But after they had settled in at Jørundgaard, they lived for the most part just as quietly and kept much to themselves; Ragnfrid did not seem overly fond of her kinsmen, since she only saw them as often as she had to for the sake of propriety. This was partially due to the fact that Lavrans and Ragnfrid were particularly pious and God-fearing people, who faithfully went to church and were glad to house God’s servants and people traveling on church business or pilgrims journeying up the valley to Nidaros.¹ And they showed the greatest respect to their parish priest, who was their closest neighbor and lived at Romundgaard. But the other people in the valley felt that God’s kingdom had cost them dearly enough in tithes, goods, and money already, so they thought it unnecessary to attend to fasts and prayers so strictly or to take in priests and monks unless there was a need for them.

Otherwise the people of Jørundgaard were greatly respected and also well liked, especially Lavrans, because he was known as a strong and courageous man, but a peaceful soul, honest and calm, humble in conduct but courtly in bearing, a remarkably capable farmer, and a great hunter. He hunted wolves and bears with particular ferocity, and all types of vermin. In only a few years he had acquired a good deal of land, but he was a kind and helpful master to his tenants.

Ragnfrid was seen so seldom that people soon stopped talking about her altogether. When she first returned home to Gudbrandsdal, many were surprised, since they remembered her from the time when she lived at Sundbu. She had never been beautiful, but in those days she seemed gracious and happy; now she had lost her looks so utterly that one might think she was ten years older than her husband instead of three. People thought she took the deaths of her children unreasonably hard, because in other ways she was far better off than most women—she had great wealth and position and she got on well with her husband, as far as anyone could tell. Lavrans did not take up with other women, he always asked for her advice in all matters, and he never said an unkind word to her, whether he was sober or drunk. And she was not so old that she couldn’t have many more children, if God would grant her that.

They had some difficulty finding young people to serve at Jørundgaard because the mistress was of such a mournful spirit and because they observed all of the fasts so strictly. But the servants lived well on the manor, and angry or chastising words were seldom heard. Both Lavrans and Ragnfrid took the lead in all work. The master also had a lively spirit in his own way, and he might join in a dance or start up singing when the young people frolicked on the church green on sleepless vigil nights.² But it was mostly older people who took employment at Jørundgaard; they found it to their liking and stayed for a long time.

It was a beautiful morning in early summer. Kristin was standing in the loft where they slept in the summertime. She saw the sun shining outside, and she heard her father and his men talking down in the courtyard.³ She was so excited that she couldn’t stand still while her mother dressed her; she jumped and leaped after she was helped into every garment. She had never before been up to the mountains, only across the gorge to Vaage, when she was allowed to go along to visit her mother’s kinsmen at Sundbu, and into the nearby woods with her mother and the servants when they went out to pick berries, which Ragnfrid put in her weak ale. She also made a sour mash out of cowberries and cranberries, which she ate on bread instead of butter during Lent.

Ragnfrid coiled up Kristin’s long golden hair and fastened it under her old blue cap. Then she kissed her daughter on the cheek, and Kristin ran down to her father. Lavrans was already sitting in the saddle; he lifted her up behind him, where he had folded his cape like a pillow on the horse’s loin. There Kristin was allowed to sit astride and hold on to his belt. Then they called farewell to her mother, but she had come running down from the gallery with Kristin’s hooded cloak; she handed it to Lavrans and told him to take good care of the child.

The sun was shining but it had rained hard during the night so the streams were splashing and singing everywhere on the hillsides, and wisps of fog drifted below the mountain slopes. But above the crests, white fair-weather clouds climbed into the blue sky, and Lavrans and his men said it was going to be a hot day later on. Lavrans had four men with him, and they were all well armed because at that time there were all kinds of strange people in the mountains—although it seemed unlikely they would encounter any such people because there were so many in their group, and they were only going a short way into the mountains. Kristin liked all of the servants. Three of them were somewhat older men, but the fourth, Arne Gyrdsøn of Finsbrekken, was a half-grown boy and Kristin’s best friend. He rode right behind Lavrans because he was supposed to tell her about everything they saw along the way as they passed.

They rode between the buildings of Romundgaard and exchanged greetings with Eirik the priest. He was standing outside scolding his daughter⁴—she ran the house for him—about a skein of newly dyed yarn that she had left hanging outdoors the day before; now it had been ruined by the rain.

On the hill across from the parsonage stood the church; it was not large but graceful, beautiful, well kept, and freshly tarred. Near the cross outside the cemetery gate, Lavrans and his men removed their hats and bowed their heads. Then Kristin’s father turned around in his saddle, and he and Kristin waved to her mother. They could see her out on the green in front of the farm buildings back home; she waved to them with a corner of her linen veil.

Kristin was used to playing almost every day up here on the church hill and in the cemetery; but today she was going to travel so far that the child thought the familiar sight of her home and village⁵ looked completely new and strange. The clusters of buildings at Jørundgaard, in both the inner and outer courtyards, seemed to have grown smaller and grayer down there on the lowlands. The glittering river wound its way past into the distance, and the valley spread out before her, with wide green pastures and marshes at the bottom and farms with fields and meadows up along the hillsides beneath the precipitous gray mountains.

Kristin knew that Loptsgaard lay far below the place where the mountains joined and closed off the valley. That was where Sigurd and Jon lived, two old men with white beards; they always teased her and played with her whenever they came to Jørundgaard. She liked Jon because he carved the prettiest animals out of wood for her, and he had once given her a gold ring. But the last time he visited them, on Whitsunday, he had brought her a knight that was so beautifully carved and so exquisitely painted that Kristin thought she had never received a more marvelous gift. She insisted on taking the knight to bed with her every single night, but in the morning when she woke up he would be standing on the step in front of the bed where she slept with her parents. Her father told her that the knight got up at the first crow of the cock, but Kristin knew that her mother took him away after she fell asleep. She had heard her mother say that he would be so hard and uncomfortable if they rolled on top of him during the night.

Kristin was afraid of Sigurd of Loptsgaard, and she didn’t like it when he took her on his knee, because he was in the habit of saying that when she grew up, he would sleep in her arms. He had outlived two wives and said he would no doubt outlive the third as well; so Kristin could be the fourth. But when she started to cry, Lavrans would laugh and say that he didn’t think Margit was about to give up the ghost anytime soon, but if things did go badly and Sigurd came courting, he would be refused—Kristin needn’t worry about that.

A large boulder lay near the road, about the distance of an arrow shot north of the church, and around it there was a dense grove of birch and aspen. That’s where they played church, and Tomas, the youngest grandson of Eirik the priest, would stand up and say mass like his grandfather, sprinkling holy water and performing baptisms when there was rainwater in the hollows of the rock. But one day the previous fall, things had gone awry. First Tomas had married Kristin and Arne—Arne was still so young that he sometimes stayed behind with the children and played with them when he could. Then Arne caught a piglet that was wandering about and they carried it off to be baptized. Tomas anointed it with mud, dipped it into a hole filled with water and, mimicking his grandfather, said the mass in Latin and scolded them for their scanty offerings. That made the children laugh because they had heard the grown-ups talking about Eirik’s excessive greed. And the more they laughed, the more inventive Tomas became. Then he said that this child had been conceived during Lent, and they would have to atone before the priest and the church for their sin. The older boys laughed so hard that they howled, but Kristin was so filled with shame that she was almost in tears as she stood there with the piglet in her arms. And while this was going on, they were unlucky enough that Eirik himself came riding past, on his way home after visiting a sick parishioner. When he saw what the children were up to, he leaped from his horse and handed the holy vessel abruptly to Bentein, his oldest grandson, who was with him. Bentein almost dropped the silver dove containing the Holy Host on the ground. The priest rushed in among the children and thrashed as many as he could grab. Kristin dropped the piglet, and it ran down the road squealing as it dragged the christening gown behind, making the priest’s horses rear up in terror. The priest also slapped Kristin, who fell, and then he kicked her so hard that her hip hurt for days afterward. When Lavrans heard of this, he felt that Eirik had been too harsh toward Kristin, since she was so young. He said that he would speak to the priest about it, but Ragnfrid begged him not to do so, because the child had received no more than she deserved by taking part in such a blasphemous game. So Lavrans said nothing more about the matter, but he gave Arne the worst beating he had ever received.

That’s why, as they rode past the boulder, Arne plucked at Kristin’s sleeve. He didn’t dare say anything because of Lavrans, so he grimaced, smiled, and slapped his backside. But Kristin bowed her head in shame.

The road headed into dense forest. They rode in the shadow of Hammer Ridge; the valley grew narrow and dark, and the roar of the Laag River was stronger and rougher. When they caught a glimpse of the river, it was flowing icy-green with white froth between steep walls of stone. The mountain was black with forest on both sides of the valley; it was dark and close and rank in the gorge, and the cold wind came in gusts. They rode over the foot-bridge across Rost Creek, and soon they saw the bridge over the river down in the valley. In a pool just below the bridge there lived a river sprite.⁶ Arne wanted to tell Kristin about it, but Lavrans sternly forbade the boy to speak of such things out there in the forest. And when they reached the bridge, he jumped down from his horse and led it across by the bridle as he held his other arm around the child’s waist.

On the other side of the river a bridle path led straight up into the heights, so the men got down from their horses and walked, but Lavrans lifted Kristin forward into his saddle so she could hold on to the saddlebow, and then she was allowed to ride Guldsvein alone.

More gray crests and distant blue peaks striped with snow rose up beyond the mountainsides as they climbed higher, and now Kristin could glimpse through the trees the village north of the gorge. Arne pointed and told her the names of the farms that they could see.

High up on the grassy slope they came to a small hut. They stopped near the split-rail fence. Lavrans shouted and his voice echoed again and again among the cliffs. Two men came running down from the small patch of pasture. They were the sons of the house. They were skillful tar-burners,⁷ and Lavrans wanted to hire them to do some tar distilling for him. Their mother followed with a large basin of cold cellar milk, for it was a hot day, as the men had expected it would be.

“I see you have your daughter with you,” she said after she had greeted them. “I thought I’d have a look at her. You must take off her cap. They say she has such fair hair.”

Lavrans did as the woman asked, and Kristin’s hair fell over her shoulders all the way to the saddle. It was thick and golden, like ripe wheat.

Isrid, the woman, touched her hair and said, “Now I see that the rumors did not exaggerate about your little maiden. She’s a lily, and she looks like the child of a knight. Gentle eyes she has as well—she takes after you and not the Gjeslings. May God grant you joy from her, Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn! And look how you ride Guldsvein, sitting as straight as a king’s courtier,” she teased, holding the basin as Kristin drank.

The child blushed with pleasure, for she knew that her father was considered the most handsome of men far and wide, and he looked like a knight as he stood there among his servants, even though he was dressed more like a peasant, as was his custom at home. He was wearing a short tunic, quite wide, made of green-dyed homespun and open at the neck so his shirt was visible. He had on hose and shoes of undyed leather, and on his head he wore an old-fashioned wide-brimmed woolen hat. His only jewelry was a polished silver buckle on his belt and a little filigree brooch at the neck of his shirt. Part of a gold chain was also visible around his neck. Lavrans always wore this chain, and from it hung a gold cross, set with large rock crystals. The cross could be opened, and inside was a scrap of shroud and hair from the Holy Fru Elin of Skøvde, for the sons of Lagmand traced their lineage from one of the daughters of that blessed woman. Whenever Lavrans was in the forest or at work, he would put the cross inside his shirt against his bare chest, so as not to lose it.

And yet in his rough homespun clothing he looked more high born than many a knight or king’s retainer dressed in banquet attire. He was a handsome figure, tall, broad-shouldered, and narrow-hipped. His head was small and set attractively on his neck, and he had pleasing, somewhat narrow facial features—suitably full cheeks, a nicely rounded chin, and a well-shaped mouth. His coloring was fair, with a fresh complexion, gray eyes, and thick, straight, silky-gold hair.

He stood there talking to Isrid about her affairs, and he also asked about Tordis, Isrid’s kinswoman who was looking after Jørundgaard’s mountain pastures that summer. Tordis had recently given birth, and Isrid was waiting for the chance to find safe passage through the forest so she could carry Tordis’s little boy down from the mountains to have him baptized. Lavrans said that she could come along with them; he was going to return the next evening, and it would be safer and more reassuring for her to have so many men to accompany her and the heathen child.

Isrid thanked him. “If the truth be told, this is exactly what I’ve been waiting for. We all know, we poor folks who live up here in the hills, that you will do us a favor if you can whenever you come this way.” She ran off to gather up her bundle and a cloak.

The fact of the matter was that Lavrans enjoyed being among these humble people who lived in clearings and on leaseholdings high up at the edge of the village. With them he was always happy and full of banter. He talked to them about the movements of the forest animals, about the reindeer on the high plateaus, and about all the uncanny goings-on that occur in such places. He assisted them in word and deed and offered a helping hand; he saw to their sick cattle, helped them at the forge and with their carpentry work. On occasion he even applied his own powerful strength when they had to break up the worst rocks or roots. That’s why these people always joyfully welcomed Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn and Guldsvein, the huge red stallion he rode. The horse was a beautiful animal with a glossy coat, white mane and tail, and shining eyes—known in the villages for his strength and fierceness. But toward Lavrans he was as gentle as a lamb. And Lavrans often said that he was as fond of the horse as of a younger brother.

The first thing Lavrans wanted to attend to was the beacon at Heimhaugen. During those difficult times of unrest a hundred years earlier or more, the landowners along the valleys had erected beacons in certain places on the mountainsides, much like the wood stacked in warning bonfires at the ports for warships along the coast. But these beacons in the valleys were not under military authority; the farmer guilds kept them in good repair, and the members took turns taking care of them.

When they came to the first mountain pasture, Lavrans released all the horses except the pack horse into the fenced meadow, and then they set off on a steep pathway upward. Before long there was a great distance between trees. Huge pines stood dead and white, like bones, next to marshy patches of land—and now Kristin saw bare gray mountain domes appearing in the sky all around. They climbed over long stretches of scree, and in places a creek ran across the path so that her father had to carry her. The wind was brisk and fresh up there, and the heath was black with berries, but Lavrans said that they had no time to stop and pick them. Arne leaped here and there, plucking off berries for her, and telling her which pastures they could see below in the forest—for there was forest over all of Høvringsvang at that time.

Now they were just below the last bare, rounded crest, and they could see the enormous heap of wood towering against the sky and the caretaker’s hut in the shelter of a sheer cliff.

As they came over the ridge, the wind rushed toward them and whipped through their clothes—it seemed to Kristin that something alive which dwelled up there had come forward to greet them. The wind gusted and blew as she and Arne walked across the expanse of moss. The children sat down on the very end of a ledge, and Kristin stared with big eyes—never had she imagined that the world was so huge or so vast.

There were forest-clad mountain slopes below her in all directions; her valley was no more than a hollow between the enormous mountains, and the neighboring valleys were even smaller hollows; there were many of them, and yet there were fewer valleys than there were mountains. On all sides gray domes, golden-flamed with lichen, loomed above the carpet of forest; and far off in the distance, toward the horizon, stood blue peaks with white glints of snow, seeming to merge with the grayish-blue and dazzling white summer clouds. But to the northeast, close by—just beyond the pasture woods—stood a cluster of magnificent stone-blue mountains with streaks of new snow on their slopes. Kristin guessed that they belonged to the Raanekamp, the Boar Range, which she had heard about, for they truly did look like a group of mighty boars walking away with their backs turned to the village. And yet Arne said that it was half a day’s ride to reach them.

Kristin had thought that if she came up over the crest of her home mountains, she would be able to look down on another village like their own, with farms and houses, and she had such a strange feeling when she saw what a great distance there was between places where people lived. She saw the little yellow and green flecks on the floor of the valley and the tiny glades with dots of houses in the mountain forests; she started to count them, but by the time she had reached three dozen, she could no longer keep track. And yet the marks of settlement were like nothing in that wilderness.

She knew that wolves and bears reigned in the forest, and under every rock lived trolls and goblins and elves, and she was suddenly afraid, for no one knew how many there were, but there were certainly many more of them than of Christian people. Then she called loudly for her father, but he didn’t hear her because of the wind—he and his men were rolling great boulders down the rock face to use as supports for the timbers of the beacon.

But Isrid came over to the children and showed Kristin where the mountain Vaage Vestfjeld lay. And Arne pointed out Graafjeld, where the people of the villages captured reindeer in trenches and where the king’s hawk hunters⁸ lived in stone huts. That was the sort of work that Arne wanted to do himself someday—but he also wanted to learn to train birds for the hunt—and he lifted his arms overhead, as if he were flinging a hawk into the air.

Isrid shook her head.

“It’s a loathsome life, Arne Gyrdsøn. It would be a great sorrow for your mother if you became a hawk hunter, my boy. No man can make a living doing that unless he keeps company with the worst kind of people, and with those who are even worse.”

Lavrans had come over to them and caught the last remark.

“Yes,” he said, “there’s probably more than one household out there that pays neither taxes nor tithes.”

“I imagine you’ve seen one thing and another, haven’t you, Lavrans?” Isrid hinted. “You who have journeyed so deep into the mountains.”

“Ah, well,” Lavrans said reluctantly, “that could be—but I don’t think I should speak of such things. We must not begrudge those who have exhausted their peace in the village whatever peace they may find on the mountain, that’s what I think. And yet I’ve seen yellow pastures and beautiful hay meadows in places where few people know that any valleys exist. And I’ve seen herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, but I don’t know whether they belonged to people or to the others.”

“That’s right,” said Isrid. “Bears and wolves are blamed for the loss of cattle up here in the mountain pastures, but there are much worse robbers on the slopes.”

“You call them worse?” said Lavrans thoughtfully, stroking his daughter’s cap. “In the mountains south of the Raanekamp I once saw three little boys, the oldest about Kristin’s age, and they had blond hair and tunics made of hides. They bared their teeth at me like young wolves before they ran away and hid. It’s not so surprising that the poor man they belonged to should be tempted to take a cow or two for himself.”

“Well, wolves and bears all have young ones too,” said Isrid peevishly. “And you don’t choose to spare them, Lavrans. Neither the full-grown ones nor their young. And yet they have never been taught laws or Christianity, as have these evil-doers that you wish so well.”

“Do you think I wish them well because I wish for them something slightly better than the worst?” said Lavrans with a faint smile. “But come along now, let’s see what kind of food packets Ragnfrid has given us for today.” He took Kristin’s hand and led her away. He bent down to her and said softly, “I was thinking of your three baby brothers, little Kristin.”

They peeked into the caretaker’s hut, but it was stuffy and smelled of mold. Kristin took a quick look around, but there were only earthen benches along the walls, a hearthstone in the middle of the floor, barrels of tar, and bundles of resinous pine sticks and birchbark. Lavrans thought they should eat outdoors, and a little farther down a birch-covered slope they found a lovely green plateau.

They unloaded the pack horse and stretched out on the grass. And there was plenty of good food in Ragnfrid’s bag—soft bread and thin lefse,⁹ butter and cheese, pork and wind-dried reindeer meat, lard, boiled beef brisket, two large kegs of German ale, and a small jug of mead. They wasted no time in cutting up the meat and passing it around, while Halvdan, the oldest of the men, made a fire; it was more comforting to have heat than to be without it in the forest.

Isrid and Arne pulled up heather and gathered birch twigs and tossed them into the flames; the fire crackled as it tore the fresh foliage from the branches so that little white charred specks flew high up into the red mane of the blaze. Thick dark smoke swirled up toward the clear sky. Kristin sat and watched; the fire seemed happy to be outside and free to play. It was different; not like when it was confined to the hearth back home and had to slave to cook the food and light up the room for them.

She sat there leaning against her father, with one arm over his knee. He gave her as much as she wanted to eat from all the best portions and offered her all the ale she could drink, along with frequent sips of the mead.

“She’ll be so tipsy she won’t be able to walk down to the pasture,” said Halvdan with a laugh, but Lavrans stroked her plump cheeks.

“There are enough of us here to carry her. It will do her good. Drink up, Arne. God’s gifts will do you good, not harm, all you who are still growing. The ale will give you sweet red blood and make you sleep well. It won’t arouse rage or foolishness.”

And the men drank long and hard too. Isrid did not stint herself either, and soon their voices and the roar and hiss of the fire became a distant sound in Kristin’s ears; she felt her head grow heavy. She also noticed that they tried to entice Lavrans to tell them about the strange things he had witnessed on his hunting expeditions. But he would say very little, and she thought this so comforting and reassuring. And she had eaten so much.

Her father was holding a chunk of soft barley bread. He shaped little pieces with his fingers so they looked like horses, and he broke off tiny scraps of meat and set them astride the bread horses. Then he made them ride down his thigh and into Kristin’s mouth. Before long she was so tired that she could neither yawn nor chew—and then she toppled over onto the ground and fell asleep.

It must have been late in the day, for the sunshine was a gleaming yellow and the shadows had lengthened and now fell toward the southeast. There was no longer even a breath of wind, and mosquitoes and flies were buzzing and humming around the sleeping group of people. Kristin sat quite still, scratching the mosquito bites on her hands, and looked around. The mountain dome above them shone white with moss and gold from the lichen in the sunshine, and the beacon of weather-beaten timbers towered against the sky like the skeleton of some weird beast.

She started to feel uneasy—it was so odd to see all of them asleep in the bright, bare light of day. Whenever she woke up at home in the night, she would be lying snugly in the dark with her mother on one side and the tapestry that hung over the timbered wall on the other. Then she would know that the door and smoke vent of the room had been closed against the night and the weather outside; and she could hear the small noises of the sleeping people who lay safe and sound among the furs and pillows. But all of these bodies lying twisted and turned on the slope around the small mound of white and black ashes might just as well have been dead; some of them lay on their stomachs and some on their backs with their knees pulled up, and the sounds they uttered frightened Kristin. Her father was snoring heavily, but when Halvdan drew in a breath, a squeak and a whistle came from his nose. And Arne was lying on his side with his face hidden in his arm and his glossy light-brown hair spread out on the heath. He lay so still that Kristin was afraid he might be dead. She had to bend over and touch him; then he stirred a bit in his sleep.

Suddenly it occurred to Kristin that they might have slept a whole night and that it was now the next day. Then she grew so alarmed that she shook her father, but he merely grunted and kept on sleeping. Kristin felt heavy-headed herself, but she didn’t dare lie down to sleep. So she crept over to the fire and poked at it with a stick—there were still some embers glowing. She added some heather and small twigs, which she found close at hand, but she didn’t want to venture outside the circle of sleepers to find bigger branches.

Suddenly there was a thundering and crashing from the field nearby; Kristin’s heart sank and she grew cold with fear. Then she saw a red body through the trees, and Guldsvein emerged from the alpine birches and stood there, looking at her with his clear, bright eyes. She was so relieved that she jumped up and ran toward the stallion. The brown horse that Arne had ridden was there too, along with the pack horse. Then Kristin felt quite safe; she went over and patted all three of them on the flank, but Guldsvein bowed his head so she could reach up to stroke his cheeks and tug on his golden-white forelock. He snuffled his soft muzzle in her hands.

The horses ambled down the birch-covered slope, grazing, and Kristin walked along with them, for she didn’t think there was any danger if she kept close to Guldsvein—he had chased off bears before, after all. The blueberries grew so thick there, and the child was thirsty and had a bad taste in her mouth. She had no desire for any ale just then, but the sweet, juicy berries were as good as wine. Over in the scree she saw raspberries too; then she took Guldsvein by the mane and asked him nicely to come with her, and the stallion obediently followed the little girl. As she moved farther and farther down the slope, he would come to her whenever she called him, and the other horses followed Guldsvein.

Kristin heard a stream trickling and gurgling somewhere nearby. She walked toward the sound until she found it, and then she lay down on a slab of rock and washed her sweaty, mosquito-bitten face and hands. Beneath the rock slab the water stood motionless in a deep black pool; on the other side a sheer rock face rose up behind several slender birch trees and willow thickets. It made the finest mirror, and Kristin leaned over and looked at herself in the water. She wanted to see if what Isrid had said was true, that she resembled her father.

She smiled and nodded and bent forward until her hair met the blond hair framing the round young face with the big eyes that she saw in the water.

All around grew such a profusion of the finest pink tufts of flowers called valerian; they were much redder and more beautiful here next to the mountain stream than back home near the river. Then Kristin picked some blossoms and carefully bound them together with blades of grass until she had the loveliest, pinkest, and most tightly woven wreath. The child pressed it down on her hair and ran over to the pool to see how she looked, now that she was adorned like a grown-up maiden about to go off to a dance.

She bent over the water and saw her own dark image rise up from the depths and become clearer as it came closer. Then she saw in the mirror of the stream that someone was standing among the birches on the other side and leaning toward her. Abruptly she straightened up into a kneeling position and looked across the water. At first she thought she saw only the rock face and the trees clustered at its base. But suddenly she discerned a face among the leaves—there was a woman over there, with a pale face and flowing, flaxen hair. Her big light-gray eyes and her flaring, pale-pink nostrils reminded Kristin of Guldsvein’s. She was wearing something shiny and leaf-green, and branches and twigs hid her figure up to her full breasts, which were covered with brooches and gleaming necklaces.

Kristin stared at the vision. Then the woman raised her hand and showed her a wreath of golden flowers and beckoned to her with it.

Behind her, Kristin heard Guldsvein whinny loudly with fear. She turned her head. The stallion reared up, gave a resounding shriek, and then whirled around and set off up the hillside, making the ground thunder. The other horses followed. They rushed straight up the scree, so that rocks plummeted down with a crash, and branches and roots snapped and cracked.

Then Kristin screamed as loud as she could. “Father!” she shrieked. “Father!” She sprang to her feet and ran up the slope after the horses, not daring to look back over her shoulder. She clambered up the scree, tripped on the hem of her dress, and slid down, then climbed up again, scrabbling onward with bleeding hands, crawling on scraped and bruised knees, calling to Guldsvein in between her shouts to her father—while the sweat poured out of her whole body, running like water into her eyes, and her heart pounded as if it would hammer a hole through her chest; sobs of terror rose in her throat.

“Oh, Father, Father!”

Then she heard his voice somewhere above her. She saw him coming in great leaps down the slope of the scree—the bright, sun-white scree. Alpine birches and aspens stood motionless along the slope, their leaves glittering with little glints of silver. The mountain meadow was so quiet and so bright, but her father came bounding toward her, calling her name, and Kristin sank down, realizing that now she was saved.

“Sancta Maria!” Lavrans knelt down next to his daughter and pulled her to him. He was pale and there was a strange look to his mouth that frightened Kristin even more; not until she saw his face did she realize the extent of her peril.

“Child, child . . .” He lifted up her bloody hands, looked at them, noticed the wreath on her bare head, and touched it. “What’s this? How did you get here, little Kristin?”

“I followed Guldsvein,” she sobbed against his chest. “I was so afraid because you were all asleep, but then Guldsvein came. And then there was someone who waved to me from down by the stream. . . .”

“Who waved? Was it a man?”

“No, it was a woman. She beckoned to me with a wreath of gold—I think it was a dwarf maiden, Father.”

“Jesus Christus,” said Lavrans softly, making the sign of the cross over the child and himself.

He helped her up the slope until they came to the grassy hillside; then he lifted her up and carried her. She clung to his neck and sobbed; she couldn’t stop, no matter how much he hushed her.

Soon they reached the men and Isrid, who clasped her hands together when she heard what had happened.

“Oh, that must have been the elf maiden—I tell you, she must have wanted to lure this pretty child into the mountain.”

“Be quiet,” said Lavrans harshly. “We shouldn’t have talked about such things the way we did here in the forest. You never know who’s under the stones, listening to every word.”

He pulled out the golden chain with the reliquary cross from inside his shirt and hung it around Kristin’s neck, placing it against her bare skin.

“All of you must guard your tongues well,” he told them. “For Ragnfrid must never hear that the child was exposed to such danger.”

Then they caught the horses that had run into the woods and walked briskly down to the pasture enclosure where the other horses had been left. Everyone mounted their horses, and they rode over to the Jørundgaard pasture; it was not far off.

The sun was about to go down when they arrived. The cattle were in the pen, and Tordis and the herdsmen were doing the milking. Inside the hut, porridge had been prepared for them, for the pasture folk had seen them up at the beacon earlier in the day and they were expected.

Not until then did Kristin stop her weeping. She sat on her father’s lap and ate porridge and thick cream from his spoon.

The next day Lavrans was to ride out to a lake farther up the mountain; that’s where some of his herdsmen had taken the oxen. Kristin was supposed to have gone with him, but now he told her to stay at the hut. “And you, Tordis and Isrid, must see to it that the door is kept locked and the smoke vent closed until we come back, both for Kristin’s sake and for the sake of the little unbaptized child in the cradle.”

Tordis was so frightened that she didn’t dare stay up there any longer with the baby; she had not yet been to church herself since giving birth. She wanted to leave at once and stay down in the village. Lavrans said he thought this reasonable; she could travel with them down the mountain the next evening. He thought he could get an older widow who was a servant at Jørundgaard to come up here in her place.

Tordis had spread sweet, fresh meadow grass under the hides on the bench; it smelled so strong and good, and Kristin was almost asleep as her father said the Lord’s Prayer and Ave Maria over her.

“It’s going to be a long time before I take you with me to the mountains again,” said Lavrans, patting her cheek.

Kristin woke up with a start.

“Father, won’t you let me go with you to the south in the fall, as you promised?”

“We’ll have to see about that,” said Lavrans, and then Kristin fell at once into a sweet sleep between the sheepskins.

But this year Kristin noticed that there was something out of the ordinary about her father’s trip. It was postponed again and again. The old men from Loptsgaard came riding over unexpectedly and sat at the table with her father and mother, talking about inheritances and allodial property,¹ repurchasing rights, and the difficulties of running a manor from a distance; and about the episcopal seat and the king’s castle in Oslo, which took so many of the workers away from the farms in the neighboring areas. The old men had no time to play with Kristin, and she was sent out to the cookhouse to the maids. Her uncle, Trond Ivarsøn of Sundbu, also came to visit them more often than usual—but he had never been in the habit of teasing or playing with Kristin.

Gradually she began to understand what it was all about. Ever since he had come to Sil, her father had sought to acquire land there in the village, and now Sir Andres Gudmundsøn had offered to exchange Formo, which was his mother’s ancestral estate, for Skog, which lay closer to him, since he was one of the king’s retainers and seldom came to the valley. Lavrans was loath to part with Skog, which was his ancestral farm; it had come into his family as a gift from the king. And yet the exchange would be advantageous to him in many ways. But Lavrans’s brother, Aasmund Bjørgulfsøn, was also interested in acquiring Skog—he was now living in Hadeland, where he had a manor that he had obtained through marriage—and it was uncertain whether Aasmund would relinquish his ancestral property rights.

But one day Lavrans told Ragnfrid that this year he wanted to take Kristin along with him to Skog. She should at least see the estate where she had been born and the home of his forefathers if it was going to pass out of their possession. Ragnfrid thought this a reasonable request, even though she was a little uneasy about sending so young a child on such a long journey when she was not going along herself.

During the first days after Kristin had seen the elf maiden, she was so fearful that she kept close to her mother; she was even frightened by the mere sight of any of the servants who had been up on the mountain that day and who knew what had happened to her. She was glad that her father had forbidden anyone to mention it.

But after some time had passed, she thought that she would have liked to talk about it. In her own mind she told someone about it—she wasn’t sure who—and the strange thing was that the more time that passed, the better she seemed to remember it, and the clearer her memory was of the fair woman.

But the strangest thing of all was that every time she thought about the elf maiden, she would feel such a yearning to travel to Skog, and she grew more and more afraid that her father would refuse to take her.

Finally one morning she woke up in the loft above the storeroom and saw that Old Gunhild and her mother were sitting on the doorstep looking through Lavrans’s bundle of squirrel skins. Gunhild was a widow who went from farm to farm, sewing furs into capes and other garments. Kristin gathered from their conversation that now she was the one who was to have a new cloak, lined with squirrel skins and trimmed with marten. Then she realized that she was going to accompany her father, and she jumped out of bed with a cry of joy.

Her mother came over to her and caressed her cheek.

“Are you so happy then, my daughter, to be going so far away from me?”

Indoors the leather bags with their traveling goods were opened up again, and forgotten items were placed inside. Ragnfrid reminded her husband of all the things he was supposed to tend to for her, and she talked about kinsmen and acquaintances who lived along the way—he must give a certain person her greetings, and he must not forget to ask after someone else she mentioned.

Kristin ran in and out, saying goodbye many times to everyone in the house, unable to sit still anywhere.

“Are you so happy then, Kristin, to be going so far away from me, and for such a long time?” asked her mother. Kristin felt both sad and crestfallen, and she wished that her mother had not said such a thing. But she replied as best she could.

“No, dear Mother, but I’m happy to be going with my father.”

“Yes, I suppose you are,” said Ragnfrid with a sigh. Then she kissed the child and fussed with the maiden’s clothes a bit.

At last they sat in the saddles, everyone who was to accompany them on the journey. Kristin was riding Morvin, the horse that had once been her father’s. He was old, wise, and steady. Ragnfrid handed the silver goblet with one last fortifying drink to her husband, placed a hand on her daughter’s knee, and told her to remember everything that she had impressed upon her.

Then they rode out of the courtyard into the gray dawn. The fog hovered as white as milk over the village. But in a while it began to disperse and then the sun seeped through. Dripping with dew and green with the second crop of hay, the pastures shimmered in the white haze, along with pale stubble-fields and yellow trees and mountain ash with glittering red berries. The blue of the mountainsides was dimly visible, rising up out of the mist and steam. Then the fog broke and drifted in wisps among the grassy slopes, and they rode down through the valley in the most glorious sunshine—Kristin foremost in the group, at her father’s side.

She had stopped counting the days. It seemed to her that she had been on this long journey forever. They had visited family and friends who lived along the valley. She had gotten to know children on the large manors, she had played in unfamiliar houses and barns and courtyards, and she had worn her red dress with the silk sleeves many times. They had rested along the side of the road in the daytime when it was good weather. Arne had gathered nuts for her, and after their meals she had been allowed to sleep on top of the leather bags containing their clothes. At one estate they had been given silk-covered pillows in their beds. On another night they had slept in a roadside hostel, and whenever Kristin woke up she could hear a woman weeping softly and full of despair in one of the other beds. But every night she had slept snugly against her father’s broad, warm back.

She called to her father, and he rose from the hearth where he was sitting and came over to her, accompanied by a heavyset woman.

“Where are we?” she asked.

Lavrans laughed and said, “We’re in Hamar now, and this is Margret, Shoemaker Fartein’s wife. You must greet her nicely, for you were asleep when we arrived. But now Margret will help you get dressed.”

“Is it morning?” asked Kristin. “I thought you would be coming to bed now. Can’t you help me instead?” she begged, but Lavrans replied rather sternly that she should thank Margret for her willingness to help.

“And look at the present she has for you!”

It was a pair of red shoes with silk straps. The woman smiled at Kristin’s joyful face and then helped her put on her shift and stockings in bed so that she wouldn’t have to step barefoot onto the dirt floor.

“What’s making that sound?” asked Kristin. “Like a church bell, but so many of them.”

“Those are our bells,” laughed Margret. “Haven’t you heard about the great cathedral here in town? That’s where you’re going now. That’s where the big bell is ringing. And bells are ringing at the cloister and the Church of the Cross too.”

Margret spread a thick layer of butter on Kristin’s bread and put honey in her milk so that the food would be more filling—she had so little time to eat.

Outside it was still dark and frost had set in. The mist was so cold that it bit into her skin. The footpaths made by people and cattle and horses were as hard as cast iron, so that Kristin’s feet hurt in her thin new shoes. In one place, she stepped through the ice into a rut in the middle of the narrow street, which made her legs wet and cold. Then Lavrans lifted her up on his back and carried her.

She peered into the darkness, but there was little she could see of the town—she glimpsed the black gables of houses and trees outlined against the gray sky. Then they reached a small meadow that glittered with rime, and on the other side of the meadow she could make out a pale gray building as huge as a mountain. There were large stone buildings surrounding it, and here and there light shone through peepholes in the wall. The bells, which had been silent for a while, started ringing again, and now the sound was so powerful that it made icy shivers run down her spine.

It was like entering the mountain, thought Kristin as they stepped inside the vestibule of the church; they were met by darkness and cold. They went through a doorway, and there they encountered the chill smell of old incense and candles. Kristin was in a dark and vast room with a high ceiling. Her eyes couldn’t penetrate the darkness, neither overhead nor to the sides, but a light was burning on an altar far in front of them. A priest was standing there, and the echo of his voice crept oddly around the room, like puffs of air and whispers. Lavrans crossed himself and his child with holy water, and then walked forward. Even though he stepped cautiously, his spurs rang loudly against the stone floor. They passed giant pillars, and looking between the pillars was like peering into coal-black holes.

Up front near the altar Lavrans knelt down, and Kristin knelt at his side. Her eyes began adjusting to the dark. Gold and silver gleamed from altars between the pillars, but on the altar before them, candles were glowing in gilded candlesticks, and the holy vessels shone, as did the great, magnificent paintings behind. Kristin again thought of the mountain—this is the way she had imagined it must be inside, so much splendor, but perhaps even more light. And the dwarf maiden’s face appeared before her. But then she raised her eyes and saw above the painting the figure of Christ himself, huge and stern, lifted high up on the cross. She was frightened. He didn’t look gentle and sad, as he did back home in their own warm, brown-timbered church, where he hung heavily from his arms, his feet and hands pierced through, and his blood-spattered head bowed beneath the crown of thorns. Here he stood on a step, his arms rigidly outstretched and his head erect; his hair was gleaming gold and adorned with a golden crown; his face was lifted upward, with a harsh expression.

Then Kristin tried to follow the priest’s words as he prayed and sang, but his speech was so rapid and indistinct. At home she was able to distinguish each word, for Sira Eirik had the clearest voice, and he had taught her what the holy words meant in Norwegian so that she could better keep her thoughts on God when she was in church.

But she couldn’t do that here, for she was constantly noticing things in the dark. There were windows high up on the wall, and they began to grow lighter with the day. And near the place where they were kneeling, a strange gallowslike structure of wood had been raised; beyond it lay light-colored blocks of stone, and troughs and tools lay there too. Then she could hear that people had arrived and were padding around in there. Her eyes fell once more on the stern Lord Jesus on the wall, and she tried to keep her thoughts on the service. The icy cold of the stone floor made her legs stiff all the way up to her hips, and her knees ached. Finally everything began to swirl around her, because she was so tired.

Then her father stood up. The service was over. The priest came forward to greet her father. While they talked, Kristin sat down on a step because she saw the altar boy do the same. He yawned, and that made her yawn too. When he noticed that she was looking at him, he stuck his tongue in his cheek and crossed his eyes at her. Then he pulled out a pouch from under his clothing and dumped out the contents onto the stone floor: fish hooks, lumps of lead, leather straps, and a pair of dice; and the whole time he made faces at Kristin. She was quite astonished.

Then the priest and Lavrans looked at the children. The priest laughed and told the boy that he should go off to school, but Lavrans frowned and took Kristin by the hand.

It was starting to get lighter inside the church. Sleepily, Kristin clung to Lavrans’s hand while he and the priest walked under the wooden scaffold, talking about Bishop Ingjald’s construction work.

They wandered through the entire church, and at last they came out into the vestibule. From there a stone stairway led up into the west tower. Kristin trudged wearily up the stairs. The priest opened a door to a beautiful side chapel, but then Lavrans told Kristin to sit down outside on the steps and wait while he went in to make his confession. Afterward she could come in to kiss the shrine of Saint Thomas.

At that moment an old monk wearing an ash-brown cowl came out of the chapel. He paused for a minute, smiled at the child, and pulled out some sacking and homespun rags that had been stuffed into a hole in the wall. He spread them out on the landing.

“Sit down here; then you won’t be so cold,” he said, and continued on down the stairs in his bare feet.

Kristin was asleep when Father Martein, as the priest was called, came out to get her. From the church rose the loveliest song, and inside the chapel, candles burned on the altar. The priest gestured for Kristin to kneel beside her father, and then he took down a little golden reliquary that stood above the altar. He whispered to her that inside was a fragment of Saint Thomas of Canterbury’s bloody clothing, and he pointed to the holy image, so that Kristin could press her lips to the feet.

Lovely tones were still streaming from the church as they went downstairs. Father Martein told them that the organist was practicing while the schoolboys sang. But they had no time to listen, for Lavrans was hungry; he had fasted before confession. Now they would go over to the guest quarters at the canons’ house² to eat.

Outside, the morning sun gleamed gold on the steep shores of distant Lake Mjøsa, so that all of the faded leafy groves looked like golden dust in the dark blue forests. The lake was rippled with little white specks of dancing foam. The wind blew cold and fresh, making the multicolored leaves float down onto the frost-covered hill.

A group of horsemen appeared between the bishop’s citadel and the house belonging to the Brothers of the Holy Cross. Lavrans stepped aside and bowed with his hand to his breast as he nearly swept the ground with his hat; then Kristin realized that the horseman in the fur cape had to be the bishop himself, and she sank in a curtsey almost to the ground.

The bishop reined in his horse and greeted them in return, beckoning Lavrans to approach, and he spoke with him for a moment.

Then Lavrans came back to the priest and the child and said, “I have been invited to dine at the bishop’s citadel. Do you think, Father Martein, that one of the canons’ servants could accompany this little maiden home to Shoemaker Fartein’s house and tell my men that Halvdan should meet me here with Guldsvein at the hour of midafternoon prayers?”

The priest replied that this could easily be arranged. Then the barefoot monk who had spoken to Kristin in the tower stairway stepped forward and greeted them.

“There’s a man over in our guest house who has business with the shoemaker anyway; he can take your message, Lavrans Bjørg ulfsøn. And then your daughter can either go with him or stay at the cloister until you return. I’ll see to it that she’s given food over there.”

Lavrans thanked him and said, “It’s a shame that you should be troubled with this child, Brother Edvin.”

“Brother Edvin gathers up all the children he can,” said Father Martein with a laugh. “Then he has someone to preach to.”

“Yes, I don’t dare offer you learned gentlemen here in Hamar my sermons,” said the monk, smiling, and without taking offense. “I’m only good at talking to children and farmers, but that’s no reason to tie a muzzle on the ox that threshes.”

Kristin gave her father an imploring look; she thought there was nothing she would like better than to go with Brother Edvin. So Lavrans thanked him, and as her father and the priest followed the bishop’s entourage, Kristin put her hand in the monk’s and they walked down toward the monastery, which was a cluster of wooden houses and a light-colored stone church all the way down near the water.

Brother Edvin gave her hand a little squeeze, and when they glanced at each other, they both had to laugh. The monk was tall and gaunt but quite stoop-shouldered. The child thought he looked like an old crane because his head was small, with a narrow, shiny, smooth pate above a bushy white fringe of hair, and perched on a long, thin, wrinkled neck. His nose was also as big and sharp as a beak. But there was something about him that made Kristin feel at ease and happy just by looking up into his long, furrowed face. His old watery-blue eyes were red-rimmed, and his eyelids were like thin brown membranes with thousands of wrinkles radiating from them. His hollow cheeks, with their reddish web of veins, were crisscrossed with wrinkles that ran down to his small, thin-lipped mouth. But it looked as if Brother Edvin had become so wrinkled simply from smiling at people. Kristin thought she had never seen anyone who looked so cheerful or so kind. He seemed to carry within him a luminous and secret joy, and she was able to share it whenever he spoke.

They walked along the fence of an apple orchard where a few yellow and red fruits still hung on the trees. Two friars wearing black-and-white robes were raking withered beanstalks in the garden.

The monastery was not much different from any other farm, and the guest house into which the monk escorted Kristin closely resembled a humble farmhouse, although there were many beds. In one of the beds lay an old man, and at the hearth sat a woman wrapping an infant in swaddling clothes; two older children, a boy and a girl, stood near her.

They complained, both the man and the woman, because they had not yet received their lunch. “But they don’t want to bring food to us twice, so here we sit and starve while you run around in town, Brother Edvin.”

“Don’t be so angry, Steinulv,” said the monk. “Come over here, Kristin, and say hello. Look at this pretty maiden who is going to stay here today and eat with us.”

He told Kristin that Steinulv had fallen ill on his way home from a meeting, and he had been allowed to stay in the cloister’s guest house instead of the hospice because a kinswoman who was living at the hospice was so mean that he couldn’t stand to be there.

“But I can tell they’re getting tired of having me here,” said the old man. “When you leave, Brother Edvin, no one will have time to take care of me, and then they’ll probably make me go back to the hospice.”

“Oh, you’ll be well long before I’m done with my work at the church,” said Brother Edvin. “Then your son will come to get you.” He took a kettle of hot water from the hearth and let Kristin hold it as he attended to Steinulv. Then the old man grew more tractable, and a moment later a monk came in, bringing food and drink for them.

Brother Edvin said a prayer over the food and then sat down next to Steinulv on the edge of the bed so he could help the old man eat. Kristin sat down near the woman and fed the little boy, who was so small that he couldn’t reach the porridge bowl, and who spilled whenever he tried to dip into the bowl of ale. The woman was from Hadeland and had come with her husband and children to visit her brother who was a monk at the cloister. But he was out wandering among the villages, and she complained bitterly about having to sit there wasting time.

Brother Edvin spoke gently to the woman. She must not say that she was throwing her time away when she was here in the bishop’s Hamar. Here were all the splendid churches, and all day long the monks and canons celebrated mass and chanted the offices of the day. And the town was so beautiful, even lovelier than Oslo itself, although it was somewhat smaller. But here, nearly every farm had a garden. “You should have seen it when I arrived in the springtime,” the monk said. “The whole town was white with flowers. And since then the sweetbriar roses have bloomed . . .”

“Well, what good does that do me?” said the woman peevishly. “And it seems to me that there are more holy places here than holiness.”

The monk chuckled and shook his head. Then he rummaged around in his straw pallet and pulled out a big pile of apples and pears, which he shared among the children. Kristin had never tasted such luscious fruit. The juice ran out of her mouth with every bite she took.

Then Brother Edvin had to go off to church, and he said that Kristin could come along. They cut across the cloister courtyard, and through a little side door they entered the church’s choir.

Construction was still going on at this church too, and scaffolding had been set up at the juncture of the nave and the transept. Brother Edvin told Kristin that Bishop Ingjald was having the choir renovated and decorated. The bishop was immensely wealthy, and he used all of his riches to adorn the churches of the town. He was an excellent bishop and a good man. The friars of Olav’s cloister were also good men: celibate, learned, and humble. It was a poor monastery, but they had received Brother Edvin kindly. His home was at the Minorite³ cloister in Oslo, but he had been given permission to beg for alms here in the Hamar diocese.

“Come over here,” he said, leading Kristin to the foot of the scaffolding. He climbed up a ladder and rearranged several planks high above. Then he went back down and helped the child to ascend.

On the gray stone wall above her, Kristin saw strange, flickering specks of light, red as blood and yellow as ale, blue and brown and green. She wanted to look behind her, but the monk whispered, “Don’t turn around.” When they stood together high up on the planks, he gently turned her around, and Kristin saw a sight so glorious that it almost took her breath away.

Directly opposite her, on the south wall of the nave, stood a picture that glowed as if it had been made from nothing but glittering gemstones. The multicolored specks of light on the wall came from rays emanating from the picture itself; she and the monk were standing in the midst of its radiance. Her hands were red, as if she had dipped them in wine; the monk’s face seemed to be completely gilded, and from his dark cowl the colors of the picture were dimly reflected. She gave him a questioning glance, but he merely nodded and smiled.

It was like standing at a great distance and looking into heaven. Behind a lattice of black lines she began to distinguish, little by little, the Lord Jesus himself, wearing the costliest red cloak; the Virgin Mary in robes as blue as the sky; and the holy men and maidens in gleaming yellow and green and violet attire. They stood beneath the arches and pillars of illuminated houses surrounded by intertwining branches and twigs with extraordinary, bright leaves.

The monk pulled her a little farther out toward the edge of the scaffold.

“Stand here,” he whispered. “Then the light will fall on you from Christ’s own cloak.”

From the church below the faint smell of incense and the odor of cold stone drifted up toward them. It was gloomy down below, but rays of sunlight were entering diagonally through a series of windows on the south wall of the nave. Kristin began to see that the heavenly picture must be some sort of windowpane,⁴ for it filled that type of opening in the wall. The others were empty or closed off with panes of horn in wooden frames. A bird appeared, perched on the windowsill, chirped briefly, and then flew away. Outside the wall of the choir the sound of metal on stone could be heard. Otherwise everything was quiet; only the wind came in small gusts, sighed a little between the church walls, and then died away.

“Well, well,” said Brother Edvin with a sigh. “No one can make things like this in Norway. They may paint with glass in Nidaros, but not like this. But in the lands to the south, Kristin, in the great cathedrals, there they have picture panes as big as the portals of this church.”

Kristin thought about the pictures in the church back home. The altars of Saint Olav and Saint Thomas of Canterbury had paintings on the front panels and the tabernacles behind. But those pictures seemed dull to her and without radiance as she thought about them now.

They climbed down the ladder and went up into the choir. There stood the altar, naked and bare, and on its stone top were stacked up small boxes and cups made of metal and wood and ceramic; odd little knives, pieces of iron, and pens and brushes lay next to them. Then Brother Edvin told Kristin that these were his tools. He was skilled in the craft of painting pictures and carving tabernacles, and he had made the exquisite paintings that stood nearby on the choir chairs. They were intended for the front panels of the altars here in the friars’ church.

Kristin was allowed to watch as he mixed colored powders and stirred them in little ceramic cups, and she helped him carry the things over to a bench next to the wall. As the monk went from one painting to the next, sketching fine red lines in the fair hair of the holy men and women so curls and waves were made visible, Kristin followed close on his heels, watching him and asking questions. And the monk explained what he had painted.

In one of the paintings Christ sat on a golden chair, and Saint Nikulaus and Saint Clement stood near him under a canopy. On either side was depicted the life of Saint Nikulaus. In one place he was an infant sitting on his mother’s knee; he had turned away from the breast she offered him, for he was so holy, even in his cradle, that he refused to nurse more than once on Fridays. Next to this was a picture of him placing the money bags at the door of the house where three maidens lived who were so poor that they couldn’t find husbands. Kristin saw how he cured the child of the Roman knight, and she saw the knight sail off in a boat with the false golden chalice in his hands. The knight had promised the holy bishop a golden chalice, which had been in his family for a thousand years, as payment for returning the child to good health. But then he tried to betray Saint Nikulaus by giving him a false golden chalice instead. That’s why the boy fell into the sea with the real golden chalice in his hand. But Saint Nikulaus carried the child unharmed beneath the water, and he emerged onto shore as his father stood in Saint Nikulaus’s church, offering the false goblet. All of this was shown in the picture, painted with gold and the most beautiful of colors.

In another painting the Virgin Mary sat with the Christ child on her knee. He had put one hand up under his mother’s chin, and he was holding an apple in the other. With them stood Saint Sunniva and Saint Kristina. They were leaning gracefully from the hips, their faces a lovely pink and white, and they had golden hair and wore golden crowns.

Brother Edvin gripped his right wrist with his left hand as he painted leaves and roses in their crowns.

“It seems to me that the dragon is awfully small,” said Kristin, looking at the image of the saint who was her namesake. “It doesn’t look as if it could swallow up the maiden.”

“And it couldn’t, either,” said Brother Edvin. “It was no bigger than that. Dragons and all other creatures that serve the Devil only seem big as long as we harbor fear within ourselves. But if a person seeks God with such earnestness and desire that he enters into His power, then the power of the Devil at once suffers such a great defeat that his instruments become small and impotent. Dragons and evil spirits shrink until they are no bigger than goblins and cats and crows. As you can see, the whole mountain that Saint Sunniva was trapped inside is so small that it will fit on the skirt of her cloak.”

“But weren’t they inside the caves?” asked Kristin. “Saint Sunniva and the Selje men?⁵ Isn’t that true?”

The monk squinted at her and smiled again.

“It’s both true and not true. It seemed to be true for the people who found the holy bodies. And it seemed true to Sunniva and the Selje men, because they were humble and believed that the world is stronger than all sinful people. They did not imagine that they might be stronger than the world because they did not love it. But if they had only known, they could have taken all the mountains and flung them out into the sea like tiny pebbles. No one and nothing can harm us, child, except what we fear and love.”

“But what if a person doesn’t fear and love God?” asked Kristin in horror.

The monk put his hand on her golden hair, gently tilted her head back, and looked into her face. His eyes were blue and open wide.

“There is no one, Kristin, who does not love and fear God. But it’s because our hearts are divided between love for God and fear of the Devil, and love for this world and this flesh, that we are miserable in life and death. For if a man knew no yearning for God and God’s being, then he would thrive in Hell, and we alone would not understand that he had found his heart’s desire. Then the fire would not burn him if he did not long for coolness, and he would not feel the pain of the serpent’s bite if he did not long for peace.”

Kristin looked up into his face; she understood nothing of what he said.

Brother Edvin continued, “It was because of God’s mercy toward us that He saw how our hearts were split, and He came down to live among us, in order to taste, in fleshly form, the temptations of the Devil when he entices us with power and glory, and the menace of the world when it offers us blows and contempt and the wounds of sharp nails in our hands and feet. In this manner He showed us the way and allowed us to see His love.”

The monk looked down into the child’s strained and somber face. Then he laughed a little and said in an entirely different tone of voice, “Do you know who was the first one to realize that Our Lord had allowed Himself to be born? It was the rooster. He saw the star and then he said—and all the animals could speak Latin back then—he cried, ‘Christus natus est!’ ”

Brother Edvin crowed out the last words, sounding so much like a rooster that Kristin ended up howling with laughter. And it felt so good to laugh, because all the strange things that he had just been talking about had settled upon her like a burden of solemnity.

The monk laughed too.

“It’s true. Then when the ox heard about it, he began to bellow, ‘Ubi, ubi, ubi?’

“But the goat bleated and said, ‘Betlem, Betlem, Betlem.’

“And the sheep was so filled with longing to see Our Lady and her Son that he baa’d at once, ‘Eamus, eamus!’

“And the newborn calf lying in the straw got up and stood on his own legs. ‘Volo, volo, volo!’ he said.

“Haven’t you heard this before? No, I should have known. I realize that he’s a clever priest, that Sira Eirik who lives up there with you, and well educated, but he probably doesn’t know about this because it’s not something you learn unless you journey to Paris. . . .”

“Have you been to Paris then?” asked the child.

“God bless you, little Kristin, I’ve been to Paris and traveled elsewhere in the world as well, and yet you mustn’t think me any better for it, because I fear the Devil and love and desire this world like a fool. But I hold on to the cross with all my strength—one must cling to it like a kitten hanging on to a plank when it falls into the sea.

“And what about you, Kristin? How would you like to offer up those lovely curls of yours and serve Our Lady like these brides that I’ve painted here?”

“There are no other children at home besides me,” replied Kristin. “So I will probably marry, I would think. Mother has already filled chests and trunks with my dowry.”

“Yes, I see,” said Brother Edvin, stroking her forehead. “That’s the way folk dispatch their children these days. To God they give the daughters that are lame and blind and ugly and infirm; or if they think He has given them too many children, they let Him take some of them back. And yet they wonder why the men and maidens who live in the cloisters are not all holy people. . . .”

Afterward he shook his head at himself. “There you see my fear, Kristin. But they’re so nervous about their books here in this house. If I had the proper faith and love, I wouldn’t stand here and lie to Brother Aasulv. But then I could just as well take these old leather gloves and hang them up on that ray of sunshine over there.”

Kristin went with the monk over to the guest house and had something to eat, but otherwise she sat in the church all day long, watching him work and talking to him. And not until Lavrans came back to get Kristin did either she or the monk remember the message that should have been sent to the shoemaker.

The journey home was cold; it was almost Advent, and when they had traveled a short distance into the valley, they came upon snow. They had to borrow sleighs and ride for most of the way.

The exchange of estates was handled in such a manner that Lavrans turned over Skog to his brother Aasmund but retained the right of repurchase for himself and his descendants.

Kristin thought that her mother, who was otherwise constantly praying, should have called on God and the Virgin Mary instead. She tried to pray herself—especially to Saint Olav,¹ for she knew that he was kind and he had helped so many who suffered from illness and wounds and broken bones. But she couldn’t collect her thoughts.

Her parents were now alone in the room. Lavrans was lying on the bed again and Ragnfrid sat leaning over the injured child, occasionally wiping Ulvhild’s forehead and hands with a damp cloth and moistening her lips with wine.

A long time passed. Tordis looked in on them now and then; she wanted so desperately to help, but each time Ragnfrid sent her away. Kristin wept soundlessly and prayed in silence, but every once in a while she would think about the witch, and she waited tensely to see her enter the room.

Suddenly Ragnfrid broke the silence. “Are you asleep, Lavrans?”

“No,” replied her husband. “I’m listening to Ulvhild. God will help His innocent lamb, my wife—we mustn’t doubt that. But it’s hard to lie here and wait.”

“God hates me for my sins,” said Ragnfrid in despair. “My children are in peace where they are—I don’t dare doubt that. And now Ulvhild’s time has come too. But He has cast me out, for my heart is a viper’s nest of sin and sorrow.”

Just then the door opened. Sira Eirik stepped inside, straightening up his enormous body as he stood in the doorway, and pronounced in his deep, clear voice, “God help those in this house!”

The priest placed the box containing his medical things² on the step of the bed, went over to the hearth, and poured warm water over his hands. Then he pulled out his cross, raised it to all four corners of the room, and murmured something in Latin. After that he opened the smoke vent so that light could stream into the room. Then he went over and looked at Ulvhild.

Kristin was afraid that he would discover her and chase her away—usually very little escaped Sira Eirik’s eye. But he didn’t look around. The priest took a vial out of his box, poured something onto a tuft of finely carded wool, and placed it over Ulvhild’s nose and mouth.

“Soon her suffering will lessen,” said the priest. He went over to Lavrans and attended to him as he asked them to tell him how the accident had occurred. Lavrans had two broken ribs and he had received a wound to his lungs, but the priest didn’t think he was in danger.

“What about Ulvhild?” asked her father sorrowfully.

“I’ll tell you after I have examined her,” replied the priest. “But you must go up to the loft and rest; we need quiet here and more room for those who will take care of her.” He put Lavrans’s arm around his shoulder, lifted up the man, and helped him out. Kristin would have preferred to go with her father, but she didn’t dare show herself.

When Sira Eirik returned, he didn’t speak to Ragnfrid but cut the clothes off Ulvhild, who was now whimpering less and seemed to be half asleep. Cautiously he ran his hands over the child’s body and limbs.

“Are things so bad for my child, Eirik, that you don’t know what to do? Is that why you have nothing to say?” asked Ragnfrid in a subdued voice.

The priest replied softly, “It looks as if her back is badly injured, Ragnfrid. I don’t know anything else to do except to let God and Saint Olav prevail. There’s not much I can do here.”

The mother said vehemently, “Then we must pray. You know that Lavrans and I will give everything you ask for, sparing nothing, if you can convince God to allow Ulvhild to live.”

“I think it would be a miracle,” said the priest, “if she were to live and regain her health.”

“But aren’t you always talking about miracles both day and night? Don’t you think a miracle could happen for my child?” she said in the same tone of voice.

“It’s true that miracles do occur,” said the priest, “but God does not grant everyone’s prayers—we do not know His mysterious ways. And don’t you think it would be worse for this pretty little maiden to grow up crippled and lame?”

Ragnfrid shook her head and cried softly, “I have lost so many, priest, I cannot lose her too.”

“I’ll do everything I can,” replied the priest, “and pray with all my might. But you must try, Ragnfrid, to bear whatever fate God visits upon you.”

The mother murmured softly, “Never have I loved any of my children as I have loved this one. If she too is taken from me, I think my heart will break.”

“God help you, Ragnfrid Ivarsdatter,” said Sira Eirik, shaking his head. “You want nothing more from all your prayers and fasting than to force your will on God. Does it surprise you, then, that it has accomplished so little good?”

Ragnfrid gave the priest a stubborn look and said, “I have sent for Fru Aashild.”

“Well, you may know her, but I do not,” said the priest.

“I will not live without Ulvhild,” said Ragnfrid in the same voice as before. “If God won’t help her, then I will seek the aid of Fru Aashild, or offer myself up to the Devil if he will help!”

The priest looked as if he wanted to make a sharp retort, but he restrained himself. He leaned down and touched the injured girl’s limbs again.

“Her hands and feet are cold,” he said. “We must put some kegs of hot water next to her—and then you must not touch her again until Fru Aashild arrives.”

Kristin soundlessly slipped down onto the bench and pretended to sleep. Her heart was pounding with fear. She had not understood much of the conversation between Sira Eirik and her mother, but it had frightened her greatly, and she knew it wasn’t meant for her ears.

Her mother stood up to get the kegs; then she broke down, sobbing. “Pray for us, nevertheless, Sira Eirik!”

A little while later her mother came back with Tordis. The priest and the women bustled around Ulvhild, and then Kristin was discovered and sent away.

No one was in the courtyard, but she heard people talking in the servants’ room. Fresh earth had been spread over the spot where her father had killed the ox. She didn’t know what to do with herself; then she crept behind the wall of the new building, which had been raised to a height of a couple of logs. Inside were Ulvhild’s and her playthings; she gathered them up and put them into a hole between the lowest log and the foundation. Lately Ulvhild had wanted all of Kristin’s toys, and that had made her unhappy at times. She thought now that if her sister got well, she would give her everything she owned. And that thought comforted her a little.

Kristin thought about the monk at Hamar—he at least was convinced that miracles could happen for everyone. But Sira Eirik was not as sure of it, nor were her parents, and they were the ones she was most accustomed to listening to. It fell like a terrible burden upon her when she realized for the first time that people could have such different opinions about so many things. And not just evil, godless people disagreeing with good people, but also good people such as Brother Edvin and Sira Eirik—or her mother and father. She suddenly realized that they too thought differently about many things.

Tordis found Kristin asleep there in the corner late in the day, and she took her indoors. The child hadn’t eaten a thing since morning. Tordis kept vigil with Ragnfrid over Ulvhild that night, and Kristin lay in her bed with Jon, Tordis’s husband, and Eivind and Orm, her little boys. The smell of their bodies, the man’s snoring, and the even breathing of the two children made Kristin quietly weep. Only the night before she had lain in bed, as she had every night of her life, with her own father and mother and little Ulvhild. It was like thinking about a nest that had been torn apart and scattered, and she herself had been flung from the shelter and wings that had always warmed her. At last she cried herself to sleep, alone and miserable among all those strangers.

As she stood and pondered this, a maidservant came up to her and asked her to go up to the loft to her father.

But when she stepped into the loft room Kristin forgot all about tending to him, for across from the open doorway, with the light shining directly in her face, sat a small woman, whom she realized must be the witch—although Kristin had not expected her to look like that.

She seemed as small as a child, and delicate, for she was sitting in the big high-backed chair that had been brought up to the room. A table had also been placed in front of her, covered with Ragnfrid’s finest embroidered linen cloth. Pork and fowl were set forth on silver platters, there was wine in a bowl of curly birchwood, and she had Lavrans’s own silver goblet to drink from. She had finished eating and was wiping her small, slender hands on one of Ragnfrid’s best towels. Ragnfrid herself stood in front of her, holding a brass basin of water.

Fru Aashild let the towel drop into her lap, smiled at the child, and said in a lovely, clear voice, “Come over here to me!” And to Kristin’s mother she said, “You have beautiful children, Ragnfrid.”

Her face was full of wrinkles but pure white and pink like a child’s, and her skin looked as if it were just as soft and fine to the touch. Her lips were as red and fresh as a young woman’s, and her big hazel eyes gleamed. An elegant white linen wimple framed her face and was fastened tightly under her chin with a gold brooch; over it she wore a veil of soft, dark-blue wool, which fell loosely over her shoulders and onto her dark, well-fitting clothes. She sat as erect as a candle, and Kristin sensed rather than thought that she had never seen such a beautiful or noble woman as this old witch whom the gentry of the village refused to have anything to do with.

Fru Aashild held Kristin’s hand in her own soft old hands; she spoke to her kindly and with humor, but Kristin could not find a word to reply.

Fru Aashild said to Ragnfrid with a little laugh, “Do you think she’s afraid of me?”

“No, no,” Kristin almost shouted.

Fru Aashild laughed even more and said, “She has wise eyes, this daughter of yours, and good strong hands. And she’s not accustomed to slothfulness either, I can see. You’re going to need someone who can help you care for Ulvhild when I’m not here. So you can let Kristin assist me while I’m at the manor. She’s old enough for that, isn’t she? Eleven years old?”

Then Fru Aashild left, and Kristin was about to follow her. But Lavrans called to her from his bed. He was lying flat on his back with pillows stuffed under his knees; Fru Aashild had ordered him to lie in this manner so that the injury to his chest would heal faster.

“You’re going to get well soon, aren’t you, Father?” asked Kristin, using the formal means of address. Lavrans looked up at her. Never before had she addressed him in that manner.

Then he said somberly, “I’m not in danger, but it’s much more serious for your sister.”

“I know,” said Kristin with a sigh.

Then she stood next to his bed for a while. Her father did not speak again, and Kristin could find nothing more to say. And when Lavrans told her some time later to go downstairs to her mother and Fru Aashild, Kristin hurried out and rushed across the courtyard to the winter house.

“Yes, it would be best if you took after Lavrans, both in temperament and appearance. And yet it would be a shame if they married you to someone up here in the valley. Farming customs and the ways of smallholders should not be disdained, but these gentry up here all think they’re so grand that their equals are not to be found in all of Norway. I’m sure they wonder how I can manage to live and prosper even though they’ve closed their doors to me. But they’re lazy and arrogant and refuse to learn new ways—and then they blame everything on the old enmity with the monarchy in the time of King Sverre.¹ It’s all a lie—your ancestor reconciled with King Sverre and accepted gifts from him. But if your mother’s brother wanted to serve the king and join his retinue, then he would have to cleanse himself, both inside and out, which is not something Trond is willing to do. But you, Kristin, you ought to marry a man who is both chivalrous and courtly. . . .”

Kristin sat staring down at the Formo courtyard, at Arne’s red back. She hadn’t been aware of it herself, but whenever Fru Aashild talked about the world she had frequented in the past, Kristin always pictured the knights and counts in Arne’s image. Before, when she was a child, she had always envisioned them in her father’s image.

“My nephew, Erlend Nikulaussøn of Husaby—now he would have been a suitable bridegroom for you. He has grown up to be so handsome, that boy. My sister Magnhild came to visit me last year when she was on her way through the valley, and she brought her son along with her. Well, you won’t be able to marry him, of course, but I would have gladly spread the blanket over the two of you in the wedding bed. His hair is as dark as yours is fair, and he has beautiful eyes. But if I know my brother-in-law, he has already set his sights on a better match for Erlend than you would be.”

“Does that mean I’m not a good match, then?” asked Kristin with surprise. She was never offended by anything Fru Aashild said, but she felt embarrassed and chagrined that Fru Aashild might be somehow better than her own family.

“Yes, of course you’re a good match,” said Fru Aashild. “And yet you couldn’t expect to become part of my lineage. Your ancestor here in Norway was an outlaw and a foreigner, and the Gjeslings have sat moldering away on their estates for such a long time that almost no one remembers them outside of this valley. But my sister and I married the nephews of Queen Margret Skulesdatter.”

Kristin didn’t even think to object that it was not her ancestor but his brother who had come to Norway as an outlaw. She sat and gazed out over the dark mountain slopes across the valley, and she remembered that day, many years ago, when she went up onto the ridge and saw how many mountains there were between her own village and the rest of the world. Then Fru Aashild said they ought to head home, and she asked Kristin to call for Arne. Kristin put her hands up to her mouth and shouted and then waved her kerchief until she saw the red speck down in the courtyard turn and wave back.

Kristin sometimes longed for Fru Aashild, who occasionally would talk to her a great deal, but at other times Kristin would wait in vain for a word beyond the casual greeting as Fru Aashild came and went.

Instead, Fru Aashild would sit with the grown-ups and talk. That was always what happened when she brought her husband along with her, for now Bjørn Gunnarsøn also came to Jørund gaard. One day in the fall, Lavrans had ridden over to Haugen to take Fru Aashild payment for her doctoring: the best silver pitcher and matching platter they owned. He had stayed the night and afterward had high praise for their farm. He said it was beautiful and well tended, and not as small as people claimed. Inside the buildings everything looked prosperous, and the customs of the house were as courtly as those of the gentry in the south of the country. What Lavrans thought of Bjørn he didn’t say, but he always received the man courteously when Bjørn accompanied his wife to Jørundgaard. On the other hand, Lavrans was exceedingly fond of Fru Aashild, and he believed that most of what people said about her was a lie. He also said that twenty years earlier she would hardly have required witchcraft to bind a man to her—she was sixty now but still looked young, and she had a most appealing and charming manner.

Kristin noticed that her mother was not happy about all this. It’s true that Ragnfrid never said much about Fru Aashild, but one time she compared Bjørn to the flattened yellow grass that can be found under large rocks, and Kristin thought this an apt description. Bjørn had an oddly faded appearance—he was quite fat, pale, and sluggish, and slightly bald—even though he was not much older than Lavrans. And yet it was still apparent that he had once been an extremely handsome man. Kristin never exchanged a single word with him. He said little, preferring to stay in one spot, wherever he happened to be seated, from the moment he stepped in the door until it was time for bed. He drank an enormous amount but it seemed to have little effect on him. He ate almost nothing, and occasionally he would stare at someone in the room, stony-faced and pensive, with his strange, pale eyes.

One evening toward the end of the holidays, Sira Sigurd, Trond Gjesling’s house priest, arrived in a big sleigh, and his primary mission was to invite them all to visit Sundbu.

Sira Sigurd was not well liked in the surrounding villages, for he was the one who actually managed Trond’s properties for him—or at least he was the one who was blamed whenever Trond acted harshly or unjustly, and Trond tended to plague his tenants somewhat. The priest was exceedingly clever at writing and figuring; he knew the law and was a skilled doctor, although not as skilled as he thought. But judging by his behavior, no one would think him a clever man; he often said foolish things. Ragnfrid and Lavrans had never liked him, but the Sundbu people, as was reasonable, set great store by their priest, and both they and he were greatly disappointed that he had not been called on to tend to Ulvhild.

On the day that Sira Sigurd came to Jørundgaard—unfortunately for him—Fru Aashild and Herr Bjørn were already there, as were Sira Eirik, Arne’s parents Gyrd and Inga of Finsbrekken, Old Jon from Loptsgaard, and a friar from Hamar, Brother Aasgaut.

While Ragnfrid had the tables set once more with food for the guests and Lavrans pored over the boxes of sealed letters that the priest had brought, Sira Sigurd asked to see Ulvhild. She had already been put to bed for the night and was sleeping, but Sira Sigurd woke her up, examined her back and limbs, and asked her questions—at first kindly enough, but with increasing impatience as Ulvhild grew frightened. Sigurd was a small man, practically a dwarf, but he had a big, flame-red face. When he tried to lift her onto the floor to test her legs, Ulvhild began to scream. Then Fru Aashild stood up, went over to the bed, and covered her with the blanket, saying that the child was sleepy—she wouldn’t have been able to stand up even if her legs were healthy.

The priest began to protest vehemently; he was also considered a capable doctor. But Fru Aashild took his hand, led him over to the high seat² at the table, and started talking about what she had done for Ulvhild as she asked his opinion on everything. Then he grew more amenable, and he ate and drank of Ragnfrid’s good repast.

But when the ale and wine began to go to his head, Sira Sigurd was once again in a foul mood, quarrelsome and bad tempered. He was quite aware that no one in the room liked him. First he turned to Gyrd, who was the envoy of the Bishop of Hamar at Vaage and Sil. There had been numerous disputes between the bishopric and Trond Ivarsøn. Gyrd didn’t say much, but Inga was a hot-tempered woman, and then Brother Aasgaut joined in the discussion.

He said, “You shouldn’t forget, Sira Sigurd, that our worthy Father Ingjald is your prelate too; we know all about you in Hamar. You revel in all that is good at Sundbu, and give little thought to the fact that you are dedicated to other work than acting as Trond’s eye-servant, helping him do everything that is unjust so that he endangers his own soul and diminishes the power of the Church. Haven’t you ever heard about what happens to those disobedient and unfaithful priests who contravene their own spiritual fathers and superiors? Don’t you know about the time when the angels led Saint Thomas of Canterbury to the gates of Hell and let him peek inside? He was greatly surprised not to see any of those who had opposed him as you oppose your bishop. He was just about to praise God’s mercy, for the holy man wished all sinners to be saved, when the angel asked the Devil to lift his tail. With a tremendous roar and a horrid stench of sulfur, out spewed all the priests and learned men who had betrayed the interests of the Church. And then he saw where all of them had ended up.”

“You’re lying, monk,” said the priest. “I’ve heard that story too, but it was friars, not priests, who were spewed out of the Devil’s behind like wasps from a wasp’s nest.”

Old Jon laughed louder than all the servants and cried, “No doubt it was both, I’ll bet it was. . . .”

“Then the Devil must have a very wide tail,” said Bjørn Gunnarsøn.

And Fru Aashild smiled and said, “Yes, haven’t you heard it said that everything bad has a long rump dragging behind?”

“You be quiet, Fru Aashild,” shouted Sira Sigurd. “You shouldn’t talk about the long rump that bad people drag behind them. Here you sit as if you were the mistress of the house instead of Ragnfrid. But it’s odd that you haven’t been able to cure her child—don’t you have any more of that powerful water you used to use? The water that could make a dismembered sheep whole again in the soup pot and turn a woman into a maiden in the bridal bed? I know all about that wedding here in the village when you prepared the bath for the despoiled bride. . . .”

Sira Eirik jumped up, grabbed the other priest by the shoulder and flank, and threw him right across the table so that pitchers and cups toppled and food and drink spilled onto the table-cloths and floor. Sira Sigurd landed flat on his back, his clothing torn.

Eirik leaped over the table and was about to strike him again, bellowing over the din, “Shut your filthy trap, you damned priest!”

Lavrans tried to separate them, but Ragnfrid stood at the table, as white as a corpse, wringing her hands. Then Fru Aashild ran over and helped Sira Sigurd to his feet and wiped the blood from his face.

She handed him a goblet of mead as she said, “You shouldn’t be so stern, Sira Eirik, that you can’t stand to hear a joke late in the evening after so many drinks. Now sit down, and I’ll tell you about that wedding. It wasn’t here in this valley at all, and it’s my misfortune that I was not the one who knew about that water. If I had been able to brew it, we wouldn’t be sitting up there on that little farm. Then I’d be a rich woman with property out in the big villages somewhere—near the town and cloisters and bishops and canons,” she said, smiling at the three clergymen.

“But someone must have known the art in the old days, because this was in the time of King Inge, as far as I know, and the bridegroom was Peter Lodinsøn of Bratteland. But I won’t say which of his three wives was the bride, since there are living descendants from all three. Well, this bride probably had good reason to wish for that water, and she managed to get it too. She prepared a bath for herself out in the shed, but before she managed to bathe, in came the woman who was to be her mother-in-law. She was muddy and dirty from the ride to the wedding manor, so she took off her clothes and stepped into the tub. She was an old woman, and she had had nine children by Lodin. But on that night both Lodin and Peter had a different kind of pleasure than they had counted on.”

Everyone in the room laughed heartily, and both Gyrd and Jon called to Fru Aashild to tell more such ribald tales.

But she refused. “Here sit two priests and Brother Aasgaut and young boys and maidservants. We should stop now before the talk grows indecent and vulgar; remember that these are the holy days.”

The men protested, but the women agreed with Fru Aashild. No one noticed that Ragnfrid had left the room. A little later Kristin, who had been sitting at the far end of the women’s bench among the maidservants, stood up to go to bed. She was sleeping in Tordis’s house because there were so many guests at the farm.

It was biting cold, and the northern lights were flaring and flickering above the domed mountains to the north. The snow creaked under Kristin’s feet as she ran across the courtyard, shivering, with her arms crossed over her breast.

Then she noticed that in the shadows beneath the old loft someone was pacing vigorously back and forth in the snow, throwing out her arms, wringing her hands, and moaning loudly. Kristin recognized her mother. Frightened, she ran over to her and asked her if she was ill.

“No, no,” said Ragnfrid fiercely. “I just had to get out. Go to bed now, child.”

Kristin turned around when her mother softly called her name.

“Go into the house and lie down in bed with your father and Ulvhild—hold her in your arms so that he doesn’t crush her by mistake. He sleeps so heavily when he’s drunk. I’ll go up and sleep here in the old loft tonight.”

“Jesus, Mother,” said Kristin. “You’ll freeze to death if you sleep there—and all alone. What will Father say if you don’t come to bed tonight?”

“He won’t notice,” replied her mother. “He was almost asleep when I left, and tomorrow he’ll get up late. Go and do as I say.”

“You’ll be so cold,” whimpered Kristin, but her mother pushed her away, somewhat more gently, and then shut herself inside the loft.

It was just as cold inside as out, and pitch dark. Ragnfrid fumbled her way over to the bed, tore the shawl from her head, took off her shoes, and crawled under the furs. They chilled her to the bone; it was like sinking into a snow drift. She pulled the covers over her head, tucked up her legs, and put her hands into the bodice of her clothing. And she lay there in that way, weeping—alternately crying quite softly, with streaming tears, and then screaming and gnashing her teeth in between her sobs. Finally she had warmed up the bed enough that she began to feel drowsy, and then she cried herself to sleep.

Lavrans had finished building the new house—two stories tall, with brick fireplaces in both the main room and the loft. It was richly and beautifully decorated with wood carvings and fine furniture. He had also renovated the old loft and expanded the other buildings, so that he could now live in a manner befitting a squire. By this time, he possessed great wealth, for he had been fortunate in his undertakings, and he was a wise and thoughtful master. He was especially known for breeding the finest horses and the best cattle of all types. And now that he had arranged things so that his daughter would acquire Formo through marriage with a man of the Dyfrin lineage, people said that he had successfully achieved his goal of becoming the foremost landowner in the village. Lavrans and Ragnfrid were also very pleased, as were Sir Andres and Simon.

Kristin was a little disappointed when she first saw Simon Andressøn, for she had heard such high praise of his handsome appearance and noble manner that there was no limit to what she had expected of her bridegroom.

Simon was indeed handsome, but he was rather heavyset for a man of only twenty; he had a short neck, and his face was as round and shiny as the moon. His hair was quite beautiful, brown and curly, and his eyes were gray and clear, but they seemed slightly pinched because his eyelids were puffy. His nose was too small and his mouth was also small and pouting, but not ugly. And in spite of his stoutness he was light-footed and quick and agile in all his movements, and he was an able sportsman. He was rather impetuous and rash in his speech, but Lavrans felt that he nevertheless showed both good sense and wisdom when he spoke to older men.

Ragnfrid soon came to like him, and Ulvhild developed at once the greatest affection for him; he was also particularly kind and loving toward the little maiden who was ill. And after Kristin had grown accustomed to his round face and his way of speaking, she was entirely satisfied with her betrothed and pleased that her father had arranged the marriage for her.

Fru Aashild was invited to the banquet. Ever since the people of Jørundgaard had taken up with her, the gentry of the nearest villages had once again begun to remember her high birth, and they paid less attention to her strange reputation; so now Fru Aashild was often in the company of others.

After she had seen Simon, she said, “He’s a good match, Kristin. This Simon will do well in the world—you’ll be spared many types of sorrow, and he’ll be a kind man to live with. But he seems to me rather too fat and cheerful. If things were the same in Norway today as they were in the past and as they are in other countries, where people are no sterner toward sinners than God is Himself, then I would suggest you find yourself a friend who is thin and melancholy—someone you could sit and talk to. Then I would say that you could fare no better than with Simon.”

Kristin blushed even though she didn’t fully understand what Fru Aashild meant. But as time passed and her dowry chests were filled and she listened to the constant talk of her marriage and what she would take to her new home, she began to yearn for the matter to be bound with a formal betrothal and for Simon to come north. After a while she began to think about him a great deal, and she looked forward to seeing him again.

Yet everyone said that if the accident had not befallen Ulvhild, she would have been many times more beautiful than her sister. She had the prettiest and sweetest face, white and pink like roses and lilies, with white-gold, silky-soft hair that flowed and curled around her slender neck and thin shoulders. Her eyes resembled those of the Gjesling family: they were deep-set beneath straight black brows, and they were as clear as water and grayish blue, but her gaze was gentle, not sharp. The child’s voice was also so clear and lovely that it was a joy to listen to her whether she spoke or sang. She had an agile talent for book learning and for playing all types of stringed instruments and board games, but she took little interest in needlework because her back would quickly tire.

It seemed unlikely that this pretty child would ever regain the full health of her body, although she improved somewhat after her parents took her to Nidaros to the shrine of Saint Olav. Lavrans and Ragnfrid went there on foot, without a single servant or maid to accompany them, and they carried the child on a litter between them for the entire journey. After that, Ulvhild was so much better that she could walk with a crutch. But it was not likely that she would ever be well enough to marry, and so, when the time came, she would probably be sent to a convent with all the possessions that she would inherit.

They never talked about it, and Ulvhild was not aware that she was any different from other children. She was very fond of finery and beautiful clothes, and her parents didn’t have the heart to refuse her anything; Ragnfrid stitched and sewed for her and adorned her like a royal child. Once some peddlers came through the village and stayed the night at Laugarbru, where Ulvhild was allowed to examine their wares. They had some amber-yellow silk, and she was set on having a shift made from it. Lavrans normally never traded with the kind of people who traveled through the villages, illegally selling goods from the town, but this time he bought the entire bolt at once. He also gave Kristin cloth for her bridal shift, which she worked on during the summer. Before that she had never owned shifts made of anything but wool, except for a linen shift for her finest gown. But Ulvhild was given a shift made of silk to wear to banquets and a Sunday shift of linen with a bodice of silk.

Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn now owned Laugarbru as well, which was tended by Tordis and Jon. Lavrans and Ragnfrid’s youngest daughter Ramborg lived with them there; Tordis had been her wetnurse. Ragnfrid would hardly even look at the child during the first days after her birth because she said that she brought her children bad luck. And yet she loved the little maiden dearly and was constantly sending gifts to her and to Tordis. Later on she would often go over to Laugarbru to visit Ramborg, but she preferred to arrive after the child was asleep, and then she would sit with her. Lavrans and the two older daughters often went to Laugarbru to play with the little one; she was a strong and healthy child, though not as pretty as her sisters.

Kristin had undoubtedly noticed that Arne was fond of her, but in many ways her feelings were quite childish, so she didn’t give it much thought and behaved toward him as she always had, ever since they were children. She sought out his company as often as she could and always took his hand when they danced at home or on the church hill. The fact that her mother didn’t approve of this, she found rather amusing. But she never spoke to Arne about Simon or about her betrothal, for she noticed that he grew dispirited whenever it was mentioned.

Arne was good with his hands and he wanted to make Kristin a sewing chest to remember him by. He had carved an elegant and beautiful box and frame, and now he was working in the smithy to make iron bands and a lock for it. On a fine evening with fair weather late in the summer, Kristin went over to talk to him. She took along one of her father’s shirts to mend, sat down on the stone doorstep, and began to sew as she chatted with the young man inside the smithy. Ulvhild was with her too, hopping around on her crutch and eating raspberries that were growing among the stones piled up on the ground.

After a while Arne came over to the smithy door to cool off. He wanted to sit down next to Kristin, but she moved away a bit and asked him to take care not to get soot on the sewing that she was holding on her lap.

“So that’s how things have become between us?” said Arne. “You don’t dare let me sit with you because you’re afraid that the farm boy will get you dirty?”

Kristin looked at him in surprise and then said, “You know quite well what I meant. But take off your apron, wash the coal from your hands, and sit down here with me and rest a while.” And she made room for him.

But Arne lay down in the grass in front of her.

Then Kristin continued, “Now don’t be angry, dear Arne. Do you think I would be so ungrateful for the lovely present that you’re making for me, or that I would ever forget that you’ve always been my best friend here at home?”

“Have I been?” he asked.

“You know you have,” said Kristin. “And I’ll never forget you. But you, who are about to go out into the world—maybe you’ll acquire wealth and honor before you know it. You’ll probably forget me long before I forget you.”

“You’ll never forget me,” said Arne and smiled. “But I’ll forget you before you forget me—you’re such a child, Kristin.”

“You’re not very old yourself,” she replied.

“I’m just as old as Simon Darre,” he said. “And we can bear helmets and shields just as well as the Dyfrin people, but my parents have not had fortune on their side.”

He had wiped off his hands on some tufts of grass. Now he took hold of Kristin’s ankle and pressed his cheek against her foot, which was sticking out from the hem of her dress. She tried to pull her foot away, but Arne said, “Your mother is at Laugarbru, and Lavrans rode off from the farm—and from the buildings no one can see us sitting here. Just this once you must let me talk about what’s on my mind.”

Kristin replied, “We’ve always known, both you and I, that it would be futile for us to fall in love with each other.”

“Can I put my head in your lap?” asked Arne, and when she didn’t reply, he did it anyway, wrapping his arm around her waist. With the other hand he tugged on her braids.

“How will you like it,” he asked after a moment, “when Simon lies in your lap like this and plays with your hair?”

Kristin didn’t answer. She felt as if a weight suddenly fell upon her—Arne’s words and Arne’s head on her knees—it seemed to her as if a door were opening into a room with many dark corridors leading into more darkness. Unhappy and heartsick, she hesitated, refusing to look inside.

“Married people don’t do things like this,” she said abruptly and briskly, as if with relief. She tried to imagine Simon’s plump, round face looking up at her with the same gaze in his eyes as Arne now had; she heard his voice—and she couldn’t help laughing.

“I don’t think Simon would ever lie down on the ground to play with my shoes!”

“No, because he can play with you in his own bed,” said Arne. His voice made Kristin feel suddenly sick and helpless.

She tried to push his head off her lap, but he pressed it harder against her knees and said gently, “But I would play with your shoes and your hair and your fingers and follow you in and out all day long, Kristin, if you would be my wife and sleep in my arms every night.”

He pulled himself halfway up, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes.

“It’s not proper for you to talk to me this way,” said Kristin quietly and shyly.

“No, it’s not,” said Arne. He got to his feet and stood in front of her. “But tell me one thing—wouldn’t you rather it had been me?”

“Oh, I would rather . . .” She sat in silence for a moment. “I would rather not have any man at all—not even . . .”

Arne didn’t move. He said, “Would you rather go into a convent then, as they’ve planned for Ulvhild, and be a maiden all your days?”

Kristin wrung her hands in her lap. She felt a strange, sweet trembling inside her—and with a sudden shudder she realized how sad it was for her little sister. And her eyes filled with tears of sorrow for Ulvhild’s sake.

“Kristin,” said Arne gently.

At that moment Ulvhild screamed loudly. Her crutch had lodged between some stones and she had fallen. Arne and Kristin ran over to her, and Arne lifted her into her sister’s arms. She had cut her mouth and was bleeding badly.

Kristin sat down with her in the doorway to the smithy, and Arne brought water in a wooden bowl. Together they began to wash Ulvhild’s face. She had also scraped the skin on her knees. Kristin bent tenderly over the small, thin legs.

Ulvhild’s wailing soon stopped and she whimpered softly, the way children do who are used to suffering pain. Kristin pressed Ulvhild’s head against her breast and rocked her gently.

Then the bell up in Olav’s church began ringing for vespers.

Arne spoke to Kristin, but she sat there as if she neither heard nor sensed what he said as she bent over her sister. Then he grew frightened and asked her whether she thought the injuries were serious. Kristin shook her head but refused to look at him.

A little later she stood up and started walking toward the farm, carrying Ulvhild in her arms. Arne followed, silent and confused. Kristin looked so preoccupied that her face was completely rigid. As she walked, the bell continued to toll across the meadows and valley; it was still ringing as she went into the house.

She placed Ulvhild on the bed which the sisters had shared ever since Kristin had grown too old to sleep with her parents. Then she took off her own shoes and lay down next to the little one. She lay there and listened for the bell long after it had stopped ringing and the child was asleep.

It had occurred to her, as the bell began to peal, while she sat with Ulvhild’s little bloodied face in her hands, that perhaps this was an omen for her. If she would take her sister’s place—if she would promise herself to the service of God and the Virgin Mary—then maybe God would grant the child renewed vigor and good health.

Kristin remembered Brother Edvin saying that these days parents offered to God only the crippled and lame children or those for whom they could not arrange good marriages. She knew her parents were pious people, and yet she had never heard them say anything except that she would marry. But when they realized that Ulvhild would be ill all her days, they at once proposed that she should enter a convent.

But Kristin didn’t want to do it; she resisted the idea that God would perform a miracle for Ulvhild if she became a nun. She clung to Sira Eirik’s words that so few miracles occurred nowadays. And yet she had the feeling this evening that it was as Brother Edvin had said—that if someone had enough faith, then he could indeed work miracles. But she did not want that kind of faith; she did not love God and His Mother and the saints in that way. She would never love them in that way. She loved the world and longed for the world.

Kristin pressed her lips to Ulvhild’s soft, silky hair. The child slept soundly, but the elder sister sat up, restless, and then lay down again. Her heart was bleeding with sorrow and shame, but she knew that she could not believe in miracles because she was unwilling to give up her inheritance of health and beauty and love.

Then she tried to console herself with the thought that her parents would never give her permission to do such a thing. Nor would they ever believe that it would do any good. She was already betrothed, after all, and they would undoubtedly be loath to lose Simon, whom they liked so much. She felt betrayed because they seemed to find this son-in-law so splendid. She suddenly thought with displeasure of Simon’s round, red face and his small, laughing eyes, of his leaping gait—it occurred to her all of a sudden that he bounced like a ball—and of his teasing manner of speaking, which made her feel awkward and stupid. And it was not such a splendid thing, either, to be given to him and then move only as far as Formo. And yet she would rather have him than be sent to a convent. But what about the world beyond the mountains? The king’s castle, and the counts and the knights that Fru Aashild had talked about, a handsome man with melancholy eyes who would follow her in and out and never grow tired. . . . She remembered Arne on that summer day long ago when he lay on his side and slept with his shiny brown hair spread out on the heath—she had loved him as if he were her own brother back then. It wasn’t proper for him to speak to her the way he had today, when he knew they could never have each other.

The night sky, bright and green, stretched above the mountain crests. It was almost time for the moon to rise, and at the spot where it waited below the ridge, small clouds drifted past, gleaming like silver underneath; the sky grew lighter and lighter, like metal gathering dew.

Kristin ran between the fences, across the road, and up the hill toward the church. It was asleep, black and locked, but she went over to the cross that stood nearby—a memorial to the time when Saint Olav once rested there as he was fleeing from his enemies.

Kristin knelt down on the stone and placed her folded hands on the base. “Holy Cross, the strongest of masts, the fairest of trees, the bridge for those who are ill to the fair shores of health . . .”

As she spoke the words of the prayer, she felt her yearning gradually spread like rings on water. The various thoughts that were making her uneasy were smoothed out, her mind grew calmer, more tender, and a gentle sorrow, empty of all thought, replaced her troubles.

She stayed there on her knees, aware of all the sounds of the night. The wind was sighing so oddly, the river was roaring beyond the groves on the other side of the church, and the stream was flowing nearby, right across the road—and everywhere, both close at hand and far away in the dark, her eyes and her ears caught hints of tiny rivulets of running and dripping water. The river flashed white down in the village. The moon glided up over a small gap in the mountains; stones and leaves wet with dew shimmered faintly, and the newly tarred timbers of the bell tower near the cemetery gate shone dull and dark. Then the moon vanished again where the ridge of the mountain rose higher. Many more gleaming white clouds appeared in the sky.

She heard a horse approaching at a slow pace higher up the road, and the sound of men’s voices, speaking evenly and softly. Kristin was not afraid of people so close to home where she knew everyone; she felt quite safe.

Her father’s dogs came rushing toward her, turned around and bounded back to the grove, then turned again and raced back to her; then her father called a greeting as he emerged from among the birches. He was leading Guldsvein by the bridle; a bunch of birds dangled in front of the saddle, and Lavrans was carrying a hooded hawk on his left hand. He was in the company of a tall, hunchbacked man in monk’s clothing, and before Kristin had even seen his face, she knew it was Brother Edvin. She went to greet them, and she couldn’t have been more surprised than if she had dreamed it. She merely smiled when Lavrans asked her whether she recognized their guest.

Lavrans had met the monk up by Rost Bridge. Then he had persuaded him to come home with him and stay the night at the farm. But Brother Edvin insisted on being allowed to sleep in the cowshed: “For I’ve picked up so many lice that you can’t have me lying in your good beds.”

And no matter how much Lavrans begged and implored, the monk was adamant; at first he even wanted them to bring his food out into the courtyard. But finally they coaxed him inside the house, and Kristin put wood in the fireplace in the corner and set candles on the table, while a maid brought in food and drink.

The monk sat down on the beggar’s bench near the door, but he would only take cold porridge and water for his evening meal. And he refused to accept Lavrans’s offer to prepare a bath for him and to have his clothes washed.

Brother Edvin scratched and rubbed himself and his gaunt old face beamed with glee.

“No, no,” he said. “The lice bite better at my proud hide than any scourges or the guardian’s words. I spent this summer under an overhang up on the mountain. They had given me permission to go into the wilderness to fast and pray, and there I sat, thinking that I was as pure as a holy hermit, and the poor people over in Setna valley brought food up to me and thought they beheld a pious monk, living a pure life. ‘Brother Edvin,’ they said, ‘if there were more monks like you, then we would soon mend our ways, but when we see priests and bishops and monks shoving and fighting like piglets at the trough . . .’ Well, I told them that was not a Christian way to talk—but I liked hearing it all the same, and I sang and prayed so my voice resounded in the mountains. Now it will be to my benefit to feel how the lice are biting and fighting on my skin and to hear the good housewives, who want to keep their houses clean and neat, shouting that the filthy monkhide can just as well sleep in the barn during the summer. I’m heading north to Nidaros now, to celebrate Saint Olav’s Day, and it will do me good to see that people aren’t so keen to come near me.”

Ulvhild woke up. Then Lavrans went over and lifted her up in his cape.

“Here is the child I told you about, dear Father. Place your hands on her and pray to God for her, the way you prayed for the boy up north in Meldal—we heard he regained his health.”

The monk gently put his hand under Ulvhild’s chin and looked into her eyes. Then he lifted one of her hands and kissed it.

“You should pray instead, you and your wife, Lavrans Bjørg ulfsøn, that you will not be tempted to bend God’s will with this child. Our Lord Jesus himself has set these small feet on a path so that she can walk safely toward the house of peace—I can see in your eyes, blessed Ulvhild, that you have your intercessors in that other house.”

“I heard that the boy in Meldal got well,” said Lavrans quietly.

“He was the only child of a poor widow, and there was no one to feed or clothe him when the mother passed away, except the village. And yet the woman only asked that God give her a fearless heart so that she might have faith that He would let happen whatever was best for the boy. I did nothing more than pray alongside her.”

“It’s not easy for Ragnfrid and me to be content with that,” said Lavrans gloomily. “Especially since she’s so pretty and so good.”

“Have you seen the child they have over in Lidstad, in the south of the valley?” asked the monk. “Would you rather your daughter were like that?”

Lavrans shuddered and pressed the child close.

“Don’t you think,” Brother Edvin went on, “that in God’s eyes we are all like children for whom He has reason to grieve, crippled as we are by sin? And yet we don’t think that things are the worst in the world for us.”

He walked over to the painting of the Virgin Mary on the wall, and everyone knelt down as he said the evening prayer. They felt that Brother Edvin had offered them great comfort.

But after he had left the house to find his sleeping place, Astrid, who was in charge of all the maids, vigorously swept the floor everywhere the monk had stood and hastily threw the sweepings into the fire.

Brother Edvin was standing on the ramp to the cowshed, ready to leave, with his staff and bag in hand. With a smile he thanked Kristin for her trouble and sat down in the grass and ate, while Kristin sat at his feet.

Her little white dog came running over to them, making the tiny bells on his collar ring. Kristin pulled the dog onto her lap, and Brother Edvin snapped his fingers, tossing little bits of wheat cake into the dog’s mouth, as he praised the animal.

“It’s the same breed that Queen Eufemia brought over to Norway,” he said. “Everything is so splendid here at Jørundgaard now.”

Kristin blushed with pleasure. She knew the dog was particularly fine, and she was proud to own him. No one else in the village had a pet dog. But she hadn’t known that he was of the same type as the queen’s pet dogs.

“Simon Andressøn sent him to me,” she said, hugging the dog as he licked her face. “His name is Kortelin.”

She had planned to speak to the monk about her uneasiness and ask for his advice. But now she had no wish to spend any more time on her thoughts of the night before. Brother Edvin believed that God would do what was best for Ulvhild. And it was generous of Simon to send her such a gift even before their betrothal had been formally acknowledged. She refused to think about Arne—he had behaved badly toward her, she thought.

Brother Edvin picked up his staff and bag and asked Kristin to give his greetings to the others; he wouldn’t wait for everyone to wake up, but would set off while the day was cool. She walked with him up past the church and a short way into the grove.

When they parted, he offered her God’s peace and blessed her.

“Give me a few words, as you did for Ulvhild, dear Father,” begged Kristin as she stood with her hand in his.

The monk poked his bare foot, knotty with rheumatism, in the wet grass.

“Then I would impress upon your heart, my daughter, that you should pay close attention to the way God tends to the welfare of the people here in the valley. Little rain falls, but He has given you water from the mountains, and the dew refreshes the meadows and fields each night. Thank God for the good gifts He has given you, and don’t complain if you think you are lacking something else that you think would be beneficial. You have beautiful golden hair, so do not fret because it isn’t curly. Haven’t you heard about the woman who sat and wept because she had only a little scrap of pork to give to her seven hungry children for Christmas dinner? Saint Olav came riding past at that very moment. Then he stretched out his hand over the meat and prayed to God to feed the poor urchins. But when the woman saw that a slaughtered pig lay on the table, she began to cry because she didn’t have enough bowls and pots.”

Kristin ran off toward home, and Kortelin danced around at her feet as he nipped at her clothing and barked, making all his tiny silver bells ring.

It was Bentein Prestesøn who had killed Arne. On New Year’s Eve the bishop’s men were sitting in the men’s house drinking, when Bentein came in. He had become a scribe for a priest, a Corpus Christi prebendary.¹ At first the men didn’t want to let Bentein in, but he reminded Arne that they were from the same village. So Arne allowed him to sit with him, and they both began to drink. But then they came to blows, and Arne fought so fiercely that Bentein seized a knife from the table and stabbed Arne in the throat and then several times in the chest. Arne died almost at once.

The bishop took this misfortune greatly to heart; he personally saw to it that the body was properly tended to, and he had his own men accompany it on the long journey home. He had Bentein thrown in irons and excommunicated from the Church, and if he had not already been hanged, then he soon would be.

Halvdan had to tell the story several times as more people crowded into the room. Lavrans and Simon also came over to the cookhouse when they noticed all the noise and commotion in the courtyard. Lavrans was much distressed; he ordered his horse to be saddled, for he wanted to ride over to Brekken at once. As he was about to leave, his eyes fell on Kristin’s white face.

“Perhaps you would like to go with me?” he asked. Kristin hesitated for a moment, shuddering, but then she nodded, for she didn’t dare utter a word.

“Isn’t it too cold for her?” said Ragnfrid. “Tomorrow they will hold the wake, and then we’ll all go.”

Lavrans looked at his wife; he also glanced at Simon’s face, and then he went over and put his arm around Kristin’s shoulder.

“You must remember that she’s his foster sister,” he said. “Perhaps she would like to help Inga attend to the body.”

And even though Kristin’s heart was gripped with fear and despair, she felt a warm surge of gratitude toward her father for his words.

Then Ragnfrid wanted them to eat the evening porridge before they left, if Kristin would be going along. She also wanted to send gifts to Inga—a new linen sheet, candles, and freshly baked bread. She asked them to tell Inga that she would come to help them prepare for the burial.

Little was eaten but much was said in the room while the food stood on the table. One person reminded the other about the trials that God had visited upon Gyrd and Inga. Their farm had been destroyed by a rock slide and flood, and many of their older children had died, so all of Arne’s siblings were still quite young. But fortune had been with them for several years now, ever since the bishop had appointed Gyrd of Finsbrekken as his envoy, and the children they had been blessed to keep were good-looking and full of promise. But Inga had loved Arne more dearly than all the rest.

People felt sorry for Sira Eirik too. The priest was loved and respected, and the people in the village were proud of him; he was well educated and capable, and in all his years with the Church he had not missed a single holy day or mass or service that he was obliged to observe. In his youth he had been a soldier under Count Alv of Tornberg, but he had brought trouble on himself by killing a man of exceedingly high birth, and so he had turned to the Bishop of Oslo. When the bishop realized how quick Eirik was to acquire book learning, he had accepted him into the priesthood. And if not for the fact that he still had enemies because of that killing in the past, Sira Eirik would probably never have stayed at that little church. It’s true that he was quite avaricious, both for his own purse and for his church. But the church was, after all, quite attractively furnished with vessels and draperies and books, and he did have those children—but he had never had anything but trouble and sorrow from his family. In the countryside people thought it unreasonable to expect priests to live like monks, since they had to have women servants on their farms and might well be in need of a woman to look after things for them when they had to make such long and arduous journeys through the parish in all kinds of weather. People also remembered that it was not so long ago that priests in Norway had been married men. So no one blamed Sira Eirik for having three children by the housekeeper who was with him when he was young. On this evening, however, they said that it looked as if God wanted to punish Eirik for taking a mistress, since his children and grandchildren had caused him so much grief. And some people said that there was good reason for priests not to have wives or children—for enmity and indignation were bound to arise between the priest and the people of Finsbrekken. Until now they had been the best of friends.

Simon Andressøn was quite familiar with Bentein’s conduct in Oslo, and he told the others about it. Bentein had become a scribe for the provost of the Maria Church and was considered a clever fellow. And there were plenty of women who were quite fond of him; he had those eyes and a quick tongue. Some thought him a handsome man—mostly women who felt they had been cheated by their husbands, or young maidens who enjoyed having men act freely toward them. Simon laughed; they knew what he meant, didn’t they? Well, Bentein was so shrewd that he didn’t get too close to those kinds of women; with them he exchanged only words, and he won a reputation for leading a pure life.

It so happened that King Haakon, who was a pious and decent man himself, wanted his men to maintain disciplined and proper behavior—at least the younger men. The others he had little control over. But the king’s priest always heard about whatever pranks the young men managed to sneak out and take part in—drunken feasts, gambling, ale-drinking, and the like. And then the rascals had to confess and repent, and they received harsh punishment; yes, two or three of the wildest boys were even sent away. But at last it came to light that it was that fox, Bentein secretarius, who had been secretly frequenting all of the ale houses and establishments that were even worse; he had actually listened to the confessions of whores and had given them absolution.

Kristin was sitting next to her mother. She tried to eat so that no one would notice how things stood with her, but her hand shook so badly that she spilled some of the porridge with every spoonful, and her tongue felt so thick and dry in her mouth that she could hardly swallow the bread. But when Simon began to talk about Bentein she had to give up all pretense of eating. She gripped the edge of the bench with her hands; terror and loathing took such a hold on her that she felt dizzy and filled with nausea. He was the one who had tried to . . . Bentein and Arne, Bentein and Arne . . . Sick with impatience she waited for the others to finish. She longed to see Arne, Arne’s handsome face, to fall to her knees and grieve, forgetting everything else.

When Ragnfrid helped Kristin into her outer garments, she kissed her daughter on the cheek. Kristin was unaccustomed to receiving any kind of caress from her mother, and it felt so good. She rested her head on Ragnfrid’s shoulder for a moment, but she could not cry.

When she came out to the courtyard, she saw that there were more people coming with them—Halvdan, Jon of Laugarbru, and Simon and his servant. She felt unreasonably anguished that the two strangers would be going along.

It was a biting cold night; the snow creaked underfoot, and the stars glittered, as dense as frost, in the black sky. After they had gone a short distance, they heard howls and shouts and furious hoofbeats south of the meadows. A little farther along the road the whole pack of riders came storming up behind them and then raced on past. The sound of ringing metal and vapor from the steaming, frost-covered bodies of the horses rose up before Lavrans and his party as they moved out of the way into the snow. Halvdan shouted at the wild throng—it was the youths from the farms south of the village. They were still celebrating Christmas and were out trying their horses. Those who were too drunk to take notice raced on ahead, thundering and bellowing as they hammered on their shields. But a few of them understood the news that Halvdan had yelled after them; they dropped away from the group, fell silent, and joined Lavrans’s party as they whispered to the men in the back of the procession.

They continued on until they could see Finsbrekken on the slope alongside the Sil River. There was a light between the buildings; in the middle of the courtyard the servants had set pine torches in a mound of snow, and the firelight gleamed red across the white hillock, but the dark houses looked as if they were streaked with clotted blood. One of Arne’s little sisters was standing outside, stamping her feet, with her arms crossed under her cloak. Kristin kissed the tear-stained face of the freezing child. Her heart was as heavy as stone, and she felt as if there was lead in her limbs as she climbed the stairs to the loft where they had laid him out.

Lavrans lit his candle from one of the candles in the room, set it firmly on the board of the bier, and knelt down. Kristin was about to do the same, but she couldn’t get her candle to stand; then Simon stepped over to help her. As long as the priest prayed, everyone remained on their knees, repeating his words in a whisper, so that the steam hovered around their mouths. It was ice-cold in the loft.

When the priest closed his book, the people rose; many had already gathered in the death chamber. Lavrans went over to Inga. She was staring at Kristin and seemed not to hear Lavrans’s words; she stood there with the gifts he had given her, holding them as if unaware that she had anything in her hands.

“So you have come too, Kristin,” she said in an odd, strained tone of voice. “Perhaps you would like to see my son, the way he has come back to me?”

She moved a few candles aside, grabbed Kristin’s arm with a trembling hand, and with the other she tore the cloth from the dead man’s face.

It was grayish-yellow like mud, and his lips were the color of lead; they were slightly parted so that the even, narrow, bone-white teeth seemed to offer a mocking smile. Beneath the long eyelashes could be seen a glimpse of his glazed eyes, and there were several bluish-black spots high on his cheeks that were either bruises from the fight or the marks of a corpse.

“Perhaps you would like to kiss him?” asked Inga in the same tone of voice, and Kristin obediently leaned forward and pressed her lips to the dead man’s cheek. It was clammy, as if from dew, and she thought she could faintly smell the stench of the corpse; he had no doubt begun to thaw out in the heat from all the candles.

Kristin remained leaning there, with her hands on the bier, for she did not have the strength to stand up. Inga pulled aside more of the shroud so the gash from the knife wound across his collar-bone was visible.

Then she turned to the people and said in a quavering voice, “I see that it’s a lie, what people say, that a dead man’s wounds will bleed if he’s touched by the one who caused his death. He’s colder now, my boy, and not as handsome as when you last met him down on the road. You don’t care to kiss him now, I see—but I’ve heard that you didn’t refuse his lips back then.”

“Inga,” said Lavrans, stepping forward, “have you lost your senses? What are you saying?”

“Oh, you’re all so grand over there at Jørundgaard—you were much too rich a man, Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn, for my son to dare court your daughter with honor. And no doubt Kristin thought she was too good for him too. But she wasn’t too good to run after him on the road at night and dally with him in the thickets on the evening he left. Ask her yourself and we’ll see if she dares to deny it, as Arne lies here dead—she who has brought this upon us with her loose ways. . . .”

Lavrans did not ask the question; instead he turned to Gyrd.

“You must rein in your wife—she has taken leave of her senses.”

But Kristin raised her pale face and looked around in despair.

“I did go out to meet Arne on that last evening, because he asked me to do so. But nothing happened between us that was not proper.” And as she seemed to pull herself together and fully realize what was implied, she shouted loudly, “I don’t know what you mean, Inga. Are you defaming Arne as he lies here? Never did he try to entice or seduce me.”

But Inga laughed loudly.

“Arne? No, not Arne. But Bentein didn’t let you play with him that way. Ask Gunhild, Lavrans, who washed the filth off your daughter’s back, and ask any man who was in the men’s quarters at the bishop’s citadel on New Year’s Eve when Bentein ridiculed Arne for having let her go and then was made her fool. She let Bentein come under her fur as she walked home, and she tried to play the same game with him—”

Lavrans gripped Inga by the shoulder and pressed his hand against her mouth.

“Get her out of here, Gyrd. It’s shameful that you should talk this way before the body of this good boy. But even if all of your children lay here dead, I would not stand and listen to your lies about mine. And you, Gyrd, will have to answer for what this demented woman is saying.”

Gyrd took hold of his wife to lead her away, but he said to Lavrans, “It’s true that Arne and Bentein were talking about Kristin when my son lost his life. It’s understandable that you may not have heard it, but there has been talk here in the village this fall. . . .”

Simon slammed his sword into the nearest clothes chest.

“No, good folks, now you will have to find something other than my betrothed to talk about in this death chamber. Priest, can’t you harness these people so that everything proceeds according to custom?”

The priest—Kristin now saw that he was the youngest son from Ulvsvold who had been home for Christmas—opened his book and took up his position next to the bier. But Lavrans shouted that those who had spoken of his daughter, whoever they might be, would have to eat their words.

And then Inga screamed, “Go ahead and take my life, Lavrans, just as she has taken all my solace and joy—and celebrate her marriage to this son of a knight, and yet everyone will know that she was married to Bentein on the road. Here—” And she threw the sheet that Lavrans had given her across the bier to Kristin. “I don’t need Ragnfrid’s linen to wrap around Arne for burial. Make yourself a kerchief out of it, or keep it to swaddle your wayside bastard—and go over to help Gunhild mourn for the hanged man.”

Lavrans, Gyrd, and the priest all seized hold of Inga. Simon tried to lift up Kristin, who was lying across the bier. But she vehemently shook off his hand, and then, still on her knees, she straightened up and shouted loudly, “May God my Savior help me, that is a lie!”

She put out her hand and held it over the nearest candle on the bier.

It looked as if the flame wavered and moved aside. Kristin felt everyone’s eyes upon her—for a very long time, it seemed. Then she suddenly noticed a searing pain in her palm, and with a piercing shriek she collapsed onto the floor.

She thought she had fainted, but she could feel Simon and the priest lifting her up. Inga screamed something. She saw her father’s horrified face and heard the priest shout that no one should consider it a true trial—this was not the way to ask God to bear witness—and then Simon carried Kristin out of the loft and down the stairs. Simon’s servant ran to the stable and a moment later Kristin, still only half conscious, was sitting on the front of Simon’s saddle, wrapped in his cape, as he rode down toward the village as fast as his horse could carry them.

They had almost reached Jørundgaard when Lavrans overtook them. The rest of their entourage came thundering along the road far behind.

“Say nothing to your mother,” said Simon as he set Kristin down next to the door. “We’ve heard far too much senseless talk tonight; it’s no wonder that you fainted in the end.”

“We must have a mass said for the boy,” said Ragnfrid. “May God give Inga strength. She has been sorely tried, that good, capable woman.”

Lavrans fell in with the tone that Simon had set, and in a little while Simon said that now they must all go to bed—”For Kristin is both tired and sad.”

Sobbing, Kristin told him of everything that had happened on the evening that Arne left for Hamar. Lavrans said little. Then Kristin crawled forward on the bed and threw her arms around his neck, whimpering softly.

“I am to blame for Arne’s death—it’s true what Inga said. . . .”

“Arne himself asked you to come and meet him,” said Lavrans, pulling the covers up around his daughter’s bare shoulders. “It was thoughtless of me to allow the two of you to spend so much time together, but I thought the boy had better sense. I won’t blame the two of you; I can see that these things are heavy for you to bear. And yet I never imagined that any of my daughters would fall into ill repute here in our village. It will be painful for your mother when she hears this news. But you went to Gunhild instead of coming to me—that was so unwise that I can’t understand how you could act so foolishly.”

“I don’t want to stay here in the village any longer,” wept Kristin. “I don’t dare look a single person in the eye. And all the sorrow I have caused those at Romundgaard and at Finsbrekken . . .”

“Yes,” said Lavrans, “they will have to make sure, both Gyrd and Sira Eirik, that these lies about you are put in the ground along with Arne. Otherwise it is Simon Andressøn who can best defend you in this matter.” And he patted her in the dark. “Don’t you think he handled things well and with good sense?”

“Father,” Kristin begged, fearful and fervent, as she clung to him, “send me to the cloister, Father. Yes, listen to me—I’ve thought about this for a long time. Maybe Ulvhild will get well if I go in her place. Do you remember the shoes that I sewed for her this autumn, the ones with pearls on them? I pricked my fingers so badly, I bled from the sharp gold thread. I sat and sewed those shoes because I thought it was wrong that I didn’t love my sister enough to become a nun and help her. Arne asked me about that once. If I had said yes back then, none of this would have happened.”

Lavrans shook his head.

“Lie down now,” he told her. “You don’t know what you’re saying, my poor child. Now you must try to sleep.”

Then she remembered Arne’s face, cold and hideous. She remembered that she had seen an open grave waiting for a body the last time she came out of church. The chopped-up lumps of earth lay on the snow, hard and cold and gray as iron—that was where she had brought Arne.

Suddenly she thought about a summer night many years before. She was standing on the loft gallery at Finsbrekken, the same loft where she had been struck down this evening. Arne was playing ball with some boys down in the courtyard, and the ball came sailing up to her on the gallery. She held it behind her back and refused to give it up when Arne came to retrieve it. Then he tried to take it from her by force, and they had fought over it on the gallery, then inside the loft among the chests. The leather sacks full of clothes that were hanging there knocked them on the head when they ran into them during the chase. They had fought and tumbled over that ball.

And now she finally seemed to realize that he was dead and gone, and that she would never see his brave, handsome face or feel his warm hands again. She had been so childish and heartless that it had never occurred to her how he would feel about losing her. She wept in despair and thought she deserved her own unhappiness. But then she started thinking again about everything that still awaited her, and she wept because she thought the punishment that would befall her was too severe.

Simon was the one who told Ragnfrid about what had happened at the vigil at Brekken the night before. He made no more of the matter than was necessary. But Kristin was so dazed from grief and a sleepless night that she felt a purely unreasonable bitterness toward him, because he could speak of it as if it were not so terrible after all. She also felt a great displeasure at the way her parents let Simon act as if he were the master of the house.

“So you don’t think anything of it, Simon?” asked Ragnfrid anxiously.

“No,” replied Simon. “And I don’t think anyone else will either; they know you and her and they know this Bentein. But there’s not much to talk about in this remote village; it’s perfectly reasonable for people to help themselves to this juicy tidbit. Now we’ll have to teach them that Kristin’s reputation is too rich a diet for the peasants around here. But it’s too bad that she was so frightened by his coarseness that she didn’t come to you at once, or go to Sira Eirik himself. I think that whorehouse priest would have gladly testified that he had meant no more than some innocent teasing if you had spoken to him, Lavrans.”

Both parents agreed that Simon was right. But Kristin gave a shriek and stamped her foot.

“But he knocked me to the ground. I hardly know what he did to me. I was out of my senses; I no longer remember a thing. For all I know, it might be as Inga says. I haven’t been well or happy for a single day since. . . .”

Ragnfrid gave a cry and pressed her hands together; Lavrans leaped to his feet. Even Simon’s face changed expression; he gave Kristin a sharp look, went over to her, and put his hand under her chin. Then he laughed.

“God bless you, Kristin. You would have remembered it if he had done you any harm. It’s no wonder she’s been feeling melancholy and unwell since that unlucky evening when she was given such a fright—she who has never met with anything but kindness and goodwill before,” he said to the others. “Anyone can see from her eyes, which bear no ill intent and would rather believe in good than evil, that she is a maiden and not a woman.”

Kristin looked up into the small, steady eyes of her betrothed. She raised her arms halfway up; she wanted to place them around his neck.

Then Simon went on. “You mustn’t think, Kristin, that you won’t forget all about this. I don’t intend for us to settle at Formo right away and never allow you to leave this valley. ‘No one has the same color of hair or temperament in the rain as in the sun,’ said old King Sverre when they accused his ‘Birch-Leg’ followers² of growing arrogant with success.”

Lavrans and Ragnfrid smiled. It amused them to hear the young man speak as if he were a wise old bishop.

Simon continued. “It would not be proper for me to admonish you, the man who is to be my father-in-law, but perhaps I might say this much: we were dealt with more strictly, my siblings and I. We were not allowed to move so freely among the servants as I see it is Kristin’s custom. My mother used to say that if you play with the cottager’s children, in the long run you’ll end up with lice in your hair; and there is some truth to that.”

Lavrans and Ragnfrid said nothing to this. But Kristin turned away, and the desire she had felt for a moment to put her arms around Simon Darre’s neck had vanished completely.

They lay in the sun under a steep cliff and drank and ate. Then Lavrans talked a little about Arne; he had been very fond of the boy. Simon joined in, praising the dead man, and said that he didn’t find it strange that Kristin should grieve for her foster brother. Then Lavrans mentioned that perhaps they should not pressure her so much, but give her a little more time to regain her composure before they celebrated the betrothal ale. She had said that she would like to go to a cloister for a while.

Simon sat up suddenly and gave a long whistle.

“You don’t care for the idea?” asked Lavrans.

“Oh, yes, yes,” replied the other man hastily. “This seems to be the best counsel, dear father-in-law. Send her to the sisters in Oslo for a year; then she’ll learn how people talk about each other out in the world. I happen to know a little about several of the maidens who are there,” he said and laughed. “They wouldn’t lie down and die of grief over two mad boys tearing each other apart for their sake. Not that I would want such a maiden for my wife, but I don’t think it would do Kristin any harm to meet some new people.”

Lavrans put the rest of the food in the knapsack and said, without looking at the young man, “You are fond of Kristin, I think.”

Simon laughed a little but did not look at Lavrans.

“You must know that I have great affection for her—and for you, as well,” Simon said brusquely, and then he stood up and put on his skis. “I have never met any maiden I would rather marry.”