Kristin Lavransdatter Read online

  She noticed that Helga was watching them. Then she took from her chest a large silver clasp. It was the one she had worn on her cloak the night that Bentein had confronted her on the road, and she had never wanted to wear it since. She went over to Helga and said softly, “I realize that you meant to show me kindness yesterday; you must believe I know that.” And she handed the clasp to Helga.

  Ingebjørg was also quite beautiful when she had finished dressing, wearing her green gown with a red silk cloak over her shoulders and her pretty, curly hair falling loose. They had been in a race to outdress each other, thought Kristin and laughed.

  The morning was cool and fresh with dew when the procession wound its way from Nonneseter, heading west toward Frysja. The haying season was almost over in that area, but along the fences grew clusters of bluebells and golden Maria-grass. The barley in the fields had sprouted spikes and rippled pale silver with a sheen of faint rose. In many places where the path was narrow and led through the fields, the grain brushed against people’s knees.

  Haakon walked in front, carrying the convent’s banner with the image of the Virgin Mary on blue silk cloth. Behind him walked the servants and corrodians, and then came Fru Groa and four old nuns on horseback, followed by the young maidens on foot; their colorful, secular feast attire shimmered and fluttered in the sun. Several corrodian women and a few armed men brought up the rear of the procession.

  They sang as they walked across the bright meadows, and whenever they met others on the side roads, the people would step aside and greet them respectfully. All across the fields small groups of people were walking and riding, heading toward the church from every house and farm. In a little while they heard behind them hymns sung by deep male voices, and they saw the cloister banner from Hovedø rise up over a hill. The red silk cloth gleamed in the sun, bobbing and swaying with the footsteps of the man who was bearing it.

  The mighty, sonorous voice of the bells drowned out the neighs and whinnies of the stallions as they came over the last hill to the church. Kristin had never seen so many horses at one time—a surging, restless sea of glossy equine backs surrounded the green in front of the entrance to the church. People dressed for the celebration were standing, sitting, and lying on the slope, but everyone stood up in greeting when the Maria banner from Nonneseter was carried in amongst them, and they all bowed deeply to Fru Groa.

  It looked as if more people had come than the church could hold, but an open space closest to the altar had been reserved for the people from the convent. A moment later the Cistercian monks from Hovedø came in and went up to the choir, and then song resounded throughout the church from the throats of men and boys.

  During the mass, when everyone had risen, Kristin caught sight of Erlend Nikulaussøn. He was tall, and his head towered above those around him. She saw his face from the side. He had a high, narrow forehead and a large, straight nose; it jutted out like a triangle from his face and was strangely thin, with fine, quivering nostrils. There was something about it that reminded Kristin of a skittish, frightened stallion. He was not as handsome as she thought she had remembered him; the lines in his face seemed to extend so long and somberly down to his soft, small, attractive mouth—oh yes, he was handsome after all.

  He turned his head and saw her. She didn’t know how long they continued to stare into each other’s eyes. Then her only thought was for the mass to be over; she waited expectantly to see what would happen next.

  As everyone began to leave the crowded church, there was a great crush. Ingebjørg pulled Kristin along with her, backward into the throng; they were easily separated from the nuns, who were the first to leave. The girls were among the last to approach the altar with their offering and then exit from the church.

  Erlend was standing outside, right next to the door, between the priest from Gerdarud and a stout, red-faced man wearing a magnificent blue velvet surcoat. Erlend was dressed in silk but in dark colors—a long, brown-and-black patterned surcoat and a black cape interwoven with little yellow falcons.

  They greeted each other and walked across the slope toward the spot where the men’s horses were tethered. As they exchanged words about the weather, the beautiful mass, and the great crowd of people in attendance, the fat, ruddy-faced gentleman—he wore golden spurs and his name was Sir Munan Baardsøn—offered his hand to Ingebjørg. He seemed to find the maiden exceedingly attractive. Erlend and Kristin fell behind; they walked along in silence.

  There was a great hubbub on the church hill as people began to ride off. Horses jostled past each other and people shouted, some of them angry, some of them laughing. Many of them rode in pairs—men with their wives behind them or children in front on the saddle—and young boys leaped up to ride with a friend. They could already see the church banners, the nuns, and the priest far below them.

  Sir Munan rode past; Ingebjørg was sitting in front of him, in his arms. They both shouted and waved.

  Then Erlend said, “My men are both here with me. They could take one of the horses and you could have Haftor’s—if you would prefer that?”

  Kristin blushed as she replied, “We’re so far behind the others already, and I don’t see your men, so . . .” Then she laughed and Erlend smiled.

  He leaped into the saddle and helped her up behind him. At home Kristin often sat sideways behind her father after she grew too old to sit astride the horse’s loins. And yet she felt a little shy and uncertain as she placed one of her hands over Erlend’s shoulder; with the other hand she supported herself against the horse’s back. Slowly they rode down toward the bridge.

  After a while Kristin felt that she ought to speak since he did not, and she said, “It was unexpected, sir, to meet you here today.”

  “Was it unexpected?” asked Erlend, turning his head around toward her. “Hasn’t Ingebjørg Filippusdatter brought you my greeting?”

  “No,” said Kristin. “I haven’t heard of any greeting. She has never mentioned you since that day when you came to our aid back in May,” she said slyly. She wanted Ingebjørg’s duplicity to come to light.

  Erlend didn’t turn around, but she could hear in his voice that he was smiling when he spoke again.

  “And what about the little black-haired one—the novitiate—I can’t remember her name. I even paid her a messenger’s fee to give you my greetings.”

  Kristin blushed, but then she had to laugh. “Yes, I suppose I owe it to Helga to tell you that she earned her pay,” she said.

  Erlend moved his head slightly, and his neck came close to her hand. Kristin shifted her hand at once to a place farther out on his shoulder. Rather uneasy, she thought that perhaps she had shown greater boldness than was proper, since she had come to this feast after a man had, in a sense, arranged to meet her there.

  After a moment Erlend asked, “Will you dance with me tonight, Kristin?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” replied the maiden.

  “Perhaps you think it might not be proper?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he went on. “It could be that it’s not. But I thought perhaps you might not think it would do any harm if you took my hand tonight. And by the way, it has been eight years since I took part in a dance.”

  “Why is that, sir?” asked Kristin. “Is it because you are married?” But then it occurred to her that if he were a married man, it would not have been seemly for him to arrange this rendezvous with her. So she corrected herself and said, “Perhaps you have lost your betrothed or your wife?”

  Erlend turned around abruptly and gave her a peculiar look. “Me? Hasn’t Fru Aashild . . .” After a moment he asked, “Why did you blush when you heard who I was that evening?”

  Kristin blushed again but did not reply.

  Then Erlend went on. “I would like to know what my aunt has told you about me.”

  “Nothing more than that she praised you,” said Kristin hastily. “She said you were handsome and so highborn that . . . she said that compared to a lineage such as yours and hers, we were o
f little consequence, my ancestors and I.”

  “Is she still talking about such things, there, where she now resides?” said Erlend with a bitter laugh. “Well, well, if it comforts her . . . And she has said nothing else about me?”

  “What else would she say?” asked Kristin. She didn’t know why she felt so strange and anxious.

  “Oh, she might have said . . . ,” replied Erlend in a low voice, his head bowed, “she might have said that I had been excommunicated and had to pay dearly for peace and reconciliation.”

  Kristin said nothing for a long time. Then she said quietly, “I’ve heard it said that there are many men who are not masters of their fortunes. I’ve seen so little of the world. But I would never believe of you, Erlend, that it was for any . . . ignoble . . . matter.”

  “God bless you for such words, Kristin,” said Erlend. He bent his head and kissed her wrist so fervently that the horse gave a start beneath them. When the animal was once again walking calmly, he said with great ardor, “Won’t you dance with me tonight, Kristin? Later I’ll tell you everything about my circumstances—but tonight let’s be happy together.”

  Kristin agreed, and they rode for a while in silence.

  But a short time later Erlend began asking about Fru Aashild, and Kristin told him everything she knew; she had much praise for her.

  “Then all doors are not closed to Bjørn and Aashild?” asked Erlend.

  Kristin replied that they were well liked and that her father and many others thought that most of what had been said of the couple was untrue.

  “What did you think of my kinsman, Munan Baardsøn?” asked Erlend with a chuckle.

  “I didn’t pay much heed to him,” said Kristin, “and it didn’t seem to me that he was much worth looking at anyway.”

  “Didn’t you know that he’s her son?” asked Erlend.

  “Fru Aashild’s son?” said Kristin in astonishment.

  “Yes, the children couldn’t take their mother’s fair looks, since they took everything else,” said Erlend.

  “I didn’t even know the name of her first husband,” said Kristin.

  “They were two brothers who married two sisters,” said Erlend. “Baard and Nikulaus Munansøn. My father was the older one; Mother was his second wife, but he had no children by his first wife. Baard, who married Aashild, wasn’t a young man either, and apparently they never got on well. I was a child when it all happened, and they kept as much from me as they could. But she left the country with Herr Bjørn and married him without the counsel of her kinsmen—after Baard was dead. Then people wanted to annul their marriage. They claimed that Bjørn had slept with her while her first husband was still alive and that they conspired together to get rid of my father’s brother. But they couldn’t find any proof of this, and they had to let the marriage stand. But they had to give up all their possessions. Bjørn had killed their nephew too—the nephew of my mother and Aashild, I mean.”

  Kristin’s heart was pounding. At home her parents had taken strict precautions to keep the children from hearing impure talk. But things had occurred in their village, too, that Kristin had heard about—a man who lived in concubinage with a married woman. That was adultery, one of the worst of sins. They were also to blame for the husband’s violent death, and then it was a case for excommunication and banishment. Lavrans had said that no woman had to stay with her husband if he had been with another man’s wife. And the lot of offspring from adultery could never be improved, even if the parents were later free to marry. A man could pass on his inheritance and name to his child by a prostitute or a wandering beggar woman, but not to his child from adultery—not even if the mother was the wife of a knight.

  Kristin thought about the dislike she had always felt toward Herr Bjørn, with his pallid face and his slack, corpulent body. She couldn’t understand how Fru Aashild could always be so kind and amenable toward the man who had lured her into such shame; to think that such a gracious woman could have allowed herself to be fooled by him. He was not even nice to her; he let her toil with all the work on the farm. Bjørn did nothing but drink ale. And yet Aashild was always so gentle and tender when she spoke to her husband. Kristin wondered whether her father knew about this, since he had invited Herr Bjørn into their house. Now that she thought about it, it seemed odd to her that Erlend would speak in this manner of his close kinsmen. But he probably thought that she knew about it already.

  “It would please me,” said Erlend after a moment, “to visit her, my Aunt Aashild, sometime—when I journey north. But is he still a handsome man, my kinsman Bjørn?”

  “No,” said Kristin. “He looks like a mound of hay that has lain on the ground all winter long.”

  “Ah yes, it must wear on a man,” said Erlend with the same bitter smile. “Never have I seen a more handsome man—that was twenty years ago, and I was only a small boy back then—but I have never seen his equal.”

  A short time later they reached the hospice. It was an enormous and grand estate with many buildings of both stone and wood: a hospital, an almshouse, a guest inn for travelers, the chapel, and the rectory. There was a great tumult in the courtyard, for food was being prepared for the banquet in the hospice’s cookhouse, and the poor and the sick guild members were also to be served the very best on that day.

  The guild hall was beyond the gardens of the hospice, and people were heading that way through the herb garden, for it was quite famous. Fru Groa had brought in plants that no one in Norway had ever heard of before and, besides that, all the plants that usually grew in such gardens seemed to thrive better in hers—flowers and cooking herbs and medicinal herbs. She was the most skilled woman in all such matters, and she had even translated herbals from Salerno into the Norwegian language. Fru Groa had been particularly friendly toward Kristin ever since she noticed that the maiden knew something of the art of herbs and wanted to know more about it.

  So Kristin pointed out to Erlend what plants were growing in the beds on both sides of the green lane as they walked. In the noonday sun there was a hot, spicy fragrance of dill and celery, onions and roses, southernwood and wallflowers. Beyond the shadeless, sun-baked herb garden, the rows of fruit trees looked enticingly cool; red cherries gleamed in the dark foliage, and apple trees bowed their branches, weighted down by green fruit.

  Surrounding the garden was a hedge of sweetbriar. There were still some roses left—they looked no different from other hedge roses, but the petals smelled of wine and apples in the heat of the sun. People broke off twigs and pinned them to their clothing as they passed. Kristin picked several roses too, tucking them into the circlet at her temples. She held one in her hand, and after a moment Erlend took it from her, without saying a word. He carried it for a while and then stuck it into the filigree brooch on his chest. He looked self-conscious and embarrassed, and did it so clumsily that he scratched his fingers and drew blood.

  In the banquet loft several wide tables had been set up: one for the men and one for the women along the walls. In the middle of the floor there were two tables where the children and the young people sat together.

  At the women’s table Fru Groa sat in the high seat; the nuns and most of the wives of high standing sat along the wall, and the unmarried women sat on the opposite bench, with the maidens from Nonneseter closest to the head of the table. Kristin knew that Erlend was looking at her, but she didn’t dare turn her head even once, either when they were standing or after they sat down. Not until they rose and the priest began to read the names of the deceased guild brothers and sisters did she cast a hasty glance toward the men’s table. She caught a glimpse of him as he stood near the wall, behind the burning candle on the table. He was looking at her.

  The meal lasted a long time with all of the toasts in honor of God, the Virgin Mary, and Saint Margareta, Saint Olav, and Saint Halvard, interspersed with prayers and hymns.

  Kristin could see through the open door that the sun had gone down; the sound of fiddles and songs could be heard
from out on the green, and the young people had already left the tables when Fru Groa said to the young daughters that now they might go out to play for a while, if they so pleased.

  Three red bonfires were burning on the green; around them moved the chains of dancers, now aglow, now in silhouette. The fiddlers were sitting on stacks of chests, bowing the strings of their instruments; they were playing and singing a different tune in each circle. There were far too many people to form only one dance. It was nearly dusk already; to the north the crest of the forested ridges stood coal-black against the yellowish green sky.

  People were sitting under the gallery of the loft, drinking. Several men leaped up as soon as the six maidens from Nonneseter came down the stairs. Munan Baardsøn ran up to Ingebjørg and dashed off with her, and Kristin was seized by the wrist—it was Erlend; she already knew his touch. He gripped her hand so tightly that their rings scraped against each other and bit into their flesh.

  He pulled her along to the farthest bonfire, where many children were dancing. Kristin took a twelve-year-old boy by the hand, and Erlend had a tiny, half-grown maiden on his other side.

  No one was singing in their circle just then—they walked and swayed from side to side, in time with the sound of the fiddle. Then someone shouted that Sivord the Dane should sing a new ballad for them. A tall, fair man with enormous fists stepped in front of the chain of dancers and performed his song:

  They are dancing now at Munkholm

  across the white sand.

  There dances Ivar Herr Jonsøn

  taking the Queen’s hand.

  Do you know Ivar Herr Jonsøn?

  The fiddle players didn’t know the tune; they plucked a little on the strings, and the Dane sang alone. He had a beautiful, strong voice.

  Do you remember, Danish Queen,

  that summer so clear

  when you were led out of Sweden

  and to Denmark here.