BOOK III

LAVRANS BJÖRGULFSÖN 219

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BOOK ONE

JÖRUNDGAARD

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1

WHEN the lands and goods of Ivar Gjesling the younger, of Sundbu, were

divided after his death in 1306, his lands in Sil of Gudbrandsdal fell

to his daughter Ragnfrid and her husband Lavrans Björgulfsön. Up to then

they had lived on Lavrans’ manor of Skog at Follo near Oslo; but now

they moved up to Jörundgaard at the top of the open lands of Sil.

Lavrans was of the stock that was known in this country as the

Lagmandssons. It had come here from Sweden with that Laurentius, Lagmand

of East Gotland, who took the Belbo Jarl’s sister, the Lady Bengta, out

of Vreta convent, and carried her off to Norway. Sir Laurentius lived at

the Court of King Haakon the Old, and won great favour with the King,

who gave him the Skog manor. But when he had been in the country about

eight years he died in his bed, and his widow, who belonged to the

Folkunga kindred, and had the name of a King’s daughter among the

Norwegians, went home and made matters up with her relations. Afterwards

she made a rich marriage in another land. She and Sir Laurentius had no

children, so the heritage of Skog fell to Laurentius’ brother, Ketil. He

was father’s father to Lavrans Björgulfsön.

Lavrans was married very young; he was three years younger than his

wife, and was only twenty-eight when he came to Sil. As a youth he had

been in the King’s bodyguard and had enjoyed a good upbringing; but

after his marriage he lived a quiet life on his estate, for Ragnfrid was

something strange and heavy of mood, and seemed not at home among the

people of the south. After she had had the ill-hap to lose three little

sons, one after the other, in the cradle, she grew yet more shy of

people. Thus it was in part to bring his wife nearer to her kinsfolk and

old acquaintance that Lavrans moved to Gudbrandsdalen. When they came

there, they brought with them the one child that was left, a little maid

called Kristin.

But when they had settled at Jörundgaard they lived for the most part

just as quietly there, keeping very much to themselves; it seemed as

though Ragnfrid did not care much for her kindred, for she saw them no

oftener than seemly use and wont required. This was in part because

Lavrans and Ragnfrid were more than commonly pious and God-fearing folk,

diligent in church-going, and always pleased to give harbour to God’s

servants, to messengers sent on the Church’s errands, or to pilgrims on

their way up the valley to Nidaros; and showing the greatest honour to

their parish-priest—who was also their nearest neighbour, living at

Romundgaard. Other folk in the valley were rather given to think that

the Church cost them quite dear enough in tithes and in goods and money;

and that there was no need to fast and pray so hard besides, or to bring

priests and monks into their houses, unless at times when they were

really needed.

Otherwise the Jörundgaard folk were much looked up to, and well-liked

too; most of all Lavrans, for he was known as a strong man and a bold,

but peace-loving, quiet and upright, plain in his living but courteous

and seemly in his ways, a rarely good husbandman and a mighty

hunter—’twas wolves and bears and all kinds of harmful beasts he hunted

most keenly. In a few years he had gotten much land into his hands; but

he was a good and helpful landlord to his tenants.

Folk saw so little of Ragnfrid that they soon gave up talking much about

her. In the first time after she came back to the valley many people had

wondered, for they remembered her as she had been at her home at Sundbu

in her youth. Beautiful she had never been, but she had looked kind and

happy; now she had fallen off so that you might well believe she was ten

years older than her husband, and not only three. Most folk deemed she

took the loss of her children harder than was reason, for but for this

she was better off in every way than most wives—she lived in great

plenty and in high esteem, and things were well between her and her

husband, so far as people could see; Lavrans did not go after other

women, he took counsel with her in all affairs, and, sober or drunk, he

never said a harsh word to her. Besides she was not so old but she might

yet bear many children, if it were God’s pleasure.

It was somewhat hard for them to get young folks to take service at

Jörundgaard, the mistress being thus heavy of mood and all the fasts so

strictly kept. Otherwise it was a good house to serve in; hard words and

punishments were little in use; and both Lavrans and Ragnfrid took the

lead in all the work. The master, indeed, was glad of mood in his own

way, and would join in a dance or lead the singing when the young folk

held their games on the Church-green on vigil nights. But still it was

mostly older folks who came and took service at Jörundgaard; these liked

the place well and stayed there long.

When the child Kristin was seven years old, it so fell out one time that

she got leave to go with her father up to their mountain sæter.

It was a fine morning, a little way on in the summer, Kristin was in the

loft-room, where they were sleeping now summer had come; she saw the sun

shining outside and heard her father and his men talking in the

courtyard below—and she was so joyful that she could not stand still

while her mother put on her clothes, but hopped and jumped about as each

piece of clothing was put on her. She had never been up in the mountains

before; only across the pass to Vaage, when she was taken to visit her

mother’s kinsfolk at Sundbu, and sometimes to the woods near by the

manor with her mother and the house-folk, when they went out to pluck

berries for Ragnfrid to mix with the small beer, or to make into sour

paste of cranberries and cowberries that she ate on her bread in Lent

instead of butter.

The mother twisted up Kristin’s long yellow hair and tied it into her

old blue cap, then kissed her daughter on the cheek, and Kristin sprang

away and down to her father. Lavrans was in the saddle already; he

lifted her up behind him and seated her on his cloak, which he had

folded up and placed on the horse’s loins for a pillion. Kristin had to

sit there astride and hold on to his belt. They called out “Goodbye” to

Ragnfrid; but she came running down from the balcony with Kristin’s

hooded cape—she handed it to Lavrans and bade him look well to the

child.

The sun shone, but it had rained much in the night, so that everywhere

the becks came rushing and singing down the grassy slopes, and wreaths

of mist clung and drifted under the mountain sides. But over the

hill-crest white fair-weather clouds were swelling up in the blue air,

and Lavrans and his men said among themselves that it was like to be hot

as the day went on. Lavrans had four men with him, and they were all

well-armed; for at this time there were many kinds of outlandish people

lying up among the mountains—though a strong party like this, going but

a short way in, was not like to see or hear aught of such folk. Kristin

was fond of all the men; three of them were men past youth, but the

fourth, Arne Gyrdsön, from Finsbrekken, was a half-grown boy, and he was

Kristin’s best friend; he rode next after Lavrans and her, for it was he

that was to tell her about all they saw on their road.

They passed between the Romundgaard houses and changed greetings with

Eirik priest. He was standing outside chiding with his daughter—she kept

house for him—about a web of new-dyed cloth that she had hung out and

forgotten the day before; it was all spoilt now with the night’s rain.

On the hill behind the parsonage lay the church; it was not large, but

fair and pleasant, well-kept and newly tarred. By the cross outside the

churchyard gate Lavrans and his men took off their hats and bowed their

heads; then the father turned in the saddle, and he and Kristin waved to

Ragnfrid, whom they could see down below at home standing out on the

sward by the houses; she waved back to them with the full of her linen

head-dress.

Up here on the church-green and in the church yard Kristin was used to

come and play near every day but to-day, when she was setting out to go

so far, the sight she knew so well—home and all the parish round

it—seemed new and strange to the child. The clusters of houses at

Jörundgaard looked, as it were, smaller and greyer, lying there down on

the flats, courtyard and farmyard. The river wound shining on its way,

the valley spread far with broad green meadows and marshes in its bottom

and farms with ploughland and pasture stretched up the hillsides under

the grey and headlong mountain walls.

Far below, where the mountains came together and closed the valley,

Kristin knew that Loptsgaard lay. There lived Sigurd and Jon, two old

men with white beards; they were always for playing and making merry

with her when they came to Jörundgaard. She was fond of Jon, for he

would carve out the fairest beasts in wood for her, and once she had had

a gold finger-ring of him; nay, the last time he came to them, at

Whitsuntide, he had brought her a knight so sweetly carved and coloured

so fairly that Kristin thought she had never had so fine a gift. She

must needs take the knight to bed with her every single night; but when

she woke in the morning he was always standing on the step in front of

the bed she lay in with her father and mother. Her father said the

knight jumped up at the first cockcrow; but Kristin knew well enough

that, after she had fallen asleep, her mother took him away, for she

heard her say that he was so hard, and hurt so if he got underneath them

in the night.—Sigurd of Loptsgaard Kristin was afraid of, and she did

not like him to take her on his knees; for he used to say that when she

grew up he meant to sleep in her arms. He had outlived two wives, and he

said himself he was sure to outlive the third; and then Kristin could be

the fourth. But when she began to cry at this, Lavrans laughed and said

he had no fear that Morgit would give up the ghost so speedily; but if

the worst came to pass and Sigurd should come a-wooing, let Kristin have

no fear—he should have No for his answer.

A bowshot or so north of the church there lay by the roadside a great

block of stone, and around it a thick small grove of birch and aspen.

Here the children were wont to play at church, and Tomas, the youngest

son of Eirik priest’s daughter, stood up in the person of his

grandfather and said mass, sprinkled holy-water, and even baptized, when

there was rain-water in the hollows of the rock. But once, the autumn

before, this game had fallen out but sadly for them. For first Tomas had

married Kristin and Arne—Arne was not so old but he would go off and

play with the children when he saw a chance. Then Arne caught a baby pig

that was going by, and they brought it into church to be baptized. Tomas

anointed it with mud, dipped it into a pool of water, and, copying his

grandfather, said mass in Latin and chid them for the smallness of their

offerings—and at this the children laughed, for they had heard their

elders talk of Eirik’s exceeding greed of money. But the more they

laughed the worse Tomas got in the things he hit on: for next he said

that this child had been gotten in Lent, and they must pay penalty for

their sin to the priest and the church. The great boys shouted with

laughter at this; but Kristin was so ashamed that she was all but

weeping, as she stood there with the little pig in her arms. And just as

this was going on who must chance to come that way but Eirik himself

riding home from a sick-visit. When he understood what the young folks

were about, he sprang from his horse, and handed the holy vessels to

Bentein, his eldest grandson, who was with him, so suddenly that Bentein

nearly dropped the silver dove with God’s body in it on the hillside,

while the priest rushed in among the children belabouring all he could

reach. Kristin let slip the little pig, and it rushed shrieking down the

road with the christening robe trailing after it, while Eirik’s horses

reared and plunged with terror; the priest pushed her too so that she

fell down, and he knocked against her with his foot so hard that she

felt the pain in her hip for many days after. Lavrans had thought when

he heard of this, that Eirik had been too hard with Kristin, seeing she

was but a little child. He said he would speak to the priest of it, but

Ragnfrid begged him not to do so, for the child had gotten but what she

deserved, for joining in such a blasphemous game. So Lavrans said no

more of the matter; but he gave Arne the worst beating the boy had ever

had.

So now, as they rode by the stone, Arne plucked Kristin by the sleeve.

He dared not say aught for fear of Lavrans, but he made a face, then

smiled and clapped his hand to his back. But Kristin bowed her head

shamefacedly.

Their way led on into thick woods. They rode along under Hammerhill; the

valley grew narrow and dark here and the roar of the river sounded

louder and more harsh—when they caught a glimpse of the Laagen it ran

ice-green and white with foam between walls of rock. The mountains on

either side of the valley were black with forest; it was dark and narrow

and ugly in the gorge, and there came cold gusts of wind. They rode

across the Rostaa stream by the log-bridge, and soon could see the

bridge over the great river down the valley. A little below the bridge

was a pool where a kelpy lived. Arne began to tell Kristin about it, but

Lavrans sternly told the boy to hold his peace in the woods about such

things. And when they came to the bridge he leaped off his horse and led

it across by the bridle, while he held the child round the waist with

his other arm.

On the other side of the river was a bridle-path leading steeply up the

hillside, so the men got off their horses and went on foot; but her

father lifted Kristin forward into the saddle, so that she could hold on

to the saddle-bow; and let her ride Guldsveinen all alone.

Now grey-stone peaks and blue domes flecked with snow rose above the

mountain ridges as they climbed higher up; and now Kristin saw through

the trees glimpses of the parish north of the gorge, and Arne pointed,

and told her the names of the farms that they could make out down there.

High up the mountain-side they came to a little croft. They stopped by

the stick fence; Lavrans shouted, and his voice came back again and

again from the mountains round. Two men came running down, between the

small tilled patches. These were both sons of the house; they were good

men at the tar-burning and Lavrans was for hiring them to burn some tar

for him. Their mother came after them with a great bowl of cooled milk;

for the day was now grown hot, as the men had foretold.

“I saw you had your daughter with you,” she said when she had greeted

them, “and methought I must needs have a sight of her. But you must take

the cap from her head; they say she hath such bonny hair.”

Lavrans did as the woman asked him, and Kristin’s hair fell over her

shoulders and hung down right to the saddle. It was thick and yellow

like ripe wheat. The woman, Isrid, took some of it in her hand and said:

“Aye, now I see the word that has gone about concerning this little maid

of yours was nowise too great—a lilyrose she is, and looks as should the

child of a knightly man. Mild eyes hath she too—she favours you and not

the Gjeslings. God grant you joy of her, Lavrans Björgulfsön! And you’re

riding on Guldsveinen, as stiff and straight as a courtier,” she said,

laughingly, as she held the bowl for Kristin to drink.

The child grew red with pleasure, for she knew well that her father was

held to be the comeliest man far around; he looked like a knight,

standing there among his men, though his dress was much of the farmer

fashion, such as he wore at home for daily use. He wore a coat of

green-dyed wadmal, somewhat wide and short, open at the throat, so that

the shirt showed beneath. For the rest, his hose and shoes were of

undyed leather, and on his head he had a broad-brimmed woollen hat of

the ancient fashion. For ornaments he had only a smooth silver buckle to

his belt, and a little silver brooch in his shirt-band; but some links

of a golden neck-chain showed against his neck. Lavrans always wore this

chain, and on it there hung a golden cross set with great rock-crystals;

it was made to open, and inside there were shreds of the hair and the

shroud of the holy Lady Elin of Skövde, for the Lagmandssons counted

their descent from one of that blessed lady’s daughters. But when

Lavrans was in the woods or out at his work he was used to thrust the

cross in next his bare breast, so that he might not lose it.

Yet did he look in his coarse homely clothing more high-born than many a

knight of the King’s household in his finest banqueting attire. He was

stalwart of growth, tall, broad-shouldered, and small-waisted; his head

was small and sat fairly on his neck, and he had comely features,

somewhat long—cheeks of a seemly fullness, chin fairly rounded and mouth

well shaped. His skin was light and his face fresh of hue, he had grey

eyes and thick smooth silky-yellow hair.

He stood there and talked with Isrid of her affairs; and asked about

Tordis too, a kinswoman of Isrid’s that was tending the Jörundgaard

sæter this summer. Tordis had just had a child; Isrid was only waiting

for the chance of a safe escort through the woods before taking the boy

down to have him christened. Lavrans said that she had best come with

them up to the sæter; he was coming down again the next evening, and

’twould be safer and better for her to have many men to go along with

her and the heathen child.

Isrid thanked him: “To say truth, ’twas even this I was waiting for. We

know well, we poor folk under the uplands here, that you will ever do us

a kind turn if you can, when you come hither.” She ran up to the hut to

fetch a bundle and a cloak.

It was indeed so that Lavrans liked well to come among these small folk

who lived on clearings and lease-holdings high up on the outskirts of

the parish; amongst them he was always glad and merry. He talked with

them of the ways of the forest beasts and the reindeer of the upland

wastes; and of all the uncanny things that are stirring in such places.

And he stood by them and helped them with word and deed; saw to their

sick cattle; helped them with their errands to the smith or to the

carpenter; nay, would sometimes take hold himself and bend his great

strength to the work, when the worst stones or roots were to be broken

out of the earth. Therefore were these people ever glad to greet Lavrans

Björgulfsön and Guldsveinen, the great red stallion that he rode upon.

’Twas a comely beast with a shining skin, white mane and tail and light

eyes—strong and fiery, so that his fame was spread through all the

country round; but with his master he was gentle as a lamb, and Lavrans

used to say that the horse was dear to him as a younger brother.

Lavrans’ first errand was to see to the beacon on Heimhaugen. For in the

hard and troubled times a hundred years or more gone by, the yeoman of

the dales had built beacons here and there high up on the fells above

them, like the seamarks in the roadsteads upon the coast. But these

beacons in the uplands were not in the ward of the King’s levies, but

were cared for by the yeomen-guilds, and the guild-brothers took turns

at their tending.

When they were come to the first sæter, Lavrans turned out all but the

pack-horse to graze there; and now they took a steep foot-path upwards.

Before long the trees grew thin and scattered. Great firs stood dead and

white as bones upon the marshy grounds—and now Kristin saw bare,

grey-stone peaks rising to the sky on all hands. They climbed long

stretches amid loose stones, and at times the becks ran in the track, so

that her father must carry her. The wind blew strong and fresh up here

and the ground was black with berries amidst the heather, but Lavrans

said they could not stop now to gather them. Arne sprang now in front

and now behind, plucked berries for her, and told her whose the sæters

were that they saw below them in the forest—for there was forest over

the whole of Hövringsvangen in those days.

And now they were close below the highest round bare top and saw the

great pile of timber against the sky, with the watch-house under the lee

of a crag.

As they came up over the brow the wind rushed against them and buffeted

their clothing—it seemed to Kristin as though something living, that

dwelt up here, met and greeted them. It blew gustily around her and Arne

as they went forward over the mosses, till they sate them down far out

on a jutting point, and Kristin gazed with great eyes—never before had

she dreamed that the world was so big and wide.

Forest-shagged ranges lay below her on all sides; the valley was but a

cleft betwixt the huge fells, and the side-glens still lesser clefts;

there were many such, yet was there little of dale and much of fell. All

around grey peaks, flaming with golden lichen, rose above the sea of

forest, and far off, on the very brink of heaven, stood blue crests

flashing here and there with snow, and melting, before their eyes, into

the grey-blue and pure white summer-clouds. But northeastwards, nearer

by—just beyond the sæter woods—lay a cluster of mighty slate-coloured

domes with streaks of new-fallen snow down their slopes. These Kristin

guessed to be the Boar Fells she had heard tell of, for they were indeed

like naught but a herd of heavy boar wending inland that had just turned

their backs upon the parish. Yet Arne told her ’twas a half-day’s ride

to get even so far.

Kristin had ever thought that could she but win over the top of the

home-fells she would look down upon another parish like their own, with

tilled farms and dwellings, and ’twas great wonder to her now to see how

far it was betwixt the places where folks dwelt. She saw the small

yellow and green flecks down below in the dale-bottom, and the tiny

clearings with their grey dots of houses amid the hill forests; she

began to take tale of them, but when she had reckoned three times

twelve, she could keep count of them no longer. Yet the human

dwelling-places were as nothing in that waste.

She knew that in the wild woods wolves and bears lorded it, and that

under every stone there dwelt trolls and goblins and elfinfolk, and she

was afraid, for no one knew the number of them, but there must be many

times more of them than of Christian men and women. Then she called

aloud on her father, but he could not hear, for the blowing of the

wind—he and his men were busy rolling heavy stones up the bare mountain

top to pile round the timbers of the beacon.

But Isrid came to the children and showed Kristin where the fell west of

Vaage lay. And Arne pointed out the Grayfell, where folk from the parish

took reindeer in pits, and where the King’s falcon-catchers lay in stone

huts. That was a trade Arne thought to take to some day—but if he did he

would learn as well to train the birds for the chase—and he held his

arms aloft as though to cast a hawk.

Isrid shook her head.

“’Tis a hard and evil life, that, Arne Gyrdsön—’twould be a heavy sorrow

for your mother, boy, should you ever come to be a falcon-catcher. None

may earn his bread in those wild hills except he join in fellowship with

the worst of men—aye, and with them that are worse still.”

Lavrans had come toward them and had heard this last word: “Aye,” says

he, “there’s more than one hide of land in there that pays neither tax

nor tithe—”

“Yes, many a thing must you have seen,” said Isrid coaxingly, “you who

fare so far afield—”

“Aye, aye,” said Lavrans slowly. “Maybe—but methinks ’tis well not to

speak of such things overmuch. One should not, I say, grudge folks who

have lost their peace in the parish, whatever peace they can find among

the fells. Yet have I seen yellow fields and brave meadows where few

folk know that such things be, and herds have I seen of cattle and small

stock, but of these I know not whether they belonged to mankind or to

other folk—”

“Oh! aye,” says Isrid. “Bears and wolves get the blame for the beasts

that are missed from the sæters here, but there are worse thieves among

the fells than they.”

“Do you call them worse?” asked Lavrans thoughtfully, stroking his

daughter’s cap. “In the hills to the south under the Boar Fells I once

saw three little lads, and the greatest was even as Kristin here—yellow

hair they had, and coats of skin. They gnashed their teeth at me like

wolf-cubs before they ran to hide. ’Twere little wonder if the poor man

who owned them were fain to lift a cow or two—”

“Oh! both wolves and bears have young,” says Isrid testily. “And you

spare not them, Lavrans, neither them nor their young. Yet they have no

lore of law nor of Christendom, as have these evil-doers you wish so

well to—”

“Think you I wish them too well, because I wish them a little better

than the worst?” said Lavrans, smiling a little. “But come now, let us

see what cheer Ragnfrid has sent with us to-day.” He took Kristin by the

hand and led her with him. And as they went he bent and said softly: “I

thought of your three small brothers, little Kristin.”

They peeped into the watch-house, but it was close in there and smelt of

mould. Kristin took a look around, but there were only some earthen

benches about the walls, a hearth-stone in the middle of the floor, and

some barrels of tar and faggots of pine-roots and birch-bark. Lavrans

thought ’twould be best they should eat without doors, and a little way

down among the birches they found a fine piece of green-sward.

The pack-horse was unloaded, and they stretched themselves upon the

grass. In the wallets Ragnfrid had given them was plenty food of the

best—soft bread and bannocks, butter and cheese, pork and wind-dried

reindeer meat, lard, boiled brisket of beef, two kegs with German beer,

and of mead a little jar. The carving of the meat and portioning it

round went quickly, while Halvdan, the oldest of the men, struck fire

and made a blaze—it was safer to have a good fire out here in the woods.

Isrid and Arne gathered heather and dwarf-birch and cast it on the

blaze. It crackled as the fire tore the fresh green from the twigs, and

small white flakes flew high upon the wisps of red flame; the smoke

whirled thick and black toward the clear sky. Kristin sat and watched;

it seemed to her the fire was glad that it was out there, and free, and

could play and frisk. ’Twas otherwise than when, at home, it sat upon

the hearth and must work at cooking food and giving light to the folks

in the room.

She sat nestled by her father with one arm upon his knee; he gave her

all she would have of the best, and bade her drink her fill of the beer

and taste well of the mead.

“She will be so tipsy she’ll never get down to the sæter on her feet,”

said Halvdan, laughing, but Lavrans stroked her round cheeks:

“Then here are folk enough who can bear her—it will do her good—drink

you too, Arne—God’s gifts do good, not harm, to you that are yet

growing—make sweet, red blood, and give deep sleep, and rouse not

madness and folly—”

The men too drank often and deep; neither was Isrid backward. And soon

their voices and the roar and crackle of the fire were but a far off

hubbub in Kristin’s ears, and she began to grow heavy of head. She was

still aware how they questioned Lavrans and would have him tell of the

strange things he had met with when out a-hunting. But much he would not

say; and this seemed to her so good and so safe—and then she had eaten

so well.

Her father had a slice of soft barley-bread in his hands; he pinched

small bits of it between his fingers into shapes of horses, and cutting

shreds of meat, he set these astride the steeds and made them ride over

his thigh and into Kristin’s mouth. But soon she was so weary she could

neither open her mouth nor chew—and so she sank back upon the ground and

slept.

* * * * *

When she came to herself again, she was lying in a warm darkness within

her father’s arm—he had wrapped his cloak about them both. Kristin sat

up, wiped the moisture from her face, and unloosed her cap that the air

might dry her damp locks.

The day was surely far spent, for the sunlight was golden, and the

shadows had lengthened and fell now toward the southeast. No breath of

wind was stirring, and gnats and flies buzzed and swarmed about the

group of sleeping men. Kristin sat stock still, scratched her

gnat-bitten hands and gazed about her—the mountain-top above them shone

white with moss and golden with lichen in the sunshine, and the pile of

weather-beaten timber stood against the sky like the skeleton of some

wondrous beast.

She grew ill at ease—it was so strange to see them all sleeping there in

the naked daylight. At home if by hap she woke at night, she lay snug in

the dark with her mother on the one side and on the other the tapestry

stretched upon the wall. And then she knew that the chamber with its

smoke-vent was shut and barred against the night and the weather

without, and sounds of slumber came from the folk who lay soft and safe

on the pillows twixt the skins. But all these bodies, lying twisted and

bent on the hillside, about the little heap of black and white ashes,

might well be dead—some lay upon their faces, some upon their backs with

knees updrawn, and the noises that came from them scared her. Her father

snored deeply, but when Halvdan drew a breath, it piped and whistled in

his nose. And Arne lay upon his side, his face hidden on his arm, and

his glossy, light-brown hair spread out amongst the heather; he lay so

still Kristin grew afraid lest he be dead. She had to bend forward and

touch him—and on this he turned a little in his sleep.

Kristin suddenly bethought her, maybe they had slept through the night

and this was the next day—and this frightened her so that she shook her

father; but he only grunted and slept on. Kristin herself was still

heavy of head, but she dared not lie down to sleep again. And so she

crept forward to the fire and raked in it with a stick—there were still

some embers aglow beneath. She threw upon it heather and small twigs

which she broke off round about her—she dared not pass the ring of

sleepers to find bigger branches.

There came a rattling and crashing in the woods near by, and Kristin’s

heart sank and she went cold with fear. But then she spied a red shape

amidst the trees, and Guldsveinen broke out of the thicket. He stood

there and gazed upon her with his clear, bright eyes. She was so glad to

see him, she leapt to her feet and ran to the stallion. And there, too,

was the brown horse Arne had ridden, and the pack-horse as well. Now she

felt safe and happy again; she went and patted them all three upon their

flanks, but Guldsveinen bent his head so that she could reach up to

fondle his cheeks, and pull his yellow-white forelock, while he nosed

round her hands with his soft muzzle.

The horses wandered, feeding, down the birch-grown slope, and Kristin

went with them—she felt there was naught to fear so long as she kept

close to Guldsveinen—he had driven off a bear before now, she knew. And

the bilberries grew so thick in here, and the child was thirsty now,

with a bad taste in her mouth; the beer was not to her liking any more,

but the sweet, juicy berries were good as wine. Away, on a scree, she

saw raspberries growing too—so she grasped Guldsveinen by the mane, and

sweetly bade him go there with her, and the stallion followed willingly

with the little maid. Thus, as she wandered further and further down the

hillside, he followed her when she called, and the other two horses

followed Guldsveinen.

Somewhere near at hand she heard the gurgling and trickling of a beck;

she followed the sound till she found it, and then lay out upon a great

slab and washed her hot, gnat-bitten face and hands. Below the slab the

water stood, a still, black pool, for over against it there rose a wall

of rock behind some small birches and willows—it made the finest of

mirrors, and Kristin leaned over and looked at herself in the water, for

she wished to see whether ’twas true, as Isrid said, that she bore a

likeness to her father.

She smiled and nodded and bent forward till her hair met the bright hair

about the round, great-eyed child-face she saw in the beck.

Round about grew a great plenty of those gay, pink flower-clusters they

name valerian—redder far and finer here by the fell-beck than at home by

the river. Of these Kristin plucked and bound them about with grass,

till she had woven herself the finest, thickest wreath of rose-pink. The

child pressed it down on her head and ran to the pool to see how she

looked now she was decked out like a grown maid who goes a dancing.

She stooped over the water and saw her own dark image rise from the

bottom and grow clearer as it came to meet her—and then in the mirror of

the pool she saw another figure standing among the birches opposite and

bending toward her. In haste she got upon her knees and gazed across. At

first she thought it was but the rock and the bushes clinging round its

foot. But all at once she was aware of a face amid the leaves—there

stood a lady, pale, with waving, flaxen hair—the great, light-grey eyes

and wide, pink nostrils were like Guldsveinen’s. She was clad in

something light, leaf-green, and branches and twigs hid her up to the

broad breasts which were covered over with brooches and sparkling

chains.

The little girl gazed upon the figure; and as she gazed the lady raised

a hand and showed her a wreath of golden flowers;—she beckoned with it.

Behind her Kristin heard Guldsveinen neigh loud in fear—she turned her

head—the stallion reared, screaming till the echoes rang, then flung

around and fled up the hill with a thunder of hoofs. The other horses

followed—straight up the scree, while stones came rumbling down and

boughs and roots broke and rattled.

Then Kristin screamed aloud. “Father,” she shrieked, “father!” She

gained her feet, tore after the horses and dared not look behind. She

clambered up the scree, trod on the hem of her dress and slipped back

downwards; climbed again, catching at the stones with bleeding hands,

creeping on sore bruised knees, and crying now to Guldsveinen, now to

her father—sweat started from every pore of her body and ran like water

into her eyes, and her heart beat as though ’twould break against her

ribs; while sobs of terror choked her throat:

“Oh father, oh father!”

Then his voice sounded somewhere above: she saw him come with great

bounds down the scree—the bright, sunlit scree; birch and aspen stood

along it and blinked from their small silvered leaves—the hillside was

so quiet, so bright, while her father came leaping, calling her by name;

and Kristin sank down and knew that now she was saved.

“Sancta Maria!” Lavrans knelt and clasped his daughter—he was pale and

strange about the mouth, so that Kristin grew yet more afraid; ’twas as

though only now in his face she read how great had been her peril.

“Child, child,—” he lifted her bleeding hands, looked at them, saw the

wreath upon her bare head, and touched it. “What is it—how came you

hither, my little Kristin—?”

“I went with Guldsveinen,” she sobbed upon his breast. “I got so afraid

seeing you all asleep, but then Guldsveinen came—and then there was

someone by the beck down yonder that beckoned me—”

“Who beckoned—was it a man?”

“No, ’twas a lady—she beckoned with a wreath of gold—I think ’twas the

dwarf-maiden, father—”

“Jesus Kristus,” said Lavrans softly, and crossed himself and the child.

He helped her up the scree till they came to a grassy slope; then he

lifted and bore her. She clung about his neck and sobbed—could not stop

for all his soothing.

Soon they met the men and Isrid. The woman smote her hands together,

when she heard what had befallen:

“Aye, ’twas the Elf-maiden sure enough—she would have lured the fair

child into the mountain, trust you me.”

“Hold your peace,” bade Lavrans sternly. “Never should we have talked of

such things here in the woods as we did—one knows not what may lie

beneath the rocks and hearken to each word.”

He drew the golden chain from out his shirt and hung it and the

relic-holding cross about Kristin’s neck and thrust them in upon her

bare body.

“But see to it, all of you,” he said, “that you watch well your mouths,

so Ragnfrid may never know the child has been in such peril.”

Then they caught the three horses, which had made off into the woods,

and went quickly down to the pasture where the other horses were

grazing. There they all mounted and rode to the Jörundgaard sæter; it

was no great way.

The sun was near setting when they came thither; the cattle were in the

pens, and Tordis and the herds were busy at the milking. Within the hut,

porridge stood cooked awaiting them, for the sæter-folk had spied them

by the beacon earlier in the day, and they were looked for.

Now, at length, was Kristin’s weeping stilled. She sat upon her father’s

knee and ate porridge and cream from out the same spoon as he.

Lavrans was to go next day to a lake farther in the mountains, where lay

some of his herdsmen with the bulls. Kristin was to have gone with him,

but now he said she must stay in the hut while he was gone—“and you must

take heed, both Tordis and Isrid, to keep the door barred and the

smokehole closed till we come back, both for Kristin’s sake, and for the

poor unchristened babe’s here in the cradle.”

Tordis was so frighted now that she dared no longer stay with the little

one up here, for she was still unchurched since her lying in—rather

would she go down at once and bide in the parish. Lavrans said this

seemed to him but wise; she could go down with them the next evening; he

thought he could get an older widow woman, serving at Jörundgaard, up

hither in her stead.

Tordis had spread sweet, fresh mountain grass under the skins on the

benches; it smelt so strong and good, and Kristin was near asleep while

her father said Our Father and Ave Maria over her.

“Aye, ’twill be a long day before I take you with me to the fells

again,” said Lavrans, patting her cheek.

Kristin woke up with a start:

“Father—mayn’t I go with you either when you go southwards at harvest,

as you promised—”

“We must see about that,” said Lavrans, and straightway Kristin fell

asleep between the sheepskins.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

2

Each summer it was Lavrans Björgulfsön’s wont to ride southward and see

to his manor in Follo. These journeys of her father were landmarks of

each year in Kristin’s life—the long weeks while he was gone, and the

joy of his homecoming with brave gifts: fine outlandish stuffs for her

bride-chest, figs, raisins and honey-bread from Oslo—and many strange

things to tell her.

But this year Kristin marked that there was something more than common

afoot toward the time of her father’s going. ’Twas put off and off; the

old men from Loptsgaard rode over at odd times and sat about the board

with her father and mother; spoke of heritage, and freehold and

redemption rights, and hindrances to working the estate from so far off,

and the bishop’s seat and the King’s palace in Oslo, which took so much

labour from the farms round about the town. They scarce ever had time to

play with her, and she was sent out to the kitchen-house to the maids.

Her mother’s brother, Trond Ivarsön of Sundbu, came over to them more

often than was his wont—but _he_ had never been used to play with

Kristin or pet her.

Little by little she came to have some inkling of what it was all about.

Ever since he was come to Sil, Lavrans had sought to gather to himself

land here in the parish, and now had Sir Andres Gudmundsön tendered him

Formo in Sil, which was Sir Andres’ heritage from his mother, in change

for Skog, which lay more fittingly for him, since he was with the King’s

bodyguard and rarely came hither to the Dale. Lavrans was loth to part

with Skog, which was his freehold heritage, and had come to his

forebears by royal gift; and yet the bargain would be for his gain in

many ways. But Lavran’s brother, Aasmund Björgulfsön, too, would gladly

have Skog—he dwelt now in Hadeland, where he had wedded an estate—and

’twas not sure that Aasmund would waive the right his kinship gave him.

But one day Lavrans told Ragnfrid that this year he would have Kristin

with him to Skog—she should see the manor where she was born, and which

was his fathers’ home, now that it was like to pass from their hands.

Ragnfrid deemed this but right, though she feared not a little to send

so young a child on such a long journey, where she herself could not be

by.

For a time after Kristin had seen the Elf-maid she was so fearful that

she kept much within doors by her mother—she was afraid even when she

saw the folk who had been with them on the fells and knew what had

befallen her, and she was glad her father had forbidden all talk of that

sight of hers.

But when some little time was gone by she began to think she would like

to speak of it. In her thoughts she told the story to someone—she knew

not whom—and, ’twas strange, the more time went by, the better it seemed

she remembered it, and the clearer and clearer grew the memory of the

fair lady.

But, strangest of all, each time she thought of the Elf-maid there came

upon her such a longing for the journey to Skog, and more and more fear

that her father would not take her with him.

At last she woke one morning in the loft-room and saw her mother and old

Gunhild sitting on the threshold looking over a heap of Lavrans’

squirrel-skins. Gunhild was a widow who went the round of the farms and

sewed fur lining into cloaks and the like. And Kristin guessed from

their talk that now it was she should have a new cloak, lined with

squirrel-skin and edged with marten. And then she knew she was to go

with her father, and she sprang up in bed and shrieked with gladness.

Her mother came over to her and stroked her cheek:

“Are you so glad then, my daughter, you are going so far from me?”

* * * * *

Ragnfrid said the same that morning they were to set out. They were up

at cock-crow; it was dark without, with thick mist between the houses,

as Kristin peeped out of the door at the weather. The mist billowed like

grey smoke round the lanterns, and out by the open house-doors. Folk ran

twixt stables and outhouses, and women came from the kitchen with

steaming porridge-pots and trenchers of meat and pork—they were to have

a plenty of good, strong food before they rode out into the morning

cold.

Indoors, saddlebags were shut and opened, and forgotten things packed

inside. Ragnfrid called to her husband’s mind all the errands he must do

for her, and spoke of kin and friends upon the way—he must greet this

one and not forget to ask for that one.

Kristin ran out and in; she said farewell many times to all in the

house, and could not hold still a moment in any place.

“Are you so glad then, Kristin, you are going from me so far and for so

long?” asked her mother. Kristin was abashed and uneasy, and wished her

mother had not said this. But she answered as best she could:

“No, dear my mother, but I am glad that I am to go with father.”

“Aye, that you are indeed,” said Ragnfrid, sighing. Then she kissed the

child and put the last touches to her dress.

At last they were in the saddle, the whole train—Kristin rode on Morvin,

who ere now had been her father’s saddle-horse—he was old, wise and

steady. Ragnfrid held up the silver stoup with the stirrup-cup to her

husband, and laid a hand upon her daughter’s knee and bade her bear in

mind all her mother had taught her.

And so they rode out of the courtyard in the grey light. The fog lay

white as milk upon the parish. But in a while it began to grow thinner

and the sunlight sifted through. And dripping with dew there shone

through the white haze hillsides, green with the aftermath, and pale

stubble fields, and yellow trees, and rowans bright with red berries.

Glimpses of blue mountain-sides seemed rising through the steamy

haze—then the mist broke and drove in wreaths across the slopes, and

they rode down the Dale in the most glorious sunshine, Kristin in front

of the troop at her father’s side.

* * * * *

They came to Hamar one dark and rainy evening, with Kristin sitting in

front on her father’s saddle-bow, for she was so weary that all things

swam before her eyes—the lake that gleamed wanly on their right, the

gloomy trees which dripped wet upon them as they rode beneath, and the

dark, leaden clusters of houses on the hueless, sodden fields by the

wayside.

She had stopped counting the days—it seemed as though she had been an

endless time on the journey. They had visited kindred and friends all

down the Dale; she had made acquaintance with children on the great

manors and had played in strange houses and barns and courtyards, and

had worn many times her red dress with the silk sleeves. They had rested

by the roadside by day when the weather was fair; Arne had gathered nuts

for her and she had slept after meals upon the saddlebags wherein were

their clothes. At one great house they had silk-covered pillows in their

beds, but one night they lay at an inn, and in one of the other beds was

a woman who lay and wept softly and bitterly each time Kristin was

awake. But every night she had slumbered safely behind her father’s

broad, warm back.

* * * * *

Kristin awoke with a start—she knew not where she was, but the wondrous

ringing and booming sound she had heard in her dream went on. She was

lying alone in a bed, and on the hearth of the room a fire was burning.

She called upon her father, and he rose from the hearth where he had

been sitting, and came to her along with a stout woman.

“Where are we?” she asked, and Lavrans laughed and said:

“We’re in Hamar now, and here is Margret, the wife of Fartein the

shoemaker—you must greet her prettily now, for you slept when we came

hither. But now Margret will help you to your clothes.”

“Is it morning then?” said Kristin. “I thought you were even now coming

to bed.—Oh! do _you_ help me,” she begged; but Lavrans said, something

sternly, that she should rather be thankful to kind Margret for helping

her.

“And see what she has for you for a gift!”

’Twas a pair of red shoes with silken latchets. The woman smiled at

Kristin’s glad face, and drew on her shift and hose up on the bed, that

she should not need to tread barefoot upon the clay floor.

“What is it makes such a noise,” asked Kristin, “like a church bell, but

many bells?”

“Aye, those are our bells,” laughed Margret. “Have you heard not of the

great minster here in the town—’tis there you are going now. There goes

the great bell! And now ’tis ringing in the cloister and in the Church

of Holy Cross as well.”

Margret spread the butter thick upon Kristin’s bread and gave her honey

in her milk, that the food she took might stand in more stead—she had

scant time to eat.

Out of doors it was still dark and the weather had fallen frosty. The

fog was biting cold. The footprints of folk and of cattle and horses

were hard as though cast in iron, so that Kristin bruised her feet in

the thin, new shoes, and once she trod through the ice on the gutter in

the middle of the street and her legs got wet and cold. Then Lavrans

took her on his back and carried her.

She strained her eyes in the gloom, but there was not much she could see

of the town—she caught a glimpse of black house-gables and trees through

the grey air. Then they came out upon a little meadow that shone with

rime, and upon the further side of the meadow she dimly saw a pale-grey

building, big as a fell. Great stone houses stood about, and at points

lights glimmered from window-holes in the walls. The bells, which had

been silent for a time, took to ringing again, and now it was with a

sound so strong that a cold shiver ran down his back.

’Twas like going into the mountain-side, thought Kristin, when they

mounted into the church forehall; it struck chill and dark in there.

They went through a door, and were met by the stale, cold smell of

incense and candles. Now Kristin was in a dark and vastly lofty place.

She could not see where it ended, neither above nor to the sides, but

lights burned upon an altar far in front. There stood a priest, and the

echoes of his voice stole strangely round the great place, like

breathings and whisperings. Her father signed the cross with holy-water

upon himself and the child, and so they went forward; though he stepped

warily, his spurs rang loudly on the stone floor. They passed by giant

pillars, and betwixt the pillars it was like looking into coal-black

holes.

Forward, nigh to the altar, the father bent his knee, and Kristin knelt

beside him. She began to be able to make things out in the gloom—gold

and silver glittered on altars in between the pillars, but upon that

before them shone tapers which stood and burned on gilt candlesticks,

while the light streamed back from the holy vessels and the big,

beautiful picture-panel behind. Kristin was brought again to think of

the mountain-folk’s hall—even so had she dreamed it must be, splendid

like this, but maybe with yet more lights. And the dwarf-maid’s face

came up before her—but then she raised her eyes and spied upon the wall

above the altar, Christ himself, great and stern, lifted high upon the

cross. Fear came upon her—he did not look mild and sorrowful as at home

in their own snug timber-brown church, where he hung heavily, with

pierced feet and hands, and bowed his blood-besprinkled head beneath the

crown of thorns.

Here, he stood upon a footboard with stiff, outstretched arms and

upright head; his gilded hair glittered; he was crowned with a crown of

gold, and his face was upturned and harsh.

Then she tried to follow the priest’s words as he read and chanted, but

his speech was too hurried and unclear. At home she was wont to

understand each word, for Sira Eirik had the clearest speech, and had

taught her what the holy words betokened in Norse, that she might the

better keep her thoughts with God while she was in church.

But she could not do that here, for every moment she grew aware of

something new in the darkness. There were windows high up in the walls,

and these began to shimmer with the day. And near by where they knelt

there was raised a wondrous scaffolding of timber, but beyond lay blocks

of light-coloured stone; and there stood mortar-troughs and tools—and

she heard folks coming tiptoeing about in there. But then again her eyes

fell upon the stern Lord Christ upon the wall, and she strove to keep

her thoughts fixed upon the service. The icy cold from the stone floor

stiffened her legs right up to the thighs, and her knees gave her pain.

At length everything began to sway about her, so weary was she.

Then her father rose; the mass was at an end. The priest came forward

and greeted her father. While they spoke, Kristin sate herself down upon

a step, for she saw the choirboy had done the like. He yawned—and so she

too fell a yawning. When he marked that she looked at him, he set his

tongue in his cheek and twisted his eyes at her. Thereupon he dug up a

pouch from under his clothing and emptied upon the flags all that was in

it—fish-hooks, lumps of lead, leather thongs and a pair of dice, and all

the while he made signs to her. Kristin wondered mightily.

But now the priest and her father looked at the children. The priest

laughed, and bade the boy be gone back to school, but Lavrans frowned

and took Kristin by the hand.

It began to grow lighter in the church now. Kristin clung sleepily to

Lavrans’ hand, while he and the priest walked beneath the pile of timber

and talked of Bishop Ingjald’s building-work.

They wandered all about the church, and in the end went out into the

forehall. Thence a stone stairway led to the western tower. Kristin

tumbled wearily up the steps. The priest opened a door to a fair chapel,

and her father said that Kristin should set herself without upon the

steps and wait while he went to shrift; and thereafter she could come in

and kiss St. Thomas’s shrine.

At that there came an old monk in an ash-brown frock from out the

chapel. He stopped a moment, smiled at the child, and drew forth some

sacks and wadmal cloths which had been stuck into a hole in the wall.

These he spread upon the landing:

“Sit you here, and you will not be so cold,” said he, and passed down

the steps upon his naked feet.

Kristin was sleeping when Canon Martein, as the priest was called, came

out and waked her with a touch. Up from the church sounded the sweetest

of song, and in the chapel candles burned upon the altar. The priest

made sign that she should kneel by her father’s side, and then he took

down a little golden shrine which stood above the communion-table. He

whispered to her that in it was a piece of St. Thomas of Canterbury’s

bloody garments, and he pointed at the saint’s figure on the shrine that

Kristin might press her lips to his feet.

The lovely tones still streamed from the church as they came down the

steps; Canon Martein said ’twas the organist practising his art and the

school-boys singing; but they had not the time to stay and listen, for

her father was hungry—he had come fasting for confession—and they were

now bound for the guest-room of the canons’ close to take their food.

The morning sun without was gilding the steep shores on the further side

of the great lake, and all the groves of yellowing leaf-trees shone like

gold-dust amid the dark-blue pinewoods. The lake ran in waves with small

dancing white caps of foam to their heads. The wind blew cold and fresh

and the many-hued leaves drifted down upon the rimy hillsides.

A band of riders came forth from between the bishop’s palace and the

house of the Brothers of Holy Cross. Lavrans stepped aside and bowed

with a hand upon his breast, while he all but swept the sward with his

hat, so Kristin could guess the nobleman in the fur cloak must be the

bishop himself, and she curtsied to the ground.

The bishop reined in his horse and gave back the greeting; he beckoned

Lavrans to him and spoke with him a while. In a short space Lavrans came

back to the priest and child and said:

“Now am I bidden to eat at the bishop’s palace—think you Canon Martein,

that one of the serving-men of the canonry could go with this little

maid of mine home to Fartein the shoemaker’s and bid my men send Halvdan

to meet me here with Guldsveinen at the hour of nones.”

The priest answered, doubtless what he asked could be done. But on this

the bare-footed monk who had spoken to Kristin on the tower stairs came

forward and saluted them:

“There is a man here in our guest-house who has an errand of his own to

the shoemaker’s; he can bear your bidding thither, Lavrans Björgulfsön,

and your daughter can go with him or bide at the cloister with me till

you yourself are for home. I shall see to it that she has her food

there.”

Lavrans thanked him but said, “’Twere shame you should be troubled with

the child, brother Edwin—”

“Brother Edwin draws to himself all the children he can lay hands upon,”

said Canon Martein and laughed. “’Tis in this wise he gets someone to

preach to—”

“Aye, before you learnéd lords here in Hamar I dare not proffer my poor

discourses,” said the monk without anger, and smiling. “All I am fit for

is to talk to children and peasants, but even so, ’tis not well, we

know, to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.”

Kristin looked up at her father beseechingly; she thought there was

nothing she would like more than to go with brother Edwin. So Lavrans

gave thanks again, and while her father and the priest went after the

bishop’s train, Kristin laid her hand in the monk’s, and they went down

towards the cloister, a cluster of wooden houses and a light-hued stone

church far down by the lake-side.

Brother Edwin gave her hand a little squeeze, and as they looked at one

another they had both to laugh. The monk was thin and tall, but very

stoop-backed; the child thought him like an old crane in the head, for

’twas little, with a small, shining, bald pate above a shaggy, white rim

of hair, and set upon a long, thin, wrinkled neck. His nose was large

too, and pointed like a beak. But ’twas something which made her light

of heart and glad, only to look up into the long, narrow, deep-lined

face. The old, sea-blue eyes were red-rimmed and the lids brown and thin

as flakes. A thousand wrinkles spread out from them; the wizened cheeks

with the reddish network of veins were scored with furrows which ran

down towards the thin-lipped mouth, but ’twas as though Brother Edwin

had grown thus wrinkled only through smiling at mankind.—Kristin thought

she had never seen anyone so blithe and gentle; it seemed he bore some

bright and privy gladness within which she would get to know of when he

began to speak.

They followed the fence of an apple-orchard where there still hung upon

the trees a few red and golden fruit. Two Preaching Brothers in black

and white gowns were raking together withered beanshaws in the garden.

The cloister was not much unlike any other farm steading, and the

guest-house whither the monk led Kristin was most like a poor peasant’s

house, though there were many bedsteads in it. In one of the beds lay an

old man, and by the hearth sat a woman swathing a little child; two

bigger children, boy and girl, stood beside her.

They murmured, both the man and the woman, that they had not been given

their breakfast yet: “None will be at the pains to bear in food to us

twice in the day, so we must e’en starve while you run about the town,

Brother Edwin!”

“Nay, be not peevish, Steinulv,” said the monk, “—Come hither and make

your greetings, Kristin—see this bonny, sweet little maid who is to stay

and eat with us to-day.”

He told how Steinulv had fallen sick on the way home from a fair, and

had got leave to lie here in the cloister guest-house, for he had a

kinswoman dwelling in the spital and she was so curst he could not

endure to be there with her.

“But I see well enough, they will soon be weary of having me here,” said

the peasant. “When you set forth again, Brother Edwin, there will be

none here that has time to tend me, and they will surely have me to the

spital again.”

“Oh! you will be well and strong long before I am done with my work in

the church,” said Brother Edwin. “Then your son will come and fetch

you—” He took up a kettle of hot water from the hearth and let Kristin

hold it while he tended Steinulv. Thereupon the old man grew somewhat

easier, and soon after there came in a monk with food and drink for

them.

Brother Edwin said grace over the meat, and set himself on the edge of

the bed by Steinulv that he might help him to take his food. Kristin

went and sat by the woman and gave the boy to eat, for he was so little

he could not well reach up to the porridge-dish, and he spilled upon

himself when he tried to dip into the beer-bowl. The woman was from

Hadeland, and she was come hither with her man and her children to see

her brother who was a monk here in the cloister. But he was away

wandering among the country parishes, and she grumbled much that they

must lie here and waste their time.

Brother Edwin spoke the woman fair: she must not say she wasted time

when she was here in Bishopshamar. Here were all the brave churches, and

the monks and canons held masses and sang the livelong day and night—and

the city was fine, finer than Oslo even, though ’twas somewhat less; but

here were gardens to almost every dwelling-place: “You should have seen

it when I came hither in the spring—’twas white with blossom over all

the town. And after, when the sweet-brier burst forth—”

“Aye, and much good is that to me now,” said the woman sourly. “And here

are more of holy places than of holiness, methinks—”

The monk laughed a little and shook his head. Then he routed amidst the

straw of his bed and brought forth a great handful of apples and pears

which he shared amongst the children. Kristin had never tasted such good

fruit. The juice ran out from the corners of her mouth every bite she

took.

But now Brother Edwin must go to the church, he said, and Kristin should

go with him. Their path went slantwise across the close, and, by a

little side wicket, they passed into the choir.

They were still building at this church as well, so that here too there

stood a tall scaffolding in the cross where nave and transepts met.

Bishop Ingjald was bettering and adorning the choir, said Brother

Edwin—the bishop had great wealth, and all his riches he used for the

adornment of the churches here in the town; he was a noble bishop and a

good man. The Preaching Friars in the Olav’s cloister were good men too,

clean-living, learned and humble; ’twas a poor cloister, but they had

made him most welcome—Brother Edwin had his home in the Minorite

cloister at Oslo, but he had leave to spend a term here in Hamar

diocese.

“But now come hither,” said he, and led Kristin forward to the foot of

the scaffolding. First he climbed up a ladder and laid some boards

straight up there, and then he came down again and helped the child up

with him.

Upon the grey-stone wall above her Kristin saw wondrous fluttering

flecks of light; red as blood and yellow as beer, blue and brown and

green. She would have turned to look behind her, but the monk whispered:

“Turn not about.” But when they stood together high upon the planking,

he turned her gently round, and Kristin saw a sight so fair she almost

lost her breath.

Right over against her on the nave’s south wall stood a picture and

shone as if it were made of naught but gleaming precious stones. The

many-hued flecks of light upon the wall came from rays which stood out

from that picture; she herself and the monk stood in the midst of the

glory; her hands were red as though dipped in wine; the monk’s visage

seemed all golden, and his dark frock threw the picture’s colours softly

back. She looked up at him questioningly, but he only nodded and smiled.

’Twas like standing far off and looking into the heavenly kingdom.

Behind a network of black streaks, she made out little by little the

Lord Christ himself in the most precious of red robes, the Virgin Mary

in raiment blue as heaven, holy men and maidens in shining yellow and

green and violet array. They stood below arches and pillars of

glimmering houses, wound about with branches and twigs of strange bright

leafage—

The monk drew her a little further out upon the staging:

“Stand here,” he whispered, “and ’twill shine right upon you from

Christ’s own robe.”

From the church beneath there rose to them a faint odour of incense and

the smell of cold stone. It was dim below, but the sun’s rays slanted in

through a row of window-bays in the nave’s south wall. Kristin began to

understand that the heavenly picture must be a sort of windowpane, for

it filled just such an opening. The others were empty or filled with

panes of horn set in wooden frames. A bird came, set itself upon a

windowsill, twittered a little and flew away, and outside the wall of

the choir they heard the clank of metal on stone. All else was still;

only the wind came in small puffs, sighed a little round about the

church walls and died away.

“Aye, aye,” said Brother Edwin and sighed. “No one here in the land can

make the like—they paint on glass, ’tis true, in Nidaros, but not like

this—But away in the lands of the south, Kristin, in the great minsters,

there they have such picture-panes, big as the doors of the church

here—”

Kristin thought of the pictures in the church at home. There was St.

Olav’s altar and St. Thomas of Canterbury’s altar with pictures on their

front panels and on the tabernacles behind—but those pictures seemed to

her dull and lustreless as she thought of them now.

They went down the ladder and up into the choir. There stood the altar

table, naked and bare, and on the stone slab were set many small boxes

and cups of metal and wood and earthenware; strange little knives and

irons, pens and brushes lay about. Brother Edwin said these were his

gear; he plied the crafts of painting pictures and carving

altar-tabernacles, and the fine panels which stood yonder by the

choir-stalls were his work. They were for the altarpieces here in the

Preaching Friars’ church.

Kristin watched how he mixed up coloured powders and stirred them into

little cups of stoneware, and he let her help him bear the things away

to a bench by the wall. While the monk went from one panel to another

and painted fine red lines in the bright hair of the holy men and women

so that one could see it curl and crinkle, Kristin kept close at his

heels and gazed and questioned, and he explained to her what it was that

he had limned.

On the one panel sat Christ in a chair of gold, and St. Nicholas and St.

Clement stood beneath a roof by his side. And at the sides was painted

St. Nicholas’ life and works. In one place he sat as a suckling child

upon his mother’s knee; he turned away from the breast she reached him,

for he was so holy that from the very cradle he would not suck more than

once on Fridays. Alongside of that was a picture of him as he laid the

money-purses before the door of the house where dwelt the three maids

who were so poor they could not find husbands. She saw how he healed the

Roman knight’s child, and saw the knight sailing in a boat with the

false chalice in his hands. He had vowed the holy bishop a chalice of

gold which had been in his house a thousand years, as guerdon for

bringing his son back to health again. But he was minded to trick St.

Nicholas and give him a false chalice instead; therefore the boy fell

into the sea with the true beaker in his hands. But St. Nicholas led the

child unhurt underneath the water and up on to the shore just as his

father stood in St. Nicholas’ church and offered the false vessel. It

all stood painted upon the panels in gold and the fairest colours.

On another panel sat the Virgin Mary with the Christ-child on her knee;

he pressed his mother’s chin with the one hand and held an apple in the

other. Beside them stood St. Sunniva and St. Christina. They bowed in

lovely wise from their waists, their faces were the fairest red and

white and they had golden hair and golden crowns.

Brother Edwin steadied himself with the left hand on the right wrist,

and painted leaves and roses on the crowns.

“The dragon is all too small, methinks,” said Kristin, looking at her

holy namesake’s picture. “It looks not as though it could swallow up the

maiden.”

“And that it could not either,” said Brother Edwin. “It was not bigger.

Dragons and all such-like that serve the devil, seem great only so long

as fear is in ourselves. But if a man seek God fervently and with all

his soul so that his longing wins into his strength, then does the

devil’s power suffer at once such great downfall that his tools become

small and powerless—dragons and evil spirits sink down and become no

bigger than sprites and cats and crows. You see that the whole mountain

St. Sunniva was in is no larger than that she can wrap it within the

skirt of her gown.”

“But were they not in the caves then,” asked Kristin, “St. Sunniva and

the Selje-men? Is not that true?”

The monk twinkled at her and smiled again:

“’Tis both true and untrue. It seemed so to the folk who found the holy

bodies. And true it is that it seemed so to Sunniva and the Selje-men,

for they were humble and thought only that the world is stronger than

all sinful mankind, and they thought not that they themselves were

stronger than the world, because they loved it not. But had they but

known it, they could have taken all the hills and slung them forth into

the sea like so many pebbles. No one, nor anything, can harm us child,

save what we fear or love.”

“But if a body doth not fear nor love God?” asked Kristin, affrighted.

The monk took her yellow hair in his hand, bent Kristin’s head back

gently and looked down into her face; his eyes were wide open and blue.

“There is no man nor woman, Kristin, who does not love and fear God, but

’tis because our hearts are divided twixt love of God and fear of the

devil and fondness for the world and the flesh, that we are unhappy in

life and death. For if a man had not any yearning after God and God’s

being, then should he thrive in hell, and ’twould be we alone who would

not understand that there he had gotten what his heart desired. For

there the fire would not burn him if he did not long for coolness, nor

would he feel the torment of the serpents’ bite, if he knew not the

yearning after peace.”

Kristin looked up in his face; she understood none of all this. Brother

Edwin went on:

“’Twas God’s loving-kindness towards us that, seeing how our hearts are

drawn asunder, He came down and dwelt among us, that He might taste in

the flesh the lures of the devil when he decoys us with power and

splendour, as well as the menace of the world when it offers us blows

and scorn and sharp nails in hands and feet. In such wise did He show us

the way and make manifest His love—”

He looked down upon the child’s grave, set face—then he laughed a little

and said with quite another voice:

“Do you know who ’twas that first knew our Lord had caused himself to be

born? ’Twas the cock; he saw the star and so he said—all the beasts

could talk Latin in those days; he cried: ‘Christus natus est!’”

He crowed these last words so like a cock that Kristin fell to laughing

heartily. And it did her good to laugh, for all the strange things

Brother Edwin had just been saying had laid a burden of awe on her

heart.

The monk laughed himself:

“Aye, and when the ox heard that, he began to low: ‘Ubi, ubi, ubi.’

“But the goat bleated and said: ‘Betlem, Betlem, Betlem!’

“And the sheep longed so to see Our Lady and her Son that she baa-ed out

at once: ‘Eamus, eamus!’

“And the new-born calf that lay in the straw, raised itself and stood

upon its feet. ‘Volo, volo, volo!’ it said.

“You never heard that before? No, I can believe it; I know that he is a

worthy priest, that Sira Eirik that you have up in your parts, and

learned; but he knows not this, I warrant; for a man does not learn it

except he journey to Paris—”

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

“God bless you, little Kristin, I have been in Paris and have travelled

round elsewhere in the world as well; and you must not believe aught

else than that I am afraid of the devil, and love and covet like any

other fool. But I hold fast to the Cross with all my might—one must

cling to it like a kitten to a lath when it has fallen in the sea—

“And you, Kristin—how would you like to offer up this bonny hair and

serve Our Lady like these brides I have figured here?”

“We have no child at home but me,” answered Kristin. “So ’tis like that

I must marry. And I trow mother has chests and lockers with my bridal

gear standing ready even now.”

“Aye, aye,” said Brother Edwin, and stroked her forehead. “’Tis thus

that folk deal with their children now. To God they give the daughters

who are lame or purblind or ugly or blemished, or they let Him have back

the children when they deem Him to have given them more than they need.

And then they wonder that all who dwell in the cloisters are not holy

men and maids—”

* * * * *

Brother Edwin took her into the sacristy and showed her the cloister

books which stood there in a book-case; there were the fairest pictures

in them. But when one of the monks came in, Brother Edwin made as though

he were but seeking an ass’s head to copy. Afterward he shook his head

at himself:

“Aye, there you see what fear does, Kristin—but they’re so fearful about

their books in the house here. Had I the true faith and love, I would

not stand here as I do and lie to Brother Aasulv—But then I could take

these old fur mittens here and hang them upon yonder sunbeam—”

She was with the monk to dinner over in the guest-house, but for the

rest she sat in the church the whole day and watched his work and

chatted with him. And first when Lavrans came to fetch her, did either

she or the monk remember the message that should have been sent to the

shoemaker.

* * * * *

Afterwards Kristin remembered these days in Hamar better than all else

that befell her on the long journey. Oslo, indeed, was a greater town

than Hamar, but now that she had seen a market town, it did not seem to

her so notable. Nor did she deem it as fair at Skog as at Jörundgaard,

though the houses were grander—but she was glad she was not to dwell

there. The manor lay upon a hillside; below was the Botnfjord, grey, and

sad with dark forest, and on the further shore and behind the houses the

forest stood with the sky right down upon the tree-tops. There were no

high, steep fells as at home, to hold the heavens high above one and to

keep the sight sheltered and in bounds so that the world might seem

neither too big nor too little.

The journey home was cold; it was nigh upon Advent; but, when they were

come a little way up the Dale, snow was lying, and so they borrowed

sleighs and drove most of the way.

With the affair of the estates it fell out so that Lavrans made Skog

over to his brother Aasmund, keeping the right of redemption for himself

and his heirs.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

3

THE spring after Kristin’s long journey, Ragnfrid bore her husband

another daughter. Both father and mother had wished indeed that it might

be a son, but they soon took comfort, and were filled with the tenderest

love for little Ulvhild. She was a most fair child, healthy, good, happy

and quiet. Ragnfrid doted so on this new baby that she went on suckling

it during the second year of its life; wherefore, on Sira Eirik’s

counsel, she left off somewhat her strict fasts and religious exercises

while she had the child at the breast. On this account and by reason of

her joy in Ulvhild, her bloom came back to her, and Lavrans thought he

had never seen his wife so happy or so fair and kindly in all the years

he had been wed.

Kristin, too, felt that great happiness had come to them with this

tender little sister. That her mother’s heavy mood made a stillness

about her home, had never come into her thought; she had deemed it was

but as it should be that her mother should correct and chide her, while

her father played and jested with her. But Ragnfrid was much gentler

with her now and gave her more freedom; petted her more too; and so

Kristin little heeded that her mother had much less time to tend her.

She loved Ulvhild as much as the others, and was joyful when they let

her carry or rock her sister, and in time there was still more sport

with the little one when she began to creep and walk and talk and

Kristin could play with her.

Thus there went by three good years for the Jörundgaard folk. They had

fortune with them in many ways, and Lavrans built and bettered round

about on the manor, for the buildings and cattlesheds were old and small

when he came thither—the Gjeslings had had the place leased out for more

lifetimes than one.

Now it fell out at Whitsuntide in the third year that Trond Ivarsön from

Sundbu, with his wife Gudrid and his three small sons, were come to

Jörundgaard to visit them. One morning the older folk were sitting

talking in the balcony of the loft-room while the children played about

in the courtyard below. In the yard Lavrans had begun a new

dwelling-house, and the children were climbing and creeping about on the

timber brought together for the building. One of the Gjesling boys had

struck at Ulvhild and made her weep; and at that Trond came down and

gave his son a buffet, and took Ulvhild up into his arms. She was the

fairest and sweetest child a man’s eyes could see, and her uncle had

much love for her, though else he cared not for children.

Just then there came a man across the court from the cattleyard,

dragging at a great, black bull; but the bull was savage and

unmanageable and broke away from the man. Trond sprang up upon the pile

of timber, driving the bigger children up before him, but he had Ulvhild

in his arms and his youngest son by the hand. Then a beam turned under

his feet and Ulvhild slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground. The

beam slipped after, rolled over on the child and lay across her back.

Lavrans was down from the balcony in the same instant; he ran up and was

in act to lift the beam when the bull rushed at him. He tried to seize

it by the horns, but was flung down and gored. But getting then a grip

of its nostrils, he half raised himself from the ground and managed to

hold the brute till Trond came to himself from his bewilderment and the

farm servants, running from the houses, cast thongs about the beast and

held it fast.

Ragnfrid was on her knees trying to lift the beam; and now Lavrans was

able to ease it so far that she could draw the child from under and into

her lap. The little one wailed piteously when they touched her, but her

mother sobbed aloud:

“She lives, thank God, she lives!—”

It was great wonder the child had not been quite crushed; but the log

had chanced to fall so that it rested with one end upon a stone in the

grass. When Lavrans stood up again, blood was running from the corners

of his mouth, and his clothes were all torn at the breast by the bull’s

horns.

Tordis came running with a skin coverlet; warily she and Ragnfrid moved

the child on to it, but it seemed as though she suffered unbearable pain

at the lightest touch. Her mother and Tordis bore her into the

winter-room.

Kristin stood upon the timber pile white and stock still, while the

little boys clung round her weeping. All the house and farm folk were

now huddled together in the courtyard, the women weeping and wailing.

Lavrans bade them saddle Guldsveinen and another horse as well; but when

Arne came with the horses, Lavrans fell to the ground when he tried to

climb to the saddle. So he bade Arne ride for the priest, while Halvdan

went southward for a leech-woman who dwelt by the meeting of the rivers.

Kristin saw that her father was ashy white in the face, and that he had

bled till his light-blue garments were covered all over with red-brown

stains. All at once he stood upright, snatched an axe from one of the

men and went forward where some of the folk stood holding on to the

bull. He smote the beast between the horns with the back of the axe—it

dropped forward on its knees; but Lavrans ceased not striking till its

blood and brains were scattered all about. Then a fit of coughing took

him and he sank backwards on the ground. Trond and another man came to

him and bore him within the house.

At that, Kristin thought her father was surely dead; she screamed loudly

and ran after, calling to him as if her heart were breaking.

In the winter-room Ulvhild had been laid on the great bed—all the

pillows were thrown out upon the floor, so that the child lay flat.

’Twas as though already she lay stretched on the dead-straw. But she

wailed loudly and without cease, and her mother lay bent over her,

soothing and patting the child, wild with grief that she could do naught

to help her.

Lavrans lay upon the other bed: he rose and staggered across the floor

that he might comfort his wife. At that she started up and shrieked:

“Touch me not, touch me not! Jesus, Jesus,—’twere liker you should

strike me dead—never will it end, the ill-fortune I bring upon you—”

“You?—Dear my wife, ’tis not you that have brought this on us,” said

Lavrans, and laid a hand upon her shoulder. She shuddered at that, and

her light-grey eyes shone in her lean, sallow face.

“Doubtless she means that ’twas my doing,” said Trond Ivarsön roughly.

His sister looked at him with hate in her eyes, and answered:

“Trond knows what I mean.”

Kristin ran forward to her parents, but both thrust her away from them,

and Tordis, coming in with a kettle of hot water, took her gently by the

shoulder and said, “Go—go over to our house, Kristin; you are in the way

here.”

Tordis was for seeing to Lavrans’ hurt—he had set himself down on the

step before the bed—but he said there was little amiss with him:

“But is there naught you can do to ease Ulvhild’s pain a little—God help

us! her crying would move the very stones in the mountain-side!”

“Nay; we dare not touch her ere the priest or Ingegjerd the leech-wife

comes,” said Tordis.

Arne came just then with word that Sira Eirik was not at home. Ragnfrid

stood a while wringing her hands. Then she said:

“Send to Lady Aashild of Haugen! Naught matters now, if only Ulvhild may

be saved—”

No one gave heed to Kristin. She crept on to the bench behind the bed’s

head, crouched down and laid her head upon her knees.

It seemed to her now as if stony hands were pressing on her heart. Lady

Aashild was to be fetched! Her mother would not have them send for Lady

Aashild, even when she herself was near death’s door at Ulvhild’s birth,

nor yet when Kristin was so sick of the fever. She was a witch-wife,

folk said—the bishop of Oslo and the chapter had held session on her;

and she must have been put to death or even burned, had it not been that

she was of such high birth and had been like a sister to Queen

Ingebjörg—but folk said she had given her first husband poison, and him

she now had, Sir Björn, she had drawn to her by witchcraft; he was young

enough to be her son. She had children too, but they came never to see

their mother, and these two highborn folk, Björn and Aashild, lived upon

a petty farm in Dovre, and had lost all their wealth. None of the great

folk in the Dale would have to do with them, but, privily, folk sought

her counsel—nay, poor folk went openly to her with their troubles and

hurts; they said she was kind, but they feared her too.

Kristin thought her mother, who else was wont to pray so much, should

rather have called on God and the Virgin now. She tried to pray

herself—to St. Olav most of all, for she knew he was so good and helped

so many who suffered from sickness and wounds or broken bones. But she

could not keep her thoughts together.

Her father and mother were alone in the room now. Lavrans had laid

himself upon his bed again, and Ragnfrid sat bent over the sick child,

passing, from time to time, a damp cloth over her forehead and hands,

and wetting her lips with wine.

A long time went by. Tordis looked in between whiles, and would fain

have helped, but Ragnfrid sent her out each time. Kristin wept silently

and prayed to herself, but all the while she thought of the witch-wife

and waited eagerly to see her come in.

Suddenly Ragnfrid asked in the silence:

“Are you sleeping, Lavrans?”

“No,” answered her husband. “I am listening to Ulvhild. God will surely

help His innocent lamb, wife—we dare not doubt it. But ’tis weary lying

here waiting—”

“God,” said Ragnfrid, hopelessly, “hates me for my sins. ’Tis well with

my children, where they are, I doubt not that, and now ’tis like

Ulvhild’s hour has come, too—but me he has cast off, for my heart is a

viper’s nest, full of sin and sorrow—”

Then someone lifted the latch—Sira Eirik stepped in, straightened his

huge frame where he stood and said in his clear, deep voice: “God help

all in this house!”

The priest put the box with his medicines on the step before the bed and

went to the open hearth and poured warm water over his hands. Then he

took a cross from his bosom, struck out with it to all four corners of

the room and mumbled something in Latin. Thereupon he opened the

smoke-vent so that the light might stream into the room, and went and

looked at Ulvhild.

Kristin grew afraid he might find her and send her out—not often did

Sira Eirik’s eyes let much escape them. But the priest did not look

round. He took a flask from the box, poured somewhat upon a wad of

finely carded wool and laid it over Ulvhild’s mouth and nose.

“Now she will soon suffer less,” said the priest. He went to Lavrans and

tended his wounds, while they told him how the mishap had come to pass.

Lavrans had two ribs broken and had a wound in the lungs; but the priest

thought that for him there was no great fear.

“And Ulvhild?” asked the father fearfully.

“I will tell you when I have looked at her more nearly,” answered the

priest; “but you must lie in the loft-room, so that there may be more

quiet and room here for those who must tend her.” He laid Lavrans’ arm

about his own shoulder, took firm hold under the man, and bore him out.

Kristin would fain have gone with her father now, but she dared not show

herself.

When Sira Eirik came back, he did not speak to Ragnfrid, but first cut

the clothes off Ulvhild, who now moaned less and seemed half asleep.

Then carefully he felt with his hands over the child’s body and limbs.

“Is it so ill with my child, Eirik, that you know not how to save her,

since you say naught,” asked Ragnfrid under her breath.

The priest answered low:

“It seems as though her back were badly hurt, Ragnfrid; I see no better

way than to leave all in God’s hands and St. Olav’s—much there is not

that I can do.”

“Then must we pray,” cried the mother passionately: “—you know well that

Lavrans and I will give you all you ask, and spare nothing if so be your

prayers can win God to grant that Ulvhild may live.”

“’Twould seem to me a miracle,” said the priest, “were she to live and

have her health again.”

“And is’t not of miracles that you preach late and early—believe you not

that a miracle can happen with my child,” she said, as wildly as before.

“’Tis true,” replied the priest, “that miracles happen; but God does not

grant the prayers of all—we know not His secret counsel. And think you

not, it would be worst of all should this fair little maid grow up

marred or crippled?”

Ragnfrid shook her head. She wailed softly:

“I have lost so many, priest: I cannot lose her too!”

“I will do all that I may,” answered the priest, “and pray with all my

power. But you must strive, Ragnfrid, to bear the cross God lays upon

you.”

The mother moaned low:

“None of my children have I loved like this little one—if she too be

taken from me, full sure I am my heart will break.”

“God help you, Ragnfrid Ivarsdatter,” said Sira Eirik, and shook his

head. “In all your praying and fasting, you have thought only to force

your will upon God. Can you wonder that it has helped but little?”

Ragnfrid looked defiantly at the priest, and spoke:

“I have sent for the Lady Aashild even now.”

“Aye, you know her; I know her not,” replied the priest.

“I cannot live without Ulvhild,” said Ragnfrid as before. “If so be God

will not help her, I will seek counsel of Lady Aashild, or e’en give

myself to the devil if he will help!”

The priest looked as though he would answer sharply, but checked himself

again. He bent and felt the limbs of the little sick girl once more:

“Her hands and feet are cold,” he said. “We must lay jars of hot water

about her—and then you must touch her no more till Lady Aashild comes.”

Kristin let herself sink back noiselessly on the bench and lay as if

asleep. Her heart beat hard with fear—she had understood but little of

the talk between Sira Eirik and her mother, but it had frightened her

terribly, and the child knew well that it had not been for her ears.

Her mother rose up to go for the hot water jars; and suddenly she burst

out sobbing: “But yet pray for us, Sira Eirik.”

Soon after she came back with Tordis. Then the priest and the women

busied themselves with Ulvhild, and soon Kristin was found and sent

away.

The light dazzled the child as she stood without in the courtyard. She

had thought that most of the day must have gone by while she sat in the

dark winter-room, and yet the houses stood there light-grey, and the

grass was shining like silk in the white midday sunshine. The river

gleamed behind the dun and golden trellis-work of the alder-brakes—it

filled the air with its gladsome rushing sound, for here by Jörundgaard

it ran swiftly over a flat bed strewn with boulders. The mountain-walls

rose into the thin blue haze, and the becks sprang down their sides

through the melting snows. The sweet, strong springtide out of doors

brought tears to her eyes, for sorrow at the helplessness she felt all

about her.

There was no one in the courtyard, but she heard voices in the

housecarls’ cottage. Fresh earth had been strewn over the spot where her

father had killed the bull. She knew not what to do with herself—so she

crept behind the wall of the new house—two log-courses had already been

laid. Inside lay Ulvhild’s playthings and her own; she put them all

together and laid them in a hole between the lowest log and the

foundation wall. Of late Ulvhild had wanted all her toys; this had vexed

her sometimes. Now she thought, if her sister got well, she would give

her all she had. And this thought comforted her a little.

She thought of the monk in Hamar—_he_ was sure that miracles could

happen for every one. But Sira Eirik was not so sure about it, nor her

parents either—and she was used to think as they did. A heavy weight

fell upon her as it came to her for the first time that folk could think

so unlike about so many things—not only bad, ungodly men and good men,

but such men as Brother Edwin and Sira Eirik,—even her mother and her

father: she felt all at once that they too thought not alike about many

things—

Tordis found her there in the corner, asleep, late in the day, and took

her to her own house; the child had eaten nothing since the morning.

Tordis watched with Ragnfrid over Ulvhild through the night, and Kristin

lay in Tordis’ bed with Jon, Tordis’ husband, and Eivind and Orm, their

little boys. The smell of their bodies, the man’s snoring and the

children’s even breathing made Kristin weep silently. It was no longer

ago than last evening that she had lain down, as each night of her life

before, by her own father and mother and little Ulvhild—it was as though

a nest had been riven asunder and scattered and she herself lay cast out

from the shelter of the wings which had always kept her warm. At last

she cried herself to sleep, alone and unhappy among these strange folk.

* * * * *

Next morning as soon as she was up, she heard that her mother’s brother

and all his party had left the place—in anger; Trond had called his

sister a foolish, crazy woman, and his brother-in-law a soft simpleton

who had never known how to rule his wife. Kristin grew hot with wrath,

but she was ashamed too—she understood well enough that a most unseemly

thing had befallen in that her mother had driven her nearest kin from

the house. And for the first time she dimly felt that there was

something about her mother that was not as it should be—that she was not

the same as other women.

While she stood brooding on this, a serving-maid came and said she was

to go up to the loft-room to her father.

But when she was come into the room Kristin forgot to look at him, for

right opposite the open door, with the light full upon her face, sat a

little woman who she guessed must be the witch-wife. And yet Kristin had

never thought that she would look like this.

She seemed small as a child and slightly made, as she sat in the great

high-backed arm-chair which had been brought up thither. A table had

been set before her too, covered with Ragnfrid’s finest, fringed, linen

tablecloth. Bacon and fowl were set out upon the silver platter; there

was wine in a mazer bowl, and she had Lavrans’ own silver goblet to

drink from. She had finished eating and was busy drying her small and

slender hands on one of Ragnfrid’s best hand-towels. Ragnfrid herself

stood in front of her and held for her a brass basin with water.

Lady Aashild let the hand-towel sink into her lap; she smiled to the

child, and said in a clear and lovely voice:

“Come hither to me, child!” Then to the mother: “Fair children are these

you have, Ragnfrid.”

Her face was greatly wrinkled, but as clear white and pink as a child’s,

and it looked as though her skin must be just as soft and fine to the

touch. Her mouth was as red and fresh as a young woman’s, and her large,

hazel eyes shone bright. A fine, white, linen headdress lay close about

her face and was fastened under her chin with a golden clasp; over it

she had a veil of soft, dark-blue wool; it fell over her shoulders and

far down upon her dark, well-fitting dress. She was upright as a wand,

and Kristin felt more than thought that she had never seen a woman so

fair and so mannerly as was this old witch-wife, with whom the great

folk of the valley would have naught to do.

Lady Aashild held Kristin’s hand in her old, soft one; and spoke to her

with kindly jesting; but Kristin could not answer a word. Then said Lady

Aashild with a little laugh:

“Is she afraid of me, think you?”

“Nay, nay,” Kristin all but shouted. And then Lady Aashild laughed still

more, and said to the mother:

“She has wise eyes, this daughter of yours, and good strong hands, nor

is she used to be idle, I can see. You will need one by-and-by to help

you tend Ulvhild, when I am gone. ’Twere well, therefore, you let

Kristin be by me and help while yet I am here—she is old enough for

that; eleven years is she not?”

Thereupon the Lady Aashild went out, and Kristin would have followed

her, but Lavrans called to her from his bed. He lay flat upon his back

with the pillows stuffed beneath his updrawn knees; Lady Aashild had

bidden that he should lie so, that the hurt in his breast might the

sooner heal.

“Now surely you will soon be well, sir father, will you not?” asked

Kristin.

Lavrans looked up at her—the child had never said “sir” to him before.

Then he said gravely:

“For me there is naught to fear;—’tis worse with your sister.”

“Aye,” said Kristin, and sighed.

She stood yet a little while by his bed. Her father said no more, and

Kristin found naught to say. And when Lavrans after a while said she

should go down to her mother and Lady Aashild, Kristin hastened out and

ran across the courtyard down into the winter-room.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

4

Lady Aashild stayed on at Jörundgaard most of the summer. Thus it fell

out that folk came thither seeking her counsel.—Kristin heard Sira Eirik

fling at this now and then, and it came into her mind that her father

and mother, too, were not pleased. But she put all thoughts of such

things from her, nor did she ponder over what she thought of Lady

Aashild, but was with her ever, and tired not of listening to the lady

and of watching her.

Ulvhild still lay stretched upon her back in the great bed. Her little

face was white to the lips, and dark rings had come about her eyes. Her

lovely yellow hair had a stale smell, it had been unwashed for so long,

and it had grown dark and lost all gloss and curl, so that it looked

like old, burnt-up hay. She looked tired and suffering and patient; but

she smiled faintly and wanly at her sister when Kristin sat down on the

bed-side by her and chattered and showed the child all the fine gifts

there were for her from her father and mother and from their friends and

kinsfolk from far around. There were dolls and wooden birds and beasts,

and a little draught-board, trinkets and velvet caps and coloured

ribbons; Kristin kept them all together in a box for her—and Ulvhild

looked at them all with her grave eyes, and, sighing, dropped the

treasures from her weary hands.

But when Lady Aashild came nigh, Ulvhild’s face lit up with gladness.

Eagerly she drank the quenching and sleepy drinks Lady Aashild brewed

for her; when Lady Aashild tended her hurts she made no plaint, and lay

happy listening when the Lady played on Lavrans’ harp and sang—she had

great store of ballads strange to the folk of the Dale.

Often she sang to Kristin when Ulvhild lay asleep. And then at times she

would tell of her youth, when she dwelt in the South at the courts of

King Magnus and King Eirik and their Queens.

Once as they sat thus and Lady Aashild told of these things, there

slipped from Kristin’s lips a thought she had often had in mind:

“Methinks it is strange you can be so glad at all times, you who have

been used to—” she broke off and grew red.

Lady Aashild looked down at the child with a smile:

“Mean you because I am parted from all that now?” She laughed quietly,

and said: “I have had my happy time, Kristin, and I am not so foolish as

to murmur, if now, since I have drunk up my wine and beer, I have to put

up with skimmed milk and sour. Good days may last long if one lives

wisely and deals warily with what one has; all wise folk know that, and

’tis therefore, I trow, that wise folk must rest content with good

days—for the best days of all cost very dear. In this world they call

him a fool who wastes his heritage that he may make merry in the days of

his youth. As to that each man may deem as he lists. But that man only

do I call a fool and a very dolt who rues his bargain after it is made;

and twice a simpleton and a fool of fools is he who thinks to see more

of his boon-companions after his heritage is gone—”

“—Is there aught amiss with Ulvhild?” she called gently across to

Ragnfrid, who had made a sharp movement where she sat by the child’s

bed.

“Nay, she sleeps well,” said the child’s mother and came over to Lady

Aashild and Kristin at the hearth. Her hands on the pole of the

smoke-vent, she stood and looked down into Lady Aashild’s face.

“Kristin doth not understand such things,” she said.

“No,” answered the Lady. “But she learned her prayers, too, I doubt not,

before she understood them. The times when we need prayers or counsel,

we are little like to be in a mood to learn, nor yet to understand.”

Ragnfrid drew her dark eyebrows together thoughtfully. At such times her

bright, deep-set eyes looked like barns below a dark-wooded hillside, so

Kristin had often thought when she was little—or so she had heard others

say. Lady Aashild looked at Ragnfrid with her little half-smile, and the

mother seated herself upon the edge of the hearth, and taking a twig,

stuck it into the embers.

“But he who has wasted his heritage upon the sorriest goods—and

thereafter beholds a treasure he would gladly give his life to own—think

you not he must rue bitterly his own folly?”

“No doing without some rueing, Ragnfrid,” said Lady Aashild. “And he who

is willing to give his life, should make the venture and see what he can

win—”

Ragnfrid plucked the burning twig from the fire, blew out the flame and

bent her hand about the glowing end, so that it shone out blood-red from

between her fingers.

“Oh! these are words, words, and only words, Lady Aashild.”

“Well,” said the other, “truly, Ragnfrid, there is not much that’s worth

buying so dear as with one’s life.”

“Nay, but there is,” said Ragnfrid passionately, and she whispered so it

could scarce be heard: “My husband.”

“Ragnfrid,” said Lady Aashild in a low voice: “So hath many a maid

thought when she strove to bind a man to her and gave her maidenhood to

do it. But have you not read of men and maids who gave to God all they

owned, went into a cloister or naked into the wilds, and repented after.

Aye, they are called fools in the godly books. And ’twould sure be

sinful to think God cheated _them_ over their bargain.”

Ragnfrid sat quite still a while. Then Lady Aashild said:

“You must come now, Kristin; ’tis time we went and gathered dew for

Ulvhild’s morning wash.”

* * * * *

Outside the courtyard lay all black and white in the moonlight. Ragnfrid

went with them, through the farm-yard, down to the gate of the cabbage

garden. Kristin saw her mother’s thin, dark figure leaning there, while

she was shaking the dew from the big, icy-cold cabbage leaves, and the

folds of the lady’s-mantles, into her father’s silver goblet.

Lady Aashild walked silent at Kristin’s side. She was there only to

watch over her, for it was not well to let a child go out alone on such

a night. But the dew had more virtue if gathered by an innocent maid.

When they came back to the gate Ragnfrid was gone. Kristin was shaking

with the cold as she gave the icy silver cup into Lady Aashild’s hands.

She ran in her wet shoes over toward the loft-room, where she slept now

with her father. She had her foot upon the first step when Ragnfrid

stepped out of the shadow of the balcony. In her hands she bore a

steaming bowl.

“Here, I have warmed some beer for you, daughter,” said the mother.

Kristin thanked her mother gladly, and put the bowl to her lips. Then

Ragnfrid asked:

“Kristin—the prayers and all the other things that Lady Aashild teaches

you—you are sure there is naught sinful or ungodly in them?”

“That I can never believe,” answered the child. “There is Jesus’ name

and the Virgin Mary’s, and the names of the Saints in them all—”

“What is it she teaches you,” asked her mother again.

“Oh!—about herbs—and charms to stop running blood and cure warts and

sore eyes—and moth in clothes and mice in the store-room. And what herbs

one should pluck in sunshine, and which have virtue in the rain—But the

prayers I must not tell to anyone, for then they lose their power,” said

she quickly.

Her mother took the empty bowl and put it upon the step. Then suddenly

she threw her arms around her daughter, and pressed her tightly to her

and kissed her.—Kristin felt that her mother’s cheeks were wet and hot:

“May God and Our Lady guard and shield you from all evil—we have naught

else but you, your father and I, that has not been touched by our

ill-fortune. Darling, darling—never forget that you are your father’s

dearest joy—”

Ragnfrid went back to the winter-room, undressed and crept into bed

beside Ulvhild. She put an arm about the child and laid her cheek close

to the little one’s so that she felt the warmth of Ulvhild’s body and

smelt the keen odour of her damp hair. Ulvhild slept heavily and

soundly, as she ever did after Lady Aashild’s evening draught. The

lady’s bedstraw, spread beneath the bedding, gave out a drowsy scent.

None the less did Ragnfrid lie long sleepless, gazing at the little spot

of light in the roof where the moon shone upon the smoke-hole’s pane of

horn.

Over in the other bed lay Lady Aashild, but Ragnfrid never knew whether

she slept or waked. The Lady never spoke of their having known each

other in former days—this frightened Ragnfrid. And it seemed to her she

had never known such bitter sorrow and such haunting dread as now—even

though she knew that Lavrans would have his full health again—and that

Ulvhild would live.

* * * * *

It seemed as though Lady Aashild took pleasure in talking to Kristin,

and with each day that passed the maid became better friends with her.

One day, when they had gone to gather herbs, they sat together high up

the hillside on a little green, close under the tree. They could look

down into the farm-place at Formo and see Arne Gyrdson’s red jerkin: he

had ridden down the valley with them and was to look after their horses

while they were up the hillside seeking herbs.

As they sat, Kristin told Lady Aashild of her meeting with the

dwarf-maiden. She had not thought of it for many years, but now it rose

before her. And while she spoke, the thought came to her strangely that

there was some likeness betwixt Lady Aashild and the dwarf-lady—though

she knew well all the time they were not really like. But when she had

told all, Lady Aashild sat still a while and looked out down the Dale;

at length she said:

“You were wise to fly, since you were only a child then. But have you

never heard of folk who took the gold the dwarfs offered, and after

bound the troll in stone?”

“I have heard such tales,” said Kristin, “but I would never dare to do

it. And methinks it is not a fair deed.”

“’Tis well when one dares not do what one doth not think a fair deed,”

said Lady Aashild, laughing a little. “But it is not so well when one

thinks a thing to be no fair deed because one dares not do it.—You have

grown much this summer,” the Lady said of a sudden. “Do you know

yourself, I wonder, that you are like to be fair?”

“Aye,” said Kristin. “They say I am like my father.”

Lady Aashild laughed quietly.

“Aye ’twould be best for you if you took after Lavrans both in mind and

body, too. Yet ’twould be pity were they to wed you up here in the Dale.

Plainness and country ways let no man scorn, but they think, themselves,

these big folk up here, they are so fine that their like is not to be

found in Norway’s land. They wonder much, belike, that I can live and

thrive though they bar their doors against me. But they are lazy and

proud and will not learn new ways—and they put the blame on the old

strife with the King in Sverre’s days. ’Tis all lies; your mother’s

forefather made friends with King Sverre and received gifts from him;

but were your mother’s brother to become one of our King’s men and wait

upon his Court, he would have to trim himself up both without and

within, and that Trond would not be at pains to do. But you,

Kristin,—you should be wedded to a man bred in knightly ways and

_courteisie_—”

Kristin sat looking down into the Formo yard, at Arne’s red back. She

scarce knew it herself, but when Lady Aashild talked of the world she

had once moved in, Kristin ever thought of the knights and earls in

Arne’s likeness. Before, when she was little, she had always seen them

in her father’s shape.

“My sister’s son, Erlend Nikulaussön of Husaby, _he_ might have been a

fitting bridegroom for you—he has grown comely, has the boy. My sister

Magnhild looked in on me last year as she passed through the Dale, and

he with her. Aye ’tis not like you could get him, but I had gladly

spread the coverlid over you two in the bridal bed—he is as dark-haired

as you are fair, and he has goodly eyes.—But if I know my brother-in-law

aright, he has bethought him already for sure of a better match for

Erlend than you.”

“Am I not a good match then?” asked Kristin wondering. She had never

thought of being hurt by anything Lady Aashild said, but she felt

humbled and sad that the Lady should be in some way better than her own

folks.

“Aye, you are a good match,” said the other. “Yet you could scarce look

to come into my kindred. Your forefather in this land was an outlaw and

a stranger, and the Gjeslings have sat and grown moulded on their farms

so long that soon they’ll be forgotten outside the Dale. But I and my

sister had for husbands the nephews of Queen Margret Skulesdatter.”

Kristin could not even pluck up heart to say it was not her forefather,

but his brother, who had come to the land an outlaw. She sat and gazed

at the dark hillsides across the dale, and she thought of the day many

years gone by, when she had been up on the upland wastes and seen how

many fells there were twixt her own valley and the outer world. Then

Lady Aashild said they must go home now, and bade her call on Arne. So

Kristin put her hands to her mouth, and hallooed and waved her kerchief,

till she saw the red spot in the farm-place move and wave back.

* * * * *

Not long after this Lady Aashild went home, but through the autumn and

the first part of the winter, she came often to Jörundgaard to spend

some days with Ulvhild. The child was taken out of bed in the daytime

now, and they tried to get her to stand, but her legs gave way beneath

her when she put her feet to the ground. She was fretful, white and

weary, and the laced jacket of horsehide and thin withes, which Lady

Aashild had made for her, plagued her sorely, so that she would rather

lie still in her mother’s lap. Ragnfrid had her sick daughter for ever

in her arms, so that Tordis had the whole care of the house now, and at

her mother’s bidding, Kristin went with Tordis to learn and to help.

Kristin longed for Lady Aashild between whiles, and sometimes the Lady

would chat much with her, but at other times the child would wait in

vain for a word beyond the other’s greeting when she came and when she

went—Lady Aashild sat and talked with the grown-up folk only. That was

always the way when she had her husband with her, for it happened now at

times that Björn Gunnarsön came with his wife. Lavrans had ridden to

Haugen one day in the autumn to take the Lady her leech’s fee—it was the

very best silver tankard they had in the house, with a plate to match.

He had slept there the night, and ever since he praised the farm

mightily; it was fair and well ordered, and not so small as folks would

have it, he said. And within the house all spoke of well-being and the

customs of the house were seemly, following the ways of great folks’

houses in the South. What he thought of Björn, Lavrans said not, but he

welcomed him fairly at all times when he came with his wife to

Jörundgaard. But the Lady Aashild, Lavrans liked exceeding well, and he

said he deemed most of the tales that had been told of her were lies. He

said, too, ’twas most sure that twenty years since she could have had

small need of witchcraft to bind a man to her—she was near the sixties

now, yet she still looked young and had a most fair and winning bearing.

Kristin saw well that her mother liked all this but little. Of Lady

Aashild, it is true, Ragnfrid said naught, but once she likened Björn to

the yellow, flattened grass one sometimes finds growing under big

stones, and Kristin thought this fitted him well. Björn looked strangely

faded; he was somewhat fat, pale and sluggish, and a little bald,

although he was not much older than Lavrans. Yet one saw he had once

been a very comely man. Kristin never came to speech with him—he spoke

little, and was wont to sit in the same place where he first settled

down, from the time he stepped into the room till he went to bed. He

drank hugely, but one marked it but little on him; he ate scarce any

food, but gazed now and again at one or another in the room with a

fixed, brooding look in his strange, pale eyes.

They had seen naught of their kinsfolk at Sundbu since the mishap

befell, though Lavrans had been over at Vaage more times than one. But

Sira Eirik came to Jörundgaard as before; and there he often met Lady

Aashild, and they were good friends. Folk thought this was good of the

priest, for he was himself a very skilful leech. That, too, was

doubtless one cause why the folk of the great estates had not sought

Lady Aashild’s counsel, at least not openly, as they held the priest to

be skilful enough, nor was it easy for them to know how they should bear

themselves toward two folks who had been cast off, in a manner, by their

own kin and fellows. Sira Eirik said himself, they did not graze on one

another’s meadows; and as to her witchcraft, he was not her parish

priest—it might well be the lady knew more than was good for her soul’s

health—yet one must not forget ignorant folk were all too ready to talk

of witchcraft as soon as a woman was a bit wiser than her neighbours.

Lady Aashild, on her side, praised the priest much and was diligent at

church if it chanced she was at Jörundgaard on a holy day.

* * * * *

Yule-tide was sorrowful that year; Ulvhild could not yet put her feet to

the ground, and they neither heard nor saw aught of the Sundbu folk.

Kristin knew that it was talked of in the parish and that her father

took it to heart. But her mother seemed to care naught; and Kristin

thought this wrong of her.

But one evening, toward the end of Yule-tide, came Sira Sigurd, Trond

Gjesling’s house-priest, driving in a great sledge, and his chief errand

was to bid them all to a feast at Sundbu.

Sira Sigurd was ill-liked in the parishes about, for it was he who

really managed Trond’s estates—or at the least, he got the blame for

Trond’s hard and unjust dealings, and there was no denying Trond was

something of a plague to his tenants. His priest was most learned in

writing and reckoning, versed in the law, and a skilful leech—if not

quite so skilful as he deemed himself. But from his ways, no one would

have thought him over-wise; he often said foolish things. Ragnfrid and

Lavrans had never liked him, but the Sundbu folk, as was but reason, set

great store by their priest, and both they and he felt very bitter that

he had not been called in to Ulvhild.

Now by ill-fortune it fell out that when Sira Sigurd came to

Jörundgaard, Lady Aashild and Sir Björn were there already, besides Sira

Eirik, Gyrd and Inga of Finsbrekken, Arne’s parents, old Jon from

Loptsgaard, and a Preaching Friar from Hamar, Brother Aasgaut.

While Ragnfrid had the tables spread anew with Christmas fare, and

Lavrans looked into the letters brought by Sira Sigurd, the priest

wished to look at Ulvhild. She was already abed for the night and

sleeping, but Sira Sigurd woke her, felt her back and limbs, and asked

her many questions, at first gently enough, but then roughly and

impatiently as the child grew frightened—Sigurd was a little man, all

but a dwarf, with a great, flaming, red face. As he made to lift her out

upon the floor to test her feet, she began screaming loudly. On this

Lady Aashild rose, went to the bed, and covered Ulvhild with the skins,

saying the child was so sleepy she could not have stood upon the floor

even had her legs been strong.

The priest began then to speak loudly; he too was reckoned to know

somewhat of leech-craft. But Lady Aashild took him by the hand, brought

him forward to the high-seat and fell to telling him what she had done

for Ulvhild, and asking his judgment on each and every matter. On this

he grew somewhat milder of mood, and ate and drank of Ragnfrid’s good

cheer.

But as the beer and wine began to mount to his head, Sira Sigurd’s

humour changed again and he grew quarrelsome and hotheaded—he knew well

enough there was no one in the room who liked him. First he turned on

Gyrd—he was the bishop of Hamar’s bailiff in Vaage and Sil, and there

had been many quarrels twixt the bishop’s see and Trond Ivarsön. Gyrd

said not much, but Inga was a fiery woman, and then Brother Aasgaut

joined in and spoke:

“You should not forget, Sira Sigurd, our reverend Father Ingjald is your

overlord, too—we know enough of you in Hamar. You wallow in all good

things at Sundbu, never thinking that you are vowed to other work than

to do Trond eyeservice, helping him in all wrong and injustice, to the

peril of his soul and the minishing of the rights of Holy Church. Have

you never heard how it fares with the false and unruly priests who hatch

out devices against their spiritual fathers and those in authority? Wot

you not of that time when the angels took St. Thomas of Canterbury to

the door of Hell and let him peep in? He wondered much that he saw none

of the priests who had set themselves up against him, as you have set

yourself against your bishop. He was about to praise God’s mercy, for

the holy man begrudged not salvation to all sinners—but at that the

angel bade the devil lift his tail a little, and out there came, with a

great bang and a foul smell of sulphur, all the priests and learned men

who had wrought against the good of the church. Thus did he come to know

whither _they_ had gone.”

“_There_ you lie, monk,” said the priest. “I have heard that tale too;

only they were not priests, but beggar-monks, who came from the rear of

the devil like wasps out of a wasp-nest.”

Old Jon laughed louder than all the serving-folk, and roared:

“There were both sorts, I’ll be bound—”

“Then the devil must have a fine broad tail,” said Björn Gunnarsön, and

Lady Aashild smiled and said:

“Aye, have you not heard that all evil drags a long tail behind it?”

“Be still, Lady Aashild,” cried Sira Sigurd, “do not you talk of the

long tail evil drags after it. You sit here as though _you_ were

mistress in the house, and not Ragnfrid. But ’tis strange you could not

help her child—have you no more of that strong water you dealt in once,

which could make whole the sheep already boiling in the pot, and turn

women to maids in the bridal bed? Think you I know not of the wedding in

this very parish where you made a bath for the bride that was no maid—”

Sira Eirik sprang up, gripped the other priest by the shoulder and

thigh, and flung him right over the table, so that the jugs and tankards

were overturned and food and drink ran upon the cloths and floor, while

Sira Sigurd lay his length upon the ground with torn garments. Eirik

leaped over the board, and would have struck him again, roaring above

the tumult:

“Hold your filthy mouth, priest of Hell that you are—” Lavrans strove to

part them, but Ragnfrid stood, white as death, by the board, and wrung

her hands. Then Lady Aashild ran and helped Sira Sigurd to his feet, and

wiped the blood from his face. She poured a beaker of mead down his

throat, saying:

“You must not be so strict, Sira Eirik, that you cannot bear to listen

to jesting so far on in a drinking bout. Seat yourselves now and you

shall hear of that wedding. ’Twas not here in the Dale at all, nor had I

the good fortune to be the one that knew of that water—could I have

brewed it I trow we would not be sitting now on a hill-croft in the

wilds. I might have been a rich woman and had lands in the great, rich

parishes—nigh to town and cloisters and bishop and chapter,” and she

smiled at the three churchmen. “But ’tis said sure enough, that the art

was known in the olden days.”

And the Lady told a merry tale of a misadventure that befell in King

Inga’s time when the magic wash was used by mistake by the wrong woman

and of what followed thereon.

Great was the laughter in the room, and both Gyrd and Jon shouted for

more such tales from Lady Aashild. But the Lady said no: “Here sit two

priests and Brother Aasgaut and young lads and serving maids; ’tis best

we cease before the talk grows unseemly and gross; let us bear in mind

’tis a holy day.”

The men made an outcry, but the women held with Lady Aashild. No one saw

that Ragnfrid had left the room. Soon after it was time that Kristin,

who sat lowest on the women’s bench among the serving maids, should go

to bed—she was sleeping in Tordis’ house, there were so many guests at

the manor.

It was biting cold, and the northern-lights flamed and flickered over

the brows of the fells to the north. The snow crackled under Kristin’s

feet as she ran over the courtyard shivering, her arms crossed on her

breast.

Then she was aware of a woman in the shadow of the old loft walking

hurriedly to and fro in the snow, throwing her arms about, wringing her

hands, and wailing aloud. Kristin saw it was her mother, and ran to her

affrighted, asking if she were ill.

“No, no,” burst out Ragnfrid. “But I could not stay within—go you to

bed, child.”

As Kristin turned away her mother called her softly:

“Go back to the room and lie beside your father and Ulvhild—take her in

your arms so that he may not roll upon her by mischance; he sleeps so

heavily when he has drunk deep. I am going up to sleep in the old

loft-room to-night.”

“Jesus, mother,” said Kristin, “you will freeze to death if you lie

there—alone, too. And what think you father will say if you come not to

bed to-night?”

“He will not mark it,” answered her mother, “he was all but asleep when

I left, and to-morrow he will waken late. Go and do as I have said.”

“’Twill be so cold for you,” said Kristin, whimpering, but her mother

sent her away, a little more kindly, and shut herself into the

loft-room.

Within it was as cold as without, and it was pitch-dark. Ragnfrid groped

her way to the bed, pulled off her headdress, undid her shoes, and crept

in among the skins. They chilled her to the bone; it was like sinking

into a snowdrift. She pulled the skins over her head, and drew her knees

up to her chin, and thrust her hands into her bosom—so she lay and wept;

now quite low, with flowing tears; now crying aloud and grinding her

teeth. But in time she had warmed the bed around her so much that she

grew drowsy, and at last wept herself to sleep.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

5

The year that Kristin was fifteen in the spring, Lavrans Björgulfsön and

Sir Andres Gudmundsön of Dyfrin made tryst at the Holledis Thing. There

’twas agreed between them that Andres’ second son, Simon, should wed

Kristin Lavransdatter and should have Formo, Sir Andres’ mother’s udal

estate. This the two men shook hands upon; yet it was not put in

writing, for Sir Andres had first to settle with his other children

about their heritage. And for this reason no betrothal feast was held;

but Sir Andres and Simon came to Jörundgaard to see the bride, and

Lavrans gave them a great banquet.

By this time Lavrans had ready his new dwelling-house of two storeys,

with corner fire-places of masonry both in the living room and the

loft-room above richly furnished and adorned with fair wood-carvings. He

had rebuilt the old loft-room too, and bettered the other houses in many

ways, so that he was now housed as befitted an esquire bearing arms. He

was very wealthy now, for he had had good fortune in his undertakings

and was a shrewd and careful husband of his goods; above all was he

known as a breeder of the finest horses and the goodliest cattle of all

kinds. And now he had been able so to order things that his daughter was

to wed into the Dyfrin kindred and the Formo estate, all folks deemed he

had brought to a happy end his purpose to be the foremost man in the

country-side. He, and Ragnfrid too, were well pleased with the

betrothal, as were Sir Andres and Simon.

Kristin was a little cast down when she first saw Simon Andressön; for

she had heard great talk of his good looks and seemly bearing, so that

she had outrun all measure in her hopes of what her bridegroom would be.

Truly Simon was well-favoured, but he was something fat to be only

twenty years of age; he was short of neck and had a face as round and

shining as the moon. He had goodly hair, brown and curly, and his eyes

were grey and clear, but lay deep and as it were shut in, the lids were

so fat; his nose was over small and his mouth was small too, and

pouting, but not unsightly. In spite of his stoutness, he was light, and

quick, and nimble in all his ways, and was skilled in all sports. He was

something too brisk and forward in his speech, but Lavrans held he

showed both good wit and learning when he talked with older men.

Ragnfrid soon came to like him, and Ulvhild was taken at once with the

greatest love for him—he was more gentle and kind with the little sick

maid than with any other. And when Kristin had grown used a little to

his round face and his way of speech, she grew to be well content with

her betrothed, and happy in the way her father had ordered things for

her.

Lady Aashild was at the feast. Since Jörundgaard had opened its doors to

her, the great folk in the parishes round about had begun to call to

mind her high birth and to think less of her doubtful fame, so that the

Lady came much out among people. She said when she had seen Simon:

“’Tis a good match, Kristin; this Simon will go forward in the world—you

will be spared many cares, and he will be good to live with. But to my

mind he seems something too fat and too cheerful—Were it now in Norway

as it was in days gone by, and as it is still in other lands—that folk

were not more hard to sinners than is God himself, I would say you

should find yourself a friend who is lean and sorrowful—one you could

have to sit and hold converse with. Then would I say, you could not fare

better than you would with Simon.”

Kristin grew red, though she understood not well what the Lady’s words

might mean. But as time went on and her bridal chests filled and she

evermore heard talk of her wedding and of what she was to take in to the

new household, she began to long that the betrothal-knot should be tied

once for all, and that Simon should come north; thus she thought much

about him in the end and was glad at the thought of meeting him again.

* * * * *

Kristin was full-grown now and very fair to look upon. She was most like

her father and had grown tall; she was small waisted, with slender, fine

limbs and joints, yet round and plump withal. Her face was somewhat

short and round, her forehead low and broad and white as milk; her eyes

large, grey and soft, under fairly drawn eyebrows. Her mouth was

something large, but it had full bright, red lips, and her chin was

round as an apple and well shaped. She had goodly long, thick hair; but

’twas something dark in hue, almost as much brown as yellow, and quite

straight. Lavrans liked nothing better than to hear Sira Eirik boast of

Kristin—the priest had seen the maid grow up, had taught her her books

and writing, and loved her much. But the father was not so pleased when

the priest sometimes likened his daughter to an unblemished,

silken-coated filly.