Kristin Lavransdatter Read online

  Her father had given her a dress made of thick cotton fabric from the East; it was sky-blue with an intricate red flower pattern. This is what she put on. She brushed and combed out her hair, tying it back from her face with red silk ribbons. She wrapped a red silk belt tightly around her waist and slipped Erlend’s rings onto her fingers, all the while wondering whether he would find her beautiful.

  She had let the two dogs that had been up in the forest with Erlend sleep in the loft with her at night. Now she enticed them to come with her. She sneaked around the buildings and took the same path up through the outlying fields that she had used the day before.

  The forest meadow lay empty and still in the glare of the noonday sun. There was a hot fragrance coming from the spruce trees that surrounded it on all sides. The blazing sun and the blue sky seemed strangely close and harsh against the treetops.

  Kristin sat down in the shade at the edge of the clearing. She wasn’t disappointed at Erlend’s absence. She was sure that he would come, and she felt a peculiar joy at being allowed to sit there alone, the first to arrive.

  She listened to the soft buzz of insects across the yellow, scorched grass. She plucked off several dry, spice-scented flowers that she could reach without moving more than her hand. She twirled them between her fingers and sniffed at them; with her eyes wide open she sank into a kind of trance.

  She didn’t move when she heard a horse approaching from the forest. The dogs growled and raised their hackles; then they bounded up across the meadow, barking and wagging their tails. Erlend jumped down from his horse at the edge of the forest and let it go with a slap on its loins. Then he ran down toward Kristin with the dogs leaping around him. He grabbed their snouts with his hands and walked toward her between the two animals, which were elk-gray and wolflike. Kristin smiled and reached out her hand without getting up.

  Once, as she was looking down at his dark-brown head lying in her lap between her hands, a memory abruptly rose up before her. It stood there, clear and distant, the way a house far off on the slope of a ridge can suddenly emerge quite clearly from the dark clouds as it is struck by a ray of sunshine on a turbulent day. And her heart suddenly seemed filled with all of the tenderness that Arne Gyrdsøn had once wanted, back when she hardly even understood his words. Anxiously she drew the man to her, pressing his face against her breast, kissing him as if she were afraid that he might be taken from her. And when she looked at his head lying in her embrace, she thought it was like having a child in her arms. She hid his eyes with her hand and sprinkled little kisses over his mouth and cheek.

  The sun had disappeared from the meadow. The intense color above the treetops had deepened to a dark blue, spreading over the entire sky. There were small copper-red streaks in the clouds, like smoke from a fire. Bajard came toward them, gave a loud whinny, and then stood motionless, staring. A moment later the first lightning flashed, followed at once by thunder, not far away.

  Erlend stood up and took the reins of the horse. There was an old barn at the bottom of the meadow, and that’s where they headed. He tethered Bajard to some planks just inside the door. In the back of the barn was a mound of hay, and there Erlend spread out his cape. They sat down with the dogs at their feet.

  Soon the rain had formed a curtain in front of the doorway. The wind rushed through the forest and the rain lashed against the hillside. A moment later they had to move farther inside because of a leak in the roof.

  Every time there was lightning and thunder, Erlend would whisper, “Aren’t you afraid, Kristin?”

  “A little,” she would whisper back and then press closer to him.

  They had no idea how long they sat there. The storm passed over quite quickly, and they could still hear the thunder far away, but the sun was shining outside the door in the wet grass, and fewer and fewer glittering drops were falling from the roof. The sweet smell of hay grew stronger in the barn.

  “I have to go now,” said Kristin.

  And Erlend replied, “I suppose you do.” He put his hand on her foot. “You’ll get wet. You must ride, and I’ll walk. Out of the forest . . .” He gave her such a strange look.

  Kristin was trembling—she thought it was because her heart was pounding so hard—and her hands were clammy and cold. When he kissed the bare skin above her knee, she tried powerlessly to push him away. Erlend raised his face for a moment, and she was suddenly reminded of a man who had once been given food at the convent—he had kissed the bread they handed to him. She sank back into the hay with open arms and let Erlend do as he liked.

  She was sitting bolt upright when Erlend lifted his head from his arms. Abruptly he propped himself up on his elbow.

  “Don’t look like that, Kristin!”

  His voice etched a wild new pain into Kristin’s soul. He wasn’t happy—he was distressed too.

  “Kristin, Kristin . . .”

  And a moment later he asked, “Do you think I lured you out here to the woods because I wanted this from you, to take you by force?”

  She stroked his hair but didn’t look at him.

  “I wouldn’t call it force. No doubt you would have let me go as I came if I had asked you to,” she said softly.

  “I’m not sure of that,” he replied, hiding his face in her lap.

  “Do you think I will forsake you?” he asked fervently. “Kristin—I swear on my Christian faith—may God forsake me in my last hour if I fail to be faithful to you until I die.”

  She couldn’t say a word; she merely caressed his hair, over and over.

  “Now, surely, it must be time for me to go home,” she said at last, and she felt as if she were waiting with dread for his reply.

  “I suppose it is,” he said gloomily. He stood up quickly, went over to his horse, and began to untie the reins.

  Then Kristin stood up too—slowly, feeling faint and shattered. She didn’t know what she had expected him to do—perhaps help her up onto his horse and take her along with him so that she could avoid going back to the others. Her whole body seemed to be aching with astonishment—that this was the iniquity that all the songs were about. And because Erlend had done this to her, she felt as if she had become his possession, and she couldn’t imagine how she could live beyond his reach anymore. She was going to have to leave him now, but she could not conceive of doing so.

  Down through the woods he walked, leading the horse and holding Kristin’s hand in his, but they could think of nothing to say to each other.

  When they had gone so far that they could see the buildings of Skog, he said farewell.

  “Kristin, don’t be sad. Before you know it the day will come when you’ll be my wife.”

  But her heart sank as she spoke.

  “Then you have to leave me?” she asked fearfully.

  “As soon as you’ve left Skog,” he said, and his voice sounded more vibrant all at once. “If there’s no campaign, then I’ll speak to Munan. He’s been urging me for a long time to get married; I’m certain he’ll accompany me and speak to your father on my behalf.”

  Kristin bowed her head. For every word he spoke, the time that lay before her seemed longer and more impossible to imagine—the convent, Jørundgaard—it was as if she were floating in a stream that was carrying her away from everything.

  “Do you sleep alone in the loft, now that your kinsmen have gone?” asked Erlend. “If so, I’ll come and talk to you tonight. Will you let me in?”

  “Yes,” murmured Kristin. And then they parted.

  The rest of the day Kristin sat with her grandmother, and after the evening meal she helped the old woman into bed. Then she went up to the loft where she slept. There was a small window in the room, and Kristin sat down on the chest that stood beneath it; she had no desire to go to bed.

  She had to wait for a long time. It was pitch dark outside when she heard the quiet footsteps on the gallery. He tapped on the door with his cape wrapped around his knuckles, and Kristin stood up, drew back the bolt, and let Erlend in.
r />   She noticed that he was pleased when she threw her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him.

  “I was afraid you’d be angry with me,” he said.

  Some time later he said, “You mustn’t grieve over this sin. It’s not a great one. God’s law is not the same as the law of the land in this matter. Gunnulv, my brother, once explained it all to me. If two people agree to stand by each other for all eternity and then lie with each other, they are married before God and cannot break their vows without committing a great sin. I would tell you the word in Latin if I could remember it—I knew it once.”

  Kristin wondered what could have been the reason for Erlend’s brother to speak of this, but she brushed aside the nagging fear that it might have been about Erlend and someone else. And she sought solace in his words.

  They sat next to each other on the chest. Erlend put his arm around Kristin, and now she felt warm and secure—at his side was the only place she would ever feel safe and protected again.

  From time to time Erlend would say a great deal, speaking elat edly. Then he would fall silent for long periods, simply caressing her. Without knowing it, Kristin was gathering up from all he said every little thing that might make him more attractive and dear to her, and that would lessen his blame in all she knew about him that was not good.

  Erlend’s father, Sir Nikulaus, was so old when his children were born that he had neither the patience nor the ability to raise them himself. Both sons had grown up in the home of Sir Baard Petersøn of Hestnaes. Erlend had no siblings other than his brother Gunnulv, who was one year younger and a priest at Christ Church. “I love him more dearly than anyone, except for you.”

  Kristin asked Erlend whether Gunnulv looked like him, but he laughed and said they were quite different in both temperament and appearance. Gunnulv was abroad, studying. This was the third year he had been gone, but twice he had sent letters home; the last one arrived the year before, when he was about to leave Sancta Genoveva in Paris and head for Rome. “Gunnulv will be happy when he comes home and finds me married,” said Erlend.

  Then he talked about the vast inheritance he had acquired from his parents. Kristin realized that he hardly knew himself how his affairs now stood. She was quite familiar with her father’s land dealings, but Erlend’s dealings had been of the opposite kind. He had sold and scattered, mortgaged and squandered his property, especially during the past few years as he had tried to separate from his mistress, thinking that with time his wild life would be forgotten and his kinsmen would take him back. He had believed that in the end he would be named sheriff of half of Orkdøla county, just as his father had been.

  “But now I have no idea how things will finally go,” he said. “Maybe I’ll end up on a farm on some scruffy slope like Bjørn Gunnarsøn, and I’ll have to carry out the dung on my back the way slaves used to do in the past because I own no horses.”

  “God help you,” said Kristin, laughing. “Then I’d better come with you. I think I know more about peasant ways than you do.”

  “But I don’t imagine that you’ve ever carried a dung basket,” he said, laughing too.

  “No, but I’ve seen how they spread out the muck, and I’ve sown grain almost every year back home. My father usually plows the closest fields himself, and then he lets me sow the first section because I’ll bring him luck . . .” The memory painfully pierced her heart, and she said hastily, “And you’ll need a woman to bake and brew the weak ale and wash out your only shirt and do the milking. You’ll have to lease a cow or two from the nearest wealthy farmer.”

  “Oh, thank God I can hear you laugh a little once again,” said Erlend, taking her onto his lap so that she lay in his arms like a child.

  During the six nights before Aasmund Bjørgulfsøn returned home, Erlend came up to the loft to be with Kristin each evening.

  On the last night he seemed just as unhappy as she was; he said many times that they would not be parted from each other a day longer than was necessary.

  Finally he said in a subdued voice, “If things should go so badly that I cannot return here to Oslo before winter—and you happen to be in need of a friend’s help—then you can safely turn to Sira Jon here at Gerdarud; we’ve been friends since childhood. And Munan Baardsøn you can also trust.”

  Kristin could only nod. She realized that he was talking about the same thing that had been on her mind every single day, but Erlend didn’t mention it again. Then she was silent too, not wanting to show him how sick at heart she felt.

  The other times he had left her as the hour grew late, but on this last night he pleaded earnestly to be allowed to lie down and sleep with her for a while.

  Kristin was afraid, but Erlend said defiantly, “You should realize that if I’m discovered here in your chamber, I know how to defend myself.”

  She wanted so badly to keep him with her a little longer, and she was incapable of refusing him anything.

  But she was worried that they might sleep too long. So for most of the night she sat up, leaning against the headboard, dozing a little now and then, not always conscious of when he was actually caressing her and when she had simply dreamed it. She kept one hand on his chest, where she could feel the beat of his heart, and turned her face toward the window so she could watch for the dawn outside.

  Finally she had to wake him. She threw on some clothes and walked out onto the gallery with him. He leaped over the railing on the side of the house facing another building. Then he disappeared around the corner. Kristin went back inside and crawled into bed again; then she let herself go and wept for the first time since she had become Erlend’s possession.

  CHAPTER 5

  AT NONNESETER the days passed as they had before. Kristin spent her time in the dormitory and the church, the weaving room, the library, and the refectory. The nuns and the convent servants harvested the crops of the herb garden and orchard, Holy Cross Day arrived in the fall with its procession, and then came the time of fasting before Michaelmas. Kristin was astonished that no one seemed to notice anything different about her. But she had always been quiet in the company of strangers, and Ingebjørg Filippusdatter, who was her companion day and night, managed to talk enough for both of them.

  So no one noticed that her thoughts were far away from everything around her. Erlend’s mistress. She told herself this: now she was Erlend’s mistress. It was as if she had dreamed it all—the evening of Saint Margareta’s Day, the time in the barn, the nights in her bedchamber at Skog. Either she had dreamed all that or she was dreaming now. But one day she would have to wake up; one day it would all come out. Not for a moment did she doubt that she was carrying Erlend’s child.

  But she couldn’t really imagine what would happen to her when this came to light—whether she would be thrown into a dark cell or be sent home. Far off in the distance she glimpsed the faint images of her father and mother. Then she would close her eyes, dizzy and sick, submerged by the imagined storm, trying to steel herself to bear the misfortune, which she thought would inevitably end with her being swept into Erlend’s arms for all eternity—the only place where she now felt she had a home.

  So in this sense of tension there was just as much anticipation as there was terror; there was sweetness as well as anguish. She was unhappy, but she felt that her love for Erlend was like a plant that had been sown inside her, and for every day that passed it sprouted a new and even lusher abundance of flowers, in spite of her misery. She had experienced the last night that he had slept with her as a delicate and fleeting sweetness, and a passion and joy awaited her in his embrace which she had never known before. Now she trembled at the memory; it felt to her like the hot, spicy gust from the sun-heated gardens. Wayside bastard—those were the words that Inga had flung at her. She reached out for the words and held them tight. Wayside bastard—a child that had been conceived in secret in the woods or meadows. She remembered the sunshine and the smell of the spruce trees in the glade. Every new, trickling sensation, every quicke
ned pulse in her body she took to be the unborn child, reminding her that now she had ventured onto new paths; and no matter how difficult they might be to follow, she was certain that in the end they would lead her to Erlend.

  She sat between Ingebjørg and Sister Astrid, embroidering on the great tapestry with the knights and birds beneath the twining leaves. All the while she was thinking that she would run away once her condition could no longer be concealed. She would walk along the road, dressed as a poor woman, with all the gold and silver she owned knotted into a cloth in her hand. She would pay for a roof over her head at a farm somewhere in an isolated village. She would become a servant woman, carrying water buckets on a yoke across her shoulders. She would tend to the stables, do the baking and washing, and suffer curses because she refused to name the father of her child. Then Erlend would come and find her.

  Sometimes she imagined that he would come too late. Snow-white and beautiful, she would be lying in the poor peasant bed. Erlend would lower his head as he stepped through the doorway. He was wearing the long black cape he had worn when he came to her on those nights at Skog. The farm woman had led him to the room where she lay. He sank down and took her cold hands in his, his eyes desperate with grief. “Is this where you are, my only joy?” Then, bowed with sorrow, he would leave, with his infant son pressed to his breast inside the folds of his cape.

  No, that’s not how she wanted things to end. She didn’t want to die, and Erlend must not suffer such a sorrow. But she was so despondent, and it helped to think such things.

  Then all of a sudden it became chillingly clear to her—the child was not something she had merely imagined, it was something inevitable. One day she would have to answer for what she had done, and she felt as if her heart had stopped in terror.