Kristin Lavransdatter (48 page)

Stein had come to the farm on the last turnover day
⁴
and since then he had been begging the master to come up and see the condition that the buildings were in when he took over, or to send an envoy in his stead. The farmers testified that not one building had been without leaks, and those that were now in a state of collapse had been that way when Stein arrived. Kristin saw that it was a good farm, but it had been poorly maintained. She saw that this Stein was a capable man, and Erlend was also very amenable and promised him some reductions in his land rent until he was able to repair the buildings.

Then they went into the main house where the table was set with good food and strong ale. The leaseholder’s wife asked Kristin’s forgiveness for not coming out to greet her. But her husband would not allow her to step out under open sky until she had been to church after giving birth.
⁵
Kristin greeted the woman kindly, and then she had to go over to the cradle to see the child. It was the couple’s first, and it was a son, twelve nights old, big and strong.

Then Erlend and Kristin were led to the high seat, and everyone sat down and ate and drank for a good long time. Kristin was the one who talked most during the meal; Erlend didn’t say much, nor did the farmers, and yet Kristin noticed that they seemed to like her.

Then the child woke up, at first whimpering but then shrieking so terribly that the mother had to put him to her breast to calm his cries. Kristin glanced over at the two of them several times, and when the boy had had enough, she took him from the woman and held him in her arms.

“Look, husband,” she said, “don’t you think he’s a handsome and fine young fellow?”

“That he is,” said Erlend, not looking in her direction.

Kristin sat and held the child for a while before she gave him back to his mother.

“I will send a gift over here to your son, Arndis,” she said. “For he’s the first child I’ve held in my arms since I came up here to the north.”

Flushed and defiant, with a little smile Kristin cast a glance at her husband and then at the farmers sitting along the bench. A few of them showed a slight twitch at the corner of the mouth, but then they stared straight ahead, their faces stiff and solemn. After a moment a very old man stood up; he had been drinking heavily. Now he lifted the ladle out of the ale bowl, placed it on the table, and raised the large vessel.

“So let us drink to that, mistress; that the next child you hold in your arms will be the new master of Husaby!”

Kristin stood up and accepted the heavy bowl. First she offered it to her husband. Erlend barely touched it with his lips, but Kristin took a long, deep drink.

“Thank you for that greeting, Jon of Skog,” she said with a cheery nod, her eyes twinkling. Then she sent the bowl around.

Kristin could see that Erlend was red-faced and quite angry. She herself merely felt such a foolish urge to laugh and be merry. A short time later Erlend wanted to leave, and so they set off on their way home.

 

They had been riding for a while without speaking when Erlend suddenly burst out, “Do you think it’s necessary to let even our tenants know that you were carrying a child when you were wed? You can wager your soul with the Devil that talk about the two of us will soon be flying through all the villages along the fjord.”

Kristin didn’t reply at first. She stared into the distance over her horse’s head, and she was now so white in the face that Erlend grew frightened.

“I will never forget for as long as I live,” she said at last, without looking at him, “that those were the first words you greeted him with, this son of yours that I carry under my belt.”

“Kristin!” said Erlend, his voice pleading. “My Kristin,” he implored when she said nothing and refused to look at him. “Kristin!”

“Sir?” she replied coldly and courteously, without turning her head.

Erlend cursed so that sparks flew; he spurred his horse and raced ahead along the road. But a few minutes later he came riding back toward her.

“This time I was almost so furious,” he said, “that
I
was going to ride away from
you
.”

Kristin said calmly, “Then you might have had to wait a good long time before I followed you to Husaby.”

“The things you say!” said her husband, resigned.

 

Once again they rode for some time without talking. In a while they reached a place where a small path led up over a ridge. Erlend said to his wife, “I was thinking that we could ride home this way, over the heights—it will take a little longer, but I’ve wanted to travel up this way with you for some time.”

Kristin nodded indifferently.

After a while Erlend said that now it would be better for them to walk. He tied their horses to a tree.

“Gunnulf and I had a fortress up here on the ridge,” he said. “I’d like to see whether there’s anything left of our castle.”

He took Kristin’s hand. She didn’t resist, but walked with her eyes downcast, looking at where she set her feet. It wasn’t long before they were up on the heights. Beyond the bare, frost-covered forest, in the crook of the little river, Husaby lay on the mountain slope directly across from them, looming big and grand with the stone church and all its massive buildings, surrounded by the broad acres, and the dark forested ridge behind.

“Mother used to come up here with us,” said Erlend softly. “Often. But she would always sit and stare off to the south, toward the Dovre Range. I suppose she was always yearning, night and day, to be far away from Husaby. Or she would turn toward the north and gaze out at the gap in the slopes—there where you can see blue in the distance; those are the mountains on the other side of the fjord. Not once did she look at the farm.”

Erlend’s voice was tender and beseeching. But Kristin neither spoke nor looked at him. Then he went over and kicked at the frozen heath.

“No, there’s probably nothing left here of Gunnulf’s and my fortress. And it was a long time ago, after all, that we played up here, Gunnulf and I.”

He received no answer. Right below where they stood was a small frozen pond. Erlend picked up a stone and threw it. The hollow was frozen solid so that only a tiny white star appeared on the black mirror. Erlend picked up another stone and threw it harder—then another and another. Now he was throwing them in utter fury, and in the end he would have splintered the ice with a vengeance. But then he caught sight of his wife’s face—she stood there, her eyes dark with contempt, smiling scornfully at his childishness.

Erlend spun around, but all at once Kristin grew deathly pale and her eyes fell shut. She stood there with her hands stretched out and groping, swaying as if she were about to faint—then she grabbed hold of a tree trunk.

“Kristin—what is it?” Erlend asked in fear.

She didn’t answer but stood as if she were listening to something. Her gaze was remote and strange.

Now she felt it again. Deep within her womb it felt as if a fish was flicking its tail. And again the whole world seemed to reel around her, and she felt dizzy and weak, but not as much as the first time.

“What’s the matter?” asked Erlend.

She had waited so long for this—she hardly dared to acknowledge the great fear in her soul. She could not speak of it—not now, when they had been fighting all day long. Then
he
said it.

“Was it the child moving inside you?” he asked gently, touching her shoulder.

Then she cast off all her anger toward him, pressed herself against the father of her child, and hid her face on his chest.

 

Some time later they walked back down to the place where their horses were tied. The short day was almost over; behind them in the southwest the sun was sinking behind the treetops, red and dull in the frosty haze.

Erlend carefully tested the buckles and straps of the saddle before he lifted his wife up onto her horse. Then he went over and untied his own. He reached under his belt for the gloves he had put there, but he found only one. He looked around on the ground.

Then Kristin couldn’t resist and said, “It will do you no good to look for your glove here, Erlend.”

“You might have said something to me if you saw me lose it—no matter how angry you were with me,” he replied. They were the gloves that Kristin had sewn for him and given to him as one of his betrothal presents.

“It fell out of your belt when you hit me,” said Kristin very quietly, her eyes downcast.

Erlend stood next to his horse with his hand on the saddlebow. He looked embarrassed and unhappy. But then he burst out laughing.

“Never would I have believed, Kristin—during all the time I was courting you, rushing around and begging my kinsmen to speak on my behalf and making myself so meek and pitiful in order to win you—that you could be such a witch!”

Then Kristin laughed too.

“No, then you probably would have given up long ago—and it certainly would have been in your own best interest.”

Erlend took a few steps toward her and placed his hand on her knee.

“Jesus help me, Kristin—have you ever heard it said of me that I did anything that was in my own best interest?”

He pressed his face down in her lap and then looked up with sparkling eyes into his wife’s face. Flushed and happy, Kristin bowed her head, trying to hide her smile and her eyes from Erlend.

He grabbed hold of her horse’s harness and let his own horse follow behind; and in this manner he escorted her until they reached the bottom of the ridge. Every time they looked at each other he would laugh and she would turn her face away to hide that she was laughing too.

“So,” he said merrily as they came out onto the road again, “now we’ll ride home to Husaby, my Kristin, and be as happy as two thieves!”

ON CHRISTMAS EVE the rain poured down and the wind blew hard. It was impossible to use sleighs, and so Kristin had to stay home when Erlend and the servants rode off for the evening mass at Birgsi Church.

She stood in the doorway of the main house and watched them go. The pine torches they carried shone red against the dark old buildings, reflected in the icy surface of the courtyard. The wind seized the flames and flattened them out sideways. Kristin stood there as long she could hear the faint sound of their passage in the night.

Inside the hall there were candles burning on the table. The remains of the evening meal were scattered about—lumps of porridge in dishes, half-eaten pieces of bread, and fishbones floating in puddles of spilt ale. The serving maids who were to stay at home had all fallen asleep on the straw spread out on the floor. Kristin was alone with them at the manor, along with an old man named Aan. He had served at Husaby since the time of Erlend’s grandfather; now he lived in a little hut down by the lake but he liked to come up to the farm in the daytime to putter around, in the belief that he was working very hard. Aan had fallen asleep at the table that evening, and Erlend and Ulf had laughingly carried him over to a corner and spread a blanket over him.

Back home at Jørundgaard the floor would now be thickly strewn with rushes, for the entire household would sleep together in the main house during the holiday nights. Before they left for church they used to clear away the remains of the meal eaten after their fast, and Kristin’s mother and the maids would set the table as beautifully as they could with butter and cheeses, heaps of thin, light bread, chunks of glistening bacon, and the thickest joints of cured mutton. The silver pitchers and horns of mead stood there gleaming. And her father himself would place the ale cask on the bench.

Kristin turned her chair around to face the hearth—she didn’t want to look at the loathsome table. One of the maids was snoring so loudly that it was awful to hear.

That was also one of the things that she didn’t care for about Erlend. At home on his estate he ate in a manner that was so repugnant and slovenly, pawing through the dishes for good bits of food, hardly bothering to wash his hands before he came to the table. And he let the dogs jump up onto his lap and gulp down food along with him while everyone ate. So it was only to be expected that the servants had no table manners. Back home she had been constrained to eat delicately and slowly. It would not be proper, said her mother, for the master’s family to wait while the servants ate, and those who had toiled and labored should have time to eat their fill.

“Here, Gunna,” Kristin called softly to the big yellow bitch that lay with a whole cluster of pups against the draft stone by the hearth. She was such an ill-tempered animal, and that’s why Erlend had named her after the old mistress of Raasvold.

“You poor wretch,” whispered Kristin, petting the dog who had come over and put her head on Kristin’s knee. Her backbone was as sharp as a scythe, and her teats almost swept the floor. The pups were literally eating their mother up. “Oh, yes, my poor wretch.”

Kristin leaned her head against the back of the chair and looked up at the soot-covered rafters. She was tired.

No, she had not had an easy time of it these past few months that she had spent at Husaby. She had talked with Erlend a little on the evening of the day they had gone to Medalby. Then she realized that he thought she was angry with him because he had brought this upon her.

“I do remember,” he said in a low voice, “that day in the spring when we went walking in the woods north of the church. I do remember that you asked me to leave you alone. . . .”

Kristin was pleased that he had told her this. Otherwise she often wondered about all the things that Erlend seemed to have forgotten.

But then he said, “And yet I would not have believed it of you, Kristin, that you could walk around bearing such a secret rancor toward me, and still act so gentle and happy. For you must have known long ago how things stood with you. And I believed that you were as bright and honest as the rays of the sun.”