Kristin Lavransdatter Page 4

  But Isrid came over to the children and showed Kristin where the mountain Vaage Vestfjeld lay. And Arne pointed out Graafjeld, where the people of the villages captured reindeer in trenches and where the king’s hawk hunters8 lived in stone huts. That was the sort of work that Arne wanted to do himself someday—but he also wanted to learn to train birds for the hunt—and he lifted his arms overhead, as if he were flinging a hawk into the air.

  Isrid shook her head.

  “It’s a loathsome life, Arne Gyrdsøn. It would be a great sorrow for your mother if you became a hawk hunter, my boy. No man can make a living doing that unless he keeps company with the worst kind of people, and with those who are even worse.”

  Lavrans had come over to them and caught the last remark.

  “Yes,” he said, “there’s probably more than one household out there that pays neither taxes nor tithes.”

  “I imagine you’ve seen one thing and another, haven’t you, Lavrans?” Isrid hinted. “You who have journeyed so deep into the mountains.”

  “Ah, well,” Lavrans said reluctantly, “that could be—but I don’t think I should speak of such things. We must not begrudge those who have exhausted their peace in the village whatever peace they may find on the mountain, that’s what I think. And yet I’ve seen yellow pastures and beautiful hay meadows in places where few people know that any valleys exist. And I’ve seen herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, but I don’t know whether they belonged to people or to the others.”

  “That’s right,” said Isrid. “Bears and wolves are blamed for the loss of cattle up here in the mountain pastures, but there are much worse robbers on the slopes.”

  “You call them worse?” said Lavrans thoughtfully, stroking his daughter’s cap. “In the mountains south of the Raanekamp I once saw three little boys, the oldest about Kristin’s age, and they had blond hair and tunics made of hides. They bared their teeth at me like young wolves before they ran away and hid. It’s not so surprising that the poor man they belonged to should be tempted to take a cow or two for himself.”

  “Well, wolves and bears all have young ones too,” said Isrid peevishly. “And you don’t choose to spare them, Lavrans. Neither the full-grown ones nor their young. And yet they have never been taught laws or Christianity, as have these evil-doers that you wish so well.”

  “Do you think I wish them well because I wish for them something slightly better than the worst?” said Lavrans with a faint smile. “But come along now, let’s see what kind of food packets Ragnfrid has given us for today.” He took Kristin’s hand and led her away. He bent down to her and said softly, “I was thinking of your three baby brothers, little Kristin.”

  They peeked into the caretaker’s hut, but it was stuffy and smelled of mold. Kristin took a quick look around, but there were only earthen benches along the walls, a hearthstone in the middle of the floor, barrels of tar, and bundles of resinous pine sticks and birchbark. Lavrans thought they should eat outdoors, and a little farther down a birch-covered slope they found a lovely green plateau.

  They unloaded the pack horse and stretched out on the grass. And there was plenty of good food in Ragnfrid’s bag—soft bread and thin lefse,9 butter and cheese, pork and wind-dried reindeer meat, lard, boiled beef brisket, two large kegs of German ale, and a small jug of mead. They wasted no time in cutting up the meat and passing it around, while Halvdan, the oldest of the men, made a fire; it was more comforting to have heat than to be without it in the forest.

  Isrid and Arne pulled up heather and gathered birch twigs and tossed them into the flames; the fire crackled as it tore the fresh foliage from the branches so that little white charred specks flew high up into the red mane of the blaze. Thick dark smoke swirled up toward the clear sky. Kristin sat and watched; the fire seemed happy to be outside and free to play. It was different; not like when it was confined to the hearth back home and had to slave to cook the food and light up the room for them.

  She sat there leaning against her father, with one arm over his knee. He gave her as much as she wanted to eat from all the best portions and offered her all the ale she could drink, along with frequent sips of the mead.

  “She’ll be so tipsy she won’t be able to walk down to the pasture,” said Halvdan with a laugh, but Lavrans stroked her plump cheeks.

  “There are enough of us here to carry her. It will do her good. Drink up, Arne. God’s gifts will do you good, not harm, all you who are still growing. The ale will give you sweet red blood and make you sleep well. It won’t arouse rage or foolishness.”

  And the men drank long and hard too. Isrid did not stint herself either, and soon their voices and the roar and hiss of the fire became a distant sound in Kristin’s ears; she felt her head grow heavy. She also noticed that they tried to entice Lavrans to tell them about the strange things he had witnessed on his hunting expeditions. But he would say very little, and she thought this so comforting and reassuring. And she had eaten so much.

  Her father was holding a chunk of soft barley bread. He shaped little pieces with his fingers so they looked like horses, and he broke off tiny scraps of meat and set them astride the bread horses. Then he made them ride down his thigh and into Kristin’s mouth. Before long she was so tired that she could neither yawn nor chew—and then she toppled over onto the ground and fell asleep.

  When she woke up, she was lying in the warmth and darkness of her father’s arms—he had wrapped his cape around both of them. Kristin sat up, wiped the sweat from her face, and untied her cap so the air could dry her damp hair.

  It must have been late in the day, for the sunshine was a gleaming yellow and the shadows had lengthened and now fell toward the southeast. There was no longer even a breath of wind, and mosquitoes and flies were buzzing and humming around the sleeping group of people. Kristin sat quite still, scratching the mosquito bites on her hands, and looked around. The mountain dome above them shone white with moss and gold from the lichen in the sunshine, and the beacon of weather-beaten timbers towered against the sky like the skeleton of some weird beast.

  She started to feel uneasy—it was so odd to see all of them asleep in the bright, bare light of day. Whenever she woke up at home in the night, she would be lying snugly in the dark with her mother on one side and the tapestry that hung over the timbered wall on the other. Then she would know that the door and smoke vent of the room had been closed against the night and the weather outside; and she could hear the small noises of the sleeping people who lay safe and sound among the furs and pillows. But all of these bodies lying twisted and turned on the slope around the small mound of white and black ashes might just as well have been dead; some of them lay on their stomachs and some on their backs with their knees pulled up, and the sounds they uttered frightened Kristin. Her father was snoring heavily, but when Halvdan drew in a breath, a squeak and a whistle came from his nose. And Arne was lying on his side with his face hidden in his arm and his glossy light-brown hair spread out on the heath. He lay so still that Kristin was afraid he might be dead. She had to bend over and touch him; then he stirred a bit in his sleep.

  Suddenly it occurred to Kristin that they might have slept a whole night and that it was now the next day. Then she grew so alarmed that she shook her father, but he merely grunted and kept on sleeping. Kristin felt heavy-headed herself, but she didn’t dare lie down to sleep. So she crept over to the fire and poked at it with a stick—there were still some embers glowing. She added some heather and small twigs, which she found close at hand, but she didn’t want to venture outside the circle of sleepers to find bigger branches.

  Suddenly there was a thundering and crashing from the field nearby; Kristin’s heart sank and she grew cold with fear. Then she saw a red body through the trees, and Guldsvein emerged from the alpine birches and stood there, looking at her with his clear, bright eyes. She was so relieved that she jumped up and ran toward the stallion. The brown horse that Arne had ridden was there too, along with the pack horse. Then Kristin fel
t quite safe; she went over and patted all three of them on the flank, but Guldsvein bowed his head so she could reach up to stroke his cheeks and tug on his golden-white forelock. He snuffled his soft muzzle in her hands.

  The horses ambled down the birch-covered slope, grazing, and Kristin walked along with them, for she didn’t think there was any danger if she kept close to Guldsvein—he had chased off bears before, after all. The blueberries grew so thick there, and the child was thirsty and had a bad taste in her mouth. She had no desire for any ale just then, but the sweet, juicy berries were as good as wine. Over in the scree she saw raspberries too; then she took Guldsvein by the mane and asked him nicely to come with her, and the stallion obediently followed the little girl. As she moved farther and farther down the slope, he would come to her whenever she called him, and the other horses followed Guldsvein.

  Kristin heard a stream trickling and gurgling somewhere nearby. She walked toward the sound until she found it, and then she lay down on a slab of rock and washed her sweaty, mosquito-bitten face and hands. Beneath the rock slab the water stood motionless in a deep black pool; on the other side a sheer rock face rose up behind several slender birch trees and willow thickets. It made the finest mirror, and Kristin leaned over and looked at herself in the water. She wanted to see if what Isrid had said was true, that she resembled her father.

  She smiled and nodded and bent forward until her hair met the blond hair framing the round young face with the big eyes that she saw in the water.

  All around grew such a profusion of the finest pink tufts of flowers called valerian; they were much redder and more beautiful here next to the mountain stream than back home near the river. Then Kristin picked some blossoms and carefully bound them together with blades of grass until she had the loveliest, pinkest, and most tightly woven wreath. The child pressed it down on her hair and ran over to the pool to see how she looked, now that she was adorned like a grown-up maiden about to go off to a dance.

  She bent over the water and saw her own dark image rise up from the depths and become clearer as it came closer. Then she saw in the mirror of the stream that someone was standing among the birches on the other side and leaning toward her. Abruptly she straightened up into a kneeling position and looked across the water. At first she thought she saw only the rock face and the trees clustered at its base. But suddenly she discerned a face among the leaves—there was a woman over there, with a pale face and flowing, flaxen hair. Her big light-gray eyes and her flaring, pale-pink nostrils reminded Kristin of Guldsvein’s. She was wearing something shiny and leaf-green, and branches and twigs hid her figure up to her full breasts, which were covered with brooches and gleaming necklaces.

  Kristin stared at the vision. Then the woman raised her hand and showed her a wreath of golden flowers and beckoned to her with it.

  Behind her, Kristin heard Guldsvein whinny loudly with fear. She turned her head. The stallion reared up, gave a resounding shriek, and then whirled around and set off up the hillside, making the ground thunder. The other horses followed. They rushed straight up the scree, so that rocks plummeted down with a crash, and branches and roots snapped and cracked.

  Then Kristin screamed as loud as she could. “Father!” she shrieked. “Father!” She sprang to her feet and ran up the slope after the horses, not daring to look back over her shoulder. She clambered up the scree, tripped on the hem of her dress, and slid down, then climbed up again, scrabbling onward with bleeding hands, crawling on scraped and bruised knees, calling to Guldsvein in between her shouts to her father—while the sweat poured out of her whole body, running like water into her eyes, and her heart pounded as if it would hammer a hole through her chest; sobs of terror rose in her throat.

  “Oh, Father, Father!”

  Then she heard his voice somewhere above her. She saw him coming in great leaps down the slope of the scree—the bright, sun-white scree. Alpine birches and aspens stood motionless along the slope, their leaves glittering with little glints of silver. The mountain meadow was so quiet and so bright, but her father came bounding toward her, calling her name, and Kristin sank down, realizing that now she was saved.

  “Sancta Maria!” Lavrans knelt down next to his daughter and pulled her to him. He was pale and there was a strange look to his mouth that frightened Kristin even more; not until she saw his face did she realize the extent of her peril.

  “Child, child . . .” He lifted up her bloody hands, looked at them, noticed the wreath on her bare head, and touched it. “What’s this? How did you get here, little Kristin?”

  “I followed Guldsvein,” she sobbed against his chest. “I was so afraid because you were all asleep, but then Guldsvein came. And then there was someone who waved to me from down by the stream. . . .”

  “Who waved? Was it a man?”

  “No, it was a woman. She beckoned to me with a wreath of gold—I think it was a dwarf maiden, Father.”

  “Jesus Christus,” said Lavrans softly, making the sign of the cross over the child and himself.

  He helped her up the slope until they came to the grassy hillside; then he lifted her up and carried her. She clung to his neck and sobbed; she couldn’t stop, no matter how much he hushed her.

  Soon they reached the men and Isrid, who clasped her hands together when she heard what had happened.

  “Oh, that must have been the elf maiden—I tell you, she must have wanted to lure this pretty child into the mountain.”

  “Be quiet,” said Lavrans harshly. “We shouldn’t have talked about such things the way we did here in the forest. You never know who’s under the stones, listening to every word.”

  He pulled out the golden chain with the reliquary cross from inside his shirt and hung it around Kristin’s neck, placing it against her bare skin.

  “All of you must guard your tongues well,” he told them. “For Ragnfrid must never hear that the child was exposed to such danger.”

  Then they caught the horses that had run into the woods and walked briskly down to the pasture enclosure where the other horses had been left. Everyone mounted their horses, and they rode over to the Jørundgaard pasture; it was not far off.

  The sun was about to go down when they arrived. The cattle were in the pen, and Tordis and the herdsmen were doing the milking. Inside the hut, porridge had been prepared for them, for the pasture folk had seen them up at the beacon earlier in the day and they were expected.

  Not until then did Kristin stop her weeping. She sat on her father’s lap and ate porridge and thick cream from his spoon.

  The next day Lavrans was to ride out to a lake farther up the mountain; that’s where some of his herdsmen had taken the oxen. Kristin was supposed to have gone with him, but now he told her to stay at the hut. “And you, Tordis and Isrid, must see to it that the door is kept locked and the smoke vent closed until we come back, both for Kristin’s sake and for the sake of the little unbaptized child in the cradle.”

  Tordis was so frightened that she didn’t dare stay up there any longer with the baby; she had not yet been to church herself since giving birth. She wanted to leave at once and stay down in the village. Lavrans said he thought this reasonable; she could travel with them down the mountain the next evening. He thought he could get an older widow who was a servant at Jørundgaard to come up here in her place.

  Tordis had spread sweet, fresh meadow grass under the hides on the bench; it smelled so strong and good, and Kristin was almost asleep as her father said the Lord’s Prayer and Ave Maria over her.

  “It’s going to be a long time before I take you with me to the mountains again,” said Lavrans, patting her cheek.

  Kristin woke up with a start.

  “Father, won’t you let me go with you to the south in the fall, as you promised?”

  “We’ll have to see about that,” said Lavrans, and then Kristin fell at once into a sweet sleep between the sheepskins.

  CHAPTER 2

  EVERY SUMMER Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn would ride off to
the south to see to his estate at Follo. These journeys of her father were like yearly mileposts in Kristin’s life: those long weeks of his absence and then the great joy when he returned home with wonderful gifts—cloth from abroad for her bridal chest, figs, raisins, and gingerbread from Oslo—and many strange things to tell her.

  But this year Kristin noticed that there was something out of the ordinary about her father’s trip. It was postponed again and again. The old men from Loptsgaard came riding over unexpectedly and sat at the table with her father and mother, talking about inheritances and allodial property,1 repurchasing rights, and the difficulties of running a manor from a distance; and about the episcopal seat and the king’s castle in Oslo, which took so many of the workers away from the farms in the neighboring areas. The old men had no time to play with Kristin, and she was sent out to the cookhouse to the maids. Her uncle, Trond Ivarsøn of Sundbu, also came to visit them more often than usual—but he had never been in the habit of teasing or playing with Kristin.

  Gradually she began to understand what it was all about. Ever since he had come to Sil, her father had sought to acquire land there in the village, and now Sir Andres Gudmundsøn had offered to exchange Formo, which was his mother’s ancestral estate, for Skog, which lay closer to him, since he was one of the king’s retainers and seldom came to the valley. Lavrans was loath to part with Skog, which was his ancestral farm; it had come into his family as a gift from the king. And yet the exchange would be advantageous to him in many ways. But Lavrans’s brother, Aasmund Bjørgulfsøn, was also interested in acquiring Skog—he was now living in Hadeland, where he had a manor that he had obtained through marriage—and it was uncertain whether Aasmund would relinquish his ancestral property rights.