, begging, but never came near the convent. When Sira Eiliv or any of the abbess’s envoys went looking for his mother, she would flee or refuse to talk to them, no matter whether they spoke to her kindly or sternly. She had spent ten years living in the alleyways of Nidaros, but then she acquired a sickness that disfigured her so badly that finally she could no longer earn a living in the manner she had before. And so she had come to the parish and lived in a hovel out on the shore. Occasionally a beggar or the like would move in and share her hut for a time. Who the father of her boy might be, she herself didn’t know.

  “We must go out there,” said Kristin. “We can’t just sit here while Christian souls sell themselves to the Devil right on our doorstep.”

  The nuns whimpered. They were the worst men of the parish, coarse, ungodly fellows, and surely the latest calamity and despair must have turned them into regular demons. If only Sira Eiliv was home, they lamented. Ever since the onset of the plague, the priest’s position had changed, and the sisters expected him to do everything.

  Kristin wrung her hands. “If I have to go alone . . . Mother, may I have your permission to go out there myself?”

  The abbess gripped her arm so tightly that she gave a little cry. The old woman, who was unable to speak, struggled to her feet; by gesturing she made them understand that she wanted to be dressed to go out. She demanded to be given the gold cross, the symbol of her office, and her staff. Then she held on to Kristin’s arm since she was the youngest and strongest of the women. All the nuns stood up and followed.

  Passing through the door of the little room between the chapter hall and the church choir, they stepped out into the raw, cold winter night. Fru Ragnhild began shivering, and her teeth chattered. She still sweated incessantly from the illness, and the sores left by the plague boils were not fully healed; walking caused her great pain. But she snarled angrily and shook her head when the sisters implored her to turn around. She gripped Kristin’s arm harder, and shaking with cold, she trudged ahead of them through the garden. As their eyes grew used to the dark, the women glimpsed light patches of withered leaves scattered beneath their feet and a pale scrap of cloudy sky above the bare crowns of the trees. Drops of cold water trickled down, and gusts of wind murmured faintly. Sluggish and heavy, the drone of the fjord sighed against the shore beyond the cliffs.

  At the bottom of the garden was a small gate; the sisters shuddered at the shriek of the rusted iron bolt as Kristin struggled to shove it open. Then they crept onward through the grove, down toward the parish church. They caught a glimpse of the tarred timber shape, darker against the night, and they saw the roof and ridge turret with its animal-head carvings and cross on the top against the pale gleam of the clouds above the slopes on the other side of the fjord.

  Yes, there were people in the cemetery; they sensed their presence rather than saw or heard anything. Now a low, faint gleam of light appeared, as if from a lantern standing on the ground. Something moved in the darkness nearby.

  The nuns huddled together, whimpering faintly under their whispered prayers; they took several steps forward, stopped to listen, and moved forward again. They had almost reached the cemetery gate.

  Then out of the darkness they heard the shrill cry of a child’s voice: “Hey, stop, you’re getting dirt on my bread!”

  Kristin let go of the abbess’s arm and ran forward, through the churchyard gate. She pushed aside several shadowy men’s backs, stumbled on piles of shoveled dirt, and came to the edge of the open grave. She fell to her knees, bent down, and pulled out the little boy who was standing in the bottom, still complaining because there was earth on the good piece of lefse he had been given for sitting still in the pit.

  The men were frightened out of their wits and ready to flee. Several were stomping in place; Kristin could see their feet in the light from the lantern on the ground. Then she thought that one of them seemed about to leap at her. At that moment the grayish-white habits of the nuns came into view, and the group of men stood there, in confusion.

  Kristin still held the boy in her arms; he was crying for his lefse. She set him down, picked up the bread, and brushed it off.

  “Here, eat it. Now your bread is as good as ever. And you men should go on home.” The quaver in her voice forced her to pause for a moment. “Go home and thank God that you were saved before you committed an act you might never be able to atone for.” Now she spoke the way a mistress speaks to her servants: kindly, but as if it would never occur to her that they might disobey. Without thinking, several of the men turned toward the gate.

  Then one of them shouted, “Wait a minute, don’t you see it’s a matter of life itself, maybe even all we own? Now that these overstuffed monks’ whores have stuck their noses in it, we can’t let them leave here to talk about what went on!”

  None of the men moved, but Sister Agata began shrieking and yelling, with sobs in her voice, “Oh, sweet Jesus, my bridegroom. I thank you for allowing us, your servant maidens, to die for the glory of your name!”

  Fru Ragnhild shoved her sternly aside, staggered forward, and picked up the lantern from the ground. No one raised a hand to stop her. When she lifted it up, the gold cross on her breast glittered. She stood leaning on her staff and slowly shone the light down the line, giving a slight nod to each man as she looked at him. Then she gestured to Kristin that she wished her to speak.

  Kristin said, “Go home in peace, dear brothers. Have faith that the worthy Mother and these good sisters will be as merciful as God and the honor of His Church will allow them to be. But move aside now so that we might take away this child, and then each of you should return to your own home.”

  The men stood there, irresolute. Then one of them shouted in the greatest agitation, “Isn’t it better to sacrifice one than for all of us to perish? This boy here, who belongs to no one—”

  “He belongs to Christ. Better for all of us to perish than for us to harm one of his children.”

  But the man who had spoken first began yelling again. “Stop saying words like that or I’ll stuff them back into your mouth with this.” He waved his knife in the air. “Go home, go to bed, and ask your priest to comfort you, and keep silent about this—or I swear by the name of Satan that you’ll find out it was the worst thing you’ve ever done, trying to meddle in our affairs.”

  “You don’t have to shout so loudly for the one you mentioned to hear you, Arntor. Be assured that he isn’t far away,” said Kristin calmly. Several of the men seemed to grow fearful and involuntarily crept closer to the abbess holding the lantern. “The worst thing, for both us and for you, would have been if we had stayed home while you went about building your home in the hottest Hell.”

  But the man, Arntor, cursed and raged. Kristin knew that he hated the nuns because his father had mortgaged his farm to them in order to pay penalties for murder and blood guilt with his wife’s niece. Now he continued slinging out the Fiend’s most hateful lies about the sisters, accusing them of sins so black and unnatural that only the Devil himself could have put such thoughts into a man’s mind.

  The poor nuns, terrified and weeping, bowed under the vicious words, but they stood stalwartly around the old abbess, and she held the lantern in the air, shining it at the man and gazing calmly at his face as he raged.

  But anger flared up inside Kristin like the flames of a newly lit fire.

  “Silence! Have you lost your senses? Or has God struck you blind? Should we dare breathe a word under His admonishment? We who have seen His wedded brides stand up to the sword that was drawn for the sake of the world’s sins? They kept
vigil and prayed while we sinned and forgot our Creator every single day; they shut themselves inside the fortress of prayer while we roamed through the world, urged on by avarice for treasures, both great and small, for our own pleasure and our own anger. But they came out to us when the angel of death was sent among us; they gathered up the ill, the defenseless, and the poor. Twelve of our sisters have died from this sickness; all of you know this. Not one of them turned away, not one of them refused to pray for us all with sisterly love, until their tongues dried up in their mouths and their life blood ebbed out.”

  “How beautifully you speak about yourself and those like you—”

  “I am like you,” she screamed, beside herself. “I’m not one of the holy sisters. I am one of you.”

  “How submissive you’ve become, woman,” said Arntor derisively. “I see that you’re afraid. When the end comes, you’ll be saying you’re like her, the mother of that boy.”

  “God must be the judge of that; he died for her as well as for me, and he knows us both. Where is she? Where is Steinunn?”

  “Go out to her hovel, and I’m sure you’ll find her there,” replied Arntor.

  “Yes, someone should send word to the poor woman that we have her boy here,” said Kristin to the nuns. “We can go out to see her tomorrow.”

  Arntor snickered, but another man shouted reluctantly, “No, no . . . She’s dead.” He told Kristin, “Fourteen days ago Bjarne went out to her place and bolted the door shut. She was lying there, close to death.”