Cecilia said in a low tone: “Aslak has heard something—at home in the Hamar country. There was some talk about Mother, that time she was young, about a clerk or a pupil in the school. He disappeared, and some thought that Father might have had a finger in it—”
“Are you not ashamed?” whispered Eirik indignantly. “Do you and Aslak pay heed to folks’ gossip about your parents—?”
“You yourself have said he was hard on her.”
“I was only a child when she died—what I thought of the things I saw counts for nothing. Perhaps that was what weighed most heavily on him—to endure his marriage with patience. They were so unlike, and she was ailing from her youth. God must judge between the two. Without sin no man goes through life.”
Eirik rose, took a few paces toward the door of the closet, and came back to his sister. “It may be as well that I tell you now—I had meant to announce it to you and Aslak at the funeral ale. When Father is committed to the earth, I shall go back to the convent. So that all he leaves behind him will be yours—except that which Eldrid and I will give for the repose of his soul.”
Cecilia was silent a long while.
“Is Eldrid at one with you in this?” she asked at last, a little incredulously.
“Yes. She goes to Gimsöy. Whether she will take the veil I know not—she knows not yet herself. But she will take the vow of chastity and dwell there.”
“Is it for Father’s soul you do this?” asked his sister again.
“Ay, and for my own.” And for Jörund. And for you and your children. For all of us who are rebellious and defiant, when God lays a heavy burden upon us, and who forget Him wholly or in part when He showers His bounties upon us.—This he left unsaid.
“Have you told him this?”
“No. Father was never a man to care much for words and promises. Time enough for him to see it after he is dead.”
A moment later Cecilia started up—they heard Gunnar screaming outside in the courtyard. His mother hurried out. Eirik went into the closet to the sick man. In the dim light he saw that Olav lay with one eye open—he was hot and his breath was laboured, but Eirik guessed that he was conscious—and wondered whether the old man had heard anything; he looked at him so strangely—
Olav had lain awake and had heard sentence passed on his own life by the mouth of his son. Meanwhile an image hovered before his vision—it was the frenzy of fever, but not so violent that he did not know it for what it was. He saw a cornfield, overgrown with tares and thistles, willow-herb and brambles—the weeds flaunted their red and yellow flowers in the sun, and the corn was so choked by them that none could tell that the ground had been sown. But out in the field there walked owe—sometimes he thought it was his guardian angel, but sometimes it was Eirik—a friend who did not ask whether the dying man had done him wrong, but thought only of gathering up the poor ears of corn that he could save among the thistles. It should not have been so, his life should have been like a cornfield swaying clean and bright and ready for the sickle. But one there was who had been able to find a handful of good corn and would lay it in the balance—
Kolbein came to the door and eagerly announced that now they could see Sira Magne’s roan horse down by the bridge. Eirik lighted the candles, gave one to the boy, and they went out.
The crag that rose behind the line of outhouses seemed to stand out vaster and more immovable now that it was bathed in the late yellow sunlight. The firs shone with their hard red trunks and branches washed light after the winter’s snow, and above was the burning blue vault of heaven. Eirik thought that never before had he seen so plainly how infinitely deep was the ocean of sky, and against this depth the firm rock was more rock and the firs were more intensely firs than he had ever guessed before. The wakeful Eye that watched over all rested upon every single one of the midges that danced before him in the air and knew every pulse-beat in his body. And in the likeness of the bread He came, borne by the priest on the great horse that was now mounting the hill by the barn, to give Himself as food for His own.
The groom who led the horse rang the little silver bell; the house-folk had come out and were kneeling in the yard. Cecilia had her little son in her arms, Aslak and the boys by her side. Kolbein and Eirik knelt before the door of the house with their candles, whose flames were almost invisible in the sunshine. Eirik knew that the fire that now consumed him was destined to die down, to hide beneath the ashes, to blaze up again in bright flames, but never would it be quenched within him.
At the funeral feast for Olav Audunsson, Eirik announced his and his wife’s determination, and at midsummer he and Eldrid had made division of their estate. He accompanied her to Gimsöy, and thence he went straight to Oslo and resumed the habit of the order in the Minorite convent. The ceremony was a quiet one this time, on a weekday morning during one of the first masses. No others of his family were in church than Aslak Gunnarsson and Cecilia. This time his sister seemed less opposed to her brother’s turning monk.
Aslak and his wife husbanded the Hestvik estate so well that all Olav’s grandchildren were abundantly provided for—Cecilia had three sons and three daughters by her second husband. Of Jörund’s sons, Kolbein and Audun turned out well; Torgils was a wild lad, but he was drowned at an early age.
Eirik always impressed it upon the youths, when they visited him at the convent, that their worldly prosperity was a reward for their grandfather’s pious and manly life, and he could quote many sayings from Scripture to this effect. The boys were fond of him and had great respect for him; they had never known him except as a barefoot friar. And he was a pious friar, diligent in tending the sick, whether in body or soul; book-learning he also acquired with years, and he was the convent’s gardener most of his time. But his nephews knew from what they heard among the neighbours that in his youth Eirik had a name for being somewhat wild. Cecilia never spoke to her children of her brother’s former life.
Olav’s fame among men was not so lustrous as Eirik would fain have made it—all the young folk knew that well. A bold warrior he had been and a good, honest franklin, but odd and unsociable, a joyless companion in a joyful gathering.
The great pestilence came and made riddance in the family, but it was still numerous after the sickness had passed. Its ravages were not so severe in the south as in the north country. In the Minorite convent of Oslo not much more than the half of the brethren died, but in the house of the order at Nidaros only two monks were left. It was therefore decided that Brother Eirik Olavsson and three young friars from Oslo should be transferred thither. Eirik was then threescore years old, strong and hale, though he had always treated himself with great rigour. But the friars were exposed to violent storms in crossing the mountains, and a few days after he had arrived at his new convent Eirik expired in the arms of his brethren.
SIGRID UNDSET
Sigrid Undset is a major figure in early twentieth-century literature. A Norwegian born in Denmark in 1881, she worked with the Norwegian underground during the Second World War, fled to Sweden in 1940, and later came to the United States. She is the author of many works of fiction as well as several books for young readers and a number of nonfiction titles. Her novels encompass a variety of settings and time periods, ranging from medieval romances such as the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy—generally considered to be her masterwork—and The Master of Hestviken tetralogy to modern novels such as The Winding Road, Ida Elisabeth, and The Faithful Wife. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928. Sigrid Undset died in 1949.
Books by Sigrid Undset
The Master of Hestviken Series
The Axe
The Snake Pit
In the Wilderness
The Son Avenger
Kristin Lavransdatter Trilogy
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wife
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross
BOOKS BY SIGRID UNDSET
The Kristin Lavransdatter Series
&nb
sp; The acknowledged masterpiece of the Nobel Prize–winning Norwegian novelist Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter has never been out of print in this country since its first publication in 1927. Its story of a woman’s life in fourteenth-century Norway has kept its hold on generations of readers, and the heroine, Kristin—beautiful, strong-willed, and passionate—stands with the world’s great literary figures.
THE BRIDAL WREATH
Volume I
Volume I, The Bridal Wreath, describes young Kristin’s stormy romance with the dashing Erlend Nikulaussön, a young man perhaps overly fond of women, of whom her father strongly disapproves.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-394-475299-0
THE MISTRESS OF HUSABY
Volume II
Volume II, The Mistress of Husaby, tells of Kristin’s troubled and eventful married life on the great estate of Husaby, to which her husband has taken her.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-394-75293-8
THE CROSS
Volume III
Volume III, The Cross, shows Kristin still indomitable, reconstructing her world after the devastation of the Black Death and the loss of almost everything that she has loved.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-394-75291-4
The Master of Hestviken Series
THE AXE
Volume I
Set in thirteenth-century Norway, a land racked by political turmoil and bloody family vendettas, The Axe is the first volume in Sigrid Undset’s epic tetralogy, The Master of Hestviken. In it we meet Olav Audunsson and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter, who were betrothed as children and raised as brother and sister. Now, in the heedlessness of youth, they become lovers, unaware that their ardor will forge the first link in a chain of murder, exile, and disgrace.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75273-8
THE SNAKE PIT
Volume II
Olav Audunsson and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter became lovers when they were barely beyond childhood and endured a long and bitter separation before they could wed. Now they are beginning what each hopes will be a new life—but in Ingunn’s past lies the shame of an illegitimate child and in Olav’s past lies murder. And the guilt they carry may prove more destructive of their happiness than all the years they spent as outcasts. In conveying both the emotional immediacy of Olav and Ingunn’s love and the epic sweep of their story, The Snake Pit is a masterly recreation of a vanished world tainted by bloodshed and haunted by sin and retribution.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75554-8
IN THE WILDERNESS
Volume III
In the third volume of her medieval epic, Sigrid Undset plunges readers into a world that is at once profoundly alien yet inhabited by men and women as recognizable as our own kin. Heartbroken by the death of his wife and estranged from a son who may not be his, Olav leaves Hestviken on a journey of adventure, temptation, and remorse that leads him to a bloody reckoning at the gates of Oslo. Vividly, poignantly, and with the fierce grandeur of a Norse folktale, In the Wilderness portrays the terrible conflicts of a man who is both sinner and penitent in an age that lies on the cusp of savagery and faith.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75553-1
THE SON AVENGER
Volume IV
As a young man Olav Audunsson committed two murders for love. Now he has outlived his enemies and the woman he killed for. But in the last years of his life, Olav must watch his grown children—and particularly his rebellious son Erik—reenact the sins of his youth, with even more fearful consequences. Powerfully written and filled with magnificent vignettes of the daily life of a medieval estate, The Son Avenger suggests a Greek tragedy whose vision of fate coexists with a Christian sense of suffering and forgiveness.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75552-4
VINTAGE BOOKS
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