Kristin Lavransdatter (144 page)

“But listen to me, Nikulaus Erlendssøn,” he said, placing the palms of his hands together. “I don’t know whether it would be wise to make such haste to bring your father here or to set this Ulf Haldorssøn free. It seems to me that your mother
must
clear her name since there has been so much talk that she has sinned. But as matters now stand, do you think it would be easy for Kristin to find the women willing to swear the oath along with her?”

Nikulaus looked up at the bishop; his eyes grew uncertain and fearful.

“But wait a few days, Nikulaus! Your father and Ulf are strangers in the region and not well liked. Kristin and Jardtrud both are from here in the valley, but Jardtrud is from much farther south, while your mother is one of their own. And I’ve noticed that Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn has not been forgotten by the people. It looks as if they mostly had intended to chastise her because she seemed to them a bad daughter. And yet already I can see that many realize the father would be poorly served by raising such an outcry against his child. They are remorseful and repentant, and soon there will be nothing they wish for more than that Kristin should be able to clear her name. And perhaps Jardtrud will have scant evidence to present when she has a look inside her bag. But it’s another matter if her husband goes around turning people against him.”

“My Lord,” said Naakkve, looking up at the bishop, “forgive me for saying this, but I find this difficult to accept. That we should do nothing for our foster father and that we should not bring our father to stand at Mother’s side.”

“Nevertheless, my son,” said Bishop Halvard, “I beg you to take my advice. Let us not hasten to summon Erlend Nikulaussøn here. But I will write a letter to Sir Sigurd of Sundbu, asking him to come see me at once. What’s that?” He stood up and went out on the gallery.

Against the wall of the building stood Gaute and Bjørgulf Er lendssøn, and several of the bishop’s men were threatening them with weapons. Bjørgulf struck a man to the ground with a blow of his axe as the bishop and Naakkve came outside. Gaute defended himself with his sword. Some farmers seized hold of Ivar and Skule, while others led away the wounded man. Sira Solmund stood off to the side, bleeding from his mouth and nose.

“Halt!” shouted Lord Halvard. “Throw down your weapons, you sons of Erlend.” He went down to the courtyard and approached the young men, who obeyed at once. “What is the meaning of this?”

Sira Solmund stepped forward, bowed, and said, “I can tell you, Reverend Father, that Gaute Erlendssøn has broken the peace of the Sabbath and struck me, his parish priest, as you can see!”

Then a middle-aged farmer stepped forward, greeted the bishop, and said, “Reverend Father, the boy was sorely provoked. This priest spoke of his mother in such a way that it would be difficult to expect Gaute to listen peaceably.”

“Keep silent, priest. I cannot listen to more than one of you at a time,” said Lord Halvard impatiently. “Speak, Olav Trondssøn.”

Olav Trondssøn said, “The priest tried to rankle the sons of Erlend, but Bjørgulf and Gaute countered his words, calmly enough. Gaute also said what we all know is true: that Kristin was with her husband at Dovre for a time this past summer, and that’s when he was conceived, the poor infant who has stirred up all this trouble. But then the priest said the people of Jørundgaard have always had so much book learning—no doubt she knew the story of King David and Bathsheba—but Erlend Nikulaussøn might have been just as cunning as Uriah the knight.”
²

The bishop’s face turned as purple as his robes; his black eyes flashed. He looked at Sira Solmund for a moment, but he did not speak to him.

“Surely you must know, Gaute Erlendssøn, that with this deed you have brought the ban of the Church upon your head,” he said. Then he ordered the sons of Erlend to be escorted home to Jørundgaard; he sent along two of his men and four farmers, whom the bishop selected from among the most honorable and sensible, to keep guard over them.

“You must go with them as well, Nikulaus,” he told Naakkve. “But stay calm. Your brothers have not helped your mother, but I realize they were sorely vexed.”

In his heart the bishop of Hamar didn’t think that Kristin’s sons had harmed her case. He saw that there were already many who held a different opinion of the mistress of Jørundgaard than they had in the morning, when she caused the goblet to overflow by coming to church with Ulf Haldorssøn so that he might be godfather to her son. One of them was Kolbein Jonssøn, so Lord Halvard put him in charge of the guards.

 

Naakkve was the first to enter the high loft where Kristin was sitting on the bed with Lavrans, holding Munan on her lap. He told her what had happened but put great weight on the fact that the bishop considered her innocent and also thought the younger brothers had been greatly provoked to react as violently as they had. He counseled his mother not to seek out the bishop herself.

Then the four brothers were escorted into the room. Their mother stared at them; she was pale, with an odd look in her eye. In the midst of her deep despair and anguish, she felt again the strange swelling of her heart, as if it might burst. And yet she said calmly to Gaute, “Ill advised was your behavior, son, and you brought little honor to the sword of Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn by drawing it against a crowd of farmers who stood there gnawing on rumors.”

“First I drew it against the bishop’s armed men,” said Gaute indignantly. “But it’s true it did little honor to our grandfather that we had to bear arms against anyone for such a reason.”

Kristin looked at her son. Then she had to turn away. As much as his words pained her, she had to smile too—like when a child bites his mother’s nipple with his first teeth, she thought.

“Mother,” said Naakkve, “now I think it best if you go, and take Munan with you. You mustn’t leave him alone even for a moment until he is calmer,” he said quietly. “Keep him indoors so he doesn’t see that his brothers are under guard.”

Kristin stood up. “My sons, if you don’t think me undeserving, then I would ask that you kiss me before I leave.”

Naakkve, Bjørgulf, Ivar, and Skule went over and kissed her. The one who had been banned gave his mother a sorrowful look; when she held out her hand to him, he took a fold of her sleeve and kissed it. Kristin saw that all of them, except for Gaute, were now taller than she was. She straightened up Lavrans’s bed a bit, and then she left with Munan.

 

There were four buildings with lofts at Jørundgaard: the high loft house, the new storeroom—which had been the summer quarters during Kristin’s childhood, before Lavrans built the large house—the old storeroom, and the salt shed, which also had a loft. That’s where the servingwomen slept in the summer.

Kristin went up to the loft above the new storeroom with Munan. The two of them had slept there ever since the death of the infant. She was pacing back and forth when Frida and Gunhild brought the evening porridge. Kristin asked Frida to see to it that the guardsmen were given ale and food. The maid replied that she had already done so—at Naakkve’s bidding—but the men had said they would not accept anything from Kristin since they were at her manor for such a purpose. They had received food and drink from somewhere else.

“Even so, you must have a keg of foreign ale brought to them.”

Gunhild, the younger maid, was red-eyed from weeping. “None of the house servants believes this of you, Kristin Lavransdatter; surely you must know that. We always said that we knew it was a lie.”

“So you have heard this gossip before?” said her mistress. “It would have been better if you had mentioned it to me.”

“We didn’t dare because of Ulf,” said Frida.

And Gunhild said as she wept, “He warned us to keep it from you. I often thought that I should mention it and beg you to be more wary . . . when you would sit and talk to Ulf until late into the night.”

“Ulf . . . so he has known about this?” asked Kristin softly.

“Jardtrud has accused him of it for a long time; that was apparently always the reason that he struck her. One evening during Christmas, about the time when you were growing heavy, we were sitting and drinking with them in the foreman’s house. Solveig and Øivind were there too, along with several people from south in the parish. Suddenly Jardtrud said that he was the one who had caused it. Ulf hit her with his belt so the buckle drew blood. Since then Jardtrud has gone around saying that Ulf did not deny it with a single word.”

“And ever since people have been talking about this in the countryside?” asked the mistress.

“Yes. But those of us who are your servants have always denied it,” said Gunhild in tears.

To calm Munan, Kristin had to lie down next to the boy and take him in her arms, but she did not undress, and she did not sleep that night.

 

In the meantime, up in the high loft, young Lavrans had gotten out of bed and put on his clothes. Toward evening, when Naakkve went downstairs to help tend to the livestock, the boy went out to the stable. He saddled the red gelding that belonged to Gaute; it was the best horse except for the stallion, which he didn’t trust himself to ride.

Several of the men standing guard on the estate came out and asked the boy where he was headed.

“I didn’t know that
I
was a prisoner too,” replied young Lavrans. “But I don’t need to hide it from you. Surely you wouldn’t refuse to allow me to ride to Sundbu to bring back the knight to defend his kinswoman.”

“It will soon be dark, my boy,” said Kolbein Jonssøn. “We can’t let this child ride across Vaage Gorge at night. We must speak to his mother.”

“No, don’t do that,” said Lavrans. His lips quivered. “The purpose of my journey is such that I will trust in God and the Virgin Mary to keep watch over me, if my mother is without blame. And if not, then it makes little difference—” He broke off, for he was close to tears.

The man stood in silence for a moment. Kolbein gazed at the handsome, fair-haired child. “Go on then, and may God be with you, Lavrans Erlendssøn,” he said, and was about to help the boy into the saddle.

But Lavrans led the horse forward so the men had to step aside. At the big boulder near the manor gate, he climbed up and then flung himself onto the back of Raud. Then he galloped westward, along the road to Vaagaa.

LAVRANS HAD RIDDEN his horse into a lather by the time he reached the spot where he knew a path led up through the scree and steep cliffs that rise up everywhere on the north side of Silsaa valley. He knew he had to make it to the heights before dark. He didn’t know these mountains between Vaagaa, Sil, and Dovre, but the gelding had grazed here one summer, and he had carried Gaute to Haugen many times, although along different paths. Young Lavrans leaned forward and patted the neck of his horse.

“You must find the way to Haugen, Raud, my son. You must carry me to Father tonight, my horse.”

As soon as he reached the crest of the mountains and was once again sitting in the saddle, darkness fell quickly. He rode through a marshy hollow; an endless progression of narrow ridges was silhouetted against the ever-darkening sky. There were groves of birches on the valley slopes, and their trunks shone white. Wet clusters of leaves constantly brushed against the horse’s chest and the boy’s face. Stones were dislodged by the animal’s hooves and rolled down into the creek at the bottom of the incline. Raud found his way in the dark, up and down the hillsides, and the trickling of the creek sounded first close and then far away. Once some beast bayed into the mountain night, but Lavrans couldn’t tell what it was. And the wind rushed and sang, first stronger, then fainter.

The child held his spear along the neck of his horse, so that the tip pointed forward between the animal’s ears. This was bear country, this valley here. He wondered when it would end. Very softly he began to hum into the darkness:
“Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison.”

Raud splashed through the shallow crossing of a mountain stream. The sky became even more star-strewn all around; the mountain peaks looked more distant against the blackness of the night, and the wind sang with a different tone in the vast space. The boy let the horse choose his own path as he hummed as much as he could remember of the hymn, “
Jesus Redemptor omnium—Tu lumen et splendor patris,
” interspersed with
“Kyrie eleison
.” Now he could see by the stars that they were riding almost due south, but he didn’t dare do anything but trust the horse and let him lead. They were riding over rocky slopes with reindeer moss gleaming palely on the stones beneath him. Raud paused for a moment, panting and peering into the night. Lavrans saw that the sky was growing lighter in the east; clouds were billowing up, edged with silver underneath. His horse moved on, now headed directly toward the rising moon. It must be about an hour before midnight, as far as the boy could tell.

When the moon slipped free of the crests off in the distance, new snow gleamed atop the domes and rounded summits, and drifting wisps of fog turned the passes and peaks white. Lavrans recognized where he was in the mountians. He was on the mossy plateau beneath the Blue Domes.

Soon afterward he found a path leading down into the valley. And three hours later Raud limped into the courtyard of Haugen, which was white with moonlight.

When Erland opened the door, the boy collapsed on the floor of the gallery in a deep faint.

Some time later Lavrans woke up in bed, lying between filthy, rank-smelling fur covers. Light shone from a pine torch that had been stuck in a crack in the wall nearby. His father was standing over him, moistening his face with something. His father was only half dressed, and the boy noticed in the flickering light that his hair was completely gray.

“Mother . . .” said young Lavrans, looking up.

Erlend turned away so his son wouldn’t see his face. “Yes,” he said after a moment, almost inaudibly. “Is your mother—has she . . . is your mother . . . ill?”