Thin tendrils of water shone on the mountain slopes, which were shrouded in a blue mist day after day. The heat steamed and trembled over the land; the spears of grain hid the soil in the fields almost completely, and the grass in the meadows grew deep and shimmered like silk when the wind blew across it. There was a sweet scent over the groves and hills, and as soon as the sun went down, a strong, fresh, sharp fragrance of sap and young plants streamed forth; the earth seemed to heave a great sigh, languorous and refreshed. Trembling, Kristin remembered how Erlend had released her from his embrace. Every night she lay down, sick with longing, and each morning she awoke, sweating and exhausted from her own dreams.

It seemed incomprehensible to her that everyone at home could avoid saying a word about the one thing that was in her thoughts. But week after week went by, and they were silent about her breach of promise to Simon and did not question what she had on her mind. Her father spent a great deal of time in the woods now that the spring plowing was done. He visited his tar-burners, and he took along his hawk and dogs and was gone for days. When he came home, he would speak to his daughter in just as friendly a manner as he always had; but he seemed to have so little to say to her, and he never asked her to come along when he went out riding.

Kristin had dreaded coming home to her mother’s reproaches, but Ragnfrid didn’t say a word, and to Kristin that felt even worse. For his ale feast on Saint Jon’s Day each year, Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn distributed to the poor people of the village all the meat and food that was saved in the house during the last week of fasting. Those who lived closest to Jørundgaard usually came in person to receive the alms. Great hospitality was shown, and Lavrans and his guests and the entire household would gather around these poor folk, for some of them were old people who knew many sagas and ballads. Then they would sit in the hearth room and pass the time drinking ale and engaging in friendly conversation, and in the evening they would dance in the courtyard.

This year Saint Jon’s Day was cold and overcast, but no one complained about it because the farmers of the valley were beginning to fear a drought. No rain had fallen since the Vigil of Saint Halvard, and there was so little snow on the mountains that in the past thirteen years people couldn’t remember seeing the river so low at midsummer.

Lavrans and his guests were in a good mood when they went down to greet the poor folk in the hearth room. The people were sitting around the table eating milk porridge and drinking stout. Kristin went back and forth to the table, serving the old and the sick.

Lavrans greeted his guests and asked them if they were satisfied with the food. Then he went over to welcome a poor old peasant man who had been moved to Jørundgaard that very day. The man’s name was Haakon, and he had been a soldier under old King Haakon and had taken part in the king’s last expedition to Scotland. Now he was impoverished and nearly blind. People had offered to build a cottage for him, but he preferred to be taken from farm to farm, since he was received everywhere as an honored guest. He was unusually knowledgeable and had seen so much of the world.

Lavrans stood with his hand on his brother’s shoulder; Aasmund Bjørgulfsøn had come to Jørundgaard as a guest. He too asked Haakon whether he was satisfied with the food.

“The ale is good, Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn,” said Haakon. “But a slut must have made the porridge for us today. Overly bedded cooks make overly boiled porridge, as the saying goes, and this porridge is scorched.”

“It’s a shame for me to give you burned porridge,” said Lavrans. “But I hope that the old saying isn’t always true, because it was my daughter herself who made the porridge.” He laughed and asked Kristin and Tordis to hurry and bring in the meat dishes.

Kristin dashed outside and over to the cookhouse. Her heart was pounding—she had caught a glimpse of her uncle’s face when Haakon was talking about the cook and the porridge.

Late that evening she saw her father and uncle talking for a long time as they walked back and forth in the courtyard. She was dizzy with fear, and it was no better the next day when she noticed that her father was taciturn and morose. But he didn’t say a word to her.

He said nothing after his brother left either. But Kristin noticed that he wasn’t talking to Haakon as much as usual, and when their time was up for housing the old man, Lavrans didn’t offer to keep him longer but let him move on to the next farm.

One morning in early autumn Ragnfrid went out with all three of her daughters to see to some linen she had spread out to bleach. Kristin praised her mother’s weaving skill. Then Ragnfrid began stroking Ramborg’s hair.

“This is for your wedding chest, little one.”

“Mother,” said Ulvhild, “will I have a chest too, if I go to a cloister?”

“You know that you’ll have no smaller dowry than your sisters,” said Ragnfrid. “But you won’t need the same kinds of things. And you know that you can stay with your father and me for as long as we live . . . if that’s what you want.”

“And by the time you go to the convent,” said Kristin, her voice quavering, “it’s possible, Ulvhild, that I will have been a nun for many years.”

She glanced at her mother, but Ragnfrid was silent.

“If I could have married,” said Ulvhild, “I would never have turned away from Simon. He was kind, and he was so sad when he said goodbye to all of us.”

“You know your father has said we shouldn’t talk about this,” said Ragnfrid.

But Kristin said stubbornly, “Yes, I know he was sadder to part with all of you than with me.”

Her mother said angrily, “He wouldn’t have had much pride if he had shown you his sorrow. You didn’t deal fairly with Simon Andressøn, my daughter. And yet he asked us not to threaten you or curse you.”

“No, he probably thought he had cursed me so much that no one else needed to tell me how wretched I was,” said Kristin in the same manner as before. “But I never noticed that Simon was particularly fond of me until he realized that I held another man dearer than I held him.”

“Go on home,” said Ragnfrid to the two younger ones. She sat down on a log lying on the ground and pulled Kristin down by her side. “You know very well,” she began, “that it has always been thought more proper and honorable for a man not to speak too much of love to his betrothed—or to sit alone with her or show too much feeling.”

“I’d be amazed,” said Kristin, “if young people in love didn’t forget themselves once in a while, instead of always keeping in mind what their elders regard as proper.”

“Take care, Kristin,” said her mother, “that you do keep it in mind.” She was silent for a moment. “I think it’s probably true that your father is afraid you have thrown your love away on a man to whom he is unwilling to give you.”

“What did my uncle say?” asked Kristin after a moment.

“Nothing except that Erlend of Husaby has better lineage than reputation,” her mother said. “Yes, he did ask Aasmund to put in a good word for him with Lavrans. Your father wasn’t pleased when he heard about it.”

But Kristin sat there beaming. Erlend had spoken to her uncle. And here she had been so miserable because he hadn’t sent any word.

Then her mother spoke again. “Now, Aasmund did mention something about a rumor going around Oslo that this Erlend had been hanging around the streets near the convent and that you had gone out and talked to him by the fence.”

“Is that so?” said Kristin.

“Aasmund advised us to accept this offer, you see,” said Ragnfrid. “But then Lavrans grew angrier than I’ve ever seen him before. He said that a suitor who took such a path to his daughter would find him with his sword in hand. The manner in which we dealt with the Dyfrin people was dishonorable enough, but if Erlend had lured you into taking to the roads with him in the dark—and while you were living in a convent, at that—then Lavrans would take it as a sure sign that you would be better served to lose such a husband.”

Kristin clenched her fists in her lap. The color came and went in her face. Her mother put her arm around her waist, but Kristin wrenched herself loose and screamed, beside herself with outrage, “Leave me be, Mother! Or maybe you’d like to feel whether I’ve grown thicker around the middle.”

The next moment she was on her feet, holding her hand to her cheek. In confusion she stared down at her mother’s furious face. No one had struck her since she was a child.

“Sit down,” said Ragnfrid. “Sit down,” she repeated so that her daughter obeyed. The mother sat in silence for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was unsteady.

“I’ve always known, Kristin, that you’ve never been very fond of me. I thought it might be because you didn’t think I loved you enough—not the way your father loves you. I let it pass. I thought that when the time came for you to have children yourself, then you would realize . . .

“Even when I was nursing you, whenever Lavrans came near, you would always let go of my breast and reach out to him and laugh so the milk ran out of your mouth. Lavrans thought it was funny, and God knows I didn’t begrudge him that. I didn’t begrudge you either that your father would play and laugh whenever he saw you. I felt so sorry for you, poor little thing, because I couldn’t help weeping all the time. I worried more about losing you than I rejoiced at having you. But God and the Virgin Mary know that I loved you no less than Lavrans did.”

Tears ran down over Ragnfrid’s cheeks, but her face was quite calm and her voice was too.

“God knows that I never resented him or you because of the affection you shared. I thought that I had not given him much happiness during the years we had lived together, and I was glad that he had you. And I also thought that if only my father Ivar had treated me that way . . .

“There are many things, Kristin, that a mother should teach her daughter to watch out for. I didn’t think it was necessary with you, since you’ve been your father’s companion all these years; you ought to know what is proper and right. What you just mentioned—do you think I would believe that you would cause Lavrans such sorrow?

“I just want to say that I wish you would find a husband you could love. But then you must behave sensibly. Don’t let Lavrans get the idea that you have chosen a troublemaker or someone who doesn’t respect the peace and honor of women. For he would never give you to such a man—not even if it were a matter of protecting you from public shame. Then Lavrans would rather let steel be the judge between him and the man who had ruined your life.”

And with that her mother rose and left her.

The people in the villages were despondent and worried about the approaching winter. The peasants also thought it a bad sign that yet another child was to be king of Norway. Old people remembered the time when King Magnus died and his sons were children.

Sira Eirik said, “Vae terrae, ubi puer rex est. In plain Norwegian it means: there’s no peace at night for the rats on the farm when the cat is young.”

Ragnfrid Ivarsdatter managed the farm while her husband was away, and both she and Kristin were glad to have their minds and hands full of cares and work. Everyone in the village was struggling to gather moss in the mountains and to cut bark because there was so little hay and almost no straw, and even the leaves that were collected after midsummer were yellow and withered. On Holy Cross Day, when Sira Eirik carried the crucifix across the fields, there were many in the procession who wept and loudly entreated God to have mercy on men and beasts.

It was long past everyone’s bedtime, but Ragnfrid was still sitting in her weaving room. She had so much to do these days that she often worked into the night at her weaving and sewing. And Ragnfrid always felt so happy in that building. It was thought to be the oldest one on the farm; they called it the women’s house, and people said it had stood there since heathen times. Kristin and the maid named Astrid were with Ragnfrid, spinning wool next to the open hearth.

They had been sitting there, sleepy and silent, for a while when they heard the hoofbeats of a single horse; a man came riding at great speed into the wet courtyard. Astrid went to the entryway to ook outside. She returned at once, followed by Lavrans Bjørg ulfsøn.

Both his wife and daughter saw at once that he was quite drunk. He staggered and grabbed hold of the smoke vent pole as Ragnfrid removed his soaking wet cape and hat and unfastened his scabbard belt.

“What have you done with Halvdan and Kolbein?” she asked apprehensively. “Did you leave them behind along the road?”

“No, I left them behind at Loptsgaard,” he said, laughing a bit. “I had such an urge to come home. I couldn’t rest before I did. They went to bed down there, but I took Guldsvein and raced homeward.

“Go and find me some food, Astrid,” he said to the maid. “Bring it over here so you won’t have to walk so far in the rain. But be quick; I haven’t eaten since early this morning.”

“Didn’t you have any food at Loptsgaard?” asked his wife in surprise.

Lavrans sat down on a bench and rocked back and forth, chuckling.

“There was food enough, but I didn’t feel like eating while I was there. I drank with Sigurd for a while, but then I thought I might just as well come home at once instead of waiting till morning.”

Astrid brought ale and food; she also brought dry shoes for her master.

Lavrans fumbled as he tried to unfasten his spurs but he kept lurching forward.

“Come over here, Kristin,” he said, “and help your father. I know you’ll do it with a loving heart—yes, a loving heart—today at least.”

Kristin obeyed and knelt down. Then he put his hands on either side of her head and tilted her face up.

“You know very well, my daughter, that I want only what is best for you. I wouldn’t cause you sorrow unless I saw that I was saving you from many sorrows later on. You’re still so young, Kristin. You only turned seventeen this year, three days after Saint Halvard’s Day. You’re seventeen . . .”

Kristin had finished her task. Somewhat pale, she got up and sat down on her stool by the hearth again.

The intoxication seemed to wear off to some extent as Lavrans ate. He answered questions from his wife and the servant girl about the ting. Yes, it had been magnificent. They had bought grain and flour and malt, some in Oslo and some in Tunsberg. They were imported goods—could have been better, but could have been worse too. Yes, he had met many kinsmen and acquaintances and brought greetings from them all. He simply sat there, the answers dripping from him.

“I talked to Sir Andres Gudmundsøn,” he said when Astrid had gone. “Simon has celebrated his betrothal to the young widow at Manvik. The wedding will be at Dyfrin on Saint Andreas’s Day. The boy made the decision himself this time. I tried to avoid Sir Andres in Tunsberg, but he sought me out. He wanted to tell me that he was absolutely certain that Simon saw Fru Halfrid for the first time around midsummer this year. He was afraid I’d think that Simon was planning on this wealthy marriage when he broke off with us.” Lavrans sat for a moment, laughing mirthlessly. “You see, this honorable man was terribly afraid that we’d think something like that of his son.”

Kristin sighed with relief. She thought that this was what her father was so upset about. Maybe he had been hoping all along that it would still take place—the marriage between Simon An-dressøn and herself. At first she had been afraid that he had inquired about her behavior down south in Oslo.

She stood up and said goodnight. Then her father told her to stay a while.

“I have some other news,” said Lavrans. “I might have kept it from you, Kristin, but it’s better that you hear it. Here it is: That man you have set your heart on, you must try to forget.”

Kristin had been standing with her arms at her sides and her head bowed. Now she raised her head and looked into her father’s face. Her lips moved, but she couldn’t manage a single audible word.

Lavrans turned away from his daughter’s gaze; he threw out his hand.

“You know I wouldn’t be against it if I sincerely believed that it would be to your benefit,” he said.

“What news have you heard on this journey, Father?” asked Kristin, her voice steady.

“Erlend Nikulaussøn and his kinsman Sir Munan Baardsøn came to me in Tunsberg,” replied Lavrans. “Sir Munan asked me for your hand on Erlend’s behalf, and I told him no.”

Kristin stood in silence for a moment, breathing heavily.

“Why won’t you give me to Erlend Nikulaussøn?” she asked.

“I don’t know how much you know about this man you want for your husband,” said Lavrans. “If you don’t know the reason yourself, it won’t be pleasant for you to hear it from my lips.”

“Is it because he was excommunicated and outlawed?” asked Kristin in the same tone as before.

“Do you know what it was that caused King Haakon to drive his close kinsman from his court? And do you know that he was banned by the Church in the end because he defied the archbishop’s decree? And that he did not leave the country alone?”

“Yes,” said Kristin. Her voice grew uncertain. “I know too that he was eighteen years old when he met her—his mistress.”

“That’s how old I was when I was married,” said Lavrans. “When I was young, we reckoned that from a man’s eighteenth birthday he could answer for himself and be responsible for his own welfare and that of others.”

Kristin stood in silence.

“You called her his mistress, that woman he has lived with for ten years and who has borne him children,” said Lavrans after a moment. “I would regret the day I sent my daughter off with a husband who had lived openly with a mistress for years on end before he married. But you know it was more than merely living in sin.”

“You weren’t so harsh to judge Fru Aashild and Herr Bjørn,” said Kristin quietly.

“Yet I cannot say I would willingly join families with them,” replied Lavrans.

“Father,” said Kristin, “have you and Mother been so without sin all your lives that you dare judge Erlend so harshly?”

“God knows,” replied Lavrans sternly, “that I judge no man to be a greater sinner than I am myself. But one cannot expect me to give my daughter to any man who wishes to ask for her, just because we all need God’s mercy.”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” said Kristin hotly. “Father, Mother, you were both young once. Don’t you remember that it’s not easy to guard yourself against the sin that love provokes?”

Lavrans turned blood-red.

“No,” he said curtly.

“Then you don’t know what you’re doing,” screamed Kristin in despair, “if you separate Erlend Nikulaussøn and me!”

Lavrans sat down on the bench again.

“You’re only seventeen years old, Kristin,” he continued. “It might be that the two of you are more fond of each other than I thought. But he’s not so young a man that he shouldn’t have realized . . . If he were a good man, then he wouldn’t have approached such a young, immature child as you with words of love. He seems to have considered it trivial that you were promised to someone else.

“But I will not betroth my daughter to a man who has two children with another man’s true wife. Don’t you realize that he has children?

“You’re too young to understand that such an injustice breeds endless quarrels and strife among kinsmen. The man cannot abandon his own offspring; neither can he claim them. It will be difficult for him to find a way to present his son in society, or to marry off his daughter to anyone other than a servant boy or a smallholder. And his children would not be made of flesh and blood if they didn’t despise you and your children. . . .

“Don’t you see, Kristin? Sins like this . . . God may forgive such sins more readily than many others, but they damage a lineage so severely that it can never be redeemed. I was thinking about Bjørn and Aashild myself. There stood that Munan, her son. He was dripping with gold and he sits on the King’s council. He and his brothers control the inheritance from their mother, and yet he hasn’t visited Aashild in her poverty in all these years. Yes, this was the man that your friend chose as his spokesman.

“No, I say, no! You shall never be part of that family as long as my head is above ground.”

Kristin covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. “Then I’ll pray to God night and day, night and day, to take me away from here if you won’t change your mind!”

“It’s useless to discuss this any more tonight,” said her father, aggrieved. “You may not believe it, but I must watch over you in such a way that I can answer for the consequences. Go to bed now, child.”

He held out his hand to her, but she refused to acknowledge it and went sobbing out of the room.

Then Lavrans said to his wife, “Would you mind bringing some ale over here? No, bring some wine. I’m tired.”

Ragnfrid did as he asked. When she returned with the tall goblet, her husband was sitting with his face in his hands. He looked up, and then stroked his hands over the wimple covering her head and down along her arms.

“Poor thing, now you’ve gotten wet. Drink a toast to me, Ragnfrid.”

She placed the goblet to her lips.

“No, drink with me,” said Lavrans vehemently, pulling his wife down onto his lap. Reluctantly she yielded to him.

Lavrans said, “You’ll stand behind me in this matter, won’t you, my wife? It will be best for Kristin if she realizes from the very start that she must put this man out of her mind.”

“It will be hard for the child,” said Ragnfrid.

“Yes, I know that,” replied Lavrans.

They sat in silence for a while, and then Ragnfrid asked, “What does he look like, this Erlend of Husaby?”

“Oh,” said Lavrans, hesitating, “he’s a handsome fellow—in a way. But he doesn’t look as if he were much good for anything but seducing women.”

They were silent again for a while, and then Lavrans went on, “He has handled the great inheritance he received from Sir Nikulaus in such a way that it is much reduced. I haven’t struggled and striven to protect my children for a son-in-law like that.”

Ragnfrid paced the floor nervously.

Lavrans went on, “I was most displeased by the fact that he tried to bribe Kolbein with silver—he was supposed to carry a secret letter from Erlend to Kristin.”

“Did you look at the letter?” asked Ragnfrid.

“No, I didn’t want to,” said Lavrans crossly. “I tossed it back to Sir Munan and told him what I thought of such behavior. He had put his seal on it too; I don’t know what to make of such childish pranks. Sir Munan showed me the seal—said it was King Skule’s privy seal that Erlend had inherited from his father. He thought I ought to realize that it’s a great honor that they would ask for my daughter. But I don’t think that Sir Munan would have presented this matter on Erlend’s behalf with such great warmth if he hadn’t realized that, with this man, the power and honor of the Husaby lineage—won in the days of Sir Nikulaus and Sir Baard—are now in decline. Erlend can no longer expect to make the kind of marriage that was his birthright.”

Ragnfrid stopped in front of her husband.

“I don’t know whether you’re right about this matter or not, my husband. First I ought to mention that, in these times, many a man on the great estates has had to settle for less power and honor than his father before him. You know quite well yourself that it’s not as easy for a man to gain wealth, whether from the land or through commerce, as it was before.”

“I know, I know,” interrupted her husband impatiently. “All the more reason to handle with caution what one has inherited.”

But his wife continued. “There is also this: It doesn’t seem to me that Kristin would be an unequal match for Erlend. In Sweden your lineage is among the best; your grandfather and your father bore the title of knight in this country. My distant ancestors were barons, son after father for many hundreds of years down to Ivar the Old; my father and my grandfather were sheriffs of the county. It’s true that neither you nor Trond has acquired a title or land from the Crown. But I think it could be said that things are no different for Erlend Nikulaussøn than for the two of you.”

“It’s not the same thing,” said Lavrans vehemently. “Power and a knight’s title lay just within reach for Erlend, and he turned his back on them for the sake of whoring. But I see now that you’re against me too. Maybe you think, like Aasmund and Trond, that it’s an honor for me that these noblemen want my daughter to be one of their kinswomen.”

“I told you,” said Ragnfrid rather heatedly, “that I don’t think you need to be so offended and afraid that Erlend’s kinsmen will think they’re condescending in this matter. But don’t you realize one thing above all else? That gentle, obedient child had the courage to stand up to us and reject Simon Darre. Haven’t you noticed that Kristin has not been herself since she came back from Oslo? Don’t you see that she’s walking around as if she had just stepped out from the spell of the mountain? Don’t you realize that she loves this man so much that if you don’t give in, a great misfortune may befall us?”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Lavrans, looking up sharply.

“Many a man greets his son-in-law and does not know it,” said Ragnfrid.

Her husband seemed to stiffen; he slowly turned white in the face.

“And you are her mother!” he said hoarsely. “Have you . . . have you seen . . . such certain signs . . . that you dare accuse your own daughter of this?”

“No, no,” said Ragnfrid quickly. “I didn’t mean what you think. But no one can know what may have happened or is going to happen. Her only thought is that she loves this man. That much I’ve seen. She may show us someday that she loves him more than her honor—or her life!”

Lavrans leaped up.

Have you taken leave of your senses? How can you think such things of our good, beautiful child? Nothing much can have happened to her there, with the nuns. I know she’s no milkmaid who gives up her virtue behind a fence. You must realize that she can’t have seen this man or spoken to him more than a few times. She’ll get over him. It’s probably just the whim of a young maiden. God knows it hurts me dearly to see her grieving so, but you know that this has to pass with time!

“Life, you say, and honor. Here at home on my own farm I can surely protect my own daughter. And I don’t believe any maiden of good family and with an honorable and Christian upbringing would part so easily with her honor, or her life. No, this is the kind of thing people write ballads about. I think when a man or a maiden is tempted to do something like that, they make up a ballad about it, which helps them, but they refrain from actually doing it. . . .

“Even you,” he said, stopping in front of his wife. “There was another man you would rather have had, back when the two of us were married. What kind of situation do you think you’d have been in if your father had let you make up your own mind?”

Now it was Ragnfrid’s turn to grow pale as death.

“Jesus and Maria! Who told you . . .”

“Sigurd of Loptsgaard said something about it, right after we moved here to the valley,” said Lavrans. “But give me an answer to my question. Do you think you would have been happier if Ivar had given you to that man?”

His wife stood with her head bowed low.

“That man,” she said almost inaudibly, “didn’t want me.” A shudder seemed to pass through her body; she struck at the air with a clenched fist.

Then her husband gently placed his hands on her shoulders.

“Is that it?” he said, overcome, and a profound and sorrowful amazement filled his voice. “Is that it? For all these years . . . have you been harboring sorrow for him, Ragnfrid?”

She was shaking, but she did not answer.

“Ragnfrid?” he said in the same tone of voice. “But after Bjør-gulf died . . . and when you . . . when you wanted me to be toward you—in a way that I couldn’t . . . Were you thinking about the other man then?” he whispered, frightened and confused and tormented.

“How can you think such things?” she whispered, on the verge of tears.

Lavrans leaned his forehead against his wife’s and turned his head gently from side to side.

“I don’t know. You’re so strange, everything you said tonight . . . I was afraid, Ragnfrid. I don’t understand women very well.”

Ragnfrid smiled wanly and put her arms around his neck.

“God knows, Lavrans . . . I begged you because I loved you more than is good for a human soul. And I hated the other man so much that I knew it made the Devil happy.”

“I have loved you, dear wife, with all my heart,” said Lavrans tenderly, kissing her. “Do you know that? I thought we were so happy together—weren’t we, Ragnfrid?”

“You are the best husband,” she said with a little sob, pressing herself against him.

Ardently he embraced her.

“Tonight I want to sleep with you, Ragnfrid. And if you would be toward me the way you were in the old days, then I wouldn’t be . . . such a fool.”

His wife stiffened in his arms and pulled away a little.

“It’s fasting time,” she said quietly, her voice strangely hard.

“So it is.” Her husband chuckled. “You and I, Ragnfrid, we have observed all the fast days and have tried to live by God’s commandments in all things. And now it almost seems to me . . . that we might have been happier if we had had more to regret.”

“Don’t talk that way,” implored his wife in despair, holding his temples in her gaunt hands. “You know that I don’t want you to do anything except what you think is right.”

He pulled her to him once more. He gasped aloud as he said, “God help her. God help us all, my Ragnfrid.

“I’m tired,” he said, releasing her. “You should go to bed now too, shouldn’t you?”

He stood by the door, waiting as she put out the fire in the hearth, blew out the little iron lamp by the loom, and pinched the wick. Together they walked through the rain over to the main house.

Lavrans already had his foot on the stairs up to the loft when he turned back to his wife, who was still standing in the door to the entryway. He pulled her fervently to him one last time and kissed her in the darkness. Then he made the sign of the cross over his wife’s face and went upstairs.

Ragnfrid threw off her clothes and crept into bed. She lay still for a while, listening to her husband’s footsteps overhead in the loft room; then the bed creaked up there and silence fell. Ragnfrid crossed her thin arms over her withered breasts. Yes, God help her. What kind of woman was she? What kind of mother was she? She would soon be old. And yet she was just the same. She no longer begged the way she had when they were young, when she had threatened and raged against this man who closed himself off, shy and modest, when she grew ardent—who turned cold when she wanted to give him more than his husband’s right. That’s the way things were, and that’s how she had gotten with child, time after time—humiliated, furious with shame because she couldn’t be content with his lukewarm, married man’s love. Then, when she was pregnant and in need of kindness and tenderness, he had had so much to give. Whenever she was sick or tormented, her husband’s tireless, gentle concern for her fell like dew on her hot soul. He willingly took on all her troubles and bore them, but there was something of his own that he refused to share. She had loved her children so much that it felt as though her heart were cut out of her each time she lost one of them. God, God, what kind of woman was she, who in the midst of her suffering was capable of tasting that drop of sweetness when he took on her sorrow and laid it close to his own?

Kristin. She would gladly have walked through fire for her daughter; they wouldn’t believe it, neither Lavrans nor the child, but it was true. And yet she felt an anger toward her that was close to hatred right now. It was to forget his own sorrow over the child’s sorrow that Lavrans had wished tonight that he could have given in to his wife.

Ragnfrid didn’t dare get up, for she didn’t know whether Kristin might be lying awake over in the other bed. But she got soundlessly to her knees, and with her forehead leaning against the footboard of the bed, she tried to pray—for her daughter, for her husband, and for herself. As her body gradually grew stiff with the cold, she set out once more on one of her familiar night journeys, trying to break a path to a peaceful home for her heart.

Down toward the valley the forest, laden white with snow and frost, stood enclosing the white slopes around the farms with intricate patterns of fences and buildings. But at the very bottom of the valley the shadows thickened into darkness.

Fru Aashild came out of the cowshed, pulled the door shut behind her, and paused for a moment in the snow. The whole world was white, and yet it was still more than three weeks until the beginning of Advent. The cold of Saint Clement’s Day would herald the real arrival of winter. Well, it was all part of a bad harvest year.

The old woman sighed heavily, standing outdoors in the desolation. Winter again, and cold and loneliness. Then she picked up the milk pail and the lantern and walked toward the house, gazing around once more.

Four black spots emerged from the forest halfway down the slope. Four men on horseback. There was the flash of a spear point in the moonlight. They were making their way across with difficulty. No one had come here since the snowfall. Were they heading this way?

Four armed men. It was unlikely that anyone with a legitimate reason for visiting her would travel in such company. She thought about the chest containing Bjørn’s and her valuables. Should she hide in the outbuilding?

She looked out across the wintry landscape and wilderness around her. Then she went into the house. The two old dogs that had been lying in front of the fireplace beat their tails against the floorboards. Bjørn had taken the younger dogs along with him to the mountains.

She blew at the coals in the hearth and laid on some wood. She filled the iron pot with snow and hung it over the fire. She strained some milk into a wooden cask and carried it to the storeroom near the entryway.

Aashild took off her filthy, undyed homespun dress that stank of sweat and the cowshed and put on a dark blue one. She exchanged the rough muslin kerchief for a white linen wimple which she draped around her head and throat. She took off her fleecy leather boots and put on silver-buckled shoes.

Then she set about putting the room in order. She smoothed out the pillows and furs on the bed where Bjørn had been sleeping during the day, wiped off the long table, and straightened the cushions on the benches.

Fru Aashild was standing in front of the fireplace, stirring the evening porridge, when the dogs gave warning. She heard the horses in the yard, the men coming into the gallery, and a spear striking the door. Aashild lifted the pot from the fire, straightened her dress, and, with the dogs at her side, stepped forward and opened the door.

Out in the moonlit courtyard three young men were holding four frost-covered horses. The man standing in the gallery shouted joyfully, “Aunt Aashild, is that you opening the door yourself? Then I must say ‘Ben trouvé!’ ”

“Nephew—is that you? Then I must say the same! Come inside while I show your men to the stable.”

“Are you alone on the farm?” asked Erlend. He followed along as she showed the men where to go.

“Yes, Herr Bjørn and his man went out with the sleigh. They were going to see about bringing back some supplies we have stored on the mountain,” said Fru Aashild. “And I have no servant girl,” she added, laughing.

Soon afterward the four young men were seated on the outer bench with their backs against the table, watching the old woman quietly bustling about and putting out food for them. She spread a cloth on the table and set down a single lighted candle; she brought butter, cheese, a bear thigh, and a tall stack of fine, thin pieces of flatbread. She brought ale and mead from the cellar beneath the room, and then she served up the porridge in a beautiful wooden trencher and invited them to sit down and begin.

“It’s not much for you young fellows,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll have to cook another pot of porridge. Tomorrow you’ll have better fare—but I close up the cookhouse in the winter except when I’m baking or brewing. There are only a few of us here on the farm, and I’m starting to get old, my kinsman.”

Erlend laughed and shook his head. He noticed that his men showed the old woman more courtesy and respect than he had ever seen them show before.

“You’re a strange woman, Aunt. Mother was ten years younger than you, but the last time we visited, she looked older than you do tonight.”

“Yes, youth fled quickly enough from Magnhild,” said Fru Aashild softly. “Where are you coming from now?” she asked after a while.

“I’ve been spending some time on a farm up north in Lesja,” said Erlend. “I’ve rented lodgings there. I don’t know whether you can guess why I’ve come here to these parts.”

“You mean whether I know that you’ve asked for the hand of Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn’s daughter here in the south, at Jørundgaard?” asked Fru Aashild.

“Yes,” said Erlend. “I asked for her in proper and honorable fashion, and Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn stubbornly said no. Since Kristin and I refuse to let anything part us, I know of no other way than to take her away by force. I have . . . I’ve had a scout here in the village, and I know that her mother is supposed to be at Sundbu until some time after Saint Clement’s Day and that Lavrans is out at the headland with the other men to bring in the winter provisions for Sil.”

Fru Aashild sat in silence for a moment.

“You’d better give up that idea, Erlend,” she said. “I don’t think the maiden would follow you willingly, and you wouldn’t use force, would you?”

“Oh yes she will. We’ve talked about this many times. She’s begged me many times to carry her away.”

“Did Kristin . . . !” said Fru Aashild. Then she laughed. “That’s no reason for you to count on the maiden coming with you when you show up to take her at her word.”

“Oh yes it is,” said Erlend. “And now I was thinking, Aunt, that you should send an invitation to Jørundgaard for Kristin to come and visit you—for a week or so while her parents are away. Then we could reach Hamar before anyone notices that she’s gone,” he explained.

Fru Aashild replied, still laughing a little, “Did you also think about what we should say—Herr Bjørn and I—when Lavrans comes to call us to account for his daughter?”

“Yes,” said Erlend. “We were four armed men, and the maiden was willing.”

“I won’t help you with this,” said his aunt sternly. “Lavrans has been a faithful friend to us for many years. He and his wife are honorable people, and I won’t participate in betraying them or shaming her. Leave the maiden in peace, Erlend. It’s also about time that your kinsmen heard of other exploits from you than that you were slipping in and out of the country with stolen women.”

“We need to talk alone, Aunt,” said Erlend abruptly.

Fru Aashild took a candle, went into the storeroom, and shut the door behind them. She sat down on a cask of flour; Erlend stood with his hands stuck in his belt looking down at her.

“You can also tell Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn that Sira Jon in Gerdarud married us before we continued on to stay with Duchess Inge bjørg Haakonsdatter in Sweden.”

“I see,” said Fru Aashild. “Do you know whether the duchess will receive you when you arrive there?”

“I spoke with her in Tunsberg,” said Erlend. “She greeted me as her dear kinsman and thanked me for offering her my service, either here or in Sweden. And Munan has promised to give me letters to her.”

“Then you know,” said Fru Aashild, “that even if you can find a priest to marry you, Kristin will relinquish all right to property and inheritance from her father. And her children will not be legitimate heirs. It’s uncertain whether she will be considered your wife.”

“Maybe not here in this country. That’s also why I want to head for Sweden. Her forefather, Laurentius Lagmand, was never married to the maiden Bengta in any other way; they never received her brother’s blessing. And yet she was considered his wife.”

“There were no children,” said Fru Aashild. “Do you think my sons would keep their hands off their inheritance from you if Kristin were left a widow with children and there was any doubt that they were born legitimate?”

“You do Munan an injustice,” replied Erlend. “I know little of your other children. You have no reason to be kind to them, that I know. But Munan has always been my loyal kinsman. He would like to see me married; he spoke with Lavrans on my behalf. Otherwise, by law, I can sue for the inheritance and the good name of whatever children we may have.”

“With that you will brand their mother as your mistress,” said Fru Aashild. “But I don’t think that meek priest, Jon Helgesøn, would dare risk trouble with his bishop in order to marry you against the law.”

“I confessed to him this summer,” said Erlend, his voice muted. “He promised then to marry us if all other means were exhausted.”

“I see,” replied Fru Aashild. “Then you have taken a grave sin upon yourself, Erlend. Kristin was happy at home with her father and mother. A good marriage with a handsome and honorable man of good family was arranged for her.”

“Kristin told me herself,” said Erlend, “that you said she and I might suit each other well. And that Simon Andressøn was no fit husband for her.”

“Oh, never mind what I said or didn’t say,” snapped his aunt. “I’ve said so much in my time. I don’t think you could have had your way with Kristin so easily. You couldn’t have met very often. And I wouldn’t think she was easy to win over, that maiden.”

“We met in Oslo,” said Erlend. “Afterward she was staying with her uncle in Gerdarud. She came out to the woods to meet me.” He looked down and said quite softly, “I had her alone to myself out there.”

Fru Aashild sprang up. Erlend bowed his head even lower.

“And after that . . . was she friends with you?” asked his aunt in disbelief.

“Yes.” Erlend’s smile was wan and quivering. “We were friends after that. And she didn’t resist very strongly; but she is without blame. That was when she wanted me to take her away; she didn’t want to go back to her kinsmen.”

“But you refused?”

“Yes, I wanted to attempt to win her as my wife with her father’s consent.”

“Was this long ago?” asked Fru Aashild.

“It was a year ago, on Saint Lavrans’s Day,” replied Erlend.

“You haven’t made much haste to ask for her hand,” said his aunt.

“She wasn’t free of her previous betrothal,” said Erlend.

“And since then you haven’t come too close to her?” asked Aashild.

“We made arrangements so that we could meet several times.” Once again that quavering smile flitted across his face. “At a place in town.”

“In God’s name,” said Fru Aashild. “I’ll help the two of you as much as I can. I see that it will be much too painful for Kristin to stay here with her parents with something like this on her conscience. There’s nothing else, is there?” she asked.

“Not that I know of,” said Erlend curtly.

After a pause, Fru Aashild asked, “Have you thought about the fact that Kristin has friends and kinsmen all along this valley?”

“We must travel in secrecy as best we can,” said Erlend. “That’s why it’s important for us to get away quickly, so we can put some distance behind us before her father comes home. You have to lend us your sleigh, Aunt.”

Aashild shrugged her shoulders. “Then there’s her uncle at Skog. What if he hears you’re celebrating a wedding with his brother’s daughter in Gerdarud?”

“Aasmund has spoken with Lavrans on my behalf,” said Erlend. “He can’t be an accomplice, that’s true, but he’ll probably look the other way. We’ll go to the priest at night and keep on traveling by night. I imagine that Aasmund will probably tell Lavrans afterward that it’s improper for a God-fearing man like him to part us once we’ve been married by a priest. Rather, he ought to give us his blessing so that we will be legally married. You must tell Lavrans the same thing. He can state his own conditions for a reconciliation with us and demand whatever penalties he deems reasonable.”

“I don’t think Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn will be easy to advise in this matter,” said Fru Aashild. “God and Saint Olav know that I do not like this business, nephew. But I realize that this is your last recourse if you are to repair the harm you have done to Kristin. Tomorrow I will ride to Jørundgaard myself if you’ll lend me one of your men, and I can get Ingrid to the north to look after my livestock.”

Fru Aashild sat next to the hearth and played with the two younger sisters. Secretly she watched Kristin with searching eyes as the maiden set the table. She was thin and silent. She had always been quiet, but it was a different kind of silence that had come over her now. Fru Aashild could imagine all the tension and stubborn defiance that lay behind it.

“You’ve probably heard,” said Kristin, coming over to her, “about what happened here this fall?”

“Yes, that my sister’s son has asked for your hand?”

“Do you remember,” said Kristin, “that you once said he and I might suit each other well? Except that he was much too rich and of too good a family for me?”

“I hear that Lavrans is of another mind,” said Aashild dryly. There was a sparkle in Kristin’s eye, and she smiled a little. She’ll do, thought Fru Aashild. As little as she liked it, she would oblige Erlend and give him the help he had asked for.

Her heart grew strangely heavy when she saw that this child did not seem to give a thought to the sorrow she would cause her parents. Yet I lived in sorrow and torment with Baard for more than twenty years, thought Aashild. But that’s probably the way it is for all of us. Kristin didn’t even seem to have noticed how Ulvhild’s health had declined that autumn. Aashild thought it unlikely that Kristin would see her little sister alive again. But she said nothing of this. The longer Kristin could hold on to this wild joy and keep up her courage, the better it would be for her.

Kristin got up, and in the darkness she collected her jewelry in a small box, which she brought over to the bed.

Then Fru Aashild said to her, “It still seems to me, Kristin, a better idea for Erlend to ride over here when your father comes home, admit openly that he has done you a great wrong, and place his case in Lavrans’s hands.”

“Then I think Father would kill Erlend,” said Kristin.

“Lavrans wouldn’t do that if Erlend refused to draw his sword against his father-in-law,” replied Aashild.

“I don’t want Erlend to be humiliated like that,” said Kristin. “And I don’t want Father to know that Erlend touched me before he asked for my hand with honor and respect.”

“Do you think Lavrans will be less angry when he hears that you’ve fled the farm with him?” asked Aashild. “And do you think it will be any easier for him to bear? According to the law you’ll be nothing more than Erlend’s mistress as long as you live with him without your father’s consent.”

“This is a different matter,” said Kristin, “since he tried to win me as his wife but could not. I will not be considered his mistress.”

Fru Aashild was silent. She thought about having to meet Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn when he returned home and found out that his daughter had stolen away.

Then Kristin said, “I see that you think me a bad daughter, Fru Aashild. But ever since Father came back from the ting, every day here at home has been torture for him as well as for me. It’s best for everyone if this matter is finally settled.”

“Have you thought about fodder for the horses?” asked Fru Aashild. “You can’t take feed from people’s spring huts in a year like this—if there’s any there at all—and you know no one has any to sell here in the valley this year.”

“I’ve thought of that,” said Kristin. “You must lend us fodder and provisions for three days. That’s also the reason why we shouldn’t travel in a large group. Erlend will have to send Jon back to Husaby. In Trøndelag it’s been a better year, and it should be possible to get some supplies over the mountain before Christmas. There are some poor people south of the village that I’d like you to give some alms to, from Erlend and me, Fru Aashild.”

Bjørn uttered a strangely mirthless guffaw. Fru Aashild shook her head.

But the manservant Ulv lifted his sharp, swarthy face and looked at Kristin with a particularly sly smile. “There’s never anything left over at Husaby, Kristin Lavransdatter, neither in a good year nor a bad one. But maybe things will be different when you manage the household. From your speech it sounds like you’re the wife Erlend needs.”

Kristin nodded calmly at the man and continued hastily. They would have to keep away from the main road as much as possible. And it didn’t seem advisable for them to travel via Hamar. Erlend objected that that was where Munan was waiting—there was the matter of the letter for the duchess.

“Ulv will have to leave us at Fagaberg and ride to Sir Munan while we head west toward Lake Mjøsa and ride across country and by back roads via Hadeland down to Hakedal. From there a desolate road goes south to Margretadal; I’ve heard my uncle speak of it. It’s not advisable for us to ride through Raumarike while the great wedding is taking place at Dyfrin,” she said with a laugh.

Erlend came over and put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned back against him, not caring about all the people who were sitting there watching.

Fru Aashild said acidly, “Anyone might think you had eloped before.”

And Herr Bjørn guffawed again.

A little later Fru Aashild stood up to go to the cookhouse and prepare some food. She had started the fire out there because Erlend’s men would be sleeping in the cookhouse that night. She asked Kristin to come along, “because I want to be able to swear to Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn that the two of you were never alone for a single minute in my house,” she said crossly.

Kristin laughed and went out with Aashild. Erlend at once came sauntering after them, pulled up a three-legged stool to the hearth and sat down. He kept getting in the women’s way. He grabbed Kristin every time she came near him as she bustled and flew around. Finally he pulled her down onto his knee.

“It’s probably true what Ulv said, that you’re the wife I need.”

“Oh yes,” said Aashild, both laughing and annoyed, “she will certainly serve you well. She’s the one risking everything in this venture; you’re not risking much.”

“That’s true,” said Erlend, “but I’ve shown my willingness to go to her along the proper paths. Don’t be so angry, Aunt Aashild.”

“I have every right to be angry,” she said. “No sooner do you get your affairs in order than you put yourself in a position where you have to run away from everything with a woman.”

“You must remember, Aunt,” said Erlend, “that it has always been true that it’s not the worst men who get themselves into trouble for the sake of a woman. That’s what all the sagas say.”

“Oh, God help us,” said Aashild. Her face grew soft and young. “I’ve heard that speech before, Erlend.” She took his head in her hands and ruffled his hair.

At that moment Ulv Haldorsøn tore open the door and shut it at once behind him.

“A guest has arrived at the farm, Erlend—the one person you would least want to see, I think.”

“Is it Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn?” asked Erlend, jumping up.

“Unfortunately not,” said the man. “It’s Eline Ormsdatter.”

“Where the Devil did you come from? What do you want here?”

Fru Aashild stepped forward and said, “Come with us up to the house, Eline Ormsdatter. We have enough courtesy on this farm that we don’t receive our guests in the cookhouse.”

“I don’t expect Erlend’s kin to greet me as a guest, Fru Aashild,” said the woman. “You asked where I came from? I come from Husaby, as you well know. I bring you greetings from Orm and Margret; they are well.”

Erlend didn’t reply.

“When I heard that you had asked Gissur Arnfinsøn to raise money for you, and that you were heading south again,” she went on, “I thought you would probably visit your kinsmen in Gudbrandsdal this time. I knew that you had made inquiries about the daughter of their neighbor.”

She looked at Kristin for the first time and met the girl’s eyes. Kristin was very pale, but she gazed at the other woman with a calm and searching expression.

Kristin was as calm as a rock. From the moment she heard who had arrived, she realized that it was the thought of Eline Ormsdatter that she had been constantly fleeing from, that she had tried to drown it out with defiance and restlessness and impatience. The whole time she had been striving not to think about whether Erlend had freed himself completely from his former mistress. Now she had been overtaken, and it was futile to fight it anymore. But she did not try to avoid it.

She saw that Eline Ormsdatter was beautiful. She was no longer young, but she was lovely, and at one time she must have been radiantly beautiful. She had let her hood fall back; her forehead was round and smooth, her cheekbones jutted out slightly—but it was still easy to see that once she had been quite striking. Her wimple covered only the back of her head; as she spoke, Eline tucked the shiny gold, wavy hair in front under the cloth. Kristin had never seen a woman with such big eyes; they were dark brown, round, and hard, but beneath the narrow, coal-black eyebrows and the long eyelashes her eyes were strangely beautiful next to her golden hair. Her skin and lips were chapped from the ride in the cold, but this did not detract from her appearance; she was much too beautiful for that. The heavy traveling clothes enshrouded her figure, but she wore them and carried herself as only a woman can who bears the most confident pride in the splendor of her own body. She was not quite as tall as Kristin, but she had such a bearing that she seemed taller than the slim, small-boned girl.

“Has she been with you at Husaby the whole time?” Kristin asked quietly.

“I haven’t been at Husaby,” said Erlend brusquely, his face flushing again. “I’ve been at Hestnæs for most of the summer.”

“Here is the news I wanted to bring you, Erlend,” said Eline. “You no longer need to seek lodgings with your kinsmen and test their hospitality while I keep house for you. This autumn I became a widow.”

Erlend stood motionless.

“I wasn’t the one who asked you to come to Husaby to keep house last year,” he said with difficulty.

“I heard that everything was going downhill there,” said Eline. “I still had enough good feelings toward you from the old days, Erlend, that I thought I should look out for your well-being—though God knows you haven’t treated me or our children very kindly.”

“I’ve done what I could for the children,” said Erlend, “and you know full well that it was for their sake that I allowed you to stay at Husaby. You can’t say that you did either them or me any good,” he added, smiling spitefully. “Gissur could manage quite well without your help.”

“Yes, you’ve always trusted Gissur,” said Eline, laughing softly. “But the fact is, Erlend—now I am free. If you wish, you can keep the promise you once gave me.”

Erlend was silent.

“Do you remember,” said Eline, “the night I gave birth to your son? You promised then that you would marry me when Sigurd died.”

Erlend pushed back his hair, wet with sweat.

“Yes, I remember,” he said.

“Will you keep your word now?” asked Eline.

“No,” said Erlend.

Eline Ormsdatter looked over at Kristin, smiled slightly, and nodded. Then she turned back to Erlend.

“That was ten years ago, Eline,” he said. “Since that day we have lived together year in and year out like two people condemned to Hell.”

“That’s not entirely true,” she said with the same smile.

“It’s been years since there was anything else,” said Erlend, exhausted. “It wouldn’t help the children. And you know . . . you know that I can hardly stand to be in the same room with you anymore,” he almost screamed.

“I didn’t notice that when you were home this summer,” said Eline with a telling smile. “We weren’t enemies then. Not all the time.”

“If you think that meant we were friends, go ahead and think so,” said Erlend wearily.

“Are you just going to stand here?” said Fru Aashild. She ladled some porridge into two large wooden trenchers and handed one of them to Kristin. The girl took it. “Take it over to the house. Here, Ulv, take the other one. Put them on the table; we must have supper no matter how things stand.”

Kristin and the servant went out with the dishes of food. Fru Aashild said to the others, “Come along, you two; it does no good for you to stand here barking at each other.”

“It’s best for Eline and me to talk this out with each other now,” said Erlend.

Fru Aashild said no more and left.

Finally Eline Ormsdatter came in alone. Fru Aashild offered her a place between Kristin and herself; Eline sat down and ate something. Every once in a while the trace of a secret smile flitted across her face, and she would glance at Kristin.

The fire had almost gone out. Erlend was sitting on the three-legged stool near the hearth, huddled up with his head on his arms. Fru Aashild went over and put her hand on his shoulder. “God forgive you, Erlend, for the way you have handled things.”

Erlend looked up. His face was tear-streaked with misery.

“She’s with child,” he said and closed his eyes.

Fru Aashild’s face flamed up; she gripped his shoulder hard. “Whose is it?” she asked bluntly and with contempt.

“Well, it isn’t mine,” said Erlend dully. “But you probably won’t believe me. No one will. . . .” He collapsed once more.

Fru Aashild sat down in front of him at the edge of the hearth.

“You must try to pull yourself together, Erlend. It’s not so easy to believe you in this matter. Do you swear that it’s not yours?”

Erlend lifted his haggard face. “As truly as I need God’s mercy. As truly as I hope that . . . that God has comforted Mother in Heaven for all that she had to endure down here. I have not touched Eline since the first time I saw Kristin!” He shouted so that Fru Aashild had to hush him.

“Then I don’t see that this is such a misfortune. You must find out who the father is and pay him to marry her.”

“I think it’s Gissur Arnfinsøn, my foreman at Husaby,” said Erlend wearily. “We talked about it last fall—and since then too. Sigurd’s death has been expected for some time. Gissur was willing to marry her when she became a widow if I would give her a sufficient dowry.”

“I see,” said Fru Aashild.

Erlend went on. “She swears that she won’t have him. She will name me as the father. If I swear that I’m not . . . do you think anyone will believe that I’m not swearing falsely?”

“You’ll have to dissuade her,” said Fru Aashild. “There’s no other way out. You must go home with her to Husaby tomorrow. And then you must stand firm and arrange this marriage between your foreman and Eline.”

“You’re right,” said Erlend. Then he bent forward and sobbed aloud.

“Don’t you see, Aunt . . . What do you think Kristin will believe?”

The next morning Kristin followed Fru Aashild out to the cowshed. While Fru Aashild went to the cookhouse to make breakfast, Kristin carried the milk up to the house.

A candle was burning on the table. Eline was dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed. Kristin greeted her quietly, got out a basin, and strained the milk.

“Would you give me some milk?” asked Eline. Kristin took a wooden ladle and handed it to the woman. She drank greedily and looked over the rim at Kristin.

“So you’re Kristin Lavransdatter, the one who has robbed me of Erlend’s affections,” she said, handing the ladle back.

“You’re the one who should know whether there were any affections to rob,” replied the young maiden.

Eline bit her lip. “What will you do,” she said, “if Erlend grows tired of you and one day offers to marry you to his servant? Would you obey Erlend in that too?”

Kristin didn’t answer.

Then the other woman laughed and said, “You obey him in everything, I imagine. What do you think, Kristin—shall we throw the dice for our man, we two mistresses of Erlend Nikulaussøn?” When she received no reply, she laughed again and said, “Are you so simple-minded that you don’t deny you’re a kept woman?”

“To you I don’t feel like lying,” said Kristin.

“It wouldn’t do you much good anyway,” replied Eline in the same tone of voice. “I know that boy. I can imagine that he probably rushed at you like a black grouse the second time you were together. And it’s too bad for you, pretty child that you are.”

Kristin’s cheeks grew pale. Sick with loathing she said quietly, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Do you think he’ll treat you any better than he did me?” Eline continued.

Then Kristin replied sharply, “I won’t complain about Erlend, no matter what he does. I was the one who took the wrong path, and I won’t moan and feel sorry for myself even if it leads me out over the scree.”

Eline was silent for a moment. Then she said, flushed and uncertain, “I was a maiden too, when he took me, Kristin—even though I had been the old man’s wife for seven years. But you probably can’t understand what a wretched life that was.”

Kristin started to tremble violently. Eline gazed at her. Then she took a little horn out of her traveling box which stood at her side on the step of the bed.

She broke the seal and said quietly, “You are young and I am old, Kristin. I know it’s useless for me to fight against you—now it’s your turn. Will you drink with me, Kristin?”

Kristin didn’t move. Then the other woman put the horn to her lips. Kristin noticed that she did not drink.

Eline said, “You might at least do me the honor of drinking to me—and promise that you won’t be a harsh stepmother to my children.”

Kristin took the horn. At that moment Erlend opened the door. He stood there, looking from one woman to the other.

“What’s this?” he asked.

Then Kristin replied, and her voice was shrill and wild. “We’re drinking to each other, your two mistresses.”

He grabbed her wrist and snatched away the horn. “Be quiet,” he said harshly. “You shall not drink with her.”

“Why not?” said Kristin in the same voice as before. “She was just as pure as I was when you seduced her.”

“She’s said that so often that she believes it herself,” replied Erlend. “Do you remember when you made me go to Sigurd with that lie, Eline, and he produced witnesses that he had caught you with another man?”

Pale with disgust, Kristin turned away. Eline’s face had flushed dark red. Then she said spitefully, “Even so, that girl isn’t going to turn into a leper if she drinks with me.”

Furious, Erlend turned toward Eline—and then his face suddenly grew rigid and the man gasped in horror.

“Jesus!” he said almost inaudibly. He grabbed Eline by the arm.

“Then drink to her,” he said, his voice harsh and quavering. “Drink first, and then she’ll drink with you.”

Eline wrenched herself away with a gasp. She fled backward across the room, the man after her.

“Drink,” he said. He pulled his dagger out of his belt and followed her with it in his hand. “Taste the drink you’ve made for Kristin.” He grabbed Eline by the arm, dragged her over to the table, and forced her to bend toward the horn.

Eline screamed once and hid her face in her arm.

Erlend released her and stood there shaking.

“It was a hell with Sigurd,” shrieked Eline. “You . . . you promised—but you’ve treated me even worse, Erlend!”

Then Kristin stepped forward and grabbed the horn. “One of us must drink—you can’t keep both of us.”

Erlend took the horn from her and flung her across the room so she fell to the floor over by Fru Aashild’s bed. He forced the drink to Eline Ormsdatter’s mouth. Standing with one knee on the bench next to her and his hand on her head, he tried to force her to drink.

She fumbled under his arm, snatched the dagger from the table, and stabbed at the man. The blow didn’t seem to cut much but his clothes. Then she turned the point on herself, and immediately fell sideways into his arms.

Kristin got up and came over to them. Erlend was holding Eline; her head hung back over his arm. The death rattle came almost at once; she had blood in her throat and it was running out of her mouth. She spat out a great quantity and said, “I had intended . . . that drink . . . for you . . . for all the times . . . you betrayed me.”

“Go get Aunt Aashild,” said Erlend in a low voice. Kristin stood motionless.

“She’s dying,” said Erlend.

“Then she’ll fare better than we will,” replied Kristin. Erlend looked at her, and the despair in his eyes softened her. She left the room.

“What is it?” asked Fru Aashild when Kristin called her away from the cookhouse.

“We’ve killed Eline Ormsdatter,” said Kristin. “She’s dying.”

Fru Aashild set off at a run. But Eline breathed her last as she stepped through the door.

“Do you realize,” said Fru Aashild, “that this was the worst thing that could have happened?”

She had put branches and kindling into the fireplace; now she placed the horn in the middle and blew on it till it flared up.

“Can you trust your men?” she asked.

“Ulv and Haftor, I think I can. I don’t know Jon very well, or the man who came with Eline.”

“You realize,” said Fru Aashild, “that if it comes out that you and Kristin were here together, and that you were alone with Eline when she died, then you might as well have let Kristin drink Eline’s brew. And if there’s any talk of poison, people will remember what I have been accused of in the past. Did she have any kinsmen or friends?”

“No,” said Erlend in a subdued voice. “She had no one but me.”

“Even so,” said Fru Aashild, “it’ll be difficult to cover this up and remove the body without the deepest suspicion falling on you.”

“She must be buried in consecrated ground,” said Erlend, “if it costs me Husaby to do it. What do you say, Kristin?”

Kristin nodded.

Fru Aashild sat in silence. The more she thought about it, the more impossible it seemed to find a solution. In the cookhouse sat four men; could Erlend bribe all of them to keep quiet? Could any of them, could Eline’s man, be paid to leave the country? That would always be risky. And at Jørundgaard they knew that Kristin had been here. If Lavrans found out about it, she couldn’t imagine what he might do. They would have to take the body away. The mountain road to the west was unthinkable now; there was the road to Raumsdal or across the mountain to Nidaros or south down the valley. And if the truth came out, it would never be believed—even if it were accepted.

“I have to discuss this with Bjørn,” she said, standing up and going out.

Bjørn Gunnarsøn listened to his wife’s account without changing expression and without taking his eyes off Erlend.

“Bjørn,” said Aashild desperately, “someone has to swear that he saw her lay hands on herself.”

The life slowly darkened in Bjørn’s eyes; he looked at his wife, and his mouth twisted into a crooked smile.

“You mean that someone should be me?”

Fru Aashild clasped her hands and raised them toward him. “Bjørn, you know what it means for these two. . . .”

“And you think it’s all over for me anyway?” he asked slowly. “Or do you think there’s enough left of the man I once was that I’ll dare to swear falsely to save this boy from going under? I, who was dragged under myself . . . all those years ago. Dragged under, I say,” he repeated.

“You say this because I’m old now,” whispered Aashild.

Kristin burst into sobs that cut through the room. Rigid and silent, she had been sitting in the corner near Aashild’s bed. Now she began to weep out loud. It was as if Fru Aashild’s voice had torn open her heart. This voice, heavy with memories of the sweetness of love, seemed to make Kristin fully realize for the first time what the love between her and Erlend had been. The memory of burning, passionate happiness washed over everything else, washed away the cruel despairing hatred from the night before. She felt only her love and her will to survive.

All three of them looked at her. Then Herr Bjørn went over, put his hand under her chin, and gazed down at her. “Kristin, do you say that she did it herself?”

“Every word you’ve heard is true,” said Kristin firmly. “We threatened her until she did it.”

“She had planned a worse fate for Kristin,” said Aashild.

Herr Bjørn let go of the girl. He went over to the body, lifted it onto the bed where Eline had slept the night before, and laid it close to the wall with the blankets pulled over it.

“You must send Jon and the man you don’t know back to Husaby with the message that Eline will accompany you to the south. Have them ride off around noon. Tell them that the women are asleep in here; they’ll have to eat in the cookhouse. Then speak to Ulv and Haftor. Has she threatened to do this before? Can you bring witnesses forward if anyone asks about this?”

“Everyone who has been at Husaby during the last years we lived together,” said Erlend wearily, “can testify that she threatened to take her own life—and sometimes mine too—whenever I talked about leaving her.”

Bjørn laughed harshly. “I thought so. Tonight we’ll dress her in traveling clothes and put her in the sleigh. You’ll have to sit next to her—”

Erlend swayed where he stood. “I can’t do that.”

“God only knows how much of a man there will be left of you when you take stock of yourself twenty years from now,” said Bjørn. “Do you think you can drive the sleigh, then? I’ll sit next to her. We’ll have to travel by night and on back roads until we reach Fron. In this cold no one will know how long she’s been dead. We’ll drive to the monks’ hostel at Roaldstad. There you and I will testify that the two of you came to words in the back of the sleigh. It’s well attested that you haven’t wanted to live with her since the ban was lifted from you and that you have asked for the hand of a maiden who is your equal. Ulv and Haftor must keep their distance during the whole journey so that they can swear, if necessary, that she was alive the last time they saw her. You can get them to do that, can’t you? At the monks’ hostel you can have her placed in a casket; and then you must negotiate with the priests for peace in the grave for her and peace of the soul for yourself.

“I know it’s not pleasant, but you haven’t handled matters so that it could be pleasant. Don’t stand there like a child bride who’s about to swoon away. God help you, my boy—I suppose you’ve never tried feeling the edge of a knife at your throat, have you?”

Two horses were hitched up, one in front of the other. Erlend sat in the front of the sleigh. Kristin went over to him.

“This time, Erlend, you must take the trouble to send me word about how the journey goes and where you end up.”

He squeezed her hand so hard she thought the blood would burst from her fingernails.

“Do you still dare stand by me, Kristin?”

“Yes, I still do,” she said, and after a moment, “We both bear the blame for this deed. I urged you on because I wanted her dead.”

Fru Aashild and Kristin stood and watched them go. The sleigh dipped down and rose up over the drifts. It vanished in a hollow, to appear farther down on a white meadow. But then the men passed into the shadow of a slope and disappeared for good.

“Do you want us to sleep in the cookhouse tonight?” Fru Aashild asked.

“It makes no difference where we sleep,” said Kristin.

Fru Aashild went outside to look at the weather.

“No, it doesn’t matter whether a storm blows in or a thaw comes; they won’t get far before the truth comes out,” said Kristin.

“It always blows here at Haugen,” replied Fru Aashild. “There’s no sign of a break in the weather.”

Then they sat in silence again.

“You mustn’t forget what fate she had intended for the two of you,” said Fru Aashild.

Kristin said softly, “I keep thinking that in her place I might have wanted to do the same.”

“You would never have wanted to cause another person to become a leper,” said Fru Aashild staunchly.

“Do you remember, Aunt, you once told me that it’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.”

“You didn’t dare because it was a sin,” said Fru Aashild.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Kristin. “I’ve done many things that I thought I would never dare do because they were sins. But I didn’t realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people.”

“Erlend wanted to mend his ways long before he met you,” replied Aashild vehemently. “It was over between those two.”

“I know that,” said Kristin, “but she probably never had reason to believe that Erlend’s plans were so firm that she wouldn’t be able to change them.”

“Kristin,” pleaded Fru Aashild fearfully, “you won’t give up Erlend now, will you? The two of you can’t be saved unless you save each other.”

“That’s hardly what a priest would say,” said Kristin, smiling coldly. “But I know that I won’t let go of Erlend—even if I have to trample on my own father.”

Fru Aashild stood up.

“We might as well keep ourselves busy instead of sitting here like this,” she said. “It would probably be useless for us to try to go to bed.”

She brought the butter churn from the storeroom, carried in some basins of milk, and filled it up; then she took up her position to churn.

“Let me do that,” begged Kristin. “I have a younger back.”

They worked without talking. Kristin stood near the storeroom door and churned, and Aashild carded wool over by the hearth. Not until Kristin had strained out the churn and was forming the butter did she suddenly say, “Aunt Aashild—aren’t you ever afraid of the day when you have to face God’s judgment?”

Fru Aashild stood up and went over to stand in front of Kristin in the light.

“Perhaps I’ll have the courage to ask the one who created me, such as I am, whether He will have mercy on me when the time comes. For I have never asked for His mercy when I went against His commandments. And I have never asked God or man to return one penning of the fines I’ve had to pay here in my earthly home.”

A moment later she said quietly, “Munan, my eldest son, was twenty years old. Back then he wasn’t the way I know him to be now. They weren’t like that then, those children of mine . . .”

Kristin replied softly, “And yet you’ve had Herr Bjørn by your side every day and every night all these years.”

“Yes,” said Aashild, “that I have.”

In the dark bed she put her arm around Kristin’s shoulder and pulled the girl’s head toward her. And it wasn’t long before she could hear by her even and quiet breathing that Kristin was asleep.

There was not much visiting done during the Christmas season that year; everyone was staying at home.

At Christmas the cold grew worse; each day felt colder than the one before. People could hardly remember such a harsh winter. And while no more snow fell, even up in the mountains, the snow that had fallen on Saint Clement’s Day froze as hard as stone. The sun shone in a clear sky, now that the days were growing lighter. At night the northern lights flickered and sputtered above the mountain ridges to the north; they flickered over half the sky, but they didn’t bring a change in the weather. Once in a while it would cloud over, sprinkling a little dry snow, but then the clear skies and biting cold would return. The Laag murmured and gurgled lazily beneath the bridges of ice.

Each morning Kristin would think that now she could stand it no longer; that she wouldn’t be able to make it through the day, because each day felt like a duel between her father and herself. And was it right for them to be so at odds with each other right now, when every living thing, every person and beast in the valleys, was enduring a common trial? But when evening came she had made it through after all.

It was not that her father was unfriendly. They never spoke of what lay between them, but Kristin could feel that in everything he left unsaid he was steadfastly determined to stand by his refusal.

And she burned with longing for his affection. Her anguish was even greater because she knew how much else her father had to bear; and if things had been as they were before, he would have talked to her about his concerns. It’s true that at Jørundgaard they were better prepared than most other places, but even here they felt the effects of the bad year, every day and every hour. In the winter Lavrans usually spent time breaking and training his foals, but this year, during the autumn, he had sold all of them in the south. His daughter missed hearing his voice out in the courtyard and watching him tussle with the lanky, shaggy two-year-old horses in the game that he loved so much. The storerooms, barns, and bins on the farm had not been emptied after the harvest of the previous year, but many people came to Jørundgaard asking for help, either as a purchase or a gift, and no one asked in vain.

Late one evening a very old man, dressed in furs, arrived on skis. Lavrans spoke to him out in the courtyard, and Halvdan took food to him in the hearth room. No one on the farm who had seen him knew who he was, but it was assumed that he was one of the people who lived in the mountains; perhaps Lavrans had run into him out there. But Kristin’s father didn’t speak of the visit, nor did Halvdan.

Then one evening a man arrived with whom Lavrans Bjørgulf søn had had a score to settle for many years. Lavrans went out to the storeroom with him. But when he returned to the house, he said, “Everyone wants me to help them. And yet here on my farm you’re all against me. Even you, wife,” he said angrily to Ragnfrid.

Then Ragnfrid lashed out at Kristin.

“Do you hear what your father is saying to me? I’m not against you, Lavrans. You know full well, Kristin, what happened south of here at Roaldstad late in the fall, when he traveled through the valley in the company of that other whoremonger, his kinsman from Haugen—she took her own life, that unfortunate woman he had enticed away from all her kinsmen.”

Her face rigid, Kristin replied harshly, “I see that you blame him as much for the years when he was striving to get out of sin as for those when he was living in it.”

“Jesus Maria,” cried Ragnfrid, clasping her hands together. “Look what’s become of you! Won’t even this make you change your mind?”

“No,” said Kristin. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

Then Lavrans looked up from the bench where he was sitting with Ulvhild.

“Nor have I, Kristin,” he said quietly.

When he was able to continue, he transported the dead woman in a coffin all the way to Oslo. There, with Sira Jon’s intervention, he found a gravesite for her in the cemetery of Nikolaus Church, which lay in ruins. Then he had confessed to the Bishop of Oslo himself, who had enjoined him to travel to the Shrine of the Holy Blood in Schwerin. So now he had left the country.

There was no place to which she could make a pilgrimage to seek redemption. Her lot was to stay here, to wait and worry and try to endure her opposition to her parents. A strange, cold winter light fell over all her memories of her meetings with Erlend. She thought about his ardor—in love and in sorrow—and it occurred to her that if she had been able to seize on all things with equal abruptness and plunge ahead at once, then afterward they might seem of less consequence and easier to bear. Sometimes she thought that Erlend might give her up. She had always had a slight fear that it could become too difficult for them, and he would lose heart. But she would not give him up—not unless he released her from all promises.

And so the winter wore on. And Kristin could no longer fool herself; she had to admit that now the most difficult trial awaited all of them, for Ulvhild did not have long to live. And in the midst of her bitter sorrow over her sister, Kristin realized with horror that her own soul had been led astray and was corrupted by sin. For as she witnessed the dying child and her parents’ unspeakable grief, she thought of only one thing: if Ulvhild dies, how will I be able to endure facing my father without throwing myself down before him, to confess everything and to beg him to forgive me and to do with me what he will.

Ulvhild was confined to bed. She slept alone in the sisters’ bed, and someone watched over her every night. Sometimes Kristin and her father would both sit with her. On one such night Lavrans said to his daughter, “Do you remember what Brother Edvin said about Ulvhild’s fate? I thought at the time that maybe this was what he meant. But I put it out of my mind.”

During those nights he would occasionally talk about one thing or another from the time when the children were small. Kristin would sit there, pale and miserable, understanding that behind his words, her father was pleading with her.

“I’m going to fatten it up and then tie it to the bedchamber of my maidens,” said Lavrans, laughing harshly.

But they couldn’t find the kind of rich milk that the bear cub needed, and so several days later Lavrans killed it.

Finally one evening clouds began to gather in front of the moon. In the morning they woke up at Jørundgaard to a whirl of snow that blocked their view in all directions.

On that day it became clear that Ulvhild was going to die.

The entire household had gathered inside, and Sira Eirik had come. Many candles were burning in the room. Early that evening, Ulvhild passed on, calmly and peacefully, in her mother’s arms.

Ragnfrid bore it better than anyone could have expected. The parents sat together, both of them weeping softly. Everyone in the room was crying. When Kristin went over to her father, he put his arm around her shoulders. He noticed how she was trembling and shaking, and then he pulled her close. But it seemed to her that he must have felt as if she had been snatched farther away from him than her dead little sister in the bed.

She didn’t know how she had managed to endure. She hardly remembered why she was enduring, but, lethargic and mute with pain, she managed to stay on her feet and did not collapse.

Then a couple of planks were pulled up in the floor in front of the altar of Saint Thomas, and a grave was dug in the rock-hard earth underneath for Ulvhild Lavransdatter.

It snowed heavily and silently for all those days the child lay on the straw bier; it was snowing as she was laid in the earth; and it continued to snow, almost without stop, for an entire month.

Kristin went out on such a day, when the water was trickling in the furrows of the road and the snow glistened like silver across the fields. Facing the sun, the snowdrifts had become hollowed out so that the delicate ice lattice of the crusted snow broke with the gentle ring of silver when she pressed her foot against it. But wherever there was the slightest shadow, the air was sharp with frost and the snow was hard.

She walked up toward the church. She didn’t know why she was going there, but she felt drawn to it. Her father was there. Several farmers—guild brothers—were holding a meeting in the gallery, that much she knew.

Up on the hill she met the group of farmers as they were leaving. Sira Eirik was with them. The men were all on foot, walking in a dark, fur-wrapped cluster, nodding and talking to each other; they returned her greeting in a surly manner as she passed.

Kristin thought to herself that it had been a long time since everyone in the village had been her friend. Everyone no doubt knew that she was a bad daughter. Perhaps they knew even more about her. Now they probably all thought that there must have been some truth to the old gossip about her and Arne and Bentein. Perhaps she was in terrible disrepute. She lifted her chin and walked on toward the church.

The door stood ajar. It was cold inside the church, and yet a certain warmth streamed toward her from this dim brown room, with the tall columns soaring upward, lifting the darkness up toward the crossbeams of the roof. There were no lit candles on the altars, but a little sunshine came in through the open door, casting a faint light on the paintings and vessels.

Up near the Saint Thomas altar she saw her father on his knees with his head resting on his folded hands, which were clutching his cap against his chest.

Shy and dispirited, Kristin tiptoed out and stood on the gallery. Framed by the arch of two small pillars, which she held on to, she saw Jørundgaard lying below, and beyond her home the pale blue haze over the valley. In the sun the river glinted white with water and ice all through the village. But the alder thicket along its bank was golden brown with blossoms, the spruce forest was spring-green even up by the church, and tiny birds chittered and chirped and trilled in the grove nearby. Oh yes, she had heard birdsong like that every evening after the sun set.

And now she felt the longing that she thought had been wrung out of her, the longing in her body and in her blood; it began to stir now, feeble and faint, as if it were waking up from a winter’s hibernation.

Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn came outside and closed the church door behind him. He went over and stood near his daughter, looking out from the next arch. She noticed how the winter had ravaged her father. She didn’t think that she could bring this up now, but it tumbled out of her all the same.

“Is it true what Mother said the other day, that you told her . . . if it had been Arne Gyrdsøn, then you would have relented?”

“Yes,” said Lavrans without looking at her.

“You never said that while Arne was alive,” replied Kristin.

“It was never discussed. I could see that the boy was fond of you, but he said nothing . . . and he was young . . . and I never noticed that you thought of him in that way. You couldn’t expect me to offer my daughter to a man who owned no property.” He smiled fleetingly. “But I was fond of the boy,” he said softly. “And if I had seen that you were pining with love for him . . .”

They remained standing there, staring straight ahead. Kristin sensed her father looking at her. She struggled to keep her expression calm, but she could feel how pale she was. Then her father came over to her, put both arms around her, and hugged her tight. He tilted her head back, looked into his daughter’s face, and then hid it against his shoulder.

“Jesus Christus, little Kristin, are you so unhappy?”

“I think I’m going to die from it, Father,” she said against his chest.

She burst into tears. But she was crying because she had felt in his caress and seen in his eyes that now he was so worn out with anguish that he could no longer hold on to his opposition. She had won.

“Get up,” he said quietly. “Do you hear it?”

Then she heard the singing at the corners of the house—the deep, full tone of the moisture-laden south wind. Water was streaming off the roof, and the rain whispered as it fell on soft, melting snow.

Kristin threw on a dress and followed her father to the outer door. Together they stood and looked out into the bright May night. Warm wind and rain swept toward them. The sky was a heap of tangled, surging rain clouds; there was a seething from the woods, a whistling between the buildings. And up on the mountains they heard the hollow rumble of snow sliding down.

Kristin reached for her father’s hand and held it. He had called her and wanted to show her this. It was the kind of thing he would have done in the past, before things changed between them. And now he was doing it again.

When they went back inside to lie down, Lavrans said, “The stranger who was here this week carried a letter to me from Sir Munan Baardsøn. He intends to come here this summer to visit his mother, and he asked whether he might seek me out and speak with me.”

“How will you answer him, my father?” she whispered.

“I can’t tell you that now,” replied Lavrans. “But I will speak to him, and then I must act in such a way that I can answer for myself before God, my daughter.”

Kristin crawled into bed beside Ramborg, and Lavrans went over and lay down next to his sleeping wife. He lay there, thinking that if the flood waters rose high and suddenly, then few farms in the village would be as vulnerable as Jørundgaard. There was supposed to be a prophecy about it—that one day the river would take the farm.

The spring farm work was late that year, and everyone sowed their sparse seeds with prayers to God that He might spare them from the night frost until harvest time. And it looked as if He would heed their prayers and lighten their burden a little. June came with favorable weather, the summer was good, and everyone began to hope that in time the traces of the bad year would be erased.

Ragnfrid and Lavrans ordered the table to be set in the high loft and beds to be made up in the loft above the storehouse. But Lavrans asked the gentlemen to wait to set forth their purpose until the following day, after they had rested from their journey.

Sir Munan did most of the talking during the meal, directing much of the conversation toward Kristin, speaking to her as if they were well acquainted. She noticed that her father was not pleased by this. Sir Munan was thickset, with a ruddy face—an ugly and garrulous man with a rather foolish manner. People called him Munan the Stump or Munan the Prancer. But in spite of the impression he made, Fru Aashild’s son was still a sensible and capable man who had been the Crown’s envoy in several matters and who doubtless had some influence on those who counseled the gover nance of the kingdom. He lived on his mother’s ancestral property in the Skogheim district. He was quite wealthy and he had made a rich marriage. Fru Katrin, his wife, was peculiarly ugly and she seldom opened her mouth, but her husband always spoke of her as if she were the wisest of women. In jest people called Fru Katrin the “resourceful woman with the lovely voice.” They seemed to get on well together and treated each other with affection, even though Sir Munan was notorious for his wayward behavior, both before and after his marriage.

Sir Baard Petersøn was a handsome and stately old man, although he was rather portly and heavy of limb. His hair and beard were somewhat faded now, but there was still as much gold in them as there was white. Ever since the death of King Magnus Haakonsøn he had lived quietly, managing his vast properties at Nordmøre. He was a widower after the death of his second wife, and he had many children, who were all said to be handsome, well-mannered, and well-to-do.

“This must lie solely in your hands,” said Ragnfrid. “You know that it would be the greatest sorrow for our daughter if this matter could not be resolved, but I see that there is much to be said against this marriage.”

Sir Munan presented a letter from Erlend Nikulaussøn. Erlend proposed that Lavrans should decide on all of the conditions if he would agree to the betrothal of his daughter Kristin. Erlend himself was willing to have his properties appraised and his income examined by impartial men, and to offer Kristin such betrothal and wedding gifts that she would own a third of his possessions, in addition to whatever she brought to the marriage herself, and all inheritances that she might acquire from her kinsmen if she should become a widow with no children surviving the father. Furthermore, he offered to allow Kristin to manage with full authority her part of the property, both that which she brought into the marriage and that which she was given by him. But if Lavrans preferred other conditions for the division of property, then Erlend would be willing to hear his views and to act accordingly. There was only one condition to which Kristin’s kinsmen would have to bind themselves: if they acquired guardianship over any children that he and she might have, they must never try to revoke the gifts that he had given to his children by Eline Ormsdatter. They must recognize as valid the claim that these properties had been separated from his possessions before he entered into the marriage with Kristin Lavransdatter. Finally, Erlend offered to hold the wedding with all appropriate splendor at his manor at Husaby.

It was then Lavrans’s turn to speak, and he said, “This is a handsome offer. I see that it is your kinsman’s fervent desire to come to an agreement with me. I also realize that he has asked you, Sir Munan, for a second time to come on such an errand to me—a man of no great import outside this village—and a gentleman such as you, Sir Baard, to take the trouble to make this journey on his behalf. But now I must tell you in regard to Erlend’s offer that my daughter has not been raised to manage properties and riches herself, and I have always intended to give her to a man in whose hands I could confidently place the maiden’s welfare. I don’t know whether Kristin is capable of handling such responsibility or not, but I hardly think that she would thrive by doing so. She is placid and compliant in temperament. One of the reasons that I bore in mind when I opposed the marriage was this: that Erlend has shown a certain imprudence in several areas. Had she been a domineering, bold, and headstrong woman, then the situation would have been quite different.”

Sir Munan burst out laughing and said, “My dear Lavrans, are you complaining that the maiden is not headstrong enough?”

And Sir Baard said with a little smile, “It seems to me that your daughter has demonstrated that she is not lacking in will. For two years she has stood by Erlend, in spite of your wishes.”

Lavrans said, “I know that quite well, and yet I know what I’m talking about. It has been hard for her during the time she has defied me, and she won’t be happy with a husband for long unless he can rule her.”

“The Devil take me,” said Sir Munan. “Then your daughter must be quite unlike all the women I have known, for I’ve never found a single one who didn’t prefer to rule over both herself and her husband.”

Lavrans shrugged his shoulders and didn’t reply.

Then Baard Petersøn said, “I can imagine, Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn, that now you are even less in favor of this marriage between your daughter and my foster son since the woman he was with came to such an end. But you should know that it has now come to light that the wretched woman had let herself be seduced by another man, the foreman of Erlend’s farm at Husaby. Erlend knew about this when he journeyed with her through the valley; he had offered to provide her with a proper dowry if the man would marry her.”

“Are you sure this is true?” asked Lavrans. “And yet I don’t know whether it makes the situation any better. It must be bitter for a woman of good family to arrive on the arm of the landowner, only to leave with the farm hand.”

Munan Baardsøn put in, “I see, Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn, that your strongest objection to my cousin is that he has had this unfortunate trouble with Sigurd Saksulvsøn’s wife. And it’s true that it was ill advised. But in the name of God, man, you must remember—there he was, a young boy in the same house with a young and beautiful wife, and she had a cold and useless old husband, and the nights last half the year up there. I don’t think much else could have been expected, unless Erlend had actually been a holy man. It can’t be denied that Erlend has never had any monk flesh in him, but I don’t imagine that your lovely young daughter would be grateful if you gave her to a monk. It’s true that Erlend conducted himself foolishly, and even worse later on. But this matter must finally be considered closed. We, his kinsmen, have striven to help set the boy on his feet again. The woman is dead, and Erlend has done everything within his power for her body and soul. The Bishop of Oslo himself has redeemed him from his sin, and now he has come home, cleansed by the Holy Blood in Schwerin. Do you intend to be harsher than the Bishop of Oslo and the archbishop or whoever it is down there who presides over the precious blood?

“My dear Lavrans, it’s true that pure living is an admirable thing, but it’s hardly within the powers of a grown man unless he is particularly blessed by God. By Saint Olav—you should keep in mind that the holy king himself was not given that blessing until the end of his life on earth. It was evidently God’s will that he should first produce the capable boy-king Magnus, who repelled the heathens’ invasion of the north. King Olav did not have that son by his queen, and yet he sits among the highest of saints in Heaven. Yes, I can see that you think this improper talk . . .”

Sir Baard interrupted, “Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn, I didn’t like this matter any better than you when Erlend first came to me and said that he had set his heart on a maiden who was betrothed. But I have since realized that there is such a strong love between these two young people, it would be a great sin to separate their affections. Erlend was with me at the Christmas feast that King Haakon held for his men. That’s where they met, and as soon as they saw each other, your daughter fainted and lay as if dead for a long time—and I could see that my foster son would rather lose his own life than lose her.”

Lavrans sat in silence for a moment before he replied.

So Kristin continued to live at Jørundgaard as Erlend’s properly acknowledged betrothed. Along with her mother she went over the dowry that had been assembled for her and strove to add even more to the piles of bed linen and clothing, for Lavrans wanted nothing to be spared now that he had given his daughter to the master of Husaby.

Kristin was surprised that she didn’t feel happier. But in spite of all the activity, there was no real joy at Jørundgaard.

Her parents missed Ulvhild deeply—she knew that. But she also realized that this was not the only reason they were so silent and somber. They were kind to her, but when they spoke of her betrothed, she could see that they had to force themselves to do so. And they did it to please her and to be kind; they did not do it out of any desire to speak of Erlend themselves. They were not any happier about the husband she had chosen now that they had come to know the man. Erlend was also silent and reserved during the brief time he was at Jørundgaard for the betrothal celebration—and it could not have been any other way, thought Kristin. He knew that her father had only reluctantly given his consent.

Even she and Erlend had hardly exchanged more than a few words alone. And it had been awkward and strange for them to sit together in full view of everyone; they had had little to talk about because they had shared so many secrets. A slight fear began to stir inside her—faint and dim, but always present—that perhaps, in some way, it might be difficult for them when they were finally married, because they had been too close to each other in the beginning and then had been separated for far too long.

But she tried to push this thought aside. Erlend was supposed to stay with them at Jørundgaard during Whitsuntide. He had asked Lavrans and Ragnfrid whether they would have any objections if he came to visit, and Lavrans had hesitated a moment but then replied that he would welcome his son-in-law, Erlend could be assured of that.

During Whitsuntide they would be able to take walks together, and they would talk as they had in the old days; then it would surely go away, this shadow that had come between them during the long separation, when they had each struggled and borne everything alone.

She must be much older than he is, thought Kristin—almost thirty. Fru Halfrid was short and delicate and thin, but she had an unusually lovely face. Even the pale brown color of her hair, which billowed from under her wimple, seemed so gentle, and her eyes were full of gentleness too; they were large and gray with a sprinkling of tiny glints of gold. Every line of her face was fine and pure; but her complexion was a pale gray, and when she opened her mouth, it was apparent that she did not have good teeth. She didn’t look strong, and she was also said to be sickly. Kristin had heard that she had already miscarried several times. She wondered how Simon felt about this wife.

The people from Jørundgaard and from Formo had greeted each other across the church hill several times, though they had not spoken. But on the third day Simon came to church without his wife. Then he came over to Lavrans, and they talked together for a while. Kristin heard them mention Ulvhild. Afterward he spoke to Ragnfrid. Ramborg, who was with her mother, said quite loudly, “I remember you. I know who you are.”

Simon lifted up the child and swung her around. “It was nice of you not to forget me, Ramborg.” Kristin he greeted only from a short distance away. And her parents didn’t mention the meeting again.

But Kristin thought a great deal about it. It had been strange to see Simon Darre as a married man. So many things from the past came alive once more: she remembered her own blind and submissive love for Erlend back then. Now it was somehow different. She wondered whether Simon had told his wife how the two of them had parted. But she knew that he wouldn’t have done that, “for my father’s sake,” she thought with derision. She felt so oddly destitute to be still unmarried and living at home with her parents. But they were betrothed; Simon could see that they had forced their will through. Whatever else Erlend might have done, he had remained faithful to her, and she had been neither reckless nor frivolous.

It was after sunset, and a fine white frosty mist rose up toward the golden-green sky. With every hoofbeat Kristin heard the brittle sound of evening ice as it shattered and then dispersed with a rattling sound. But in the twilight, from the thickets along the road, came a jubilant birdsong, soft and full of spring.

Kristin rode briskly down the road without thinking about much of anything, simply feeling how good it was to be outside alone. She rode with her gaze fixed on the new moon, which was about to sink behind the mountain ridge on the other side of the valley. She almost fell off her horse when the animal abruptly swerved to the side and then reared up.

She saw a dark body curled up at the edge of the road. At first she was afraid. The dire fear of meeting someone alone out on the road never left her. But she thought it might be a wanderer who had fallen ill, so when she had regained control of her horse, she turned around and rode back as she called out, “Is anyone there?”

The bundle stirred a bit and a voice said, “I think it must be you, Kristin Lavransdatter.”

“Brother Edvin?” she asked softly. She almost thought it was a phantom or some kind of deviltry that was trying to fool her. But she went over to him, and it was the old man after all, but he couldn’t get up without help.

“My dear Father, are you out here wandering at this time of year?” she asked in astonishment.

“Praise be to God for sending you this way tonight,” said the monk. Kristin noticed that he was shivering all over. “I was on my way north to visit you, but I could go no farther tonight. I almost thought it was God’s will that I should lie here and die on the roads where I’ve roamed and slept all my life. But I would have liked to receive absolution and the last rites. And I wanted to see you again, my daughter.”

Kristin helped the monk up onto her horse and then led it by the bridle as she supported him. In between his protests that she was getting her feet wet in the icy slush, he moaned softly in pain.

He told her that he had been at Eyabu since Christmas; some wealthy farmers in the village had promised during the bad year to furnish their church with new adornments. But his work had gone slowly; he had been ill during the winter. There was something wrong with his stomach that made him vomit blood, and he couldn’t tolerate food. He didn’t think he had long to live, so he was headed home to his cloister; he wanted to die there, among his brothers. But he had set his mind on coming north through the valley one last time, and so he had accompanied the monk from Hamar when he traveled north to become the new resident priest at the pilgrim hostel in Roaldstad. From Fron he had gone on alone.

“I heard that you were betrothed,” he said, “to that man. . . . And then I had such a yearning to see you. I felt so anguished that our meeting in the church at the cloister should be our last. It’s been weighing so heavy on my heart, Kristin, that you had strayed from the path of peace.”

Kristin kissed the monk’s hand and said, “I don’t understand, Father, what I have done to deserve your willingness to show me such great love.”

The monk replied quietly, “I have often thought, Kristin, that if it had been possible for us to meet more often, you might have become my spiritual daughter.”

“Do you mean you would have guided me so that I turned my heart to the convent life?” asked Kristin. After a pause she went on. “Sira Eirik impressed on me that if I couldn’t win my father’s consent to marry Erlend, then I would have to enter a holy sisterhood and do penance for my sins.”

“I have often prayed that you might have a yearning for the convent life,” said Brother Edvin, “but not since you told me what you know. I wish that you could have come to God with your wreath, Kristin.”

Everyone at Jørundgaard felt that great peace and joy had come to them with the monk. People went in and out of the hearth room all day long, and it was never difficult to find someone willing to keep vigil over the sick man at night. They flocked around him, as many as could find the time to sit and listen when Sira Eirik came and read to the dying man from the holy books; and they talked with Brother Edvin about spiritual matters. And even though much of what he said was vague and obscure, as was his manner of speaking, the people seemed to draw strength and comfort for their souls, because everyone could see that Brother Edvin was filled with his love for God.

But the monk also wanted to hear about everything else; he asked for news from the villages and wanted Lavrans to tell him about the bad year. Some people had seized upon evil counsel in that time of adversity and had sought out the sort of help that Christian men must shun. A short way into the mountains west of the valley, there was a place with great white stones that were shaped like the secret parts of human beings, and some men had fallen to sacrificing boars and cats before this monstrosity. Sira Eirik had then taken several of the most pious and brave of the farmers out there one night, and they had smashed the stones flat. Lavrans had gone along and could testify that they were completely smeared with blood, and there were bones and the like lying all around. Up in Heidal people had apparently made an old woman sit outside on a buried stone and recite ancient incantations on three Thursday nights in a row.

Around midnight he woke up and seemed to be suffering great pain. Then he asked Kristin to read to him from the book about the miracles of the Virgin Mary, which Sira Eirik had lent to him.

Kristin wasn’t used to reading aloud, but she sat down on the step of the bed and put the candle next to her. She placed the book on her knees and read as best she could.

After a while she noticed that the sick man was lying in bed with his teeth clamped tight, and he had clenched his emaciated hands into fists from the pain.

“You’re suffering badly, dear Father,” said Kristin with dismay.

“It seems that way to me now. But I know it’s because God has made me into a child again, and is tossing me up and down.

“I remember a time when I was small—I was four winters old—and I ran away from home and headed into the forest. I got lost and was out there for many days and nights. My mother was with the people who found me, and when she lifted me up into her arms, I remember that she bit me on the back of the neck. I thought it was because she was angry with me, but later I understood otherwise.

“Now I’m longing for home, away from this forest. It is written: ‘Forsake all things and follow me.’ But there has been far too much here in this world that I didn’t have the heart to forsake.”

“You, Father?” said Kristin. “I’ve always heard everyone say that you were a model of pure living and poverty and humility.”

The monk chuckled.

“Ah, young child, you probably think there’s nothing else that entices in the world save sensual pleasure and wealth and power. I must tell you that these are small things that are found along the side of the road—but I, I have loved the roads themselves. It was not the small things of the world that I loved but the entire world. God in His mercy allowed me to love Sister Poverty and Sister Celibacy even in my youth, and that was why I thought that with these lay sisters I could walk in safety. And so I have wandered and roamed, wishing that I could travel all the roads of the world. And my heart and my thoughts have wandered and roamed too—I fear that I have often gone astray in my thoughts about the darkest of things. But now that’s over, little Kristin. Now I want to go back to my home and put aside all my own thoughts and listen to the clear words of the guardian about what I should believe, and think about my sins and about God’s mercy.”

A little while later he fell asleep. Kristin sat down near the hearth and tended the fire. But toward morning, when she was also about to doze off, Brother Edvin suddenly said to her from the bed, “I’m glad, Kristin, that this matter between Erlend Nikulaussøn and you has come to a good end.”

Then Kristin burst into tears.

“We have done so much wrong to come this far. And worst of all is this gnawing at my heart that I have caused my father such great sorrow. He’s not happy about this either. And yet he doesn’t know . . . if he knew everything, then he would surely withdraw all his affection from me.”

“Kristin,” said Brother Edvin gently, “don’t you understand, child, that this is why you must never tell him, and why you must not cause him any more sorrow? Because he would never demand penance from you. Nothing you do could ever change your father’s heart toward you.”

Kristin didn’t hear of this until much later. But she grieved deeply when she parted with the monk. It seemed to her that he alone knew her whole life—he had known the foolish child that she had been under her father’s care, and he had known of her secret life with Erlend. So he was like a clasp, she thought, which bound everything she had loved to all that now filled her heart. She was now quite cut off from the person she had been—the time when she was a maiden.

Kristin had been sitting inside the brewhouse door, spinning, while she waited for the liquid to cool. She set the spindle on the doorstep, unwrapped the blanket from around the bucket with the dissolved yeast, and measured out a portion.

“Shut the door first,” said her mother, “so there won’t be any draft. You’re acting as if you’re asleep, Kristin,” she added, annoyed.

Kristin slowly poured the yeast into the brewing vats as Ragnfrid stirred.

Geirhild Drivsdatter invoked the name of Hatt, but it was Odin who came and helped her with the brewing; in return he demanded what was between her and the vat. This was a saga that Lavrans had once told Kristin when she was little.

What was between her and the vat . . . Kristin felt ill and dizzy from the heat and the sweet, spicy steam in the dark, close brewhouse.

Out in the courtyard Ramborg was dancing in a circle with a group of children and singing:

Kristin followed her mother out to the little entryway, which was filled with empty ale kegs and all kinds of implements. From there a door led out to a strip of ground between the back wall of the brewhouse and the fence surrounding the barley field. A swarm of pigs jostled each other, biting and squealing as they fought over the tepid, discarded mash.

Kristin shaded her eyes with her hand from the glaring noonday sun. Her mother glanced at the scuffling pigs and said, “We won’t be able to get by with fewer than eighteen reindeer.”

“Do you think we’ll need so many?” asked her daughter, distracted.

“Yes, we must serve game with the pork each day,” replied her mother. “And we’ll only have enough fowl and hare to serve the guests in the high loft. You must remember that close to two hundred people will be coming here, with their servants and children, and the poor must be fed as well. And even though you and Erlend will leave on the fifth day, some of the guests will no doubt stay on for the rest of the week—at least.

“Stay here and tend to the ale, Kristin,” said Ragnfrid. “I have to go and cook dinner for your father and the haymakers.”

Beyond the fence the tips of the barley glinted like silver and silk in the sun. Above the rush of the river, she heard now and then the sound of the scythes in the meadows out on the islet; occasionally the iron would strike against stone. Her father and the servants were working hard to put the worst of the mowing season behind them. There was so much to do for her wedding.

The smell of the tepid mash and the rank breath of the pigs . . . she suddenly felt nauseated again. And the noontime heat made her so faint and weak. White-faced, her spine rigid, she sat there waiting for the sensation to pass; she didn’t want to be sick again.

She had never felt this way before. It would do no good for her to try to console herself with the thought that it wasn’t yet certain—that she might be mistaken. What was between her and the vat . . .

Eighteen reindeer. Close to two hundred wedding guests. People would have something to laugh about then, when they heard that all the commotion was for the sake of a pregnant woman who had to be married off in time.

Oh no! She tossed aside her spinning and leaped to her feet. With her forehead pressed against the wall of the brewhouse she vomited into the thicket of nettles that grew in abundance there. Brown caterpillars were swarming over the nettles; the sight of them made her feel even sicker.

Kristin rubbed her temples, wet with sweat. Oh no, surely that was enough.

They were going to be married on the second Sunday after Michaelmas, and then their wedding would be celebrated for five days. That was more than two months away. By then her mother and the other women of the village would be able to see it. They were always so wise about such matters; they could always tell when a woman was with child months before Kristin could see how they knew. Poor thing, she has grown so pale. . . . Impatiently Kristin rubbed her hands against her cheeks, for she could feel that they were wan and bloodless.

In the past she had so often thought that this was bound to happen one day. And she had not been terribly afraid of it. But it wouldn’t have been the same back then, when they could not and would not be allowed to marry in the proper fashion. It was considered . . . yes, it was thought to be shameful in many ways, and a sin too. But if it was a matter of two young people who refused to be forced from each other, that was something everyone would remember, and they would speak of the two with compassion. She would not have been ashamed. But when it happened to those who were betrothed, then everyone merely laughed and teased them mercilessly. She realized herself that it was laughable. Here they were brewing ale and making wine, slaughtering and baking and cooking for a wedding that would be talked about far and wide—and she, the bride, felt ill at the mere smell of food and crept behind the outbuildings, in a cold sweat, to throw up.

Erlend. She clenched her teeth in anger. He should have spared her this. She had not been willing. He should have remembered how it had been before, when everything had been uncertain for her, when she had had nothing to hold on to except his love; then she had always, always gladly yielded to his wishes. He should have left her alone this time, when she tried to refuse because she thought it improper for them to steal something in secret after her father had placed their hands together in the sight of all their kinsmen. But he had taken her, partly by force, but with laughter and with caresses too, so she had been unable to show him that she was serious in her refusal.

Kristin went inside to tend to the ale, and then came back and stood leaning over the fence. The grain swayed faintly, glinting in the light breeze. She couldn’t remember ever seeing the crops so dense and lush as this year. She caught a glimpse of the river in the distance, and she heard her father’s voice shouting; she couldn’t distinguish his words, but the workers out on the islet were laughing.

What if she went to her father and told him? It would be better to forgo all this trouble, to marry her to Erlend quietly, without a church wedding and grand feast—now that it was a matter of her acquiring a wife’s name before it became apparent to everyone that she was already carrying Erlend’s child.

Erlend would be ridiculed too, just as much as she would be, or more. He was not a young boy, after all. But he was the one who wanted this wedding, he wanted to see her as a bride wearing silk and velvet and a high golden crown; he wanted that, but he also wanted to possess her during all those sweet, secret hours. She had acquiesced to everything. She would continue to do as he wanted in this matter too.

And in the end, no doubt, he would realize that no one could have both. He who had talked of the great Christmas celebration he would hold at Husaby during the first year she was his wife on the manor—then he would show all his kinsmen and friends and the people of the villages far and wide what a beautiful wife he had won. Kristin smiled spitefully. Christmas this year would hardly be a fitting occasion for that.

It would happen around Saint Gregor’s Day. Her thoughts seemed to swirl in her head whenever she told herself that sometime close to Saint Gregor’s Day she would give birth to a child. She was a little frightened by it too; she remembered her mother’s shrill screams, which had rung out over the farm for two days when Ulvhild had come into the world. Over at Ulvsvold two young women had died, one after the other, in childbirth; and Sigurd of Loptsgaard’s first two wives had died too. And her own grandmother, for whom she was named.

But fear was not what she felt most. These past years, when she realized again that she was still not pregnant, she had thought that perhaps this was to be their punishment, hers and Erlend’s—that she would continue to be barren. They would wait and wait in vain for what they had feared before; they would hope so futilely, just as they had feared so needlessly. Until at last they would realize that one day they would be carried out from his ancestral estate and vanish. His brother was a priest, after all, and the children that Erlend already had could never inherit from him. Munan the Stump and his sons would come in and take their place, and Erlend would be erased from the lineage.

She pressed her hand hard against her womb. It was there—between her and the fence, between her and the vat. Between her and the whole world—Erlend’s legitimate son. She had tried everything she had heard Fru Aashild once speak of, with blood from her right and left arm. She was carrying a son, whatever fate he might bring her. She remembered her brothers who had died and her parents’ sorrowful faces whenever they mentioned them; she remembered all those times when she had seen them in despair over Ulvhild, and the night she died. And she thought about all the sorrow she herself had caused them, and about her father’s careworn face. And yet this was not the end of the grief she would bring to her father and mother.

And yet, and yet. Kristin rested her head on her arm lying along the fence; the other hand she kept pressed against her womb. Even if this brought her new sorrows, even if it caused her own death, she would still rather die giving Erlend a son than have them both die someday, with the buildings standing empty and with the grain in their fields swaying for strangers.

Someone came into the front room. The ale! thought Kristin. I should have looked at it long ago. She straightened up—and then Erlend stooped as he came out of the doorway and stepped forward into the sunlight, beaming with joy.

“So this is where you are,” he said. “And you don’t even take a step to meet me?” he asked. He came over and embraced her.

“Beloved, have you come to visit?” she asked, astonished.

He must have just dismounted from his horse; he still had his cape over his shoulders and his sword at his side. He was unshaven, filthy, and covered with dust. He was wearing a red surcoat, which draped from the neckline and was slit up the sides almost to his arms. As they went through the brewhouse and across the courtyard, his clothes fluttered around him so that his thighs were visible clear up to his waist. It was odd; she had never noticed before that he walked slightly crooked. Before she had only seen that he had long, slender legs and narrow ankles and small, well-shaped feet.

Erlend had brought a full escort along with him: five men and four spare horses. He told Ragnfrid that he had come to get Kristin’s household goods. Wouldn’t it be a comfort for her to find her things at Husaby when she arrived? And since the wedding was to take place so late in the fall, it might be more difficult to transport everything then. And wouldn’t it be more likely to suffer damage from sea water on the ship? The abbot at Nidarholm had offered to send everything now with the Laurentius cloister’s ship; they expected to set sail from Veøy around Assumption Day. That was why he had come to convey her things through Raumsdal to the headland.

He sat in the doorway to the cookhouse and drank ale and talked while Ragnfrid and Kristin plucked the wild ducks that Lavrans had brought home the day before. The mother and daughter were alone at home; the women servants were all out in the meadows, raking. He looked so happy; he was so pleased with himself for coming on such a sensible errand.

Her mother left, and Kristin tended to the birds on the spit. Through the open door she caught a glimpse of Erlend’s men lying in the shade across the courtyard, passing the basin of ale among them. He sat on the stoop, chatting and laughing. The sun shone brightly on his bare, soot-black hair; she noticed that there were several gray streaks in it. Well, he would soon be thirty-two, after all, but he acted like a brash young man. She knew that she wouldn’t tell him about her trouble; there would be time enough for that when he realized it himself. A good-humored tenderness coursed through her heart, over the hard little anger that lay at the bottom, like a glittering river over stones.

She loved him more than anything; it filled her heart, even though she always saw and remembered everything else. How out of place this courtier seemed amidst the busy farm work, wearing his elegant red surcoat, silver spurs on his feet, and a belt studded with gold. She also noticed that her father didn’t come up to the farm, even though her mother had sent Ramborg down to the river with word of the guest who had arrived.

Erlend came over to Kristin and put his hands on her shoulders.

“Can you believe it?” he said, his face radiant. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you—that all these preparations are being made for our wedding?”

Kristin gave him a kiss and pushed him aside. She poured fat over the birds and told him not to get in her way. No, she wouldn’t tell him.

Lavrans greeted his son-in-law heartily enough and asked his forgiveness for not coming earlier. They had to push as hard as they could to get the farm work done because he had to make a journey into town between the haying season and the harvest. But when Erlend presented the reason for his visit at the supper table, Lavrans became quite cross.

It was impossible for him to do without any of his wagons or horses right now. Erlend replied that he had brought along four extra horses himself. Lavrans thought there would be at least three cartloads. Besides, the maiden would have to keep all her clothing at Jørundgaard. And the bed linen that Kristin would be taking with her would be needed at the farm during the wedding for all the guests they would have to house.

“Never mind,” said Erlend. Surely they would find a way to transport everything in the fall. But he had been so pleased, and he thought it sounded so sensible, when the abbot had suggested that Kristin’s things might travel with the monastery’s ship. The abbot had reminded him of their kinship. “That’s something they’re all remembering now,” said Erlend with a smile. His father-in-law’s disapproval did not seem to affect him in the least.

And so it was decided that Erlend should borrow a wagon and take a cartload of those things that Kristin would need most when she arrived at her new home.

The next day they were busy with the packing. Ragnfrid thought that both the large and the small looms could be sent along now; she wouldn’t have time to weave anything else before the wedding. The mother and daughter cut off the weaving that was on the loom. It was an undyed homespun fabric, but of the finest and softest wool, with tufts of black wool woven in to form a pattern. Kristin and her mother rolled up the cloth and placed it in a leather bag. Kristin thought it would be good for swaddling clothes, and it would be pretty with red or blue ribbons around it.

The sewing chest that Arne had once made for her could also go along. Kristin took from her box all the things that Erlend had given her over time. She showed her mother the blue velvet cape with the red pattern that she was going to wear in the bridal procession. Her mother turned it this way and that, feeling the fabric and the fur lining.

“This is a most costly cloak,” said Ragnfrid. “When did Erlend give this to you?”

“He gave it to me while I was at Nonneseter,” her daughter told her.

Kristin’s bridal chest, which her mother had been adding to ever since she was little, was repacked. It was carved in panels, and on each there was a leaping deer or a bird sitting amidst the foliage. Ragnfrid placed Kristin’s bridal gown in one of her own chests. It was not quite done; they had been sewing on it all winter long. It was made of scarlet silk and cut in such a fashion that it would fit snugly to her body. Kristin thought that now it would be much too tight across her breasts.

He stood with Kristin, leaning over the farm gate, looking north, where the bluish-black smudge of a storm cloud filled the valley. Thunder rumbled from the mountains, but to the south the meadows and the river lay in dazzling yellow sunlight.

“Do you remember the storm on that day in the forest near Gerdarud?” he asked softly, playing with her fingers.

Kristin nodded and tried to smile. The air was so heavy and sultry; her head was aching and she was sweating with every breath she took.

Lavrans came over to them at the gate and talked about the weather. It seldom did any harm down here in the village, but God only knew whether it would bring trouble to the cattle and horses up in the mountains.

It was as black as night up behind the church on the hill. A flash of lightning revealed a group of horses, crowding together restlessly, on the meadow outside the church gate. Lavrans didn’t think they belonged there in the valley—the horses were more likely from Dovre and had been wandering in the mountains up beneath Jetta. He shouted over the thunder that he had a mind to go up and see to them, to find out whether there were any of his among them.

A terrible bolt of lightning ripped through the darkness up there. Thunder crashed and roared so they could hear nothing else. The horses raced across the grass beneath the ridge. All three of them crossed themselves.

Then more lightning flashed; the sky seemed about to split in half, and a tremendous snow-white bolt of lightning hurtled down toward them. All three were thrown against each other; they stood there with their eyes closed, blinded, and noticed a smell like scorched stone—and then the crash of thunder exploded in their ears.

“Saint Olav, help us,” murmured Lavrans.

“Look at the birch, look at the birch!” cried Erlend. The huge birch out in the field seemed to wobble, and then a heavy limb broke off and dropped to the ground, leaving a long gash in the trunk.

“I think it’s burning. Jesus Christus! The church roof is on fire!” shouted Lavrans.

They stood there and stared. No . . . yes, it was! Red flames were flickering out of the shingles beneath the ridge turret.

Both men set off running, back across the farmyard. Lavrans tore open all the doors to the buildings, yelling to those inside. Everyone came rushing out.

“Bring axes, bring axes—the felling axes,” he shouted. “And the pickaxes!” He raced over to the stables. A moment later he reemerged, leading Guldsvein by his mane. He leaped up onto the unsaddled horse and tore off toward the north. He had the big broadaxe in his hand. Erlend rode right behind him, and all the other men followed. Some were on horseback, but others couldn’t control the frightened animals and gave up and set off running. Behind them came Ragnfrid and the women of the farm with basins and buckets.

No one seemed to notice the storm any longer. In the flash of the lightning they saw people come streaming from the buildings farther down in the village. Sira Eirik was already running up the hill, followed by his servants. Horse hooves thundered across the bridge below, and several farm hands raced past. They all turned their pale, terrified faces toward the burning church.

A light wind was blowing from the southeast. The fire was firmly entrenched in the north wall; on the west side the entrance was already blocked. But it had not yet seized the south side or the apse.

Kristin and the women from Jørundgaard entered the churchyard south of the church, at a place where the gate had collapsed.

The tremendous red blaze lit up the grove north of the church and the area where posts had been erected for tying up the horses. No one could approach the spot because of the heat. Only the cross stood there, bathed in the glow of the flames. It looked as if it were alive and moving.

Through the roaring and seething of the fire they could hear the crash of axes against the staves of the south wall. There were men on the gallery, slashing and chopping, while others tried to tear down the gallery itself. Someone shouted to the women from Jørundgaard that Lavrans and a few other men had followed Sira Eirik into the church. They had to break an opening in the wall—little tongues of fire were playing here and there among the shingles on the roof. If the wind changed or died down altogether, the flames would engulf the whole church.

Any thought of extinguishing the blaze was futile; there was no time to form a chain down to the river, but at Ragnfrid’s command, the women took up positions and passed water from the small creek running along the road to the west; at least there was a little water to throw on the south wall and on the men who were toiling there. Many of the women were sobbing as they worked, out of fear and anguish for those who had gone inside the burning building, and out of sorrow for their church.

Kristin stood at the very front of the line of women, throwing the water from the buckets. She stared breathlessly at the church, where they had both gone inside, her father and Erlend.

The posts of the gallery had been torn down and lay in a heap of wood amid pieces of shingle from the gallery’s roof. The men were chopping at the stave wall with all their might; a whole group had lifted up a timber and was using it as a battering ram.

Erlend and one of his men came out of the small south door of the choir; they were carrying between them the large chest from the sacristy, the chest that Eirik usually sat on when he heard confession. Erlend and the servant tipped the chest out into the churchyard.

Kristin didn’t hear what he shouted; he ran back, up onto the gallery again. He was as lithe as a cat as he dashed along. He had thrown off his outer garments and was dressed only in his shirt, pants, and hose.

The others took up his cry—the sacristy and choir were burning. No one could go from the nave up to the south door anymore; the fire was now blocking both exits. A couple of staves in the wall had been splintered, and Erlend had picked up a fire axe and was slashing and hacking at the wreckage of the staves. They had smashed a hole in the side of the church, while other people were shouting for them to watch out—the roof might collapse and bury them all inside the church. The shingled roof was now burning briskly on this side too, and the heat was becoming unbearable.

Erlend leaped through the hole and helped to bring Sira Eirik out. The priest had his robes full of holy vessels from the altars.

A young boy followed with his hand over his face and the tall processional cross held out in front of him. Lavrans came next. He had closed his eyes against the smoke, staggering under the heavy crucifix he held in his arms; it was much taller than he was.

People ran forward and helped them move down to the churchyard. Sira Eirik stumbled, fell to his knees, and the altar vessels rolled across the slope. The silver dove opened, and the Host fell out. The priest picked it up, brushed it off, and kissed it as he sobbed loudly. He kissed the gilded man’s head which had stood above the altar with a scrap of Saint Olav’s hair and nails inside.

Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn was still standing there, holding the crucifix. His arm lay across the arms of the cross, and he was leaning his head on the shoulder of Christ. It looked as if the Savior were bending his beautiful, sad face toward the man to console him.

The roof had begun to collapse bit by bit on the north side of the church. A blazing roof beam shot out and struck the great bell in the low tower near the churchyard gate. The bell rang with a deep, mournful tone, which faded into a long moan, drowned out by the roar of the fire.

No one had paid any attention to the weather during all the tumult. The whole event had not taken much time, but no one was aware of that either. Now the thunder and lightning were far away, to the south of the valley. The rain, which had been falling for a while, was now coming down harder, and the wind had ceased.

But suddenly it was as if a sail of flames had been hoisted up from the foundation. In a flash, and with a shriek, the fire engulfed the church from one end to the other.

Everyone dashed away from the consuming heat. Erlend was suddenly at Kristin’s side and urging her down the hill. His body reeked with the stench of the fire; she pulled away a handful of singed hair when she stroked his head and face.

They couldn’t hear each other’s voices above the roaring of the flames. But she saw that his eyebrows had been scorched right off, he had burns on his face, and his shirt was burned in places too. He laughed as he pulled her along after the others.

Everyone followed behind the weeping old priest and Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn, carrying the crucifix.

At the edge of the churchyard, Lavrans leaned the cross against a tree, and then sank down onto the wreckage of the gate. Sira Eirik was already sitting there; he stretched out his arms toward the burning church.

“Farewell, farewell, Olav’s church. God bless you, my Olav’s church. God bless you for every hour I have spent inside you, singing and saying the mass. Olav’s church, good night, good night.”

Everyone from the parish wept loudly along with him. The rain was pouring down on the people, huddled together, but no one thought of leaving. It didn’t look as if the rain were damping the heat in the charred timbers; fiery pieces of wood and smoldering shingles were flying everywhere. A moment later the ridge turret fell into the blaze with a shower of sparks rising up behind it.

Lavrans sat with one hand covering his face; his other arm lay across his lap, and Kristin saw that his sleeve was bloody from the shoulder all the way down. Blood was running along his fingers. She went over and touched his arm.

“I don’t think it’s serious. Something fell on my shoulder,” he said, looking up. He was so pale that even his lips were white. “Ulvhild,” he whispered with anguish as he gazed at the inferno.

Sira Eirik heard him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“It will not wake your child, Lavrans. She will sleep just as soundly with the fire burning over her resting place,” he said. “She has not lost the home of her soul, as the rest of us have this evening.”

Kristin hid her face against Erlend’s chest. She stood there, feeling his arms around her. Then she heard her father ask for his wife.

Someone said that out of terror a woman had started having labor pains; they had carried her down to the parsonage, and Ragnfrid had gone along.

Kristin was suddenly reminded of what she had completely forgotten ever since they realized that the church was on fire: she shouldn’t have looked at it. There was a man south of the village who had a red splotch covering half his face. They said he was born that way because his mother had looked at a fire while she was carrying him. Dear Holy Virgin Mary, she prayed in silence, don’t let my unborn child be harmed by this.

Kristin sought out Sira Eirik up at Romundgaard before he left for the ting. She asked the priest whether he thought she should take this as an omen. Perhaps it was God’s will that she should tell her father she was unworthy to stand beneath the bridal crown, and that it would be more fitting for her to be married to Erlend Nikulaussøn without a wedding feast.

But Sira Eirik flew into a rage, his eyes flashing with fury.

“Do you think God cares so much about the way you sluts surrender and throw yourselves away that He would burn down a beautiful and honorable church for your sake? Rid yourself of your pride and do not cause your mother and Lavrans a sorrow from which they would scarcely recover. If you do not wear the crown with honor on your wedding day, it will be bad enough for you; but you and Erlend are in even greater need of this sacrament as you are joined together. Everyone has his sins to answer for; no doubt that is why this misfortune has been brought upon us all. Try to better your life, and help us to rebuild this church, both you and Erlend.”

Kristin thought to herself that she had not yet told him of the latest thing that had befallen her—but she decided to let it be.

Erlend had to stay at Jørundgaard for a week because of his wounds. Kristin saw that Lavrans seemed to like his son-in-law better after the night of the fire; the men now seemed to be quite good friends. Then she thought that perhaps her father might be so pleased with Erlend Nikulaussøn that he would be more forbearing and not take it as hard as she had feared when one day he realized that they had sinned against him.

“As God is my witness, along with these men who stand before me, I, Erlend Nikulaussøn, promise myself to Kristin Lavransdatter in accordance with the laws of God and men, on such conditions as have been presented to these witnesses who stand here with us. That I shall possess you as my wife, and you shall possess me as your husband as long as we both shall live, that we shall live together in matrimony with all such communion as God’s laws and the laws of the land acknowledge.”

She was running errands across the courtyard, going from building to building, and she stopped for a moment. The mountain ash was full of berries this year; it would be a snowy winter. And the sun was shining over the pale fields, where the sheaves of grain stood piled on poles. If only the weather would hold until the wedding.