All the joys of her children she remembered and relived in this dream life with her two little sons, and all her sorrows she forgot.
It was spring for the third time since Erlend had been laid in his grave. Kristin heard no more about Tordis and Naakkve. Neither did she hear anything about the cloister. And her hope grew; she couldn’t help it. She was so reluctant to sacrifice her eldest son to the life of a monk.
Right before Saint Jon’s Day, Ivar Erlendssøn came home to Jørundgaard. The twins had been young lads in their sixteenth year when they left home. Now Ivar was a grown man, almost eighteen years old, and his mother thought he had become so handsome and manly that she could hardly get her fill of looking at him.
On the first morning Kristin took breakfast up to Ivar as he lay in bed. Honey-baked wheat bread, lefse, and ale that she had tapped from the last keg of Christmas brew. She sat on the edge of his bed while he ate and drank, smiling at everything he said. She got up to look at his clothes, turning and fingering each garment; she rummaged through his traveling bag and weighed his new silver brooch in her slender reddish-brown hand; she drew his dagger out of its sheath and praised it, along with all his other possessions. Then she sat down on the bed again, looked at her son, and listened with a smile in her eyes and on her lips to everything the young man told her.
Then Ivar said, “I might as well tell you why I’ve come home, Mother. I’ve come to obtain Naakkve’s consent for my marriage.”
Overwhelmed, Kristin clasped her hands together. “My Ivar! As young as you are . . . Surely you haven’t committed some folly!”
Ivar begged his mother to listen. She was a young widow, Signe Gamalsdatter of Rognheim in Fauskar. The estate was worth six marks in land taxes, and most of it was her sole property, which she had inherited through her only child. But she had become embroiled in a lawsuit with her husband’s kinsmen, and Inge Fluga had tried to acquire all manner of unlawful benefits for himself if he was to help the widow win justice. Ivar had become indignant and had taken up the woman’s defense, accompanying her to the bishop himself, for Lord Halvard had always shown Ivar a fatherly goodwill every time they had met. Inge Munanssøn’s actions in the county could not bear close scrutiny, but he had been wise enough to stay on friendly terms with the nobles of the countryside, frightening the peasants into their mouseholes. And he had thrown sand in the bishop’s eyes with his great cleverness. It was doubtless for Munan’s sake that Lord Halvard had refrained from being too stern. But now things did not look good for Inge, so the cousins had parted with the gravest enmity when Ivar took his horse and rode off from Inge Fluga’s manor. Then he had decided to pay a visit at Rognheim, in the south, before he left the region. That was at Eastertime, and he had been staying with Signe ever since, helping her on the estate in the springtime. Now they had agreed that he would marry her. She didn’t think that Ivar Er lendssøn was too young to be her husband and protect her interests. And the bishop, as he had said, looked on him with favor. He was still much too young and lacking in learning for Lord Halvard to appoint him to any position, but Ivar was convinced that he would do well if he settled at Rognheim as a married man.
Kristin sat fidgeting with her keys in her lap. This was sensible talk. And Inge Fluga certainly deserved no better. But she wondered what that poor old man, Munan Baardsøn, would say about all this.
About the bride she learned that Signe was thirty winters old, from a lowborn and impoverished family, but her first husband had acquired much wealth so that she was now comfortably situated, and she was an honorable, kind, and diligent woman.
Nikulaus and Gaute accompanied Ivar south to have a look at the widow, but Kristin wanted to stay home with Bjørgulf. When her sons returned, Naakkve could tell his mother that Ivar was now betrothed to Signe Gamalsdatter. The wedding would be celebrated at Rognheim in the autumn.
Not long after his arrival back home Naakkve came to see his mother one evening as she sat sewing in the weaving room. He barred the door. Then he said that now that Gaute was twenty years old and Ivar would also come of age by marrying, he and Bjørgulf intended to journey north in the fall and ask to be accepted as novices at the monastery. Kristin said little; they spoke mainly about how they would arrange those things that her two oldest sons would want to take with them from their inheritance.
But a few days later men came to Jørundgaard with an invitation to a betrothal banquet: Aasmund of Skjenne was going to celebrate the betrothal of his daughter Tordis to a good farmer’s son from Dovre.
That evening Naakkve came again to see his mother in the weaving room, and once again he barred the door behind him. He sat on the edge of the hearth, poking a twig into the embers. Kristin had lit a small fire since the nights were cold that summer.
“Nothing but feasts and carousing, my mother,” he said with a little laugh. “The betrothal banquet at Rognheim and the celebration at Skjenne and then Ivar’s wedding. When Tordis rides in her wedding procession, I doubt I’ll be riding along; by that time I will have donned cloister garb.”
Kristin didn’t reply at once. But then, without looking up from her sewing—she was making a banquet tunic for Ivar—she said, “Many probably thought it would be a great sorrow for Tordis Gunnarsdatter if you became a monk.”
“I once thought so myself,” replied Naakkve.
Kristin let her sewing sink to her lap. She looked at her son; his face was impassive and calm. And he was so handsome. His dark hair brushed back from his white forehead, curling softly behind his ears and along the slender, tan stalk of his neck. His features were more regular than his father’s; his face was broader and more solid, his nose not as big, and his mouth not as small. His clear blue eyes were lovely beneath the straight black brows. And yet he didn’t seem as handsome as Erlend had been. It was his father’s animal-like softness and languid charm, his air of inextinguishable youth that Naakkve did not possess.
Kristin picked up her work again, but she didn’t go back to sewing. After a moment, as she looked down and tucked in a hem of the cloth with her needle, she said, “Do you realize, Naakkve, that I haven’t voiced a single word of objection to your godly plans? I wouldn’t dare do so. But you’re young, and you know quite well—being more learned than I am—that it is written somewhere that it ill suits a man to turn around and look over his shoulder once he has set his hand to the plow.”
Not a muscle moved in her son’s face.
“I know that you’ve had these thoughts in mind for a long time,” continued his mother. “Ever since you were children. But back then you didn’t understand what you would be giving up. Now that you’ve reached the age of a man . . . Don’t you think it would be advisable if you waited a while longer to see if you have the calling? You were born to take over this estate and become the head of your lineage.”
“You dare to advise me now?” Naakkve took several deep breaths. He stood up. All of a sudden he slapped his hand to his breast and tore open his tunic and shirt so his mother could see his naked chest where his birthmark, the five little blood-red, fiery specks, shone amid the black hair.
“I suppose you thought I was too young to understand what you were sighing about with moans and tears whenever you kissed me here, back when I was a little lad. I may not have understood, but I could never forget the words you spoke.
“Mother, Mother . . . Have you forgotten that Father died the most wretched of deaths, unconfessed and unanointed? And you dare to dissuade us!
“I think Bjørgulf and I know what we’re turning away from. It doesn’t seem to me such a great sacrifice to give up this estate and marriage—or the kind of peace and happiness that you and Father had together during all the years I can remember.”
Kristin put down her sewing. All that she and Erlend had lived through, both bad and good . . . A wealth of memories washed over her. This child understood so little what he was renouncing. With all his youthful fights, bold exploits, careless dealings, and games of love—he was no more tha
n an innocent child.
Naakkve saw the tears well up in his mother’s eyes; he shouted, “Quid mihi et tibi est, mulier.”2 Kristin cringed, but her son spoke with violent agitation. “God did not say those words because he felt scorn for his mother. But he chastised her, that pure pearl without blemish or flaw, when she tried to counsel him on how to use the power that he had been given by his Father in Heaven and not by his mother’s flesh. Mother, you must not advise me about this; do not venture to do so.”
Kristin bent her head to her breast.
After a moment Naakkve said in a low voice, “Have you forgotten, Mother, that you pushed me away—” He paused, as if he didn’t trust his own voice. But then he continued, “I wanted to kneel beside you at my father’s deathbed, but you told me to go away. Don’t you realize my heart wails in my chest whenever I think about that?”
Kristin whispered, almost inaudibly, “Is that why you’ve been so . . . cold . . . toward me during all these years I’ve been a widow?”
Her son was silent.
“I begin to understand . . . You’ve never forgiven me for that, have you, Naakkve?”
Naakkve looked away. “Sometimes . . . I have forgiven you, Mother,” he said, his voice faint.
“But not very often . . . Oh, Naakkve, Naakkve!” she cried bitterly. “Do you think I loved Bjørgulf any less than you? I’m his mother. I’m mother to both of you! It was cruel of you to keep closing the door between him and me!”
Naakkve’s pale face turned even whiter. “Yes, Mother, I closed the door. Cruel, you say. May Jesus comfort you, but you don’t know . . .” His voice faded to a whisper, as if the boy’s strength were spent. “I didn’t think you should . . . We had to spare you.”
He turned on his heel, went to the door, and unbarred it. But then he paused and stood there with his back to Kristin. Finally she softly called out his name. He came back and stood before her with his head bowed.
“Mother . . . I know this isn’t . . . easy . . . for you.”
She placed her hands on his shoulders. He hid his eyes from her gaze, but he bent down and kissed her on the wrist. Kristin recalled that his father had once done the same, but she couldn’t remember when.
She stroked his sleeve, and then he lifted his hand and patted her on the cheek. They sat down again, both of them silent for a time.
“Mother,” said Naakkve after a while, his voice steady and quiet, “do you still have the cross that my brother Orm left to you?”
“Yes,” said Kristin. “He made me promise never to part with it.”
“I think if Orm had known about it, he would have consented to letting me have it. I too will now be without inheritance or lineage.”
Kristin pulled the little silver cross from her bodice. Naakkve accepted it; it was warm from his mother’s breast. Respectfully he kissed the reliquary in the center of the cross, fastened the thin chain around his neck, and hid the cross inside his clothing.
“Do you remember your brother Orm?” asked his mother.
“I’m not sure. I think I do . . . but perhaps that’s just because you always talked so much about him, back when I was little.”
Naakkve sat before his mother for a while longer. Then he stood up. “Good night, Mother!”
“May God bless you, Naakkve. Good night!”
He left her. Kristin folded up the wedding tunic for Ivar, put away her sewing things, and covered the hearth.
“May God bless you, may God bless you, my Naakkve.” Then she blew out the candle and left the old building.
Some time later Kristin happened to meet Tordis at a manor on the outskirts of the parish. The people there had fallen ill and hadn’t been able to bring in the hay, so the brothers and sisters of the Olav guild had gone to lend them a hand. That evening Kristin accompanied the girl part of the way home. She walked along slowly, as an old woman does, and chatted; little by little she turned the conversation so that Tordis found herself telling Naakkve’s mother all about what there had been between the two of them.
Yes, she had met with him in the paddock at home, and the summer before, when she was staying up in their mountain pastures, he had come to see her several times at night. But he had never tried to be too bold with her. She knew what people said about Naakkve, but he had never offended her, in either word or deed. But he had lain beside her on top of the bedcovers a few times, and they had talked. She once asked him if it was his intention to court her. He replied that he couldn’t; he had promised himself to the service of the Virgin Mary. He told her the same thing in the spring, when they happened to speak to each other. And then she decided that she would no longer resist the wishes of her grandfather and father.
“It would have brought great sorrow upon both of you if he had broken his promise and you had defied your kinsmen,” said Kristin. She stood leaning on her rake and looked at the young maiden. The child had a gentle, lovely round face, and a thick braid of the most beautiful fair hair. “God will surely bestow happiness on you, my Tordis. He seems a most intrepid and fine boy, your betrothed.”
“Yes, I’m quite fond of Haavard,” said the girl, and began to sob bitterly.
Kristin consoled her with words befitting the lips of an old and sensible woman. Inside, she moaned with longing; she so dearly wished she could have called this good, fresh child her daughter.
After Ivar’s wedding she stayed at Rognheim for a while. Signe Gamalsdatter was not beautiful and looked both weary and old, but she was kind and gentle. She seemed to have a deep love for her young husband, and she welcomed his mother and brothers as if she thought them to be so high above her that she couldn’t possibly honor or serve them well enough. For Kristin it was a new experience to have this woman go out of her way to anticipate her wishes and tend to her comfort. Not even when she was the wealthy mistress of Husaby, commanding dozens of servants, did anyone ever serve Kristin in a way that showed they were thinking of the mistress’s ease or well-being. She had never spared herself when she bore the brunt of the work for the benefit of the whole household, and no one else ever thought of sparing her either. Signe’s obliging concern for the welfare of her mother-in-law during the days she was at Rognheim did Kristin good. She soon grew so fond of Signe that almost as often as she prayed to God to grant Ivar happiness in his marriage, she also prayed that Signe might never have reason to regret that she had given herself and all her properties to such a young husband.
Right after Michaelmas Naakkve and Bjørgulf headed north for Trøndelag. The only thing she had heard since then was that they had arrived safely in Nidaros and had been accepted as novices by the brotherhood at Tautra.
And now Kristin had lived at Jørundgaard for almost a year with only two of her sons. But she was surprised it wasn’t longer than that. On that day, the previous fall, when she had come riding past the church and looked down to see the slopes lying under a blanket of cold, raw fog so that she couldn’t make out the buildings of her own estate—she had accompanied her two oldest sons as far as Dovre—then she had thought this was what someone must feel who is riding toward home and knows that the farm lying there is nothing but ashes and cold, charred timbers.
Now, whenever she took the old path home past the site of the smithy—and by now it was almost overgrown, with tufts of yellow bedstraw, bluebells, and sweet peas spilling over the borders of the lush meadow—it seemed almost as if she were looking at a picture of her own life: the weather-beaten, soot-covered old hearth that would never again be lit by a fire. The ground was strewn with bits of coal, but thin, short, gleaming tendrils of grass were springing up all over the abandoned site. And in the cracks of the old hearth blossomed fireweed, which sows its seeds everywhere, with its exquisite, long red tassels.
CHAPTER 2
SOMETIMES, AFTER KRISTIN had gone to bed, she would be awakened by people entering the courtyard on horseback. There would be a pounding on the door to the loft, and she would hear Gaute greet his guests loudly and joyously. The servant
s would have to get up and go out. There was a clattering and stomping overhead; Kristin could hear Ingrid’s cross voice. Yes, she was a good child, that young maid, and she didn’t let anyone get too forward with her. A roar of laughing young voices would greet her sharp and lively words. Frida shrieked; the poor thing, she never grew any wiser. She was not much younger than Kristin, and yet at times her mistress had to keep an eye on her.
Then Kristin would turn over in bed and go back to sleep.
Gaute was always up before dawn the next morning, as usual. He never stayed in bed any longer even if he had been up drinking ale the night before. But his guests wouldn’t appear until breakfast time. Then they would stay at the manor all day; sometimes they had trade to discuss, sometimes it was merely a friendly visit. Gaute was most hospitable.
Kristin saw to it that Gaute’s friends were offered the best of everything. She wasn’t aware that she went about smiling quietly at the hum of youth and merry activity returning to her father’s estate. But she seldom talked with the young men, and she saw little of them. What she did see was that Gaute was well liked and happy.
Gaute Erlendssøn was as much liked by commoners as by the wealthy landowners. The case against the men who killed Erlend had brought great misfortune upon their kin, and there were doubtless people on many manors and belonging to many lineages who vigilantly avoided meeting any of the Erlendssøns, but Gaute himself had not a single foe.
Sir Sigurd of Sundbu had taken a keen liking to his young kinsman. This cousin of hers, whom Kristin had never met until fate led him to the deathbed of Erlend Nikulaussøn, had shown her the greatest loyalty of a kinsman. He stayed at Jørundgaard almost until Christmas and did everything he could to help the widow and her fatherless young boys. The sons of Erlend displayed their gratitude in a noble and courteous manner, but only Gaute drew close to him and had spent a great deal of time at Sundbu since then.