The next morning Lavrans Bj?rgulfs?n and Sir Erling Vidkunss?n were standing at the end of the courtyard, watching some of Erlend’s horses that were running loose outside the fence.
“I think,” said Lavrans, “that if Erlend is to come to this meeting, then he is of such high position and birth, being the kinsman of the king and his mother, that he must step forward to join the ranks of the foremost men. But I don’t know, Sir Erling, whether you feel you can trust that his judgment in these matters won’t lead him to the opposing side. If Ivar Ogmundss?n attempts to make a countermove . . . Erlend is also strongly tied to the men who will follow Sir Ivar.”
“I think it unlikely that Sir Ivar will do anything,” said Erling Vidkunss?n. “And Munan . . .” He gave a slight smile. “He’s wise enough to stay away. He knows that otherwise it might become clear to everyone how much or how little influence Munan Baards?n wields.” They both laughed. “The truth is . . . Yes, no doubt you know better than I, Lavrans Lagmanss?n,9 you who have your ancestors and kinsmen over there, that the Swedish nobles are reluctant to consider our knighthood equal to their own. For that reason it’s important that we exclude no man who is among the richest and most highborn. We cannot afford to let a man like Erlend win permission to stay at home, jesting with his wife and tending to his estates—in whatever manner he tends to them,” he said when he saw Lavrans’s expression.
A smile flickered across Lavrans’s face.
“But if you think it unwise to pressure Erlend in order to make him join us, then I will not do so.”
“I think, dear sir,” said Lavrans, “that Erlend would do more good here in the villages. As you said yourself—we can expect that this war levy will be met with opposition in the districts south of Namdalseid, where the people feel they have nothing to fear from the Russians. It’s possible that Erlend might be the man who could change people’s minds about these matters in some way.”
“He has such a cursed loose tongue,” Sir Erling exclaimed.
Lavrans replied with a small smile. “Perhaps that’s the language that will appeal more to people than . . . the speech of more in sightful men.” Again they looked at each other and laughed. “However that may be, he could do more harm if he went to the meeting and spoke too loudly.”
“Well, if you cannot restrain him, then . . .”
“No, I can do so only until he meets up with the kind of birds he’s used to flying around with; my son-in-law and I are too unlike each other.”
Erlend came over to them. “Have you benefited so much from the mass that you need no breakfast?”
“I haven’t heard mention of breakfast—I’m as hungry as a wolf, and thirsty.” Lavrans stroked a dirty-white horse that he had been examining. “Whoever the man is who tends to your horses, son-in-law, I would drive him off my estate before I sat down to eat, if he was my servant.”
“I don’t dare, because of Kristin,” said Erlend. “He has gotten one of her maids with child.”
“And do you deem it such a great achievement here in these parts,” said Lavrans, raising his eyebrows, “that you now find him irreplaceable?”
“No, but you see,” said Erlend, laughing, “Kristin and the priest want them to be married—and they want me to place the man in such a position that he’ll be able to support the two of them. The girl refuses and her guardian refuses, and Tore himself is reluctant. But I’m not allowed to drive him off; she’s afraid that then he would flee the village. But Ulf Haldorss?n is his overseer, when he’s home.”
Erling Vidkunss?n walked over toward Smid Gudleikss?n. Lavrans said to his son-in-law, “It seems to me that Kristin is looking a little pale these days.”
“I know. Can’t you talk to her, Father-in-law?” Erlend said eagerly. “That boy is sucking the marrow out of her. I think she wants to keep him at her breast until the third fast, like some kind of pauper’s wife.”
“Yes, she is certainly fond of her son,” said Lavrans with a slight smile.
“I know.” Erlend shook his head. “They can sit there for three hours—Kristin and Sira Eiliv—talking about a rash he has here or there; and for every tooth he gets, they seem to think a great miracle has occurred. I’ve never heard otherwise but that all children get teeth. And it would be more wondrous if our Naakkve should have none.”
CHAPTER 2
ONE EVENING A year later, toward the end of the Christmas holidays, Kristin Lavransdatter and Orm Erlendss?n arrived quite unexpectedly to visit Master Gunnulf at his residence in Nidaros.
The wind had raged and sleet had fallen all day long, since before noon, but now, late in the evening, the weather had grown worse until it was an actual snowstorm. The two visitors were completely covered in snow when they stepped into the room where the priest was sitting at the supper table with the rest of his household.
Gunnulf asked fearfully whether something was wrong back at the manor. But Kristin shook her head. Erlend was away on a visit in Gelmin, she said in reply to her brother-in-law’s queries, but she was so weary that she hadn’t felt like going with him.
The priest thought about how she had come all the way into town. The horses that she and Orm had ridden were exhausted; during the last part of the journey they had barely been able to struggle their way through the snowdrifts. Gunnulf sent his two servant women off with Kristin to find dry clothing for her. They were his foster mother and her sister—there were no other women at the priest’s house. He attended to his nephew himself. And all the while, Orm talked steadily.
“I think Kristin is ill. I told Father, but he got angry.”
She had been so unlike herself lately, said the boy. He didn’t know what was wrong. He couldn’t remember whether it was her idea or his for them to come here—oh yes, she had mentioned first that she had a great longing to go to Christ Church, and he had said that he would accompany her. So this morning, just as soon as his father had ridden off, Kristin told him she wanted to go today. Orm had agreed, even though the weather was threatening—but he didn’t like the look in her eyes.
Gunnulf thought to himself that he didn’t like it either, when Kristin returned to the room. She looked terribly thin in Ingrid’s black dress; her face was as pale as bast and her eyes were sunken, with dark blue circles underneath. Her gaze was strange and dark.
It had been three months since he had last seen her, when he attended the christening at Husaby. She had looked good then as she lay in bed in her finery, and she said she felt well—the birth had been an easy one. So he had protested when Ragnfrid Ivarsdatter and Erlend wanted to give the child to a foster mother; Kristin cried and begged to be allowed to nurse Bj?rgulf herself. The second son had been named after Lavrans’s father.
Now the priest asked first about Bj?rgulf; he knew that Kristin was not pleased with the wet nurse to whom they had given the child. But she said he was doing well and that Frida was fond of him and took better care of him than anyone had expected. And what about Nikulaus? asked her brother-in-law. Was he still so handsome? A little smile flitted across the mother’s face. Naakkve grew more and more handsome every day. No, he didn’t talk much, but otherwise he was ahead of his years in every way, and so big. No one would believe he was only in his second winter; even Fru Gunna said as much.