Kristin Lavransdatter (61 page)

Human beings could not have done this work on their own. God’s spirit had been at work in holy Øistein and the men who built the church after him.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Now she understood those words. A reflection of the splendor of God’s kingdom bore witness through the stones that His will was all that was beautiful. Kristin trembled. Yes, God must surely turn away with scorn from all that was vile—from sin and shame and impurity.

Along the galleries of the heavenly palace stood holy men and women, and they were so beautiful that she dared not look at them. The imperishable vines of eternity wound their way upward, calm and lovely, bursting into flower on spires and towers with stone monstrances. Above the center door hung Christ on the cross; Mary and John the Evangelist stood at his side. And they were white, as if molded from snow, and gold glittered on the white.

Three times Kristin walked around the church, praying. The huge, massive walls with their bewildering wealth of pillars and arches and windows, the glimpse of the roof’s enormous slanting surface, the tower, the gold of the spire rising high into the heavens—Kristin sank to the ground beneath her sin.

She was shaking as she kissed the hewn stone of the portal. In a flash she saw the dark carved timber around the church door back home, where as a child she had pressed her lips after her father and mother.

She sprinkled holy water over her son and herself, remembering that her father had done the same when she was small. With the child clasped tightly in her arms, she stepped forward into the church.

She walked as if through a forest. The pillars were furrowed like ancient trees, and into the woods the light seeped, colorful and as clear as song, through the stained-glass windows. High overhead animals and people frolicked in the stone foliage, and angels played their instruments. At an even higher, more dizzying height, the vaults of the ceiling arched upward, lifting the church toward God. In a hall off to the side a service was being held at an altar. Kristin fell to her knees next to a pillar. The song cut through her like a blinding light. Now she saw how deep in the dust she lay.

Pater noster. Credo in unum Deum. Ave Maria, gratia plena.
She had learned her prayers by repeating them after her father and mother before she could understand a single word, from as far back as she could remember. Lord Jesus Christ. Was there ever a sinner like her?

High beneath the triumphal arch, raised above the people, hung Christ on the cross. The pure virgin, who was his mother, stood looking up in deathly anguish at her innocent son who was suffering the death of a criminal.

And here knelt Kristin with the fruit of her sin in her arms. She hugged the child tight—he was as fresh as an apple, pink and white like a rose. He was awake now, and he lay there looking up at her with his clear, sweet eyes.

Conceived in sin. Carried under her hard, evil heart. Pulled out of her sin-tainted body, so pure, so healthy, so inexpressibly lovely and fresh and innocent. This undeserved beneficence broke her heart in two; crushed with remorse, she lay there with tears welling up out of her soul like blood from a mortal wound.

Naakkve, Naakkve, my child. God visits the sins of the parents upon the children. Didn’t I know that? Yes, I did. But I had no mercy for the innocent life that might be awakened in my womb—to be cursed and tormented because of my sin.

Did I regret my sin while I was carrying you inside me, my beloved, beloved son? Oh no, there was no remorse. My heart was hard with anger and evil thoughts at the moment I first felt you move, so small and unprotected.
Magnificat anima mea Dominum. Et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo.
²
That is what she sang, the gentle queen of women, when she was chosen to bear the one who would die for our sins. I didn’t think about the one who was the redeemer of my sin and my child’s sin. Oh, no, there was no remorse. Instead I made myself pitiful and wretched and begged that the commandments of righteousness be broken, for I could not bear it if God should keep His promise and punish me in accordance with the Word that I have known all my days.

Oh yes, now she knew. She had thought that God was like her own father, that Holy Olav was like her father. All along she had expected, deep in her heart, that whenever the punishment became more than she could bear, then she would encounter not righteousness but mercy.

She wept so hard that she didn’t have the strength to rise when the others stood up during the service; she stayed there, collapsed in a heap, holding her child. Near her several other people knelt who did not rise either: two well-dressed farmers’ wives with a young boy between them.

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!

 

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.