Kristin Lavransdatter (157 page)

ONE SUMMER MORNING a year later Kristin was out on the gallery of the old hearth house, cleaning out several chests of tools that stood there. When she heard horses being led into the courtyard, she went to have a look, peering between the narrow pillars of the gallery. One of the servants was leading two horses, and Gaute had appeared in the stable doorway; the boy Erlend was sitting astride his father’s shoulders. The bright little face looked over the top of the man’s yellow hair, and Gaute was holding the boy’s tiny hands clasped in his own big tan hands under his chin. He handed the child to a maid who came across the courtyard and then mounted his horse. But when Erlend screamed and reached for his father, Gaute took him back and set him in front of him on the saddle. At that moment Jofrid came out of the main house.

“Are you taking Erlend with you? Where are you headed?”

Gaute replied that he was going up to the mill; the river was threatening to carry it away. “And Erlend says he wants to go with his father.”

“Have you lost your wits?” She quickly pulled the boy down, and Gaute roared with laughter.

“I think you actually believed I was going to take him along!”

“Yes.” His wife laughed too. “You’re always taking the poor boy everywhere. I think you’d do the same as the lynx: eat your own young before you’d let anyone else take him.”

She lifted the child’s hand to wave to Gaute as he rode off from the estate. Then she put the boy down on the grass and squatted down next to him for a moment to talk to him a bit before she continued on her way over to the new storeroom and up to the loft.

Kristin stood where she was, gazing at her grandson. The morning sun shone so brightly on the little child dressed in red. Young Erlend twirled around in circles, staring down at the grass. Then he caught sight of a big pile of wood chips, and at once he busily began strewing them all around. Kristin laughed.

He was fifteen months old, but his parents thought he was ahead of his age, because he could walk and run and even say two or three words. Now he was heading straight for the little stream that ran through the lower part of the courtyard and became a gurgling creek whenever it rained in the mountains. Kristin ran over and picked him up in her arms.

“You mustn’t. Your mother will be cross if you get wet.”

The boy drew his lips into a pout; he was probably wondering whether to cry because he wasn’t allowed to splash in the stream or to give in. Getting wet was quite a big sin for him. Jofrid was much too strict with him about such matters. But he looked so clever. Laughing, Kristin kissed the boy, put him down, and went back to the gallery. But she made little headway with her work; mostly she stood and looked out at the courtyard.

The morning sun glowed so gentle and lovely above the three storerooms across from her. Kristin felt as if she hadn’t taken a good look at them for a long time. How splendid the buildings were with the pillars adorning their loft galleries and the elaborate carvings. The gilded weather vane on the crossed timbers of the gable of the new storeroom glittered against the blue haze covering the mountains in the distance. This year, after the wet spring, the grass was so fresh on the rooftops.

Kristin gave a little sigh, cast another glance at little Erlend, and then turned back to the chests.

Suddenly the wailing cry of a child pierced the air behind her. She threw down everything she was holding and rushed outside. Erlend was shrieking as he looked back and forth from his finger to a half-dead wasp lying in the grass. When his grandmother lifted him up to soothe him, he screamed even louder. And when she, amid much crying and complaining, put some damp earth and a cold green leaf on the sting, his wailing became quite dreadful.

Hushing and caressing him, Kristin carried the boy into her house, but he screamed as if he were in deadly pain—and then stopped short in the middle of a howl. He recognized the box and horn spoon that his grandmother was taking down from above the door. Kristin dipped pieces of
lefse
in honey and fed them to the child as she continued to soothe him, placing her cheek against his fair neck where the hair was still short and curly from the days when he lay in his cradle and rubbed his head against the pillow. And then Erlend forgot all about his sorrow and turned his face up toward Kristin, offering to pat and kiss her with sticky hands and lips.

As they sat there, Jofrid came into the room.

“Have you brought him indoors? You didn’t need to do that, Mother. I was just upstairs in the loft.”

Kristin mentioned what had happened to Erlend outside. “Didn’t you hear him scream?”

Jofrid thanked her mother-in-law. “But now we won’t trouble you anymore.” And she picked up the child, who was now reaching out for his mother and wanted to go to her, and they left the room.

Kristin put away the honey box. Then she continued to sit there, with nothing to occupy her hands. The chests on the gallery could wait until Ingrid came in.

 

It had been intended that she would have Frida Styrkaarsdatter as her maid when she moved out to the old house. But then Frida married one of the servants who had come with Helge Duk, a lad young enough to be her son.

“It’s the custom in our part of the country for our servants to listen to their masters when they’re offered advice for their own good,” said Jofrid when Kristin wondered how this marriage had come about.

“But here in this parish,” said Kristin, “the commoners aren’t accustomed to obeying us if we’re unreasonable, nor do they follow our advice unless it’s of equal benefit to them and to us. I’m giving you good advice, Jofrid; you should keep it in mind.”

“What Mother says is true,” added Gaute, but his voice was quite meek.

Even before he was married, Kristin had noticed that Gaute was very reluctant to speak against Jofrid. And he had become the most amenable of husbands.

Kristin didn’t deny that Gaute could stand to listen to what his wife had to say about many things; she was more sensible, capable, and hardworking than most women. And she was no more loose in her ways than Kristin herself had been. She too had trampled on her duties as a daughter and sold her honor since she could not win the man she had set her heart on in any better way. After she had gotten what she wanted, she became the most honorable and faithful wife. Kristin could see that Jofrid had great love for her husband; she was proud of his handsome appearance and his esteemed lineage. Her sisters had married wealthy men, but it was best to look at their husbands at night, when the moon wasn’t shining, and their ancestors weren’t even worth mentioning, Jofrid said scornfully. She zealously tended to her husband’s welfare and honor as she perceived it, and at home she indulged him as best she could. But if Gaute suggested that he might have a different opinion from his wife regarding even the smallest matter, Jofrid would first agree with such an expression that Gaute would begin to waver, and then she would bring him around to her point of view.

But Gaute was flourishing. No one could doubt that these two young people lived well together. Gaute loved his wife, and both of them were so proud of their son and loved him beyond all measure.

So everything should have been fine and good. If only Jofrid Helgesdatter hadn’t been . . . well, she was stingy; Kristin couldn’t find any other word for it. If she hadn’t been stingy, Kristin wouldn’t have felt annoyed that her daughter-in-law had such a desire to take charge.

During the grain harvest that very first autumn, right after Jofrid had returned to the estate as a married woman, Kristin could see that the servants were already discontented, although they seldom said anything. But the old mistress noticed it just the same.

Sometimes it had also happened in Kristin’s day that the servants were forced to eat herring that was sour, or bacon as yellow and rancid as a resinous pine torch, or spoiled meat. But then everyone knew that their mistress was bound to make up for it with something particularly good at another meal: milk porridge or fresh cheese or good ale out of season. And if there was food that was about to go bad and had to be eaten, everyone simply felt as if Kristin’s full storerooms were overflowing. If people were in need, the abundance at Jørundgaard offered security for everyone. But now people were already uncertain whether Jofrid would prove to be generous with the food if there should be a shortage among the peasants.

This was what angered her mother-in-law, for she felt it diminished the honor of the manor and its owner.

It didn’t trouble her as much that she had discovered firsthand, over the course of the year, that her daughter-in-law always saved the best for her own. On Saint Bartholomew’s Day she received two goat carcasses instead of the four she should have been given. It was true that wolverines had ravaged the smaller livestock in the mountains the previous summer, and yet Kristin thought it petty to hold back from slaughtering two more goats on such a large estate. But she held her tongue. It was the same way with everything she was supposed to be given from the farm: the autumn slaughtering, grain and flour, fodder for her four cows and two horses. She received either smaller amounts or poor-quality goods. She saw that Gaute was both embarrassed and ashamed by this, but he didn’t dare do anything for fear of his wife, and so he pretended not to notice.

Gaute was just as magnanimous as all of Erlend’s sons. In his brothers Kristin had called it extravagance. But Gaute was a toiler, and frugal in his own way. As long as he had the best horses and dogs and a few good falcons, he would have been content to live like the smallholders of the valley. But whenever visitors came to the estate, he was a gracious host to all his guests and a generous man toward beggars—and thus a landowner after his mother’s own heart. She felt this was the proper way of living for the gentry—those nobles who resided on the ancestral estates in their home districts. They should produce goods and squander nothing needlessly, but neither should they spare anything whenever love of God and His poor, or concern for furthering the honor of their lineage, demanded that goods should be handed out.

Now she saw that Jofrid liked Gaute’s rich friends and highborn kinsmen best. And yet in this regard Gaute seemed less willing to comply with his wife’s wishes; he tried to hold on to his old companions from his youth. His drinking cohorts, Jofrid called them, and Kristin now learned that Gaute had been much wilder than she knew. These friends never came to the manor uninvited after he was a married man. But as yet no poor supplicant had gone unaided by Gaute, although he gave fewer gifts if Jofrid was watching. Behind her back he dared to give more. But not much was allowed to take place behind her back.

And Kristin realized that Jofrid was jealous of her. She had possessed Gaute’s friendship and trust so completely during all the years since he was a poor little child who was neither fully alive nor dead. Now she noticed that Jofrid wasn’t pleased if Gaute sat down beside his mother to ask her advice or got her to talk about the way things were in the past. If the man stayed for long in the old house with his mother, Jofrid was certain to find an excuse to come over.

And she grew jealous if her mother-in-law paid too much attention to little Erlend.

Amid the short, trampled-down grass out in the courtyard grew several herbs with coarse, leathery dark leaves. Now, during the sunny days of midsummer, a little stalk had sprung up with tiny, delicate pale blue flowers in the center of each flattened rosette of leaves. Kristin thought the old outer leaves, scarred as they were by each time a servant’s foot or a cow’s hoof had crushed them, must love the sweet, bright blossoming shoot which sprang from its heart, just as she loved her son’s son.

He seemed to her to be life from her life and flesh from her flesh, just as dear as her own children but even sweeter. Whenever she held him in her arms, she noticed that the boy’s mother would keep a jealous eye on the two of them and would come to take him away as soon as she deemed it proper and then possessively put him to her breast, hugging him greedily. Then it occurred to Kristin Lavransdatter in a new way that the interpreters of God’s words were right. Life on this earth was irredeemably tainted by strife; in this world, wherever people mingled, producing new descendants, allowing themselves to be drawn together by physical love and loving their own flesh, sorrows of the heart and broken expectations were bound to occur as surely as the frost appears in the autumn. Both life and death would separate friends in the end, as surely as the winter separates the tree from its leaves.

 

One evening, two weeks before Saint Olav’s Day, a group of beggars happened to come to Jørundgaard and asked for lodgings for the night. Kristin was standing on the gallery of the old storeroom—it was now under her charge—and she heard Jofrid come out and tell the poor people that they would be given food, but she could not give them shelter. “There are many of us on this manor, and my mother-in-law lives here too; she owns half the buildings.”

Anger flared up in the former mistress. Never before had any wayfarers been refused a night’s lodging at Jørundgaard, and the sun was already touching the crest of the mountains. She ran downstairs and went over to Jofrid and the beggars.

“They may take shelter in my house, Jofrid, and I might as well be the one to give them food too. Here on this manor we have never refused lodging to a fellow Christian if he asked for it in the name of God.”

“You must do as you please, Mother,” replied Jofrid, her face blazing red.

When Kristin had a look at the beggars, she almost regretted her offer. It was not entirely without cause that the young wife had been unwilling to have these people on her estate overnight. Gaute and the servants had gone up to the hay meadows near Sil Lake and would not be home that evening. Jofrid was home alone with the parish’s charity cases, two old people and two children, whose turn it was to stay at Jørundgaard, and Kristin had only her maid in the old house. Although Kristin was used to seeing all kinds of people among the wandering groups of beggars, she didn’t like the looks of this lot. Four of them were big, strong young men; three of them had red hair and small, wild eyes. They seemed to be brothers. But the fourth one, whose nose had once been split open on both sides and who was missing his ears, sounded as if he might be a foreigner. There were also two old people. A short, bent old man with a greenish-yellow face, his hair and beard ravaged by dirt and age and his belly swollen as if with some illness. He walked on crutches, alongside an old woman wearing a wimple that was completely soaked with blood and pus, her neck and face covered with sores. Kristin shuddered at the thought of this woman getting near Erlend. All the same, for the sake of these two wretched old people, it was good that the group wouldn’t have to wander through Hammer Ridge in the night.