Kristin Lavransdatter (13 page)

“You’re not very old yourself,” she replied.

“I’m just as old as Simon Darre,” he said. “And we can bear helmets and shields just as well as the Dyfrin people, but my parents have not had fortune on their side.”

He had wiped off his hands on some tufts of grass. Now he took hold of Kristin’s ankle and pressed his cheek against her foot, which was sticking out from the hem of her dress. She tried to pull her foot away, but Arne said, “Your mother is at Laugarbru, and Lavrans rode off from the farm—and from the buildings no one can see us sitting here. Just this once you must let me talk about what’s on my mind.”

Kristin replied, “We’ve always known, both you and I, that it would be futile for us to fall in love with each other.”

“Can I put my head in your lap?” asked Arne, and when she didn’t reply, he did it anyway, wrapping his arm around her waist. With the other hand he tugged on her braids.

“How will you like it,” he asked after a moment, “when Simon lies in your lap like this and plays with your hair?”

Kristin didn’t answer. She felt as if a weight suddenly fell upon her—Arne’s words and Arne’s head on her knees—it seemed to her as if a door were opening into a room with many dark corridors leading into more darkness. Unhappy and heartsick, she hesitated, refusing to look inside.

“Married people don’t do things like this,” she said abruptly and briskly, as if with relief. She tried to imagine Simon’s plump, round face looking up at her with the same gaze in his eyes as Arne now had; she heard his voice—and she couldn’t help laughing.

“I don’t think Simon would ever lie down on the ground to play with my shoes!”

“No, because he can play with you in his own bed,” said Arne. His voice made Kristin feel suddenly sick and helpless.

She tried to push his head off her lap, but he pressed it harder against her knees and said gently, “But I would play with your shoes and your hair and your fingers and follow you in and out all day long, Kristin, if you would be my wife and sleep in my arms every night.”

He pulled himself halfway up, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes.

“It’s not proper for you to talk to me this way,” said Kristin quietly and shyly.

“No, it’s not,” said Arne. He got to his feet and stood in front of her. “But tell me one thing—wouldn’t you rather it had been me?”

“Oh, I would rather . . .” She sat in silence for a moment. “I would rather not have any man at all—not even . . .”

Arne didn’t move. He said, “Would you rather go into a convent then, as they’ve planned for Ulvhild, and be a maiden all your days?”

Kristin wrung her hands in her lap. She felt a strange, sweet trembling inside her—and with a sudden shudder she realized how sad it was for her little sister. And her eyes filled with tears of sorrow for Ulvhild’s sake.

“Kristin,” said Arne gently.

At that moment Ulvhild screamed loudly. Her crutch had lodged between some stones and she had fallen. Arne and Kristin ran over to her, and Arne lifted her into her sister’s arms. She had cut her mouth and was bleeding badly.

Kristin sat down with her in the doorway to the smithy, and Arne brought water in a wooden bowl. Together they began to wash Ulvhild’s face. She had also scraped the skin on her knees. Kristin bent tenderly over the small, thin legs.

Ulvhild’s wailing soon stopped and she whimpered softly, the way children do who are used to suffering pain. Kristin pressed Ulvhild’s head against her breast and rocked her gently.

Then the bell up in Olav’s church began ringing for vespers.

Arne spoke to Kristin, but she sat there as if she neither heard nor sensed what he said as she bent over her sister. Then he grew frightened and asked her whether she thought the injuries were serious. Kristin shook her head but refused to look at him.

A little later she stood up and started walking toward the farm, carrying Ulvhild in her arms. Arne followed, silent and confused. Kristin looked so preoccupied that her face was completely rigid. As she walked, the bell continued to toll across the meadows and valley; it was still ringing as she went into the house.

She placed Ulvhild on the bed which the sisters had shared ever since Kristin had grown too old to sleep with her parents. Then she took off her own shoes and lay down next to the little one. She lay there and listened for the bell long after it had stopped ringing and the child was asleep.

It had occurred to her, as the bell began to peal, while she sat with Ulvhild’s little bloodied face in her hands, that perhaps this was an omen for her. If she would take her sister’s place—if she would promise herself to the service of God and the Virgin Mary—then maybe God would grant the child renewed vigor and good health.

Kristin remembered Brother Edvin saying that these days parents offered to God only the crippled and lame children or those for whom they could not arrange good marriages. She knew her parents were pious people, and yet she had never heard them say anything except that she would marry. But when they realized that Ulvhild would be ill all her days, they at once proposed that she should enter a convent.

But Kristin didn’t want to do it; she resisted the idea that God would perform a miracle for Ulvhild if she became a nun. She clung to Sira Eirik’s words that so few miracles occurred nowadays. And yet she had the feeling this evening that it was as Brother Edvin had said—that if someone had enough faith, then he could indeed work miracles. But she did not want that kind of faith; she did not love God and His Mother and the saints in that way. She would never love them in that way. She loved the world and longed for the world.

Kristin pressed her lips to Ulvhild’s soft, silky hair. The child slept soundly, but the elder sister sat up, restless, and then lay down again. Her heart was bleeding with sorrow and shame, but she knew that she could not believe in miracles because she was unwilling to give up her inheritance of health and beauty and love.

Then she tried to console herself with the thought that her parents would never give her permission to do such a thing. Nor would they ever believe that it would do any good. She was already betrothed, after all, and they would undoubtedly be loath to lose Simon, whom they liked so much. She felt betrayed because they seemed to find this son-in-law so splendid. She suddenly thought with displeasure of Simon’s round, red face and his small, laughing eyes, of his leaping gait—it occurred to her all of a sudden that he bounced like a ball—and of his teasing manner of speaking, which made her feel awkward and stupid. And it was not such a splendid thing, either, to be given to him and then move only as far as Formo. And yet she would rather have him than be sent to a convent. But what about the world beyond the mountains? The king’s castle, and the counts and the knights that Fru Aashild had talked about, a handsome man with melancholy eyes who would follow her in and out and never grow tired. . . . She remembered Arne on that summer day long ago when he lay on his side and slept with his shiny brown hair spread out on the heath—she had loved him as if he were her own brother back then. It wasn’t proper for him to speak to her the way he had today, when he knew they could never have each other.

Word was sent from Laugarbru that her mother would stay there overnight. Kristin got up to undress and get ready for bed. She began to unlace her dress, but then she put her shoes back on, wrapped her cloak around her, and went out.

The night sky, bright and green, stretched above the mountain crests. It was almost time for the moon to rise, and at the spot where it waited below the ridge, small clouds drifted past, gleaming like silver underneath; the sky grew lighter and lighter, like metal gathering dew.

Kristin ran between the fences, across the road, and up the hill toward the church. It was asleep, black and locked, but she went over to the cross that stood nearby—a memorial to the time when Saint Olav once rested there as he was fleeing from his enemies.

Kristin knelt down on the stone and placed her folded hands on the base. “Holy Cross, the strongest of masts, the fairest of trees, the bridge for those who are ill to the fair shores of health . . .”

As she spoke the words of the prayer, she felt her yearning gradually spread like rings on water. The various thoughts that were making her uneasy were smoothed out, her mind grew calmer, more tender, and a gentle sorrow, empty of all thought, replaced her troubles.

She stayed there on her knees, aware of all the sounds of the night. The wind was sighing so oddly, the river was roaring beyond the groves on the other side of the church, and the stream was flowing nearby, right across the road—and everywhere, both close at hand and far away in the dark, her eyes and her ears caught hints of tiny rivulets of running and dripping water. The river flashed white down in the village. The moon glided up over a small gap in the mountains; stones and leaves wet with dew shimmered faintly, and the newly tarred timbers of the bell tower near the cemetery gate shone dull and dark. Then the moon vanished again where the ridge of the mountain rose higher. Many more gleaming white clouds appeared in the sky.

She heard a horse approaching at a slow pace higher up the road, and the sound of men’s voices, speaking evenly and softly. Kristin was not afraid of people so close to home where she knew everyone; she felt quite safe.

Her father’s dogs came rushing toward her, turned around and bounded back to the grove, then turned again and raced back to her; then her father called a greeting as he emerged from among the birches. He was leading Guldsvein by the bridle; a bunch of birds dangled in front of the saddle, and Lavrans was carrying a hooded hawk on his left hand. He was in the company of a tall, hunchbacked man in monk’s clothing, and before Kristin had even seen his face, she knew it was Brother Edvin. She went to greet them, and she couldn’t have been more surprised than if she had dreamed it. She merely smiled when Lavrans asked her whether she recognized their guest.

Lavrans had met the monk up by Rost Bridge. Then he had persuaded him to come home with him and stay the night at the farm. But Brother Edvin insisted on being allowed to sleep in the cowshed: “For I’ve picked up so many lice that you can’t have me lying in your good beds.”

And no matter how much Lavrans begged and implored, the monk was adamant; at first he even wanted them to bring his food out into the courtyard. But finally they coaxed him inside the house, and Kristin put wood in the fireplace in the corner and set candles on the table, while a maid brought in food and drink.

The monk sat down on the beggar’s bench near the door, but he would only take cold porridge and water for his evening meal. And he refused to accept Lavrans’s offer to prepare a bath for him and to have his clothes washed.

Brother Edvin scratched and rubbed himself and his gaunt old face beamed with glee.

“No, no,” he said. “The lice bite better at my proud hide than any scourges or the guardian’s words. I spent this summer under an overhang up on the mountain. They had given me permission to go into the wilderness to fast and pray, and there I sat, thinking that I was as pure as a holy hermit, and the poor people over in Setna valley brought food up to me and thought they beheld a pious monk, living a pure life. ‘Brother Edvin,’ they said, ‘if there were more monks like you, then we would soon mend our ways, but when we see priests and bishops and monks shoving and fighting like piglets at the trough . . .’ Well, I told them that was not a Christian way to talk—but I liked hearing it all the same, and I sang and prayed so my voice resounded in the mountains. Now it will be to my benefit to feel how the lice are biting and fighting on my skin and to hear the good housewives, who want to keep their houses clean and neat, shouting that the filthy monkhide can just as well sleep in the barn during the summer. I’m heading north to Nidaros now, to celebrate Saint Olav’s Day, and it will do me good to see that people aren’t so keen to come near me.”

Ulvhild woke up. Then Lavrans went over and lifted her up in his cape.

“Here is the child I told you about, dear Father. Place your hands on her and pray to God for her, the way you prayed for the boy up north in Meldal—we heard he regained his health.”

The monk gently put his hand under Ulvhild’s chin and looked into her eyes. Then he lifted one of her hands and kissed it.

“You should pray instead, you and your wife, Lavrans Bjørg ulfsøn, that you will not be tempted to bend God’s will with this child. Our Lord Jesus himself has set these small feet on a path so that she can walk safely toward the house of peace—I can see in your eyes, blessed Ulvhild, that you have your intercessors in that other house.”

“I heard that the boy in Meldal got well,” said Lavrans quietly.

“He was the only child of a poor widow, and there was no one to feed or clothe him when the mother passed away, except the village. And yet the woman only asked that God give her a fearless heart so that she might have faith that He would let happen whatever was best for the boy. I did nothing more than pray alongside her.”