And Kristin did feel ill, but this was from sorrow and her anguished soul. She couldn’t hide from herself that the longer she stayed at home, the more painful it felt. That was just her nature: it hurt her to see that now, as her father approached his death, it was his wife who was closest to him.
She had always heard people praise her parents’ life together as an exemplary marriage, beautiful and noble, with harmony, loyalty, and good will. But she had felt, without thinking too closely about it, that there was something that kept them apart—some indefinable shadow that made their life at home subdued, even though it was calm and pleasant. Now there was no longer any shadow between her parents. They talked to each other calmly and quietly, mostly about small, everyday matters; but Kristin sensed there was something new in their eyes and in the tone of their voices. She could see that her father missed his wife whenever she was somewhere else. If he managed to convince her to take a rest, he would lie in bed, fidgeting and waiting; when Ragnfrid came back, it was as if she brought peace and joy to the ill man. One day Kristin heard them talking about their dead children, and yet they looked happy. When Sira Eirik came over to read to Lavrans, Ragnfrid would always sit with them. Then he would take his wife’s hand and lie there, playing with her fingers and twisting her rings around.
Kristin knew that her father loved her no less than before. But she had never noticed until now that he loved her mother. And she could see the difference between the love of a husband for the wife he had lived with all his life, during good days and bad—and his love for the child who had shared only his joys and had received his greatest tenderness. And she wept and prayed to God and Saint Olav for help—for she remembered that tearful, tender farewell with her father on the mountain in the autumn, but surely it couldn’t be true that she now wished it had been the last.
On Summer Day3 Kristin gave birth to her sixth son. Five days later she was already out of bed, and she went over to the main house to sit with her father. Lavrans was not pleased by this; it had never been the custom on his estate for a woman who had recently given birth to go outdoors under open sky until the first time she went to church. She must at least agree not to cross the courtyard unless the sun was up. Ragnfrid listened as Lavrans talked about this.
“I was just thinking, husband,” she said, “that your women have never been very obedient; we’ve usually done whatever we wanted to do.”
“And you’ve never realized that before?” asked her husband, laughing. “Well, your brother Trond isn’t to blame, at any rate. Don’t you remember that he used to call me spineless because I always let all of you have your way?”
When the next mass was celebrated, Ramborg went to church for the first time after giving birth, and afterwards she paid her first visit to J?rundgaard. Helga Rolvsdatter came with her; she was also a married woman now. And Haavard Trondss?n of Sundbu had come to see Lavrans, too. These three young people were all the same age, and for three years they had lived together like siblings at J?rundgaard. The other two had looked up to Haavard, and he had been the leader in all their games because he was a boy. But now the two young wives with the white wimples made him feel quite clearly that they were experienced women with husbands and children and households to manage, while he was merely an immature and foolish child. Lavrans found this greatly amusing.
“Just wait until you have a wife of your own, Haavard, my foster son. Then you will truly be told how little you know,” he said, and all the men in the room laughed and agreed.
Sira Eirik came daily to visit the dying man. The old parish priest’s eyesight was now failing, but he could still manage to read just as easily the story of Creation in Norwegian and the gospels and psalms in Latin, because he knew those books so well. But several years earlier, down in Saastad, Lavrans had acquired a thick volume, and it was passages from this book that he wanted to hear. Sira Eirik couldn’t read it because of his bad eyes, so Lavrans asked Kristin to try to read from the book. And after she grew accustomed to it, she managed to read beautifully and well. It was a great joy for her that now there was something she could do for her father.
The book contained what seemed to be dialogues between Fear and Courage, between Faith and Doubt, Body and Soul. There were also stories of saints and many accounts of men who, while still alive, were swept away in spirit and who witnessed the torments of the abyss, the trials of fiery purgatory, and the salvation of Heaven. Lavrans now spoke often of the purgatory fire, which he expected to enter soon, but he showed no sign of fear. He hoped for great solace from the prayers of intercession offered by his friends and the priests; and he consoled himself that Saint Olav and Saint Thomas would give him strength for the last trial, as he felt they had given him strength here in life. He had always heard that the person who firmly believed would never for a moment lose sight of the salvation toward which the soul was moving, through the fiery blaze. Kristin thought her father seemed to be looking forward to it, as if it were a test of manhood. She vaguely remembered from her childhood the time when the king’s retainers from the valley set off on a campaign against Duke Eirik.4 Now she thought that her father seemed eager for his death, in the same way he had been eager for battle and adventure back then.
One day she said that she thought her father had endured so many trials in this life that surely he would be spared from the worst of them in the next. Lavrans replied that it didn’t seem that way to him; he had been a rich man, he was descended from a splendid lineage, and he had won friends and prosperity in the world. “My greatest sorrows were that I never saw my mother’s face, and that I lost my children—but soon they will no longer be sorrows. And the same is true of other things that have grieved me in my life—they are no longer sorrows.”
Ragnfrid was often in the room while Kristin read. Strangers were also present, and now Erlend wanted to sit and listen too. Everyone found joy in what she read, but Kristin grew dejected and distressed. She thought about her own heart, which fully understood what was right and wrong, and yet it had always yearned for what was not righteous. And she was afraid for her little child; she could hardly sleep at night for fear that he would die unbaptized. Two women had to keep constant vigil over her, and yet she was still afraid to fall asleep. Her other children had all been baptized before they were three days old, but they had decided to wait this time, because the boy was big and strong, and they wanted to name him after Lavrans. But in the valley people strictly abided by the custom that children not be named for anyone who was still alive.
One day when Kristin was sitting with her father and holding the child on her lap, Lavrans asked her to unwrap the swaddling clothes. He had still not seen more than the infant’s face. She did as he asked and then placed the child in her father’s arms. Lavrans stroked the small, rounded chest and took one of the tiny, plump hands in his own.
“It seems strange, kinsman, that one day you will wear my coat of mail. Right now you wouldn’t fill up more space than a worm in a hollow nutshell; and this hand will have to grow big before it can grip the hilt of my sword. Looking at a lad like this, it almost seems God’s will that we not bear arms. But you won’t have to grow very old, my boy, before you long to take them up. There are so few men born of women who have such a love for God that they would forswear the right to carry weapons. I did not have it.”
He lay quietly, looking at the infant.
“You carry your children under a loving heart, my Kristin. The boy is fat and big, but you’re pale and thin as a reed; your mother said it was always that way after you gave birth. Ramborg’s daughter is small and thin, but Ramborg is blossoming like a rose,” he said, laughing.