The livestock were bellowing and their bells were ringing as they returned home from the pasture across from the farmyard gate.
“Now Gaute will soon have his milk,” she cooed to the infant, lifting him up. The boy lay as he usually did, with his heavy head resting on his mother’s shoulder. Now and then he would press closer, and Kristin took this as a sign that he understood her endearing words and chatter.
She walked down toward the buildings. Outside the main hall Naakkve and Bj?rgulf were leaping around, trying to entice a cat down from the roof where it had taken refuge. Then the boys took up the broken dagger which belonged to both of them and went back to digging a hole in the earthen floor of the entryway.
Dagrun came into the hall carrying a basin of goat milk, and Kristin let Gaute drink ladle after ladle of the warm liquid. The boy grunted crossly when the servant woman spoke to him; when she tried to take him away, he struck out at her and hid his face on his mother’s breast.
“But it seems to me that he’s getting better,” said the milkmaid.
Kristin cupped the little face in her hand; it was yellowish-white, like tallow, and his eyes were always tired. Gaute had a big, heavy head and thin, frail limbs. He had turned two years old on the eighth day after Saint Lavrans’s Day, but he still couldn’t stand on his own, he had only five teeth, and he couldn’t speak a word.
Sira Eiliv said that it wasn’t rickets; and neither the alb nor the altar books had helped. Everywhere the priest went he would ask advice about this illness that had overtaken Gaute. Kristin knew that he mentioned the child in all his prayers. But to her he could only say that she must patiently submit to God’s will. And she should let him have warm goat milk.
Her poor little boy. Kristin hugged him and kissed him after the woman had left. How handsome, how handsome he was. She thought she could see that he took after her father’s family—his eyes were dark gray and his hair as pale as flax, thick and silky soft.
Now he began to whimper again. Kristin stood up and paced the floor as she held him. Small and weak though he was, he still grew heavy after a while. But Gaute refused to leave his mother’s arms. So she walked back and forth in the dim hall, carrying the boy and lulling him to sleep.
Someone rode into the courtyard. Ulf Haldorss?n’s voice echoed between the buildings. Kristin went over to the entryway door with the child in her arms.
“You’ll have to unsaddle your own horse tonight, Ulf. All the men have gone off to the dance. It’s a shame you should have to be troubled with this, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped.”
Ulf muttered with annoyance, but he unsaddled the horse. Naakkve and Bj?rgulf swarmed around him and wanted to ride the horse over in the pasture.
“No, Naakkve, you must stay with Gaute—play with your brother so he doesn’t cry while I’m in the cookhouse,” said Kristin.
The boy frowned unhappily. But then he got down on all fours, roaring and butting at his little brother whom Kristin had put down on a cushion near the entryway door. She bent down and stroked Naakkve’s hair. He was so good to his younger brothers.
When Kristin came back to the hall holding the big trencher in her hands, Ulf Haldorss?n was sitting on the bench, playing with the children. Gaute liked to be with Ulf as long as he didn’t see his mother—but now he began crying at once and reached out for her. Kristin put down the trencher and picked Gaute up.
Ulf blew on the foam of the newly tapped ale, took a swallow, and then began taking food from the small bowls on the trencher.
“Are all of your maidservants out tonight?”
Kristin said, “There are fiddles and drums and pipes—a group of musicians arrived from Orkedal after the wedding. And you know that as soon as they heard about them . . . They’re young girls, after all.”
“You let them run around too freely, Kristin. I think you’re most afraid that it’ll be hard to find a wet nurse this autumn.”
Kristin involuntarily smoothed down her gown over her slender waist. She had blushed dark red at the man’s words.
Ulf laughed harshly. “But if you keep carrying around Gaute this way, then things may go as they did last year. Come here to your foster father, my boy, and I’ll give you some food from my plate.”
Kristin didn’t reply. She set her three small sons in a row on the bench along the opposite wall, brought the basin of milk porridge, and pulled over a little stool close by. There she sat, feeding the boys, although Naakkve and Bj?rgulf grumbled—they wanted spoons so they could feed themselves. The oldest was now four, and the other would soon be three years old.
“Where’s Erlend?” asked Ulf.
“Margret wanted to go to the dance, and so he went with her.”
“It’s good he understands he should keep a watchful eye on that maiden of his,” said Ulf.
Again Kristin did not reply. She undressed the children and put them to bed—Gaute in the cradle and the other two in her own bed. Erlend had resigned himself to having them there after she recovered from her long illness the year before.
When Ulf had eaten his fill, he stretched out on the bench. Kristin pushed the chair carved from a tree stump over to the cradle, got her basket of wool, and began to wind up balls of yarn for her loom as she gently and quietly rocked the cradle.
“Shouldn’t you go to bed?” she asked once without turning her head. “Aren’t you tired, Ulf?”
The man got up, poked at the fire a bit, and came over to Kristin. He sat down on the bench across from her. Kristin saw that he was not as spent from carousing as he usually was whenever he had been in Nidaros for a few days.
“You don’t even ask about news from town, Kristin,” he said, looking at her as he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
Her heart began pounding with fear. She could see from the man’s expression and manner that again there was news that wasn’t good. But she said with a gentle and calm smile, “You must tell me, Ulf—have you heard anything?”
“Yes, well . . .” But first he took out his traveling bag and unpacked the things he had brought from town for her. Kristin thanked him.
“I understand that you’ve heard some news in Nidaros,” she said after a while.
Ulf looked at the young mistress; then he turned his gaze to the pale, sleeping child in the cradle.
“Does he always sweat like this?” he asked softly, gently pushing back the boy’s damp, dark hair. “Kristin—when you were betrothed to Erlend . . . the document that was drawn up regarding the ownership of both your possessions—didn’t it state that you should manage with full authority those properties which he gave you as betrothal and wedding gifts?”
Kristin’s heart pounded harder, but she said calmly, “It’s also true, Ulf, that Erlend has always asked my advice and sought my consent in all dealings with those properties. Is this about the sections of the estate in Verdal that he has sold to Vigleik of Lyng?”
“Yes,” said Ulf. “He has bought a ship called Hugrekken from Vigleik. So now he’s going to maintain two ships. And what do you gain in return, Kristin?”
Erlend’s share of Skjervastad and two plots of land in Ulfkel stad—each taxed by one month’s worth of food—and what he owns of Aarhammar,” she said. “Surely you didn’t think Erlend would sell that estate without my permission or without repaying me?”
“Hmm . . .” Ulf sat in silence for a moment. “And yet your income will be reduced, Kristin. Skjervastad—that was where Erlend obtained hay this past winter and in return he released the farmer from the land tax for the next three years.”
“Erlend was not to blame because we had no dry hay last year. I know, Ulf, you did everything you could, but with all the misery we had here last summer—”