Kristin Lavransdatter

  She looked up toward the raised chancel. Beyond the gilded, grated door, high up behind the altar, Saint Olav’s shrine glistened in the darkness. An ice-cold shiver ran down her back. There lay his holy body, waiting for Resurrection Day. Then the lid would spring open, and he would rise up. With his axe in hand, he would stride through this church. And from the stone floor, from the earth outside, from every cemetery in all of Norway the dead yellow skeletons would rise up; they would be clothed in flesh and would rally around their king. Those who had striven to follow in his bloodied tracks, and those who had merely turned to him for help with the burdens of sin and sorrow and illness to which they had bound themselves and their children, here in this life. They would crowd around their king and ask him to remind God of their need.

  “Lord, hear my prayer for these people, whom I love so much that I would rather suffer exile and want and hatred and death than have a single man or maiden grow up in Norway not knowing that you died to save all sinners. Lord, you who bade us go out and make everyone your disciple—with my blood I, Olav Haraldssøn, wrote your gospel in the Norwegian language for these free men, my poor subjects.”

  Kristin closed her eyes, feeling sick and dizzy. She saw the king’s face before her—his blazing eyes pierced the depths of her soul—now she trembled before Saint Olav’s gaze.

  “North of your village, Kristin, where I rested when my own countrymen drove me from my ancestral kingdom, because they could not keep God’s Commandments—wasn’t a church built at that spot? Didn’t knowledgeable men come there to teach you of God’s Word?

  “Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. Thou shalt not kill. God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children. I died so that you might learn these teachings. Haven’t they been given to you, Kristin Lavransdatter?”

  Oh yes, yes, my Lord and King!

  Olav’s church back home—she saw in her mind the pleasant, brown-timbered room. The ceiling was not so high that it could frighten her. It was unassuming, built in God’s honor from dark, tarred wood, in the same way that people constructed their mountain huts and storehouses and cattle sheds. But the timbers had been cut into supple staves, and they were raised and joined to form the walls of God’s house. And Sira Eirik taught each year on the church consecration day that in this manner we ought to use the tools of faith to cut and carve from our sinful, natural being a faithful link in the Church of Christ.

  “Have you forgotten this, Kristin? Where are the deeds that should bear witness for you on the last day, showing that you were a link in God’s church? The good deeds which will bear witness that you belong to God?”

  Jesus, her good deeds! She had repeated the prayers that were placed on her lips. She had given out the alms that her father had placed in her hands; she had helped her mother when Ragnfrid clothed the poor, fed the hungry, and tended to the sores of the ill.

  But the evil deeds were her own.

  She had clung to everyone who offered her protection and support. Brother Edvin’s loving admonitions, his sorrow over her sin, his tender intercessionary prayers which she had received—and then she had flung herself into passionate sinful desire as soon as she was beyond the light of his gentle old eyes. She lay down in cowsheds and outbuildings and scarcely felt any shame that she was deceiving the good and honorable Abbess Groa; she had accepted the kind concern of the pious sisters and hadn’t even had the wit to blush when they praised her gentle and seemly behavior before her father.

  Oh, the worst was thinking about her father. Her father, who had not said a single unkind word when he came to visit this spring.

  Simon had concealed the fact that he had caught his betrothed with a man at an inn for wandering soldiers. And she had let him take the blame for her breach of promise, had let him bear the blame before her father.

  Oh, but her father, that was the worst. No, her mother, that was even worse. If Naakkve should grow up to show his mother as little love as she had shown her own mother—oh, she couldn’t bear it. Her mother, who had given birth to her and nursed her at her breast, kept watch over her when she was sick, washed and combed her hair and rejoiced at its beauty. And the first time that Kristin felt she needed her mother’s help and comfort, she had waited for her mother to come, in spite of all her own disdain. “You should know that your mother would have come north to be with you if she had known that it might give you comfort,” her father had said. Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother!

  She had seen the water from the well back home. It looked so clean and pure when it was in the wooden cups. But her father owned a glass goblet, and when he filled it with water and the sun shone through, the water was muddy and full of impurities.

  Yes, my Lord and King, now I see the way I am!

  Goodness and love she had accepted from everyone, as if they were her right. There was no end to the goodness and love she had encountered all her days. But the first time someone confronted her, she had risen up like a snake and struck. Her will had been as hard and sharp as a knife when she drove Eline Ormsdatter to her death.

  Just as she would have risen up against God Himself if He had placed His righteous hand on the back of her neck. Oh, how could her father and mother bear it? They had lost three young children; they had watched Ulvhild sicken until she died, after they had striven those long sorrowful years to give the child back her health. But they had borne all these trials with patience, never doubting that God knew what was best for their children. Then she had caused them all this sorrow and shame.

  But if there had been anything wrong with her child—if they had taken her child the way they were now taking Sigrid Andresdatter’s child from her . . . Oh, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

  She had wandered to the very edge of Hell’s abyss. If she should lose her son, after she had thrown herself into the seething rapids, turned away with scorn from any hope of joining the good and dear people who loved her—giving herself into the Devil’s power . . .

  It was no wonder that Naakkve bore the mark of a bloody hand on his chest.

  Oh, Holy Olav, you who heard me when I prayed for you to help my child. I prayed that you would turn the punishment upon me and spare the innocent one. Yes, Lord, I know how I kept my part of the agreement.

  Like a wild, heathen animal she had reared up at the first chastisement. Erlend. Not for a moment did she ever believe that he no longer loved her. If she had believed that, then she would not have had the strength to live. Oh no. But she had secretly thought that when she was beautiful again, and healthy and lively—then she would act in such a way that he would have to beg her. It wasn’t that he had been unloving during the winter. But she, who had heard ever since she was a girl that the Devil always keeps close to a woman with child and tempts her because she is weak—she had turned a willing ear to the Devil’s lies. She had pretended to believe that Erlend didn’t care for her because she was ugly and ill, when she noticed that he was distressed because he had made both her and himself the subject of gossip. She had flung his timid and tender words back at him, and when she drove him to say harsh and thoughtless things, she would bring them up later to rebuke him. Jesus, what an evil woman she was—she had been a bad wife.

  “Now do you understand, Kristin, that you need help?”

  Yes, my Lord and King, now I understand. I am in great need of your support so that I won’t turn away from God again. Stay with me, you who are the chieftain of His people, as I step forward with my prayers; pray for mercy for me. Holy Olav, pray for me!

  Cor mundum crea in me, Deus, et Spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis.

  Ne projicias me a facie tua.

  Libera me de sanguinibus, Deus, Deus salutis meae.3

  The service was over. People were leaving the church. The two farmers’ wives who were kneeling near Kristin stood up. But the boy between them did not get up. He began moving across the floor by setting his knuckles on the flagstones and hopping along like a fledgling crow. He had tiny legs, bent
crooked under his belly. The women walked in such a way as to hide him with their clothes as best they could.

  When they were out of sight, Kristin threw herself down and kissed the floor where they had walked past her.

  Feeling lost and uncertain, she was standing at the entrance to the chancel when a young priest came out the grated door. He stopped in front of the young woman with the tear-stained face, and Kristin did her best to explain the reason for her journey. At first he didn’t understand. Then she pulled out the golden crown and held it out.

  “Oh, are you Kristin Lavransdatter, the wife of Erlend of Husaby?” He gave her a rather surprised look; her face was quite swollen from weeping. “Yes, your brother-in-law, Gunnulf, spoke of you, yes he did.”

  He led her into the sacristy and took the crown; he unwrapped the linen cloth and looked at it. Then he smiled.

  “Well, you must realize that there will have to be witnesses and the like. You can’t give away such a costly treasure as if it were a piece of buttered lefse. But I can keep it for you in the meantime; no doubt you would prefer not to carry it around with you in town.

  “Oh, ask Herr Arne if he wouldn’t mind coming here,” he said to a sexton. “I think that by rights your husband should be present too. But perhaps Gunnulf has a letter from him.

  “You wish to speak to the archbishop himself, is that right? Otherwise there is Hauk Tomassøn, who is the penitentiarius. I don’t know whether Gunnulf has spoken to Archbishop Eiliv. But you must come here for matins tomorrow, and then you can ask for me after lauds. My name is Paal Aslakssøn. That,” and he pointed to the child, “you must leave at the hostel. I seem to remember your brother-in-law saying that you’re staying with the sisters at Bakke, is that right?”

  Another priest came in, and the two men talked to each other briefly. The first priest then opened a small cupboard in the wall and took out a balance scale and weighed the crown, while the other made a note of it in a ledger. Then they placed the crown in the cupboard and closed the door.

  Herr Paal was about to escort Kristin out, but then he asked her whether she would like him to lift her son up to Saint Olav’s shrine.

  He picked up the boy with the confident, almost indifferent ease of a priest who was used to holding children for baptism. Kristin followed him into the church, and he asked her whether she too would like to kiss the shrine.

  I don’t dare, thought Kristin, but she accompanied the priest up the stairs to the dais on which the shrine stood. A great, chalk-white light seemed to pass before her eyes as she pressed her lips to the golden chest.

  The priest looked at her for a moment, to see whether she might collapse in a faint. But she got to her feet. Then he touched the child’s forehead to the sacred shrine.

  Herr Paal escorted Kristin to the church door and asked whether she was certain she could find her way to the ferry landing. Then he bade her good night. He spoke the whole time in an even and dry voice, like any other courteous young man in the king’s service.

  It had started to rain lightly, and a wonderful fragrance wafted blessedly from the gardens and along the street, which, on either side of the worn ruts from the wheel tracks, was as fresh and green as a country courtyard. Kristin sheltered the child from the rain as best she could—he was heavy now, so heavy that her arms were quite numb from carrying him. And he fussed and cried incessantly; he was probably hungry again.

  The mother was dead tired from the long journey and from all the weeping and the intense emotions in the church. She was cold, and the rain was coming down harder; the drops splashed on the trees, making the leaves flutter and shake. She made her way down the lanes and came out onto a broad street; from there she could see the rushing river, wide and gray, its surface punctured like a sieve by the falling drops.

  There was no ferryboat. Kristin talked to two men who were huddled in a space beneath a warehouse standing on posts at the water’s edge. They told her to go out to the sandbanks—there the nuns had a house, and that’s where the ferryman was.

  Kristin went back up the wide street, wet and tired and with aching feet. She came to a small gray stone church; behind it stood several buildings enclosed by a fence. Naakkve was screaming furiously, so she couldn’t go inside the church. But she heard the song from the recessed paneless windows, and she recognized the antiphon: Laetare, Regina Coeli—rejoice, thou Queen of Heaven, for he whom you were chosen to bear, has risen, as he promised. Hallelujah!

  This was what the Minorites4 sang after the completorium. Brother Edvin had taught her this hymn to the Lord’s Mother as Kristin kept vigil over him during those nights when he lay deathly ill in their home at Jørundgaard. She crept out to the churchyard and, standing against the wall with her child in her arms, she repeated his words softly to herself.

  “Nothing you do could ever change your father’s heart toward you. This is why you must not cause him any more sorrow.”

  As your pierced hands were stretched out on the cross, O precious Lord of Heaven. No matter how far a soul might stray from the path of righteousness, the pierced hands were stretched out, yearning. Only one thing was needed: that the sinful soul should turn toward the open embrace, freely, like a child who goes to his father and not like a thrall who is chased home to his stern master. Now Kristin realized how hideous sin was. Again she felt the pain in her breast, as if her heart were breaking with remorse and shame at the undeserved mercy.

  Next to the church wall there was a little shelter from the rain. She sat down on a gravestone and set about quelling the child’s hunger. Now and then she would bend down and kiss his little down-covered head.

  She must have fallen asleep. Someone was touching her shoulder. A monk and an old lay brother holding a spade in his hand stood before her. The barefoot brother asked if she was looking for shelter for the night.

  The thought raced through her mind that she would much rather stay here tonight with the Minorites, Brother Edvin’s brothers. And it was so far to Bakke, and she was nearly collapsing with weariness. Then the monk offered to have the lay servant accompany her to the women’s hostel—“and give her a little calamus poultice for her feet; I see that they are sore.”

  It was stuffy and dark at the women’s hostel, which stood outside the fence in the lane. The lay brother brought Kristin water to wash with and a little food, and she sat down near the hearth, trying to soothe her child. Naakkve could no doubt tell from her milk that his mother was worn out and had fasted all day. He fretted and whimpered in between attempts to suckle from her empty breasts. Kristin gulped down the milk that the lay brother brought her. She tried to squirt it from her mouth into the child’s, but the boy protested loudly at this new means of being fed, and the old man laughed and shook his head. She would have to drink it herself, and then it would benefit the boy.

  Finally the man left. Kristin crept into one of the beds high up beneath the center roof beam. From there she could reach a hatch. There was a foul smell in the hostel—one of the women was in bed with a stomach ailment. Kristin opened the hatch. The summer night was bright and mild, the rain-washed air streamed down on her. She sat in the short bed with her head leaning back against the timbers of the wall; there were few pillows for the beds. The boy was asleep in her lap. She had meant to close the hatch after a moment, but she fell asleep.

  In the middle of the night she woke up. The moon, a pale summery honey-gold, was shining down on her and the child and illuminating the opposite wall. At that moment Kristin became aware of a person standing in the midst of the stream of moonlight, hovering between the gable and the floor.

  He was wearing an ash-gray monk’s cowl; he was tall and stooped. Then he turned his ancient, furrowed face toward her. It was Brother Edvin. His smile was so inexpressibly tender, and a little sly and merry, just as it was when he lived on this earth.

  Kristin was not the least bit surprised. Humbly, joyfully, and filled with anticipation, she looked at him and waited for what he would say or do.
r />   The monk laughed and held up a heavy old leather glove toward her; then he hung it on the moonbeam. He smiled even more, nodded to her, and then vanished.

  PART II

  HUSABY

  CHAPTER 1

  ONE DAY JUST after New Year’s, unexpected guests arrived at Husaby. They were Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn and old Smid Gudleikssøn from Dovre, and they were accompanied by two gentlemen whom Kristin didn’t know. But Erlend was very surprised to see his father-in-law in their company—they were Erling Vidkunssøn from Giske and Bjarkøy, and Haftor Graut from Godøy. He hadn’t realized that Lavrans knew them. But Sir Erling explained that they had met at Nes; he had served with Lavrans and Smid on the six-man court, which had finally settled the inheritance dispute among Jon Haukssøn’s descendants. Then he and Lavrans happened to speak of Erlend; and Erling, who had business in Nidaros, mentioned that he had a mind to pay a visit to Husaby if Lavrans would keep him company and sail north with him.

  Smid Gudleikssøn said with a laugh that he had practically invited himself along on the journey. “I wanted to see our Kristin again—the loveliest rose of the north valley. And I also thought that my kinswoman Ragnfrid would thank me if I kept an eye on her husband, to see what kind of decisions he was making with such wise and mighty men. Yes, your father has had other matters on his hands this winter, Kristin, than carousing from farm to farm with us and celebrating the Christmas season until Lent begins. All these years we’ve been sitting at home on our estates in peace and quiet, with each man tending to his own interests. But now Lavrans wants the men of the valleys who are the king’s retainers to ride together to Oslo in the harshest time of the winter—now we’re supposed to advise the noblemen of the Council and look after the king’s interests. Lavrans says they’re handling things so badly for the poor, underaged boy.”1