Erlend's brother looked at her, his eyes wide. Then he nodded.

After a moment the monk asked, "Did you know that Eiliv Serkssn is the priest and adviser for the nuns at Rein?"

"No!" exclaimed Kristin jubilantly.

"I thought that was why you had chosen to go there yourself," said Gunnulf. Soon afterward he said that he would have to go back to his cloister.

The first nocturn had begun as Kristin entered the church. In the nave and around all the altars there were great throngs of people. But a verger noticed that she was carrying a pitiful child in her arms, and he began pushing a path for her through the crowds so that she could make her way up to the front among the groups of those most crippled and ill, who occupied the middle of the church beneath the vault of the main tower, with a good view of the choir.

Many hundreds of candles were burning inside the church. Vergers accepted the tapers of pilgrims and placed them on the small mound-shaped towers bedecked with spikes that had been set up throughout the church. As the daylight faded behind the colored panes of gla.s.s, the church grew warm with the smell of burning wax, but gradually it also filled with a sour stench from the rags worn by the sick and the poor.

When the choral voices surged beneath the vaults, the organ swelled, and the flutes, drums, and stringed instruments resounded, Kristin understood why the church might be called a ship. In the mighty stone building all these people seemed to be on board a vessel, and the song was the roar of the sea on which it sailed. Now and then calm would settle over the ship, as if the waves had subsided, and the voice of a solitary man would carry the lessons out over the ma.s.ses.

Face after face, and they all grew paler and more weary as the vigil night wore on. Almost no one left between the services, at least none of those who had found places in the center of the church. In the pauses between nocturns they would doze or pray. The child slept nearly all night long; a couple of times Kristin had to rock her or give her milk from the wooden flask Gunnulf had brought her from the cloister.

The encounter with Erlend's brother had oddly distressed her, coming as it did after each step on the road north had led her closer and closer to the memory of her dead husband. She had given little thought thought to him over the past few years, as the toil for her growing sons had left her scant time to dwell on her own fate, and yet the thought of him had always seemed to be right behind her, but she simply never had a moment to turn around. Now she seemed to be looking back at her soul during those years: It had lived the way people live on farms during the busy summer half of the year, when everyone moves out of the main house and into the lofts over the storerooms. But they walk and run past the winter house all day long, never thinking of going inside, even though all it would take was a lift of the latch and a push on the door. Then one day, when someone finally has a reason to go inside, the house has turned strange and almost solemn because it has acquired the smell of solitude and silence. to him over the past few years, as the toil for her growing sons had left her scant time to dwell on her own fate, and yet the thought of him had always seemed to be right behind her, but she simply never had a moment to turn around. Now she seemed to be looking back at her soul during those years: It had lived the way people live on farms during the busy summer half of the year, when everyone moves out of the main house and into the lofts over the storerooms. But they walk and run past the winter house all day long, never thinking of going inside, even though all it would take was a lift of the latch and a push on the door. Then one day, when someone finally has a reason to go inside, the house has turned strange and almost solemn because it has acquired the smell of solitude and silence.

But as she talked to the man who was the last remaining witness to the interplay of sowing and harvesting in her life together with her dead husband, then it seemed to her that she had come to view her life in a new way: like a person who clambers up to a ridge overlooking his home parish, to a place where he has never been before, and gazes down on his own valley. Each farm and fence, each thicket and creek bed are familiar to him, but he seems to see for the first time how everything is laid out on the surface of the earth that bears the lands. And with this new view she suddenly found words to release both her bitterness toward Erlend and her anguish for his soul, which had departed life so abruptly. He had never known rancor; she saw that now, and G.o.d had seen it always.

She had finally come so far that she seemed to be seeing her own life from the uppermost summit of a mountain pa.s.s. Now her path led down into the darkening valley, but first she had been allowed to see that in the solitude of the cloister and in the doorway of death someone was waiting for her who had always seen the lives of people the way villages look from a mountain crest. He had seen sin and sorrow, love and hatred in their hearts, the way the wealthy estates and poor hovels, the bountiful acres and the abandoned wastelands are all borne by the same earth. And he had come down among them, his feet had wandered among the lands, stood in castles and in huts, gathering the sorrows and sins of the rich and the poor, and lifting them high up with him on the cross. Not my happiness or my pride, but my sin and my sorrow, oh sweet Lord of mine. She looked up at the crucifix, where it hung high overhead, above the triumphal arch.

The morning sun lit the tall, colored panes of gla.s.s deep within the forest of pillars in the choir and a glow, as if from red and brown, green and blue gemstones, dimmed the candlelight from the altar and the gold shrine behind it. Kristin listened to the last vigil ma.s.s, matins. She knew that the lessons of this service were about G.o.d's miraculous healing powers as invested in His faithful knight, King Olav Haraldssn. She lifted the ill child toward the choir and prayed for her.

But she was so cold that her teeth were chattering after the long hours spent in the chill of the church, and she felt weak from fasting. The stench of the crowds and the sickening breath of the ill and the poor blended with the reek of candle wax and settled, thick and damp and heavy, upon those kneeling on the floor, cold in the cold morning. A stout, kind, and cheerful peasant woman had been sitting and dozing at the foot of a pillar right behind them, with a bearskin under her and another one over her lame legs. Now she woke up and drew Kristin's weary head onto her s.p.a.cious lap. "Rest for a little while, sister. I think you must need to rest."

Kristin fell asleep in the woman's lap and dreamed: She was stepping over the threshold into the old hearth room back home. She was young and unmarried, because she could see her own thick brown braids, which hung down in front of her shoulders. She was with Erlend, for he had just straightened up after ducking through the doorway ahead of her.

Near the hearth sat her father, whittling arrows; his lap was covered with bundles of sinews, and on the bench on either side of him lay heaps of arrowpoints and pointed shafts. At the very moment they stepped inside, he was bending forward over the embers, about to pick up the little three-legged metal cup in which he always used to melt resin. Suddenly he pulled his hand back, shook it in the air, and then stuck his burned fingertips in his mouth, sucking on them as he turned his head toward her and Erlend and looked at them with a furrowed brow and a smile on his lips.

Then she woke up, her face wet with tears.

She knelt during the high ma.s.s, when the archbishop himself performed the service before the main altar. Clouds of frankincense billowed through the intoning church, where the radiance of colored sunlight mingled with the glow of candles; the fresh, pungent scent of incense seeped over everyone, blunting the smell of poverty and illness. Her heart burst with a feeling of oneness with these dest.i.tute and suffering people, among whom G.o.d had placed her; she prayed in a surge of sisterly tenderness for all those who were poor as she was and who suffered as she herself had suffered.

"I will rise up and go home to my Father."

CHAPTER 6.

THE CONVENT STOOD on a low ridge near the fjord, so that when the wind blew, the crash of the waves on the sh.o.r.e would usually drown out the rustling of the pine forest that covered the slopes to the north and west and hid any view of the sea.

Kristin had seen the church tower above the trees when she sailed past with Erlend, and he had said several times they ought to pay a visit to this convent, which his ancestor had founded, but nothing had ever come of it. She had never set foot in Rein Convent until she came there to stay.

She had imagined that life here would be similar to what she knew of life in the convents in Oslo or at Bakke, but things were quite different and much more quiet. Here the sisters were truly dead to the world. Fru Ragnhild, the abbess, was proud of the fact that it had been five years since she had been to Nidaros and just as long since any of her nuns had set foot outside the cloister walls.

No children were being raised there, and at the time Kristin came to Rein, there were no novices at the convent either. It had been so many years since any young maiden had sought admittance to the order that it was already six winters ago that the newest member, Sister Borghild Marcellina, had taken her vows. The youngest in years was Sister Turid, but she had been sent to Rein at the age of six by her grandfather, who was a priest at Saint Clement's Church and a very stern and somber man. The child's hands had been crippled from birth, and she was misshapen in other ways too, so she had taken the veil as soon as she reached the proper age. Now she was thirty years old and quite sickly, but she had a lovely face. From the first day Kristin arrived at the convent, she made a special attempt to serve Sister Turid, for the nun reminded her of her own little sister Ulvhild, who had died so young.

Sira Eiliv said that low birth should not be a hindrance for any maiden who came to serve G.o.d. And yet ever since the convent at Rein had been founded, it was usually only the daughters or widows of powerful and highborn men from Trndelag who had sought refuge there. But during the wicked and turbulent times that had descended upon the realm after the death of blessed King Haakon Haalegg, piety seemed to have diminished greatly among the n.o.bility. Now it was mostly the daughters of merchants and prosperous farmers who considered the life of a nun. And they were more likely to go to Bakke, where many of them had spent time learning their devotions and womanly skills and where more of the sisters came from families of lower standing. There the rule prohibiting venturing outside the convent was less strict, and the cloister was not as isolated.

Otherwise Kristin seldom had the chance to speak with Sira Eiliv, but she soon realized that the priest's position at the convent was both a wearisome and troubled one. Although Rein was a wealthy cloister and the order included only half as many members as it could have supported, the nuns' money matters were in great disarray, and they had difficulty managing their expenses. The last three abbesses had been more pious than worldly women. Even so, they and their convent had vowed tooth and nail not to submit to the authority of the archbishop; their conviction was so strong that they also refused to accept any advice offered out of fatherly goodwill. And the brothers of their order from Tautra and Munkabu, who had been priests at their church, had all been old men so that no slanderous gossip might arise, but they had been only moderately successful at managing the convent's material welfare. When King Skule built the beautiful stone church and gave his ancestral estate to the cloister, the houses were first built of wood; they all had burned down thirty years ago. Fru Audhild, who was abbess at the time, began rebuilding with stone; in her day many improvements had been made to the church and the lovely convent hall. She had also made a journey to the general chapter at the mother cloister of the order, Tart in Burgundy. From that journey she had brought back the magnificent tower of ivory that stood in the choir near the high altar, a fitting receptacle for the body of the Lord, the most splendid adornment of the church, and the pride and cherished treasure of the nuns. Fru Audhild had died with the fairest of reputations for piety and virtue, but her ignorance in dealing with the builders and her imprudent property ventures had damaged the convent's well-being. And the abbesses who succeeded her had not been able to repair that damage.

How Sira Eiliv happened to come to Rein as priest and adviser, Kristin never knew, but this much she did know: From the very beginning the abbess and the sisters had received a secular priest with reluctance and suspicion. Sira Eiliv's position at Rein was such that he was the nuns' priest and spiritual adviser; he was also supposed to see about putting the estate back on its feet and restoring order to the convent's finances. All the while he was to acknowledge the supremacy of the abbess, the independence of the sisters, and the supervisory right of Tautra. He was also supposed to maintain a friendship with the other priest at the church, a monk from Tautra. Sira Eiliv's age and renown for unblemished moral conduct, humble devotion to G.o.d, and insight into both canonical laws and the laws of the land had certainly served him well, but he had to be constantly vigilant about everything he did. Along with the other priest and the vergers, he lived on a small manor that lay northeast of the convent. This also served as the lodgings for the monks who came from Tautra from time to time on various errands. When Nikulaus was eventually ordained as a priest, Kristin knew that if she lived long enough, she would also one day hear her eldest son say ma.s.s in the cloister church.

Kristin Lavransdatter was first accepted as a corrodian. Later she had promised Fru Ragnhild and the sisters, in the presence of Sira Eiliv and two monks from Tautra, to live a chaste life and obey the abbess and nuns. As a sign that she had renounced all command over earthly goods she had placed in Sira Eiliv's hands her seal, which he had broken in half. Then she was allowed to wear the same attire as the sisters: a grayish white woolen robe-but without the scapular-a white wimple, and a black veil. After some time had pa.s.sed, the intention was for her to seek admittance into the order and to take the vows of a nun.

But it still was difficult for her to think too much about things of the past. For reading aloud during meals in the refectory, Sira Eiliv had translated into the Norwegian language a book about the life of Christ, which the learned and pious Doctor Bonaventura had written. While Kristin listened, her eyes would fill with tears whenever she thought about how blessed a person must be who could love Christ and his Mother, the cross and its torment, poverty and humility, in the way the book described. And then she couldn't help thinking about that day at Husaby when Gunnulf and Sira Eiliv had shown her the book in Latin from which this one had been copied. It was a thick little book written on such thin and dazzling white parchment that she never would have believed calfskin could be prepared so finely, and it had the most beautiful pictures and capital letters; the colors glowed like gemstones against gold. All the while Gunnulf had talked merrily-and Sira Eiliv had nodded in agreement with his quiet smile-about how the purchase of this book had made them penniless, so they had been forced to sell their clothes and take their meals with those receiving alms at a cloister until they received word of some Norwegian clerics who had come to Paris; from them they could borrow funds.

After matins, when the sisters went back to the dormitory, Kristin always stayed behind in the church. On summer mornings it seemed to her sweet and lovely inside, but during the winter it was terribly cold, and she was afraid of the darkness among all the gravestones, even though she steadily fixed her eyes on the little lamp which always burned in front of the ivory tower containing the Host. But winter or summer, as she lingered in her corner of the nuns' choir, she always thought that now Naakkve and Bjrg ulf must also be praying for their father's soul; it was Nikulaus who had asked her to say these prayers and psalms of penance as they did every morning after matins.

Always, always she would then picture the two of them as she had seen them on that gray, rainy day when she went out to the monastery. Nikulaus had suddenly appeared before her in the parlatory, looking oddly tall and unfamiliar in the grayish white monk's robes, with his hands hidden under his scapular-her son-and yet he had changed so little. It was mostly his resemblance to his father that seized her so strongly; it was like seeing Erlend in a monk's cowl.

As they sat and talked and she told him everything that had happened on the estate since he left home, she kept waiting and waiting. Finally she asked anxiously if Bjrgulf would be coming soon.

"I don't know, Mother," replied her son. A moment later he added, "It has been a hard struggle for Bjrgulf to submit to his cross and serve G.o.d. And it seemed to worry him when he heard you were here, that too many thoughts might be torn open."

Afterward she felt only deadly despair as she sat and looked at Nikulaus while he talked. His face was very sunburned, and his hands were worn with toil; he mentioned with a little smile that he had been forced to learn after all to guide a plow and use a sickle and scythe. She didn't sleep that night in the hostel, and she hurried to church when the bells rang for matins. But the monks were standing so that she could see only a few faces, and her sons were not among them.

The following day she walked in the garden with a lay brother who worked there, and he showed her all the rare plants and trees for which it was renowned. As they wandered, the clouds scattered, the sun emerged, and a fragrance of celery, onion, and thyme rose up; the large shrubs of yellow lilies and blue columbine that adorned the corners of the beds glittered, weighted down with raindrops. Then her sons appeared; both of them came out of the little arched doorway in the stone building. Kristin felt as if she had been given a foretaste of the joys of paradise when she saw the two tall brothers, dressed in light-colored attire, coming toward her along the path beneath the apple trees.

But they didn't talk much with each other; Bjrgulf said almost nothing the entire time. He had become an enormous man, now that he was full-grown. And it was as if the long separation had sharpened Kristin's sight. For the first time she understood what this son of hers had had to struggle with and was doubtless still struggling with as he grew so big and strong in body, and his inner astuteness grew, but he felt his eyesight failing.

Once he asked about his foster mother, Frida Styrkaarsdatter. Kristin told him that she was now married.

"May G.o.d bless her," said the monk. "She was a good woman; toward me she was a good and faithful foster mother."

"Yes, I think she was more of a mother to you than I was," said Kristin sadly. "You felt little trace of my mother's heart when such harsh trials were placed upon you in your youth."

Bjrgulf answered in a low voice, "And yet I thank G.o.d that the Devil never managed to bend me to such unmanliness that I should test your mother's heart in such a manner, even though I was close to it. . . . But I saw that you were carrying much too heavy a burden, and aside from G.o.d it was Nikulaus here who saved me those times when I was about to fall to temptation."

No more was said about that, or about how they were faring at the monastery or that they had acted badly and brought disfavor upon themselves. But they seemed quite pleased when they heard of their mother's intention to join the convent at Rein.

After her morning prayers, when Kristin walked back through the dormitory and looked at the sisters, sleeping on the beds, two to each straw mattress, and wearing their robes, which they never took off, she would think how unlike these women she must be, since from their youth they had devoted themselves solely to serving their Creator. The world was a master from whom it was difficult to flee once a person had submitted to its power. Surely she would not have fled either, but she had been cast out, the way a harsh master chases a used-up va.s.sal out the door. Now she had been taken in here, the way a merciful master takes in an old servant and out of compa.s.sion gives her a little work while he houses and feeds the worn-out and friendless old soul.

From the nuns' dormitory a covered gallery led to the weaving room. Kristin sat there alone, spinning. The sisters of Rein were famous for their flax. Those days during the summer and fall when all the sisters and lay sisters went out to work in the flax fields were like feast days at the convent, especially when they pulled up the ripe plants. Preparing, spinning, and weaving the flax and then sewing the cloth into clerical garments were the main activities of the nuns during their work hours. None of them copied or ill.u.s.trated books as the sisters in Oslo had done with such great skill under the guidance of Fru Groa Guttormsdatter, nor did they practice much the artful work of embroidering with silk and gold threads.

After some time Kristin was pleased to hear the sounds of the estate waking up. The lay sisters would go over to the cookhouse to prepare food for the servants; the nuns never touched food or drink until after the morning ma.s.s unless they were ill. When the bells rang for prime, Kristin would go over to the infirmary if anyone was sick, to relieve Sister Agata or one of the other nuns. Sister Turid, poor thing, often lay there.

Then she would begin looking forward to breakfast, which was served after the third hour of prayer and the ma.s.s for the convent's servants. Each day, with equal joy, Kristin would look forward to this n.o.ble and solemn meal. The refectory was built of wood, but it was a handsome hall, and all the women of the convent ate there together. The nuns sat at the highest table, where the abbess occupied the high seat, along with the three old women besides Kristin who were corrodians. The lay sisters were seated farther down. When the prayer was over, food and drink were brought in and everyone ate and drank in silence, with quiet and proper manners. While one of the sisters read aloud from a book, Kristin would think that if people out in the world could enjoy their meals with such propriety, it would be much clearer to them that food and drink are gifts from G.o.d, and they would be more generous toward their fellow Christians and think less about h.o.a.rding things for themselves and their own. But she herself had felt quite different back when she set out food for her flock of spirited and boisterous men who laughed and roared, while the dogs sniffed around under the table, sticking up their snouts to receive bones or blows, depending on what humor the boys were in.

Visitors seldom came to Rein. An occasional ship with people from the n.o.ble estates might put in when they were sailing into or out of the fjord, and then men and their wives, with children and youths, would walk up to the cloister to bring greetings to a kinswoman among the sisters. There were also the envoys from the convent's farms and fishing villages, and now and then messengers from Tautra. On the feast days that were celebrated with the most splendor-the feast days of the Virgin Mary, Corpus Christi Day, and the Feast of the Apostle Saint Andreas-people from the nearest villages on both sides of the fjord would come to the nuns' church. Otherwise only the convent's tenants and workers who lived close by would attend ma.s.s. They took up very little s.p.a.ce in the vast church.

And then there were the poor-the regular charity cases who received ale and drink on specific days when ma.s.ses were said for the souls of the dead, as provided for in the testaments of wealthy people-and others who came up to Rein almost every day. They would sit against the cookhouse wall to eat and seek out the nuns when they came into the courtyard, telling the sisters about their sorrows and troubles. The ill, the crippled, and the leprous were always coming and going. There were many who suffered from leprosy, but Fru Ragnhild said that was always true of villages near the sea. Leaseholders came to ask for reductions or deferments in their payments, and then they always had much to report about setbacks and difficulties. The more wretched and unhappy the people were, the more openly and freely they talked to the sisters about their circ.u.mstances, although they usually gave others the blame for their misfortunes, and they spoke in the most pious of terms. It was no wonder that when the nuns rested or while they worked in the weaving room, their conversation should turn to the lives of these people. Yes, Sister Turid even told Kristin that when the nuns in the convent were supposed to deliberate about trade and the like, the discussion would often slip into talk about the people who were involved in the cases. Kristin could tell from the sisters' words that they knew little more about what they were discussing than what they had heard from the people themselves or from the lay servants who had been out in the parish. They were very trusting, whether their subordinates spoke well of themselves or ill of their neighbors. And then Kristin would think with indignation about all the times she had heard unG.o.dly lay people, yes, even a mendicant monk such as Brother Arngrim, accuse the convents of being nests of gossip and the sisters of swallowing greedily all rumors and unseemly talk. Even the very people who came moaning to Fru Ragnhild or any of the sisters who would speak to them, filling their ears with gossip, would berate the nuns because they discussed the cries that reached them from the outside world, which they themselves had renounced. She thought it was the same thing with gossip about the comfortable life of convent women; it stemmed from people who had often received an early breakfast from the sisters' hands, while G.o.d's servants fasted, kept vigil, prayed, and worked before they all gathered for the first solemn meal in the refectory.

Kristin served the nuns with loving reverence during the time before her admittance to the order. She didn't think she would ever be a good nun-she had squandered her abilities for edification and piety too much for that-but she would be as humble and faithful as G.o.d would allow her to be. It was late in the summer of A.D. 1349, she had been at Rein Convent for two years, and she was to take the vows of a nun before Christmas. She received the joyous message that both her sons would come to her ordination as part of Abbot Johannes's entourage.

Brother Bjrgulf had said, when he heard of his mother's intention, "Now my dream will be realized. I've dreamed twice this year that before Christmas we both would see her, although it won't be exactly exactly as it was revealed to me, since in my dream I actually as it was revealed to me, since in my dream I actually saw saw her." her."

Brother Nikulaus was also overjoyed. But at the same time Kristin heard other news about him that was not as good. He had laid hands on several farmers over by Steinker; they were in the midst of a dispute with the monastery about some fishing rights. When the monks came upon them one night as they were proceeding to destroy the monastery's salmon pens, Brother Nikulaus had given one man a beating and thrown another into the river, at the same time sinning gravely with his cursing.

CHAPTER 7.

A FEW DAYS later Kristin went to the spruce forest with several of the nuns and lay sisters to gather moss for green dye. This moss was rather rare, growing mostly on toppled trees and dry branches. The women soon scattered through the forest and lost sight of each other in the fog.

This strange weather had already lasted for several days: no wind, a thick haze with a peculiar leaden blue color that could be seen out over the sea and toward the mountains whenever it lifted enough so that a little of the countryside became visible. Now and then it would grow denser, becoming a downpour; now and then it would disperse so much that a whitish patch would appear where the sun hovered amid the shrouded peaks. But an odd heavy bathhouse heat hung on, quite unusual for that region down by the fjord and particularly at that time of year. It was two days before the Feast of the Birth of Mary. Everyone was talking about the weather and wondering what it could mean.

Kristin was sweating in the dead, damp heat, and the thought of the news she had heard about Naakkve was making her chest ache. She had reached the outskirts of the woods and come to the rough fence along the road to the sea; as she stood there, sc.r.a.ping moss off the rails, Sira Eiliv came riding toward home in the fog. He reined in his horse, said a few words about the weather, and they fell to talking. Then she asked the priest whether he knew anything about the incident with Naakkve, even though she knew it was futile. Sira Eiliv always pretended to know nothing about the private matters of the monastery at Tautra.

"I don't think you need to worry that he won't come to Rein this winter because of that, Kristin," said the priest. "For surely that's what you fear?"

"It's more than that, Sira Eiliv. I fear that Naakkve was never meant to be a monk."

"Do you mean you would presume to judge about such things?" asked the priest with a frown. Then he got down from his horse, tied the reins to the fence, and bent down to slip under the railing as he gave the woman a steady, searching glance.

Kristin said, "I fear that Naakkve finds it most difficult to submit to the discipline of the order. And he was so young when he entered the monastery; he didn't realize what he was giving up or know his own mind. But everything that happened during his youth-losing his father's inheritance and the discord that he saw between his father and mother, which ended with Erlend's death-all this caused him to lose his desire to live in this world. But I never noticed that it made him pious."

"You didn't? It may well be that Nikulaus has found it as difficult to submit to the discipline of the order as many a good monk has. He's hot-tempered and a young man, perhaps too young for him to have realized, before he turned away from this world, that the world is just as harsh a taskmaster as any other lord, and in the end it's a lord without mercy. Of that I think you yourself can judge, sister.

"And if it's true that Naakkve entered the monastery more for his brother's sake than out of love for his Creator . . . Even so, I don't think G.o.d will let it go unrewarded that he took up the cross on his brother's behalf. Mary, the Mother of G.o.d, whom I know Naakkve has honored and loved from the time he was a little boy, will doubtless show him clearly one day that her son came down to this earth to be his brother and to carry the cross for him.

"No . . ." The horse snuffled against the priest's chest. He stroked the animal as he murmured, as if to himself, "Ever since he was a child, my Nikulaus has had remarkable capacities for love and suffering; I think he has the makings of a fine priest.

"But you, Kristin," he said, turning toward her. "It seems to me that you should have seen so much by now that you would put more trust in G.o.d the Almighty. Haven't you realized yet that He will hold up each soul as long as that soul clings to Him? Do you think-child that you still are in your old age-that G.o.d would punish the sin when you must reap sorrow and humiliation because you followed your desire and your pride along pathways G.o.d has forbidden His children to tread? Will you say that you you punished your children if they scalded their hands when they picked up the boiling kettle you had forbidden them to touch? Or the slippery ice broke beneath them when you had warned them not to go out there? Haven't you noticed when the brittle ice broke beneath you? You were drawn under each time you let go of G.o.d's hand, and you were rescued from the depths each time you called out to Him. Even when you defied your father and set your willfulness against his will, wasn't the love that was the bond of flesh between you and your father consolation and balm for the heart when you had to reap the fruit of your disobedience to him? punished your children if they scalded their hands when they picked up the boiling kettle you had forbidden them to touch? Or the slippery ice broke beneath them when you had warned them not to go out there? Haven't you noticed when the brittle ice broke beneath you? You were drawn under each time you let go of G.o.d's hand, and you were rescued from the depths each time you called out to Him. Even when you defied your father and set your willfulness against his will, wasn't the love that was the bond of flesh between you and your father consolation and balm for the heart when you had to reap the fruit of your disobedience to him?

"Haven't you realized yet, sister, that G.o.d has helped you each time you prayed, even when you prayed with half a heart or with little faith, and He gave you much more than you asked for. You loved G.o.d the way you loved your father: not as much as you loved your own will, but still enough that you always grieved when you had to part from him. And then you were blessed with having good grow from the bad which you had to reap from the seed of your stubborn will.

"Your sons . . . Two of them He took when they were innocent children; for them you need never fear. And the others have turned out well-even if they haven't turned out the way you you would have liked. No doubt Lavrans thought the same about you. would have liked. No doubt Lavrans thought the same about you.

"And your husband, Kristin . . . May G.o.d protect his soul. I know you have chastised him in your heart both night and day because of his reckless folly. It seems to me that it must have been much harder for a proud woman to remember that Erlend Niku laussn had taken you with him through shame and betrayal and blood guilt if you had seen even once that the man could act with cold intent. And yet I believe it was because you were as faithful in anger and harshness as in love that you were able to hold on to Erlend as long as you both lived. For him it was out of sight, out of mind with everything except you. May G.o.d help Erlend. I fear he never had the wits to feel true remorse for his sins, but the sins that your husband committed against you-those he did regret and grieve over. That was a lesson we dare to believe has served Erlend well after death."

Kristin stood motionless, without speaking, and Sira Eiliv said no more. He untied his reins and said, "May peace be with you." Then he mounted his horse and rode away.

Later, when Kristin arrived back at the convent, Sister Ingrid met her at the gate with the message that one of her sons had come to see her; he called himself Skule, and he was waiting at the speaking gate.

He was conversing with his fellow seamen but leaped to his feet when his mother came to the door. Oh, she recognized her son by his agile movements: his small head, held high on his broad shoulders, and his long-limbed, slender figure. Beaming, she stepped forward to greet him, but she stopped abruptly and caught her breath when she saw his face. Oh, who had done such a thing to her handsome son?

His upper lip was completely flattened; a blow must have crushed it, and then it had grown back flat and long and ruined, striped with shiny white scar tissue. It had pulled his mouth askew, so he looked as if he were always sneering scornfully. And his nose had been broken and then healed crooked. He lisped slightly when he spoke; he was missing a front tooth, and another one was blue-black and dead.

Skule blushed under his mother's gaze. "Could it be that you don't know me, Mother?" He chuckled and touched a finger to his lip, not necessarily to point out his injury; it might simply have been an involuntary gesture.

"We haven't been parted so many years, my son, that your mother wouldn't recognize you," replied Kristin calmly, smiling without restraint.

Skule Erlendssn had arrived on a swift sailing ship from Bjrgvin two days before with letters from Bjarne Erlingssn for the archbishop and the royal treasurer in Nidaros. Later that day mother and son walked down to the garden beneath the apple trees, and when they could finally talk to each other alone, Skule told his mother news of his brothers.

Lavrans was still in Iceland; Kristin hadn't even known that he'd gone there. Oh yes, said Skule, he had met his youngest brother in Oslo the previous winter at a meeting of the n.o.bles; he was there with Jammaelt Halvardssn. But the boy had always had a desire to go out and see the world, and so he had entered the service of the bishop of Skaalholt and left Norway.

Skule himself had accompanied Sir Bjarne to Sweden and then on a war campaign to Russia. His mother silently shook her head; she hadn't known about that either! The life suited him, he said with a laugh. He had finally had a chance to meet all the old friends his father had talked so much about: Karelians, Ingrians, Russians. No, his splendid scar of honor had not been won in a war. He gave a chuckle. Yes, it was in a brawl; the fellow who gave it to him would never have need to beg for his bread again. Otherwise Skule seemed to have little interest in telling her any more about the incident or about the campaign. He was now the head of Sir Bjarne's guardsmen, and the knight had promised to regain for him several properties his father had once owned in Orkedal that were now in the possession of the Crown. But Kristin noticed that Skule's big steel-gray eyes had a strange look in them as he spoke of this.

"But you think that such a promise cannot be counted on?" asked his mother.

"No, no." Skule shook his head. "The doc.u.ments are being drawn up at this very time. Sir Bjarne has always kept his promises, in all the days I've been in his service; he calls me kinsman and friend. My position on his estate is much like that of Ulf back home with us." He laughed. It didn't suit his damaged face.

But he was the handsomest of men in terms of bearing, now that he was full-grown. The clothing he wore was cut according to the new fashion, with close-fitting hose and a snug, short cote-hardi, cote-hardi, which reached only to mid-thigh and was fastened with tiny bra.s.s b.u.t.tons all the way down the front, revealing with almost unseemly boldness the supple power of his body. It looked as if he were wearing only undergarments, thought his mother. But his forehead and handsome eyes were unchanged. which reached only to mid-thigh and was fastened with tiny bra.s.s b.u.t.tons all the way down the front, revealing with almost unseemly boldness the supple power of his body. It looked as if he were wearing only undergarments, thought his mother. But his forehead and handsome eyes were unchanged.

"You look as if something were weighing on your heart, Skule," ventured his mother.

"No, no, no." It was just the weather, he said, giving himself a shake. There was a strange reddish brown sheen to the fog as the veiled sun set. The church towered above the treetops in the garden, eerie and dark and indistinct in a liver-red haze. They had been forced to row all the way into the fjord in the becalmed sea, said Skule. Then he shifted his clothes a bit and told her more about his brothers.

He had been sent on a mission by Sir Bjarne to southern Norway in the spring, so he could bring her recent news from Ivar and Gaute because he had traveled back north through the countryside and over the mountains from Vaagaa, home to Vestland. Ivar was well; he and his wife had two small sons at Rognheim, Erlend and Gamal, both handsome children. "At Jrundgaard I arrived for a christening feast. And Jofrid and Gaute said that since you were now dead to the world, they would name their little maiden after you; Jofrid is so proud of the fact that you're her mother-in-law. Yes, you may laugh, but now that the two of you don't have to live on the same manor, you can be sure that Jofrid thinks it splendid to speak of her mother-in-law, Kristin Lavransdatter. And I gave Kristin Gautesdatter my best gold ring, for she has such lovely eyes that I think she will come to look much like you."

Kristin smiled sadly.

"Soon you'll have me believing, my Skule, that my sons thought I was as fine and grand as old people always become as soon as they're in their graves."

"Don't talk like that, Mother," said the man, his voice strangely vehement. Then he laughed a little. "You know quite well that my brothers and I have always thought, ever since we wore our first pair of breeches, that you were the most splendid and magnanimous woman, even though you clutched us tightly under your wings so many times that we had to flap hard before we could escape the nest.

"But you were right that Gaute was the one with the makings of a chieftain among us brothers," he added, and he roared with laughter.