“The king is your kinsman, as are Sigurd Haftorssøn and most of the other men,” replied Naakkve vehemently. “Not without shame can they desert the man who carried his shield with honor to the borderlands of the north and cleared Finnmark and the Gandvik coast¹ of the enemies of God and the Crown. Then they would indeed be miserable cowards.”

Erlend gave a whistle. “Son, one thing I can tell you. I don’t know how this venture of the Haftorssøns will end, but I would wager my own neck they don’t dare show Lord Magnus the naked blade of a Norwegian sword. Talk and compromise are what I think will result, with not a single arrow fired. And those fellows won’t exert themselves for my sake, because they know me and realize that I’m not as squeamish about honed steel as some of the others.

“Kinsmen you say . . . Yes, they’re your third cousins, both Magnus and those sons of Haftor. I remember them from the time I served at King Haakon’s court. It was fortunate that my kinswoman Lady Agnes was the daughter of a king; otherwise she might have found herself out on the wharves, pulling in fish, if a woman like your mother, out of pious mercy, didn’t hire her to help out in the cowshed. More than once I’ve wiped the snouts of those Haftorssøns when they had to appear before their grandfather, and they came racing into the hall as snot-nosed as if they had just crept from their mother’s lap. And if I gave them a swat out of loving kinship, to teach them some proper manners, they would shriek like stuck pigs. I hear they’ve made men of these Sudrheim changelings at last. But if you expect to receive the help of kinsmen from those quarters, you’d be looking for solace in the backside of a dog.”

Later Kristin said to Erlend, “Naakkve is so young, my dear husband. Don’t you think it’s unwise to speak so openly about such matters with him?”

“You speak so gently, my dear wife,” replied Erlend with a smile, “that I see you wish to rebuke me. When I was Naakkve’s age, I was headed north to Vargøy for the first time. If Lady Inge bjørg had remained loyal to me,” he exclaimed vehemently, “I would have sent Naakkve and Gaute to serve her. In Denmark there might have been a future for two intrepid adventurers skilled with weapons.”

“When I gave birth to these children,” said Kristin bitterly, “I didn’t think that our sons would seek their living in a foreign land.”

“You know I didn’t intend that either,” said Erlend. “But man proposes, God disposes.”

And yet as young as the boys were—Nikulaus was now seventeen winters old, Bjørgulf would be sixteen, and Gaute would turn fifteen in the fall—all three had a certain way with women that made their mother uneasy.

Admittedly nothing had happened that she could point to. They didn’t run after women, they were never coarse or discourteous in speech, and they didn’t like it when the servant men told vulgar stories or brought filthy rumors back to the manor. But Erlend too had always been very chivalrous and seemly; she had seen him blush at words over which both her father and Simon laughed heartily. But at the time she had vaguely felt that the other two laughed the way peasants laugh at tales about the Devil, while learned men, who know better his ferocious cunning, have little affection for such jests.

Even Erlend could not be called guilty of the sin of running after women; only people who didn’t know the man would think he had loose ways, meaning that he had lured women to himself and then deliberately led them astray. She never denied that Erlend had had his way with her without resorting to seductive arts and without using deceit or force. And she was certain that it was not Erlend who had done the seducing in the case of the two married women with whom he had sinned. But when loose women approached him with bold and provocative manners, she had seen him turn into an inquisitive youth; an air of concealed and impetuous frivolity would come over the man.

With anguish she thought she could see that the sons of Erlend took after their father in this regard. They always forgot to think about how others would judge them before they acted, although afterward they would take what was said to heart. And when women greeted them with smiles and gentleness, they didn’t become shy or sullen or awkward, as did most young boys their age. They would smile back and talk and behave as freely and easily as if they had been at the king’s court and were familiar with royal customs. Kristin feared they would get mixed up in some misfortune or trouble out of sheer innocence. She thought the wealthy wives and daughters, as well as the poor servingwomen, were all much too flirtatious with these handsome boys. But like other young men, they would grow furious afterward if anyone teased them about a woman. Frida Styrkaarsdatter was particularly fond of doing this. She was a foolish woman, in spite of her age; she wasn’t much younger than her mistress, and she had given birth to two bastard children. She had had difficulty even finding the father of the younger child. But Kristin had offered the poor thing a protective hand. Because Frida had nursed Bjørgulf and Skule with such care and affection, the mistress was quite indulgent toward this serving maid, even though she was annoyed that the woman was always talking to the boys about young maidens.

Kristin now thought it would be best if she could marry off her sons at a young age, but she knew this wouldn’t be easy. The men whose daughters would be equal matches for Naakkve and Bjørgulf by birth and blood would not think her sons wealthy enough. And the condemnation and royal enmity their father had brought down upon himself would stand in the way if the boys tried to improve their lot through service with greater noblemen. With bitterness she thought about the days when Erlend and Erling Vidkunssøn had spoken of a marriage between Naakkve and one of the lord’s daughters.

She knew of one or another young maiden now growing up in the valleys who might be suitable: wealthy and of good lineage, although for several generations their forefathers had refrained from serving at the king’s court and had stayed home in their parishes. But she couldn’t bear the thought that Erlend might be refused if they should make an offer to one of these landowners. In this situation Simon Darre would have been the best spokesman, but now Erlend had deprived them of his help.

She didn’t think any of her sons had a desire to serve the Church, except perhaps Gaute or Lavrans. But Lavrans was still so young. And Gaute was the only one of the boys who gave her any real help with the estate.

In midafternoon Kristin went out to see how the boys were handling the unaccustomed chore. Bjørgulf was working over by the lane leading to the manor; she stopped for a while to talk with him. Then she continued northward. There she saw Naakkve leaning over the fence and talking to a woman on horseback who had stopped at the side of the road, right next to the rails. He stroked the horse and then grabbed the girl’s ankle, moving his hand, as if carelessly, up her leg under her clothing.

The maiden was the first to notice Kristin. She blushed and said something to Naakkve. Quickly he pulled his hand away and looked a little abashed. The girl was about to ride off, but Kristin called out a greeting and then talked to the maiden for a moment, asking about her kinswoman. The young girl was the niece of the mistress of Ulvsvold and had recently arrived for a visit. Kristin pretended that she hadn’t seen anything, talking to Naakkve about the fence after the maiden had gone.

Not long after, Kristin happened to stay at Ulvsvold for two weeks’ time because the mistress gave birth to a child and was then quite ill. Kristin was both her neighbor and considered the most capable healer in the region. Naakkve often came over with messages and queries for his mother, and the niece, Eyvor Haakonsdatter, would always find the opportunity to meet and talk with him. Kristin wasn’t pleased by this; she had taken a disliking to the maiden and didn’t find her beautiful, although she had heard that most men did. She was happy on the day she learned that Eyvor had returned home to Raumsdal.

But she didn’t think Naakkve had been particularly fond of Eyvor, especially when she heard that Frida kept chattering about the daughter at Loptsgaard, Aasta Audunsdatter, and teasing Naakkve about her.

One day Kristin was in the brewhouse, boiling a juniper decoction, when she heard Frida once again carrying on about Aasta. Naakkve was with Gaute and their father outside behind the courtyard. They were building a boat that they wanted to take up to the small fishing lake in the mountains. Erlend was a moderately good boatbuilder. Naakkve grew cross, and then Gaute began to tease him too: Aasta might be a suitable match.

“Ask for her hand yourself if that’s what you think,” said his brother heatedly.

“No, I don’t want her,” replied Gaute, “because I’ve heard that red hair and pine forests thrive on meager soil. But you think that red hair is pretty.”

“That saying can’t be used about women, my son,” said Erlend with a laugh. “Those with red hair usually have soft white skin.”

Frida laughed uproariously, but Kristin grew angry. She thought this talk too frivolous for such young boys. She also remembered that Sunniva Olavsdatter had red hair, although her friends called it golden.

Then Gaute said, “You should be glad I didn’t say anything; I didn’t dare, for fear of sin. On the vigil night of Whitsunday you sat with Aasta in the grain tithe barn all the time we were dancing on the church hill. So you must be fond of her.”

Naakkve was about to fall upon his brother, but at that moment Kristin came outside. After Gaute had left, she asked her other son, “What was that Gaute said about you and Aasta Audunsdatter?”

“I don’t think anything was said that you didn’t hear, Mother,” replied the boy. His face was red, and he frowned angrily.

Annoyed, Kristin said, “It’s unseemly that you young people can’t hold a vigil night without dancing and leaping about between services. We never used to do that when I was a maiden.”

“But you’ve told us yourself, Mother, that back when you were young, our grandfather used to sing while the people danced on the church hill.”

“Well, not those kinds of ballads and not such wild dancing,” said his mother. “And we children stayed properly with our parents; we didn’t go off two by two and sit in the barn.”

Naakkve was about to make an angry retort. Then Kristin happened to glance at Erlend. He was smiling so slyly as he eyed the plank he was about to cut with an axe. Indignant and dismayed, she went back inside the brewhouse.

But she thought a good deal about what she had heard. Aasta Audunsdatter was not a poor match; Loptsgaard was a wealthy estate, and there were three daughters, but no son. And Ingebjørg, Aasta’s mother, belonged to an exceedingly good lineage.

She had never thought that one day the people of Jørundgaard might call Audun Torbergssøn kinsman. But he had suffered a stroke this past winter, and everyone thought he had little time left to live. The girl was seemly and charming in manner, and clever, or so Kristin had heard. If Naakkve had great affection for the maiden, there was no reason to oppose this marriage. They would still have to wait for two more years to hold the wedding, as young as Aasta and Naakkve both were, but then she would gladly welcome Aasta as her son’s wife.

Naakkve had been up in the loft; now he stopped on the lowest step. When his mother caught a glimpse of his face, she was suddenly so overcome that she could hardly feel her own legs beneath her. The boy was crimson all the way up to his ears as he walked away toward the main house.

But Kristin soon understood from the other woman’s gossip that things must have been such with Eyvor long before she came to their parish for the first time in the spring. My poor, innocent boy, thought Kristin, sighing with relief. He must be ashamed that he thought well of the girl.

A few nights later Kristin was alone in bed because Erlend had gone out fishing. As far as she knew, Naakkve and Gaute had gone along with him. But she was awakened when Naakkve touched her and whispered that he needed to talk to her. He climbed up and sat at the foot of her bed.

“Mother, I’ve been out to talk with that poor woman Eyvor tonight. I was sure they were lying about her; I was so certain that I would have held a glowing piece of iron in my hand to prove that she was lying—that magpie from Romundgaard.”

Kristin lay still and waited. Naakkve tried to speak firmly, but suddenly his voice threatened to break with emotion and distress.

“She was on her way to matins on the last day of Christmas. She was alone, and the road from their manor passes through the woods for a long stretch. There she met two men. It was still dark. She doesn’t know who they were, maybe foresters from the mountains. In the end she couldn’t defend herself any longer, the poor young child. She didn’t dare tell her troubles to anyone. When her mother and father discovered her misfortune, they drove her from home, with slaps and curses as they pulled her hair. When she told me all this, Mother, she wept so hard that it would have melted a rock in the hills.” Naakkve abruptly fell silent, breathing heavily.

Kristin said she thought it the worst misfortune that those villains had escaped. She hoped that God’s justice would find them and that for their deeds they might suffer their just deserts on the executioner’s block.

Then Naakkve began to talk about Eyvor’s father, how rich he was and how he was related to several respected families. Eyvor intended to send the child away to be raised in another parish. Gudmund Darre’s wife had given birth to a bastard child by a priest, and there sat Sigrid Andresdatter at Kruke, a good and honored woman. A man would have to be both hardhearted and unfair to pronounce Eyvor despoiled because against her will she had been forced to suffer such shame and misfortune; surely she was still fit to be the wife of an honorable man.

Kristin pitied the girl and cursed her assailants, and in her heart she gave thanks and exulted over what good luck it was that Naakkve would not come of age for three more years. Then she told him gently to bear in mind that he should be careful not to seek out Eyvor in her chamber late at night, as he had just done, or to show himself at Ulvsvold unless he had tasks for the landowner’s servants. Otherwise he might unwittingly cause people to gossip even worse about the unfortunate child. It was all well and good to say that those who claimed to doubt Eyvor’s word and refused to believe she had landed in this misfortune without blame, wouldn’t find him weak in the arms. All the same, it would be painful for the poor girl if there was more talk.

Three weeks later Eyvor’s father came to take his daughter home for a betrothal banquet and wedding. She was to marry a good farmer’s son from her parish. At first both fathers had opposed the marriage because they were feuding over several sections of land. In the winter the men had reached an agreement, and the two young people were about to be betrothed, but suddenly Eyvor had refused. She had set her heart on another man. Afterward she realized it was too late for her to reject her first suitor. In the meantime she went to visit her aunt in Sil, no doubt thinking that there she would receive help in concealing her shame, because she wanted to marry this new man. But when Hillebjørg of Ulvsvold saw what condition the girl was in, she sent her back to her parents. The rumors were true enough—her father was furious and had struck his daughter several times, and she had indeed fled to Ulvsvold—but now he had come to an agreement with her first suitor, and Eyvor would have to settle for the man, no matter how little she liked it.

Kristin saw that Naakkve took this greatly to heart. For days he went around without saying a word, and his mother felt so sorry for him that she hardly dared cast a glance in his direction. If he met his mother’s eye, he would turn bright red and look so ashamed that it cut Kristin to the heart.

Whenever the servants at Jørundgaard started talking about these events, their mistress would tell them sharply to hold their tongues. That filthy story and that wretched woman were not to be mentioned in her house. Frida was astonished. So many times she had heard Kristin Lavransdatter speak with forbearance and offer help with both hands to a maiden who had fallen into such misfortune. Frida herself had twice found salvation in the compassion of her mistress. But the few words Kristin said about Eyvor Haakonsdatter were as vile as anything a woman might say about another.

“No misfortune has come of it,” said Erlend. “Rather, it seems to me the boy has paid a small price to learn that a man shouldn’t trust a woman.”

“Is that so?” said his wife. Her voice quivered with stifled indignation.

“Yes,” said Erlend, smiling. “Now you, when I first met you, I thought you were such a gentle maiden that you would hardly even take a bite out of a slice of cheese. As pliable as a silk ribbon and as mild as a dove. But you certainly fooled me, Kristin.”

“How do you think things would have gone for all of us if I had been that soft and gentle?” she asked.

“No . . .” Erlend took her hands, and she had to stop working. He looked up at her with a radiant smile. Then he laid his head in her lap. “No, I didn’t know, my sweet, what good fortune God was granting me when He set you in my path, Kristin.”

They were at the worst age, their thirteenth year, and so wild and willful that Kristin often wondered in utter despair whether any mother in Norway had ever given birth to such rogues. They were handsome, as all her children were, with black, silky soft, and curly hair, blue eyes beneath black brows, and lean, finely shaped faces. They were quite tall for their age, but still narrow-shouldered, with long, spare limbs. Their joints stood out like knots on a sprig of grain. They looked so much alike that no one outside their home could tell them apart, and in the countryside people called them the Jørundgaard swords—but it wasn’t meant as a title of honor. Simon had first given them this name in jest because Erlend had presented each of them with a sword, and they never let these small swords out of their grasp except when they were in church. Kristin wasn’t pleased with this gift, or with the fact that they were always rushing around with axes, spears, and bows. She feared it would land these hot-tempered boys in some kind of trouble. But Erlend said curtly that they were old enough now to become accustomed to carrying weapons.

She lived in constant fear for these twin sons of hers. When she didn’t know where they were, she would secretly wring her hands and implore the Virgin Mary and Saint Olav to lead them back home, alive and unharmed. They went through mountain passes and up steep cliffs where no one had ever traveled before. They plundered eagles’ nests and came home with hideous yellow-eyed fledglings hissing inside their tunics. They climbed among the boulders along the Laag and north in the gorge where the river plunged from one waterfall to the next. Once Ivar was nearly dragged to his death by his stirrups; he was trying to ride a half-tame young stallion, and God only knew how the boys had managed to put a saddle on the animal. And by chance, out of simple curiosity, they had ventured into the Finn’s hut in Toldstad Forest. They had learned a few words of the Sami language from their father, and when they used them to greet the Finnish witch, she welcomed them with food and drink. They had eaten until they were bursting, even though it was a fast day. Kristin had always strictly enjoined that when the grown-ups were fasting, the children should make do with a small portion of food they didn’t care for; it was what her own parents had accustomed her to when she was a child. For once Erlend also took his sons sternly to task. He burned all the tidbits that the Finnish woman had given the boys as provisions, and he strictly forbade them ever to approach even the outskirts of the woods where the Finns lived. And yet it amused him to hear about the boys’ adventure. Later he would often tell Ivar and Skule about his travels up north and what he had observed of the ways of those people. And he would talk to the boys in that ugly and heathen language of theirs.

Otherwise Erlend almost never chastised his children, and whenever Kristin complained about the wild behavior of the twins, Erlend would dismiss it with a jest. At home on the estate they got into a great deal of mischief, although they could make themselves useful if they had to; they weren’t clumsy-handed like Naakkve. But occasionally, when their mother had given them some chore to do and she went out to see how it was going, she would find the tools lying on the ground and the boys would be watching their father, who might be showing them how seafaring men tied knots.

When Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn painted tar crosses over the door to the livestock stalls or in other such places, he used to add a few flourishes with the brush: drawing a circle around the cross or painting a stroke through each of its arms. One day the twins decided to use one of these old crosses as a target. Kristin was beside herself with fury and despair at such unchristian behavior, but Erlend came to the children’s defense. They were so young; they shouldn’t be expected to think about the holiness of the cross every time they saw it painted above the door of a shed or on the back of a cow. The boys would be told to go up to the cross on the church hill, kneel down, and kiss it as they said five Pater nosters and fifteen Ave Marias. It wasn’t necessary to call in Sira Solmund for such a reason. But this time Kristin had the support of Bjørgulf and Naakkve. The priest was summoned, and he sprinkled holy water on the wall and reprimanded the two young sinners with great severity.

They fed oxen and goats the heads of snakes to make them more vicious. They teased Munan because he was still clinging to his mother’s skirts, and Gaute because he was the one they fought with most often. Otherwise the sons of Erlend stuck together with the greatest brotherly affection. But sometimes Gaute would give them a thrashing if they were too rough. Trying to talk some sense into them was like talking to a wall. And if their mother grew angry, they would stand there stiffly, their fists clenched, as they scowled at her with flashing eyes beneath frowning brows, their faces fiery red with rage. Kristin thought about what Gunnulf had said about Erlend: He had flung his knife at their father and raised his hand against him many times when he was a child. Then she would strike the twins, and strike them hard, because she was frightened. How would things end up for these children of hers if they weren’t tamed in time?

Simon Darre was the only one who had ever had any power over the two wild boys. They loved their uncle, and they always complied whenever he chided them, in a friendly and calm manner. But now that they didn’t see him anymore, Kristin hadn’t noticed that they missed him. Dejected, she thought how faithless a child’s heart could be.

But secretly, in her own heart, she knew that she was actually proudest of these two. If only she could break their terrible defiant and wild behavior, she thought that none of their brothers would make more promising men than they would. They were healthy, with good physical abilities; they were fearless, honest, generous, and kind toward all the poor. And more than once they had shown an alacrity and resourcefulness that seemed to her far beyond what might be expected of such young boys.

One evening during the hay harvesting Kristin was up late in the cookhouse when Munan came rushing in, screaming that the old goat shed was on fire. There were no men at home on the manor. Some were in the smithy, sharpening their scythes; some had gone north to the bridge where the young people usually gathered on summer evenings. Kristin grabbed a couple of buckets and set off running, calling to her maids to follow her.

The goat shed was a little old building with a roof that reached all the way down to the ground. It stood in the narrow passageway between the farmyard and the courtyard of the estate, right across from the stable and with other houses built close on either side. Kristin ran onto the gallery of the hearth house and found a broadaxe and a fire hook, but as she rounded the corner of the stable, she didn’t see any fire, just a cloud of smoke billowing out of a hole in the roof of the goat shed. Ivar was sitting up on the ridge, hacking at the roof; Skule and Lavrans were inside, pulling down patches of the thatching and then stomping and trampling out the fire. Now they were joined by Erlend, Ulf, and the men who had been in the smithy. Munan had run over to warn them; so the fire was put out in short order. And yet the most terrible of misfortunes might easily have occurred. It was a sultry, still evening, but with occasional gusts of wind from the south, and if the fire had engulfed the goat shed, all the buildings at the north end of the courtyard—the stable, storerooms, and living quarters—would certainly have burned with it.

Ivar and Skule had been up on the stable roof. They had snared a hawk and were going to hang it from the gable when they caught a whiff of fire and saw smoke coming from the roof below them. They leaped to the ground at once, and with the small axes they were carrying they began chopping at the smoldering sod while they sent off Lavrans and Munan, who were playing nearby—one to find hooks and the other to get their mother. Fortunately the rafters and beams in the roof were quite rotten, but it was clear that this time the twins had saved their mother’s estate by instantly setting about tearing down the burning roof and not wasting time by first running to get help from the grown-ups.

It was hard to understand how the fire had started, except that Gaute had passed that way an hour before, carrying embers to the smithy, and he admitted that the container had not been covered. A spark had probably flown up onto the tinder-dry sod roof.

But less was said about this than about the quick-wittedness of the twins and Lavrans when Ulf later imposed a fire watch and all the servants kept him company during the night while Kristin had strong ale and mead carried out to them. All three boys had been singed on their hands and feet; their shoes were so burned that they split into pieces. Young Lavrans was only nine years old, so it was hard for him to bear the pain patiently for very long, but from the start he was the proudest of the lot, walking around with his hands wrapped up and taking in the praise of the manor servants.

That night Erlend took his wife in his arms. “My Kristin, my Kristin . . . Don’t complain so much about your children. Can’t you see, my dear, what good breeding there is in our sons? You always treat these two hearty boys as if you thought their path would lead between the gallows and the execution block. Now it seems to me that you should enjoy some pleasure after all the pain and suffering and toil you’ve borne through all the years when you constantly carried a child under your belt, with another child at your breast and one on your arm. Back then you would talk of nothing else but those little imps, and now that they’ve grown up to be both sensible and manly, you walk among them as if you were deaf and dumb, hardly even answering when they speak to you. God help me, but it’s as if you love them less now that you no longer have to worry for their sake and these big, handsome sons of ours can give you both help and joy.”

Kristin didn’t trust herself to answer with a single word.

But she lay in bed, unable to sleep. And toward morning she carefully stepped over her slumbering husband and walked barefoot over to the shuttered peephole, which she opened.

The sky was a hazy gray, and the air was cool. Far off to the south, where the mountains merged and closed off the valley, rain was sweeping over the plateaus. Kristin stood there for a moment, looking out. It was always so hot and stuffy in this loft above the new storeroom where they slept in the summertime. The trace of moisture in the air brought the strong, sweet scent of hay to her. Outside a bird or two chittered faintly in their sleep in the summer night.

Kristin rummaged around for her flint and lit a candle stump. She crept over to where Ivar and Skule were sleeping on a bench. She shone the light on them and touched their cheeks with the back of her hand. They both had a slight fever. Softly she said an Ave Maria and made the sign of the cross over them. The gallows and the execution block . . . to think that Erlend could jest about such things . . . he who had come so close. . . .

Lavrans whimpered and murmured in his sleep. Kristin stood bending over her two youngest sons, who were bedded down on a small bench at the foot of their parents’ bed. Lavrans was hot and flushed and tossed back and forth but did not wake up when she touched him.

Gaute lay with his milk-white arms behind his head, under his long flaxen hair. He had thrown off all the bedclothes. He was so hot-blooded that he always slept naked, and his skin was such a dazzling white. The tan color of his face, neck, and hands stood out in sharp contrast. Kristin pulled the blanket up around his waist.

It was difficult for her to be angry with Gaute; he looked so much like her father. She hadn’t said much to him about the calamity he had nearly brought upon them. As clever and levelheaded as the boy was, she thought that doubtless he would learn from the incident and not forget it.

Naakkve and Bjørgulf slept in the other bed up in the loft. Kristin stood there longer, shining the light on the two sleeping young men. Black down already shadowed their childish, soft pink lips. Naakkve’s foot was sticking out from the covers, slender, with a high instep, a deep arch over the sole, and not very clean. And yet, she thought, it wasn’t long ago that the foot of this man was so small that she could wrap her fingers around it, and she had crushed it to her breast and raised it to her lips, nibbling on each tiny toe, for they were as rosy and sweet as the blossoms on a bilberry twig.

It was probably true that she didn’t pay enough heed to what God had granted her as her lot. The memory of those days when she was carrying Naakkve and the visions of terror she had wrestled with . . . it could pass with fiery heat through her soul. She had been delivered the way a person wakes up to the blessed light of day after terrifying dreams with the oppressive weight of the mare² on her breast. But other women had awakened to see that the unhappiness of the day was worse than the very worst they had dreamed. And yet, whenever she saw a cripple or someone who was deformed, Kristin would feel heartsick at the reminder of her own fear for her unborn child. Then she would humble herself before God and Holy Olav with a burning fervor; she would hasten to do good, striving to force tears of true remorse from her eyes as she prayed. But each time she would feel that unthawed discontent in her heart, the fresh surge would cool, and the sobs would seep out of her soul like water in sand. Then she consoled herself that she didn’t have the gift of piety she had once hoped would be her inheritance from her father. She was hard and sinful, but surely she was no worse than most people, and like most people, she would have to bear the fiery blaze of that other world before her heart could be melted and cleansed.

And yet sometimes she longed to be different. When she looked at the seven handsome sons sitting at her table or when she made her way up to church on Sabbath mornings as the bells tolled, calling so agreeably to joy and God’s peace, and she saw the flock of straight-backed, well-dressed young boys, her sons, climbing the hillside ahead of her . . . She didn’t know of any other woman who had given birth to so many children and had never experienced what it was like to lose one. All of them were handsome and healthy, without a flaw in their physical or mental capacities, although Bjørgulf’s sight was poor. She wished she could forget her sorrows and be gentle and grateful, fearing and loving God as her father had done. She remembered her father had said that the person who recalls his sins with a humble spirit and bows before the cross of the Lord need never bow his head beneath any earthly unhappiness or injustice.

Kristin blew out the candle, pinched the wick, and returned the stump to its place between the uppermost logs in the wall. She went back over to the peephole. It was already daylight outside, but gray and dead. On the lower rooftops, upon which she gazed, the dirty, sun-bleached grass stirred faintly from a gust of wind; a little, rustling sound passed through the leaves of the birches across from the roof of the high loft building.

She looked down at her hands, holding on to the sill of the peephole. They were rough and worn; her arms were tanned all the way up to her elbows, and her muscles were swollen and as hard as wood. In her youth the children had sucked the blood and milk from her until every trace of maidenly smoothness and fresh plumpness had been sapped from her body. Now each day of toil stripped away a little more of the remnants of beauty that had distinguished her as the daughter, wife, and mother of men with noble blood. The slender white hands, the pale, soft arms, the fair complexion, which she had carefully shielded from sunburn with linen kerchiefs and protected with specially brewed cleansing concoctions . . . She had long ago grown indifferent to whether the sun shone directly on her face, sweaty from work, and turned it as brown as that of a poor peasant woman.

Her hair was the only thing she had left of her girlish beauty. It was just as luxuriant and brown, even though she seldom found time to wash or tend to it. The heavy, tangled braid that hung down her back hadn’t been undone in three days.

Kristin pulled it forward over her shoulder, undid the plait, and shook out her hair, which still enveloped her like a cloak and reached below her knees. She took a comb from her chest, and shivering now and then, she sat in her shift beneath the peephole, open to the coolness of the morning, and gently combed out her tangled tresses.

When she was done with her hair and had rebraided it in a tight, heavy rope, she felt a little better. Then she cautiously lifted the sleeping Munan into her arms, placed him next to the wall in her husband’s bed, and then crawled in between them. She held her youngest child in her arms, rested his head against her shoulder, and fell asleep.

But the following day when Munan cried because his fingers had been stung by the recoil of the bowstring, the twins rolled him up in a coverlet and carried him over to their mother’s bed; in his mouth they stuffed a piece of bread so big that the boy nearly choked.

Erlend listened to him, saying hardly a word, with an oddly tense expression on his face. When Naakkve was finished, he sent Gaute to get the chest with his writing implements and at once set about composing a letter in Latin. Bjørgulf had to help him because Naakkve was in no condition to do much of anything and his father had sent him off to bed. In the letter Erlend invited the knight to his home on the following day, after prime¹ so they might discuss Sir Allart’s offer to take the noble-born young man, Nikulaus Erlendssøn, into his service as his esquire. He asked the knight’s forgiveness for returning his gift with the plea that Sir Allart might keep it until Nikulaus, with his father’s consent, had been sworn into the man’s service in accordance with such customs as prevailed among knights in all the lands.

Erlend dripped a little wax on the bottom of the letter and lightly pressed his small seal, the one on his ring, into it. Then he sent a servant boy off to Romundgaard at once with the letter and the silk tunic.

“Husband, surely you can’t be thinking of sending your young son off to distant lands with an unknown foreigner,” said Kristin, shivering.

“We shall see. . . .” Erlend smiled quite strangely. “But I don’t think it’s likely,” he added when he noticed her distress. He smiled again and caressed her cheek.

At Erlend’s request, Kristin had strewn the floor in the high loft with juniper and flowers, placed the best cushions on the benches, and set the table with a linen cloth and good food and drink in fine dishes and the precious silver-chased animal horns they had inherited from Lavrans. Erlend had shaved carefully, curled his hair, and dressed in a black, richly embroidered ankle-length robe made of foreign cloth. He went to meet his guest at the manor gate, and as they crossed the courtyard together, Kristin couldn’t help thinking that her husband looked more like the French knights mentioned in the sagas than did the fat, fair-haired stranger in the colorful and resplendent garments made from velvet and sarcenet. She stood on the gallery of the high loft, beautifully attired and wearing a silk wimple. The Flemish man kissed her hand as she bade him bienvenu. She didn’t exchange another word with him during all the hours he spent with them. She understood nothing of the men’s conversation; nor did Sira Solmund, who had come with his guest. But the priest told the mistress that now he had assuredly made Naakkve’s fortune. She neither agreed nor disagreed with him.

Erlend spoke a little French and could fluently speak the kind of German that mercenaries spoke; the discussion between him and the foreign knight flowed easily and courteously. But Kristin noticed that the Flemish man did not seem pleased as things progressed, although he strove to conceal his displeasure. Erlend had told his sons to wait over in the loft of the new storehouse until he sent word for them to join them, but they were not sent for.

Erlend and his wife escorted the knight and the priest to the gate. When their guests disappeared among the fields, Erlend turned to Kristin and said with that smile she found so distasteful, “I wouldn’t let Naakkve leave the estate with that fellow even to go south to Breidin.”

Ulf Haldorssøn came over to them. He and Erlend spoke a few words that Kristin couldn’t hear, but Ulf swore fiercely and spat.

Erlend laughed and slapped the man on the shoulder. “Yes, if I’d been such a country dolt as the good farmers around here . . . But I’ve seen enough that I wouldn’t let my fair young falcons out of my hands by selling them to the Devil. Sira Solmund had no idea, that blessed fool.”

Kristin stood with her arms hanging at her sides, the color ebbing and rising in her face. Horror and shame overcame her, making her feel sick; her legs seemed to lose all strength. She had known about such things—as something endlessly remote—but that this unmentionable might venture as close as her own doorstep . . . It was like the last wave, threatening to overturn her storm-tossed, overloaded boat. Holy Mary, did she also need to fear that for her sons?

Erlend said with the same loathsome smile, “I already had my doubts last night. Sir Allart seemed to me a little too chivalrous from Naakkve’s account. I know that it’s not the custom among knights anywhere in the world to welcome a man who is to be taken into service by kissing him on the lips or by giving him costly presents before seeing proof of his abilities.”

Shaking from head to toe, Kristin said, “Why did you ask me to strew the floor with roses and cover my table with linen cloths for such a—” And she uttered the worst of words.

Erlend frowned. He had picked up a stone and was keeping an eye on Munan’s red cat, which was slithering on its stomach through the tall grass along the wall of the house, heading for the chickens near the stable door. Whoosh! He threw the stone. The cat streaked around the corner, and the flock of hens scattered. He turned to face his wife.

“I thought I could at least have a look at the man. If he had been a trustworthy fellow, then . . . But in that case I had to show the proper courtesy. I’m not Sir Allart’s confessor. And you heard that he’s planning to go to Oslo.” Erlend laughed again. “Now it’s possible that some of my true friends and dear kinsmen from the past may hear that we’re not sitting up here at Jørundgaard shaking the lice from our rags or eating herring and oat lefse.”

“You seem to me morose tonight, son,” said his mother.

“How can you think that, Mother?” said Naakkve with a scornful smile. “The fact that I’m a worse fool than other men and it’s easier to throw sand in my eyes . . . surely that’s nothing to be morose about.”

“Console yourself,” said his father as they sat down at the table and Naakkve was still too quiet. “No doubt you’ll go out into the world and have a chance to try your luck.”

“That depends, Father,” replied Naakkve in a low voice, as if he intended only Erlend to hear him, “whether Bjørgulf can go with me.” Then he laughed softly. “But talk to Ivar and Skule about what you just said. They’re merely waiting to reach the proper age before they set off.”

Kristin stood up and put on her hooded cloak. She was going to go north to tend to the beggar at Ingebjørg’s hut, she told them when they asked. The twins offered to go along and carry her sack, but she wanted to go alone.

A certain dream had haunted Kristin for many years. The first time she had it was on the night before Gaute was born, but occasionally she would still wake up, soaked with sweat, her heart hammering as if it would shatter in her chest, and she had dreamed the same thing.

She saw a meadow with flowers, a steep hill deep inside a pine forest that bordered the mound on three sides, dark and dense. At the foot of the slope a small lake mirrored the dim forest and the dappled green of the clearing. The sun was behind the trees; at the top of the hill the last long golden rays of evening light filtered through the boughs, and at the bottom of the lake sun-touched, gleaming clouds swam among the leaves of water lilies.

Halfway up the slope, standing deep in the avalanche of alpine catchflies and globeflowers and the pale green clouds of angelica, she saw her child. It must have been Naakkve the first time she had the dream; back then she had only two, and Bjørgulf was still in the cradle. Later she was never certain which of her children it might be. The little round, sunburned face under the fringe of yellow-brown hair seemed to her to resemble first one and then another of her sons, but the child was always between two and three years old and dressed in the kind of small dark yellow tunic that she usually sewed for her little boys as everyday attire, from homespun wool, dyed with lichen, and trimmed with red ribbon.

Sometimes she seemed to be on the other side of the lake. Or she might not be present at all when it happened, and yet she saw everything.

She saw her little son moving about, here and there, turning his face as he tugged at the flowers. And even though her heart felt the clutch of a dull anguish—a premonition of the evil about to occur—the dream always brought with it first a powerful, aching sweetness as she gazed at the lovely child there in the meadow.

Then she sees emerging from the darkness at the edge of the woods a furry bulk that is alive. It moves soundlessly, its tiny, vicious eyes smoldering. The bear reaches the top of the meadow and stands there, its head and shoulders swaying, as it considers the slope. Then it leaps. Kristin had never seen a bear alive, but she knew bears didn’t leap that way. This is not a real bear. It runs like a cat; at the same moment it turns gray, and like a giant light-colored cat it flies with long, soft strides down the hill.

The mother is deathly frightened, but she can’t reach the child to protect him; she can’t make a sound of warning. Then the boy notices that something is there; he turns halfway and looks over his shoulder. With a horrifying, low-pitched cry of terror he tries to run downhill, lifting his legs high in the tall grass the way children do. And his mother hears the tiny crack of sap-filled stalks breaking as he runs through the profusion of blossoms. Now he stumbles over something in the grass, falls headlong, and in the next instant the beast is upon him with its back arched and its head lowered between its front paws. Then she wakes up.

And each time she would lie awake for hours before her attempts to reassure herself did any good. It was only a dream after all! She would draw into her arms her smallest child, who lay between herself and the wall, thinking that if it had been real, she could have done such and such: scared off the animal with a shriek or with a pole. And there was always the long, sharp knife that hung from her belt.

But just as she had convinced herself in this manner to calm down, it would sieze hold of her once again: the unbearable anguish of her dream as she stood powerless and watched her little son’s pitiful, hopeless flight from the strong, ruthlessly swift, and hideous beast. Her blood felt as if it were boiling inside her, foaming so that it made her body swell, and her heart was about to burst, for it couldn’t contain such a violent surge of blood.

She saw that the poor man’s life would soon be over. Kristin gave her sack to the beggar woman who was staying with him and then tended to the ill man, doing what little she could. When she heard that they had sent for the priest, she washed his face, hands, and feet so they would be clean to receive the last anointment.

The air was thick with smoke, and a terribly oppressive, foul smell filled the tiny room. When two women from the neighboring household came in, Kristin asked them to send word to Jørundgaard for anything they might need; then she bade them farewell and left. She suddenly had a strange, sick fear of meeting the priest with the Corpus Domini, so she took the first side path she encountered.

It was merely a cattle track, she soon realized. And it led her right into the wilderness. The fallen trees with their tangle of roots sticking up frightened her; she had to crawl over them in those places where she couldn’t make her way around. Layers of moss slid out from under her feet when she clambered down over large rocks. Spiderwebs clung to her face, and branches swung at her and caught on her clothes. When she had to cross a small creek or she came to a marshy clearing in the woods, it was almost impossible to find a place where she could slip though the dense, wet thickets of leafy shrubs. And the loathsome white moths were everywhere, teeming beneath the trees in the darkness, swarming up in great clouds from the heath-covered mounds when she trod on them.

But at last she reached the flat rocks down by the Laag River. Here the pine forest thinned out because the trees had to twine their roots over barren rocks, and the forest floor was almost nothing but dry grayish-white reindeer moss, which crackled under her feet. Here and there a black, heath-covered mound was visible. The fragrance of pine needles was hotter and drier and sharper than higher up. Here all the branches of the trees always looked yellow-scorched from early spring on. The white moths continued to plague her.

The roar of the river drew her. She walked all the way over to the edge and looked down. Far below, the water shimmered white as it seethed and thundered over the rocks from one pool to the next.

The monotonous drone of the waterfalls resonated through her overwrought body and soul. It kept reminding her of something, of a time that was an eternity ago; even back then she realized that she would not have the strength to bear the fate she had chosen for herself. She had laid bare her protected, gentle girl’s life to a ravaging, fleshly love; she had lived in anguish, anguish, anguish ever since—an unfree woman from the first moment she became a mother. She had given herself up to the world in her youth, and the more she squirmed and struggled against the bonds of the world, the more fiercely she felt herself imprisoned and fettered by them. She struggled to protect her sons with wings that were bound by the constraints of earthly care. She had striven to conceal her anguish and her inexpressible weakness from everyone, walking forward with her back erect and her face calm, holding her tongue, and fighting to ensure the welfare of her children in any way she could.

But always with that secret, breathless anguish: If things go badly for them, I won’t be able to bear it. And deep in her heart she wailed at the memory of her father and mother. They had borne anguish and sorrow over their children, day after day, until their deaths; they had been able to carry this burden, and it was not because they loved their children any less but because they loved with a better kind of love.

Was this how she would see her struggle end? Had she conceived in her womb a flock of restless fledgling hawks that simply lay in her nest, waiting impatiently for the hour when their wings were strong enough to carry them beyond the most distant blue peaks? And their father would clap his hands and laugh: Fly, fly, my young birds.

They would take with them bloody threads from the roots of her heart when they flew off, and they wouldn’t even know it. She would be left behind alone, and all the heartstrings, which had once bound her to this old home of hers, she had already sundered. That was how it would end, and she would be neither alive nor dead.

“You were gone a long time,” said Erlend. “It’s almost night, Kristin. I was starting to grow frightened.”

“Were you frightened for me?” Her voice sounded more harsh and haughty than she had intended.

“Well, not exactly frightened . . . But I thought I would come out to meet you.”

They barely spoke as they walked southward. All was quiet when they entered the courtyard. Some of the horses they kept on the manor were slowly moving along the walls of the main house, grazing, but all the servants had gone to bed.

Erlend headed straight for the storeroom loft, but Kristin turned toward the cookhouse. “I have to see to something,” she replied to his query.

He stood leaning over the gallery railing, waiting for his wife, when he saw her come out of the cookhouse with a pine torch in her hand and go over to the hearth house. Erlend waited a moment and then ran down and followed her inside.

She had lit a candle and placed it on the table. Erlend felt an odd, cold shiver of fear pass through him when he saw her standing there with the lone candle in the empty house. Only the built-in furniture remained in the room, and the glow of the flame shimmered over the worn wood, unadorned and bare. The hearth was cold and swept clean, except for the torch, which had been tossed into it, still smoldering. They never used this building, Erlend and Kristin, and it must have been almost half a year since a fire had been lit inside. The air was strangely oppressive; missing was the vital blend of smells from people living there and coming and going; the smoke vent and doors had not been opened in all that time. The place also smelled of wool and hides; several rolled-up skins and sacks, which Kristin had taken from among the goods in the storeroom, were piled up on the empty bed that had belonged to Lavrans and Ragnfrid.

On the table lay a heap of small skeins of thread and yarn—linen and wool to be used for mending—which Kristin had set aside when she did the dyeing. She was going through them now, setting them in order.

Erlend sat down in the high seat at the end of the table. It seemed oddly spacious for the slender man, now that it had been stripped of its cushions and coverings. The two Olav warriors, with their helmets and shields bearing the sign of the cross, that Lavrans had carved into the armrests of the high seat scowled glumly and morosely under Erlend’s slim tan hands. No man could carve foliage and animals more beautifully than Lavrans, but he had never been very skilled at capturing human likenesses.

The silence between them was so complete that not a sound was heard except for the hollow thudding out on the green, where the horses were plodding around in the summer night.

“Aren’t you going to bed soon, Kristin?” he finally asked.

“Aren’t you?”

“I thought I would wait for you,” said her husband.

“I don’t want to go yet. . . . I can’t sleep.”

After a moment he asked, “What is weighing so heavily on your heart, Kristin, that you don’t think you’ll be able to sleep?”

Kristin straightened up. She stood holding a skein of heather-green wool in her hands, tugging and pulling on it with her fingers.

“What was it you said to Naakkve today?” She swallowed a couple of times; her throat felt so parched. “Some piece of advice . . . He didn’t think it was much good for him . . . but the two of you talked about Ivar and Skule. . . .”

“Oh . . . that!” Erlend gave a little smile. “I just told the boy . . . I do have a son-in-law, now that I think of it. Although Gerlak wouldn’t be as eager to kiss my hands or carry my cape and sword as he used to be. But he has a ship on the sea and wealthy kin both in Bremen and in Lynn. Surely the man must realize that he’s obliged to help his wife’s brothers. I didn’t stint on my gifts when I was a rich man and married my daughter to Gerlak Tiedekenssøn.”

Kristin did not reply.

At last Erlend exclaimed vehemently, “Jesus, Kristin, don’t just stand there staring like that, as if you had turned to stone.”

“I never thought, when we were first married, that our children would have to roam the world, begging food from the manors of strangers.”

“No, and the Devil take me, I don’t mean for them to beg! But if all seven of them have to grow their own food here on your estates, then it will be a peasant’s diet, my Kristin. And I don’t think my sons are suited to that. Ivar and Skule look like they’ll turn out to be daredevils, and out in the world there is both wheat bread and cake for the man willing to slice his food with a sword.”

“You intend your sons to become hired soldiers and mercenaries?”

“I hired on myself when I was young and served Earl Jacob. May God bless him, I say. I learned a few things back then that a man can never learn at home in this country, whether he’s sitting in splendor in his high seat with a silver belt around his belly and swilling down ale or he’s walking behind a plow and breathing in the farts of the farm horse. I lived a robust life in the earl’s service; I say that even though I ended up with that stump chained to my foot when I was no older than Naakkve. But I was allowed to enjoy some of my youth.”

“Silence!” Kristin’s eyes grew dark. “Wouldn’t you think it the most unbearable sorrow if your sons should be lured into such sin and misfortune?”

“Yes, may God protect them from that. But surely it shouldn’t be necessary for them to copy all the follies of their father. It is possible, Kristin, to serve a noble lord without being saddled with such a burden.”

“It is written that he who draws his sword shall lose his life by the sword, Erlend!”

“Yes, I’ve heard that said, my dear. And yet most of our forefathers, both yours and mine, Kristin, died peacefully and in a Christian manner in their beds, with the last rites and comfort for their souls. You only need think of your own father; he proved in his youth that he was a man who could use his sword.”

“But that was during a war, Erlend, at the summons of the king to whom they had sworn allegiance; it was in order to protect their homeland that Father and the others took up their weapons. And yet Father said himself that it was not God’s will that we should bear arms against each other—baptized Christian men.”

“Yes, I know that. But the world has been this way ever since Adam and Eve ate from the tree—and that was before my time. It’s not my fault that we’re born with sin inside us.”

“What shameful things you’re saying!”

Erlend heatedly interrupted her. “Kristin, you know full well that I have never refused to atone and repent for my sins as best I could. It’s true that I’m not a pious man. I saw too much in my childhood and youth. My father was such a dear friend of the great lords of the chapter.² They came and went at his house like gray pigs: Lord Eiliv, back when he was a priest, and Herr Sigvat Lande, and all the others, and they brought little else with them but quarrels and disputes. They were hardhearted and merciless toward their own bishop; they proved to be no more holy or peaceable even though each day they held the most sacred relics in their hands and lifted up God Himself in the bread and wine.”

“Surely we are not to judge the priests. That’s what Father always said: It’s our obligation to bow before the priesthood and obey them, but their human behavior shall be judged by God alone.”

“Yes, well . . .” Erlend hesitated. “I know he said that, and you’ve also said the same in the past. I know you’re more pious than I can ever be. And yet, Kristin, I have difficulty accepting that this is the proper interpretation of God’s words: that you should go about storing everything away and never forgetting. He had a long memory too, Lavrans did. No, I won’t say anything about your father except that he was pious and noble, and you are too; I know that. But often when you speak so gently and sweetly, as if your mouth were full of honey, I fear that you’re thinking mostly about old wrongs, and God will have to judge whether you’re as pious in your heart as you are in words.”

Suddenly Kristin fell forward, stretched out across the table with her face buried in her arms, and began shrieking. Erlend leaped to his feet. She lay there, weeping with raw, ragged sobs that shuddered down her back. Erlend put his arm around her shoulder.

“Kristin, what is it? What is it?” he repeated, sitting down next to her on the bench and trying to lift her head. “Kristin, don’t weep like this. I think you must have lost your senses.”

“I’m frightened!” She sat up, wringing her hands together in her lap. “I’m so frightened. Gentle Virgin Mary, help us all. I’m so frightened. What will become of my sons?”

“Yes, my Kristin . . . but you must get used to it. You can’t keep hiding them under your skirts. Soon they’ll be grown men, all our sons. And you’re still acting like a bitch with pups.” He sat with his legs crossed and his hands clasped around one knee, looking down at his wife with a weary expression. “You snap blindly at both friend and foe over anything that has to do with your offspring.”

Abruptly she got to her feet and stood there for a moment, mutely wringing her hands. Then she began swiftly pacing the room. She didn’t say a word, and Erlend sat in silence, watching her.

“Skule . . .” She stopped in front of her husband. “You gave your son an ill-fated name. But you insisted on it. You wanted the duke to rise up again in that child.”

“It’s a fine name, Kristin. Ill fated . . . that can mean many things. When I revived my great-grandfather through my son, I remembered that good fortune had deserted him, but he was still a king, and with better rights than the combmaker’s descendants.”

“You were certainly proud, you and Munan Baardsøn, that you were close kinsmen of King Haakon Haalegg.”

“Yes, you know that Sverre’s lineage gained royal blood from my father’s aunt, Margret Skulesdatter.”

For a long time both husband and wife stood staring into each other’s eyes.

“Yes, I know what you’re thinking, my fair wife.” Erlend went back to the high seat and sat down. With his hands resting on the heads of the two warriors, he leaned forward slightly, giving her a cold and challenging smile. “But as you can see, my Kristin, it hasn’t broken me to become a poor and friendless man. You should know that I have no fear that the lineage of my forefathers has fallen along with me from power and honor for all eternity. Good fortune has also deserted me; but if my plan had been carried out, my sons and I would now have positions and seats at the king’s right hand, which we, his close kinsmen, are entitled to by birth. For me, no doubt, the game is over. But I see in my sons, Kristin, that they will attain the positions which are their birthright. You don’t need to lament over them, and you must not try to bind them to this remote valley of yours. Let them freely make their own way. Then you might see, before you die, that they have once again won a foothold in their father’s ancestral regions.”

“Oh, how you can talk!” Hot, bitter tears rose up in his wife’s eyes, but she brushed them aside and laughed, her mouth contorted. “You seem even more childish than the boys, Erlend! Sitting there and saying . . . when it was only today that Naakkve nearly won the kind of fortune that a Christian man can hardly speak of, if God hadn’t saved us.”

“Yes, and I was the one lucky enough to be God’s instrument this time.” Erlend shrugged his shoulders. Then he added in a somber voice, “Such things . . . you needn’t fear, my Kristin. If this is what has frightened you from your wits, my poor wife!” He lowered his eyes and said almost timidly, “You should remember, Kristin, that your blessed father prayed for our children, just as he prayed for all of us, morning and night. And I firmly believe that salvation can be found for many things, for the worst of things, in such a good man’s prayers of intercession.” She noticed that her husband secretly made the sign of the cross on his own chest with his thumb.

But as distressed as she was, this only infuriated her more.

“Is that how you console yourself, Erlend, as you sit in my father’s high seat? That your sons will be saved by his prayers, just as they are fed by his estates?”

Erlend grew pale. “Do you mean, Kristin, that I’m not worthy to sit in the high seat of Lavrans Bjørgulfsøn?”

His wife’s lips moved, but not a word came.

Erlend rose to his feet. “Do you mean that? For if you do, then as surely as God is above us both, I will never sit here again.

“Answer me,” he insisted when she remained standing in silence. A long shudder passed through his wife’s body.

“He was . . . a better husband . . . the man who sat there before you.” Her words were barely audible.

“Guard your tongue now, Kristin!” Erlend took a few steps toward her.

She straightened up with a start. “Go ahead and strike me. I’ve endured it before, and I can bear it now.”

“I had no intention of . . . striking you.” He stood leaning on the table. Again they stared at each other, and his face had that oddly unfamiliar calm she had seen only a few times before. Now it drove her into a rage. She knew she was in the right; what Erlend had said was foolish and irresponsible, but that expression of his made her feel as if she were utterly wrong.

She gazed at him, and feeling sick with anguish at her own words, she said, “I fear that it won’t be my sons that will thrive once more among your lineage in Trøndelag.”

Erlend turned blood red.

“You couldn’t resist reminding me of Sunniva Olavsdatter, I see.”

“I wasn’t the one to mention her name. You did.”

Erlend blushed even more.

“Haven’t you ever thought, Kristin, that you weren’t entirely without blame in that . . . misfortune? Do you remember that evening in Nidaros? I came and stood by your bed. I was terribly meek and sad about having grieved you, my wife. I came to beg your forgiveness for my wrong. You answered me by saying that I should go to bed where I had slept the night before.”

“How could I know that you had slept with the wife of your kinsman?”

Erlend was silent for a moment. His face turned white and then red again. Abruptly he turned on his heel and left the room without a word.

Kristin didn’t move. For a long time she stood there motionless, with her hands clasped under her chin, staring at the candle.

Suddenly she lifted her head and let out a long breath. For once he had been forced to listen.

The night had already turned a pale gray. Out in the courtyard stood Erlend and Ulf Haldorssøn. Erlend was holding his horse, and she saw that the animal was saddled and her husband was dressed for travel. The two men talked for a moment, but she couldn’t make out a single word. Then Erlend swung himself up into the saddle and began riding north, at a walking pace, toward the manor gate. He didn’t look back but seemed to be talking to Ulf, who was striding along next to the horse.

When they had disappeared between the fences, she tiptoed out, ran as soundlessly as she could up to the gate, and stood there listening. Now she could hear that Erlend had let Soten begin trotting along the main road.

A little later Ulf came walking back. He stopped abruptly when he caught sight of Kristin at the gate. For a moment they stood and stared at each other in the gray light. Ulf had bare feet in his shoes and was wearing a linen tunic under his cape.

“What is it?” his mistress asked heatedly.

“Surely you must know, for I have no idea.”

“Where was he riding off to?” she asked.

“To Haugen.” Ulf paused. “Erlend came in and woke me. He said he wanted to ride there tonight, and he seemed in a great hurry. He asked me to see to it that certain things were sent to him up there later on.”

Kristin fell silent for a long time.

“He was angry?”

“He was calm.” After a moment Ulf said quietly, “I fear, Kristin . . . I wonder if you might have said what should have been best left unspoken.”

“Surely Erlend for once should be able to stand hearing me speak to him as if he were a sensible man,” said Kristin vehemently.

They walked slowly down the hill. Ulf turned toward his own house, but she followed him.

“Ulf, kinsman,” she implored him anxiously. “In the past you were the one who told me morning and night that for the sake of my sons I had to steel myself and speak to Erlend.”

“Yes, but I’ve grown wiser over the years, Kristin. You haven’t,” he replied in the same tone of voice.

“You offer me such solace now,” she said bitterly.

He placed his hand heavily on the woman’s shoulder, but at first he didn’t speak. As they stood there, it was so quiet they could both hear the endless roar of the river, which they usually didn’t notice. Out across the countryside the roosters were crowing, and the cry of Kristin’s own rooster echoed from the stable.

“Yes, I’ve had to learn to ration out the solace sparingly, Kristin. There’s been a cruel shortage of it for several years now. We have to save it up because we don’t know how long it might have to last.”

She tore herself away from his hand. With her teeth biting her lower lip, she turned her face away. And then she fled back to the hearth house.

The morning was icy cold. She wrapped her cloak tightly around her and pulled the hood up over her head. With her dew-drenched shoes tucked up under her skirts and her crossed arms resting on her knees, she huddled at the edge of the cold hearth to think. Now and then a tremor passed over her face, but she did not cry.

Kristin went out onto the gallery. The sun was already high; from the fenced pasture below she could hear the bell of the horse that had gone lame. She looked toward the new storehouse. Then she noticed that Munan was standing up on the loft gallery, peering out from between the posts.

Her sons. It raced through her mind. What had they thought when they woke up and saw their parents’ bed untouched?

She ran across the courtyard and up to the child. Munan was wearing only his shirt. As soon as his mother reached him, he put his hand in hers, as if he were afraid.

Inside the loft none of the boys was fully dressed; she realized that no one had woken them. All of them looked quickly at their mother and then glanced away. She picked up Munan’s leggings and began helping him to put them on.

“Where’s Father?” asked Lavrans in surprise.

“Your father rode north to Haugen early this morning,” she replied. She saw that the older boys were listening as she said, “You know he’s been talking about it so long, that he wanted to go up there to see to his manor.”

The two youngest sons looked up into their mother’s face with wide, atonished eyes, but the five older brothers hid their gaze from her as they left the loft.

The candles were blown out as soon as they were carried beyond the church gallery. That day fully grown young men had donned the white shirts of choirboys. The wind whipped at their garments. They walked along in a large group, carrying the banner with their hands, gripping the fabric so the wind wouldn’t shred it to pieces as the procession leaned forward, struggling across the slope in the wind. But now and then, above the raging of the storm, the sound of Sira Eirik’s resonant voice could be heard as he fought his way forward and sang:

Kristin stopped, along with all the other women, when the procession reached the place where the water had overflowed the road, but the white-clad young boys, the deacons, and the priests were already up on the bridge, and almost all the men followed; the water came up to their knees.

The bridge shuddered and shook, and then the women noticed that an entire house was rushing from the north toward the bridge. It churned around and around in the current as it was carried along, partially shattered, with its timbers jutting out, but still managing to stay in one piece. The woman from Ulvsvold clung to Kristin Lavransdatter and moaned loudly; her husband’s two nearly grown-up brothers were among the choirboys. Kristin screamed without words to the Virgin Mary, fixing her gaze on the group in the middle of the bridge where she could discern the white-clad figure of Naakkve among the men holding the banner. The women thought they could still hear Sira Eirik’s voice, almost drowned out by the din.

He paused at the crest of the bridge and lifted the cross high up as the house struck. The bridge shuddered and swayed; to the people on both shores, it looked as if it had dipped slightly to the south. Then the procession moved on, disappearing behind the curved arch of the bridge and then reappearing on the opposite shore. The wreckage of the house had become tangled up in the heaps of other flotsam caught in the underpinnings of the bridge.

All of a sudden, like a miracle, silvery light began seeping from the windblown masses of clouds; a dull gleam like molten lead spread over the whole expanse of the swollen river. The haze lifted, the clouds scattered, the sun broke through, and as the procession came back over the bridge, the rays glittered on the cross. On the wet white alb of the priest, the crossed stripes of his stole shimmered a wondrous purple. The valley lay gilded and sparkling with moisture, as if at the bottom of a dark blue grotto, for the storm clouds had gathered around the mountain ridges and, brought low by the rays of the sun, had turned the heights black. The haze fled between the peaks, and the great crest above Formo reached up from the darkness, dazzling white with new snow.

She had seen Naakkve walk past. The drenched garments clung to the boys as they sang at the top of their lungs to the sunshine:

The priests with the cross had gone past; the group of farmers followed in their heavy, soaked clothing, but looking around them at the weather with amazed and shining faces as they took up the prayer’s refrain: Kyrie eleison!

Suddenly she saw . . . She couldn’t believe her own eyes, and now it was her turn to grab hold of the woman next to her for support. There was Erlend walking along in the procession; he was wearing a dripping wet coat made of reindeer hide with the hood pulled over his head. But it was him. His lips were slightly parted, and he was crying, Kyrie eleison, along with the others. He looked right at her as he walked past. She couldn’t properly decipher the expression on his face, but it looked as if he wore a shadow of a smile.

Together with the other women, she joined the procession as it moved up the church hill, calling out with the others as the young boys sang the litany. She was unaware of anything except the wild pounding of her own heart.

During the mass she caught a glimpse of him only once. She didn’t dare stand in her customary place but hid in the darkness of the north nave.

As soon as the service was over, she rushed outdoors. She fled from her maids who had been in church. Outside, the countryside was steaming in the sunshine. Kristin raced home without noticing the sodden state of the road.

She spread a cloth over the table and set a full horn of mead before the master’s high seat before she took time to exchange her wet clothes for her Sabbath finery: the dark blue, embroidered gown, silver belt, buckled shoes, and the wimple with the blue border. Then she knelt in the alcove. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t find the words she sought; over and over again she said the Ave Maria: Blessed Lady, dear Lord, son of the Virgin, you know what I want to say.

This went on for a long time. From her maids she heard that the men had gone back to the bridge; with broadaxes and hooks they were trying to remove the tangle of debris that had gotten caught. It was a matter of saving the bridge. The priests had also gone back after they had taken off their vestments.

It was well past midday when the men returned: Kristin’s sons, Ulf Haldorssøn, and the three servants—an old man and two youths who had been given refuge on the manor.

Naakkve had already sat down at his place, to the right of the high seat. Suddenly he stood up, stepped forward, and rushed for the door.

Kristin softly called out his name.

A moment later he came back and sat down. The color came and went in his young face; he kept his eyes lowered, and now and then he had to bite his lip. His mother saw that he was struggling hard to master his feelings, but he managed to do so.

Finally the meal came to an end. Her sons, who were seated on the inner bench, rose to their feet and came around the end of the table past the vacant high seat, adjusting their belts as they usually did after they had put their knives back in their sheaths. Then they left the room.

When they had all gone, Kristin followed. In the sunshine, water was now streaming off all the eaves. There wasn’t a soul in the courtyard except for Ulf; he was standing on the doorstep to his own house.

His face took on an oddly helpless expression when the mistress approached him. He didn’t speak, and so she asked quietly, “Did you talk to him?”

“Only a few words. I saw that he and Naakkve talked.”

After a moment he went on, “He was a little worried . . . about all of you . . . when the flooding got this bad. So he decided to head home to see how things were. Naakkve told him how you were handling everything.

“I don’t know how he happened to hear about it . . . that you gave away the pelts he sent with Gaute in the fall. He was cross about that. Also when he heard that you had rushed home right after the mass; he thought you would have stayed to talk to him.”

Kristin didn’t say a word; she turned on her heel and went back inside.

Haldor had been Kristin’s personal servant at Husaby, and she was very fond of the young man. She also liked his wife, who was a quiet and proper young woman. Shortly after Midsummer the couple had a son, and Kristin lent the wife her weaving house, where the mistresses of the estate used to reside whenever they gave birth. But Jardtrud took offense that Kristin herself should attend the woman as the foremost of the midwives, even though Jardtrud was young and quite inexperienced, unable to offer help with a birth or with caring for a newborn infant.

Kristin was the boy’s godmother, and Ulf gave the christening banquet, but Jardtrud thought he lavished too much on it and put too many costly gifts in the cradle and in the mother’s bed. To placate his wife somewhat, Ulf gave her several precious items from among his own possessions: a gilded cross on a chain, a fur-lined cape with a large silver clasp, a gold ring, and a silver brooch. But she saw that he refused to present her with a single parcel of land that he owned, aside from what he had given her when they married. Everything else would go to his half siblings if he himself had no offspring. Now Jardtrud lamented that her child had been stillborn, and it seemed unlikely that she would have any more; she was ridiculed throughout the countryside because she talked about this to everyone.

Ulf had to ask Kristin to allow Haldor and Audhild to live in the hearth house after the young wife had gone to church for the first time after giving birth. Kristin gladly consented. She avoided Haldor because she was reminded of so many things that were painful to think about whenever she spoke with her former servant. But she talked a great deal with his wife, for Audhild wanted to help Kristin as much as she could. Toward the end of the summer the child fell gravely ill, and then Kristin stepped in to tend the boy for his young and inexperienced mother.

When the couple journeyed north in the fall, she missed them both, but she missed the child even more. She realized it was foolish, but in recent years she couldn’t help feeling some measure of pain because she suddenly seemed to be barren—and yet she wasn’t an old woman, not even forty.

It had helped to keep her thoughts off painful matters when she had the childish young wife and her infant to care for and advise. And even though she found it sad to see that Ulf Haldorssøn had not found greater happiness in his marriage, the state of affairs in the foreman’s house had also served to divert her thoughts from other things.

After the way Erlend had behaved on Ascension Day, she hardly dared to speculate anymore about how the whole situation might end. The fact that he had appeared in the village and the church in full view of everyone and then had raced northward again without speaking a single word of greeting to his wife seemed to her so heartless that she felt as if she had at last grown completely indifferent toward him.

On the Sunday before Saint Bartholomew’s Day, Sir Gyrd of Dyfrin came to church with the people from Formo. Simon looked immensely happy as he went inside for mass at his brother’s side. And Ramborg came over to Kristin after the service, eagerly whispering that she was with child again and expected to give birth around the Feast of the Virgin Mary in the spring.

“Kristin, sister, can’t you come home and celebrate with us to day?”

Kristin shook her head sadly, patted the young woman’s pale cheek, and prayed that God might bring the parents joy. But she said that she couldn’t go to Formo.

But when he heard that Erlend had left Jørundgaard, it was impossible for Simon to sustain the stubborn, melancholy calm he had striven to display. It was useless to tell himself that no one fully understood what lay behind Erlend’s absence; people chattered so much but knew so little. Even so, he couldn’t get himself mixed up in this matter. But he was still uneasy. At times he wondered whether he ought to seek out Erlend at Haugen and take back the words he had said when they parted; then he could see about finding some way to return order to the affairs of his brother-in-law and his wife’s sister. But Simon never got any farther than thinking about this.

He didn’t think anyone could tell from looking at him that his heart was uneasy. He lived as he always had, running his farm and managing his properties; he was merry and drank boldly in the company of friends; he went up to the mountains to hunt when he had time and spoiled his children when he was home. And never was an unkind word spoken between him and his wife. For the servants of the manor it must have looked as if the friendship between Ramborg and him was now better than it had ever been, since his wife was more even-tempered and calm, never exhibiting those fits of capriciousness and childish anger over petty matters. But secretly Simon felt awkward and uncertain in his wife’s company; he could no longer make himself treat her as if she were still half a child, teasing and pampering her. He didn’t know how he should treat her anymore.

Neither did he know how to take it when she told him one evening that she was again with child.

“I suppose you’re not particularly happy about it, are you?” he finally said, stroking her hand.

“But surely you are happy, aren’t you?” Ramborg pressed close to him, half crying and half laughing. He laughed, a little embarrassed, as he pulled her into his arms.

“I’ll be sensible this time, Simon; I won’t behave the way I did before. But you must stay with me, do you hear me? Even if all your brothers-in-law and all your brothers were to be led off to the gallows, one after the other, with their hands bound, you mustn’t leave me!”

Simon laughed sadly. “Where would I go, my Ramborg? Geirmund, that poor creature, isn’t likely to get mixed up in any weighty matters, and he’s the only one left among my friends and kinsmen that I haven’t quarreled with yet.”

“Oh . . .” Ramborg laughed too as her tears fell. “That enmity will last only until they need a helping hand and you think you can offer it. I know you too well by now, my husband.”

The meeting between the brothers took place with few words spoken. Sir Gyrd explained that he hadn’t seen his sister and brother-in-law at Kruke in all these years, and so he had decided to come north to visit them. Since he was in the valley, Sigrid felt he should also visit Formo. “And I thought, brother, that surely you couldn’t be so angry with me that you wouldn’t offer me and my servant food and lodging until tomorrow.”

“You know I will,” said Simon as he stood looking down, his face dark red. “It was . . . noble of you, Gyrd, to come to see me.”

The brothers walked through the fields after they had eaten. The grain was starting to turn pale on the slopes facing the sun, down by the river. The weather was so beautiful. The Laag now glittered gently enough, visible as little white flashes amid the alder trees. Big, glossy clouds drifted across the summer sky; sunshine filled the entire basin of the valley, and the mountain on the other side looked light blue and green in the shimmer of heat and the fleeting shadows of the clouds.

A pounding sound came from the pasture behind them as the horses trampled across the dry hillside; the herd came rushing through the alder thickets. Simon leaned over the fence. “Foal, foal . . . Bronstein’s getting old, isn’t he?” he said as Gyrd’s horse poked his head over the rail and nudged his shoulder.

“Eighteen winters.” Gyrd stroked the horse. “I thought, kinsman, that this matter . . . It wouldn’t be right if it should end the friendship between you and me,” he said without looking at his brother.

“It has grieved me every single day,” replied Simon softly. “Thank you for coming, Gyrd.”

They continued walking along the fence—Gyrd first, with Simon plodding behind. Finally they sank down on the edge of a little yellow-scorched stony embankment. A strong, sweet fragrance came from the small mounds of hay that were scattered about, where the scythe had scraped together short stalks of hay mixed with flowers between the piles of stones. Gyrd spoke of the reconciliation between King Magnus and the Haftorssøns and their followers.

After a moment Simon asked, “Do you think it’s out of the question that any of these kinsmen of Erlend Nikulaussøn would be willing to attempt to win full reconciliation for him and clemency from the king?”

“There is not much I can do,” said Gyrd Darre. “And they have few kind words to say of him, Simon, those who might be able to do something. Oh, I have little desire to talk of this matter now. I thought he was a bold and splendid fellow, but the others think he brought his plans to such a bad end. But I’d rather not talk of this now; I know you’re so fond of that brother-in-law of yours.”

Simon sat gazing out across the silvery white brilliance of the crowns of the trees on the hillside and the sparkling gleam of the river. Surprised, he thought that yes, in a way it was true, what Gyrd had said.

“Except that right now we are foes, Erlend and I,” he said. “It’s been a long time since we last spoke.”

“It seems to me that you’ve grown quite quarrelsome over the years, Simon,” said Gyrd with a laugh.

After a moment he continued, “Haven’t you ever thought of moving away from these valleys? We kinsmen could support each other more if we lived closer to each other.”

“How can you even think of such a thing? Formo is my ancestral estate . . .”

“Aasmund of Eiken owns part of the manor through inherited rights. And I know that he would not be unwilling to exchange one ancestral property for another. He hasn’t yet given up the idea that if he could win your Arngjerd for his Grunde on the terms that he mentioned . . .”

Simon shook his head. “The lineage of our father’s mother has resided on this estate ever since Norway was a heathen land. And it is here that I intend for Andres to live when I’m gone. I don’t think you have your wits about you, brother. How could I give up Formo!”

“No, that’s understandable.” Gyrd blushed a little. “I merely thought that perhaps . . . Most of your kinsmen are at Raumarike, along with the friends from your youth; perhaps you might find that you’d thrive better there.”

“I’m thriving here.” Simon had also turned red. “This is the place where I can give the boy a secure seat.” He looked at Gyrd, and his brother’s fine, furrowed face took on an embarrassed expression. Gyrd’s hair was now almost white, but his body was still just as slender and lithe as ever. He shifted rather uneasily; several stones rolled out from the pile of rocks and tumbled down the slope and into the grain.

“Are you going to send the whole scree down into my field?” asked Simon in a stern voice as he laughed. Gyrd leaped to his feet, light and agile, reaching out a hand to his brother, who moved more slowly.

Simon gripped his brother’s hand for a moment after he got to his feet. Then he placed his arm around his brother’s shoulder. Gyrd did the same, and with their arms loosely resting around each other’s shoulders, the brothers slowly walked over the hills toward the manor.

“Benedictus tu in muliebris . . . mulieribus . . . Do you remember that?” Simon laughed suddenly.

“Yes. It cost me a few blows across the back before Sira Magnus wrung our grandmother’s misteachings out of my head.” Gyrd smiled at the memory. “And he had a devilishly hard hand too. Do you remember, brother, that time when he sat and scratched the calves of his legs, and he had lifted up the hem of his robe? You whispered to me that if you had had such misshapen calves as Magnus Ketilssøn, you would have become a priest too and always worn full-length surcoats.”

Simon smiled. Suddenly he seemed to see the boyish face of his brother, about to burst with stifled laughter, his eyes pitifully miserable. They weren’t very old back then, and Sira Magnus was cruelly hard-handed whenever he had to reprimand them.

Gyrd had not been terribly clever when they were children. And it wasn’t because Gyrd was a particularly wise man that Simon loved him now. But he felt warm with gratitude and tenderness toward his brother as he sat there: for every day of their kinship during almost forty years and for Gyrd, just the way he was—the most loyal and forthright of men.

He felt a warmth inside every time he thought about Gyrd, who had come to him to make amends for something that Simon himself had provoked when he rode to his brother’s estate in anger and with curses. His heart overflowed with gratitude; he had to thank more than Gyrd.

A man such as Lavrans . . . He knew quite well how he would have handled such an event. He could follow his father-in-law as far as he was able, by giving out alms and the like. But he wasn’t capable of such things as true contrition or contemplation of the wounds of the Lord, unless he stared zealously at the crucifix—and that was not what Lavrans had intended. Simon couldn’t bring forth tears of remorse; he hadn’t wept more than two or three times since he was a child, and never when he needed to most, those times when he had committed the worst of sins: with Arngjerd’s mother while he was a married man and that killing the previous year. And yet he had felt great regret; he thought that he always sincerely regretted his sins, taking pains to confess and to atone as the priest commanded. He was always diligent in saying his prayers and saw to it that he gave the proper tithes and abundant alms—with particular generosity in honor of the apostle Saint Simon, Saint Olav, Saint Michael, and the Virgin Mary. Otherwise he was content with what Sira Eirik had said: that salvation was to be found in the cross alone and how a man faced or fought with the Fiend was something for God to decide and not the man himself.

But now he felt an urge to show his gratitude to the holy ones with greater fervor. His mother had told him that he was supposedly born on the birthday of the Virgin Mary. He decided that he wanted to show the Lord’s Mother his veneration with a prayer he was not usually accustomed to saying. He had once had a beautiful prayer copied out, back when he was at the royal court, and he took out the small piece of parchment.

Now, much later, he feared that it was probably intended more as an appeal to King Haakon than for the sake of God or Mary that he had acquired these small epistles with prayers and learned them while he was among the king’s retainers. All the young men did so, for the king was in the habit of quizzing the pages about what they knew of such useful knowledge when he lay in bed at night, unable to sleep.

Oh yes . . . that was so long ago. The king’s bedchamber in the stone hall of the Oslo palace. On the little table next to his bed burned a single candle; the light fell across the finely etched, faded, and aging face of the man, resting above the red silken quilts. When the priest had finished reading aloud and taken his leave, the king often picked up the book himself and lay in bed, reading with the heavy volume resting against his propped-up knees. On two footstools over by the brick fireplace sat the pages; Simon nearly always had the watch with Gunstein Ingasøn. It was pleasant in the chamber. The fire burned brightly, giving heat without smoke, and the room seemed so snug with the cross-beamed ceiling and the walls always covered with tapestries. But they would grow sleepy from sitting there in that fashion, first listening to the priest read and then waiting for the king to fall asleep, as he rarely did until close to midnight. When he was sleeping, they were allowed to take turns keeping guard and napping on the bench between the fireplace and the door to the royal Council hall.

Occasionally the king would converse with them; this didn’t happen often, but when it did, he was inexpressibly kind and charming. Or he would read aloud from the book a sentence or a few stanzas of a verse that he thought the young men might find useful or beneficial to hear.

One night Simon was awakened by King Haakon calling for him in pitch-darkness. The candle had burned out. Feeling wretched with shame, Simon blew some life into the embers and lit a new candle. The king lay in bed, smiling secretively.

“Does that Gunstein always snore so terribly?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“You share a bed with him in the dormitory, don’t you? It might be deemed reasonable if you asked for another bedfellow for a while who makes less noise when he sleeps.”

“Thank you, my Lord, but it doesn’t bother me, Your Majesty!”

“Surely you must wake up, Simon, when that thunder explodes right next to your ear—don’t you?”

“Yes, Your Grace, but then I give him a shove and turn him over a bit.”

The king laughed. “I wonder whether you young men realize that being able to sleep so soundly is one of God’s great gifts. When you reach my age, Simon my friend, perhaps you will remember my words.”

That seemed endlessly far away—still clear, but not as if he were the same man, sitting here now, who had once been that young page.

“You know quite well, Simon, that we can’t do that,” she said somberly. “We can still be friends in our hearts, you and Ramborg and I, but as you know, it’s not always possible for us to determine what we must do.”

“Surely you don’t mean that you’re going to take this so far that you won’t come to your only sister when she has to lie down to give birth.”

Kristin prayed that all would go well and bring both of them joy. “But I can’t tell you with certainty that I will come.”

“Everyone will think it remarkably strange,” admonished Simon. “You have a reputation for being the best midwife, and she’s your sister, and the two of you are the mistresses of the largest estates in the northern part of the region.”

“Quite a few children have been brought into the world on the great manors around here over the past few years, but I’ve never been asked to come. It’s no longer the custom, Simon, for a birth to be considered improperly attended if the mistress of Jørund gaard is not in the room.” She saw that he was greatly distressed by her words, and so she continued, “Give my greetings to Ramborg, and tell her that I will come to help her when it’s time; but I cannot come to your Christmas feast, Simon.”

But on the eighth day of the Christmas season she met Simon as he came to mass without Ramborg. No, she was feeling fine, he said, but she needed to rest and gather her strength, for the next day he was taking her and the children south to Dyfrin. The weather was so good for traveling by sleigh, and since Gyrd had invited them, and Ramborg was so keen on going, well . . .