“Exsurrexi, et adhuc sum tecum.”5
Several more tremors passed over his body, and his hands fumbled with the coverlet. Sira Eirik continued to hold him against his chest for a moment. Then he gently laid his friend’s body down on the bed, kissing his forehead and smoothing back his hair, before he pressed his eyelids and nostrils closed; then he stood up and began to say a prayer.
Kristin was allowed to join the vigil and keep watch over the body that night. They had laid Lavrans out on his bier in the high loft, since that was the biggest room and they expected many people to come to the death chamber.
Her father seemed to her inexpressibly beautiful as he lay in the glow of the candles, with his pale, golden face uncovered. They had folded down the cloth that hid his face so that it wouldn’t become soiled by the many people who came to view the body. Sira Eirik and the parish priest from Kvam were singing over him; the latter had arrived that evening to say his last farewell to Lavrans, but he had come too late.
By the following day guests already began riding into the courtyard, and then, for the sake of propriety, Kristin had to take to her bed since she had not yet been to church. Now it was her turn to have her bed adorned with silk coverlets and the finest pillows in the house. The cradle from Formo was borrowed, and there lay the young Lavrans; all day long people came in to see her and the child.
She heard that her father’s body continued to look beautiful—it had merely yellowed a bit. And no one had ever seen so many candles brought to a dead man’s bier.
On the fifth day the funeral feast began, and it was exceptionally grand in every way. There were more than a hundred strange horses at the manor and at Laugarbru; even Formo housed some of the guests. On the seventh day the heirs divided up the estate, amicably and with friendship; Lavrans himself had made all the arrangements before his death, and everyone carefully abided by his wishes.
The next day the body, which now lay in Olav’s Church, was to begin the journey to Hamar.
The evening before—or rather, late that night—Ragnfrid came into the hearth room where her daughter lay in bed with her child. Ragnfrid was very tired, but her face was calm and clear. She asked her serving women to leave.
“All the houses are full, but I’m sure you can find a corner to sleep in. I have a mind to sit with my daughter myself on this last night that I’ll spend on my estate.”
She took the child from Kristin’s arms and carried him over to the hearth to get him ready for the night.
“It must be strange for you, Mother, to leave this manor where you’ve lived with my father all these years,” said Kristin. “I don’t see how you can stand to do it.”
“I could stand it much less to stay here,” replied Ragnfrid, rocking little Lavrans in her arms, “and not see your father going about among the buildings.
“I’ve never told you how we happened to move to this valley and ended up living here,” she continued after a moment. “When word came that Ivar, my father, was expected to breathe his last, I was unable to travel; Lavrans had to go north alone. I remember the weather was so beautiful on the evening he left—back then he liked to ride late, when it was cool, and so he set off for Oslo in the evening. It was just before Midsummer. I followed him out to the place where the road from the manor crosses the church road—do you remember the spot where there are several big flat rocks and barren fields all around? The worst land at Skog, and always arid; but that year the grain stood high in the furrows, and we talked about that. Lavrans was on foot, leading his horse, and I was holding you by the hand. You were four winters old.
“When we reached the crossroads, I wanted you to run back to the farm buildings. You didn’t want to, but then your father told you to see if you could find five white stones and lay them out in a cross in the creek below the spring—that would protect him from the trolls of Mj?rsa Forest when he sailed past. Then you set off running.”
“Is that something people believe?” asked Kristin.
“I’ve never heard of it, either before or since. I think your father made it up right then. Don’t you remember how he could think up so many things when he was playing with you?”
“Yes. I remember.”
I walked with him through the woods, all the way to the dwarf stone. He told me to turn around, and then he accompanied me back to the crossroads. He laughed and said I should know he couldn’t very well allow me to walk alone through the forest, especially after the sun was down. As we stood there at the crossroads, I put my arms around his neck. I was so sad that I couldn’t travel home with him. I had never felt comfortable at Skog, and I was always longing to go north to Gudbrandsdal. Lavrans tried to console me, and at last he said, ‘When I return and you’re holding my son in your arms, you can ask me for whatever you wish, and if it’s within my power to give it to you, then you will not have asked in vain.’ And I replied that I would ask that we might move up here and live on my ancestral estate. Your father wasn’t pleased, and he said, ‘Couldn’t you have thought of something bigger to ask for?’ He laughed a little, and I thought this was something he would never agree to, which seemed to me only reasonable. But as you know, Sigurd, your youngest brother, lived less than an hour. Halvdan baptized him, and after that the child died.
“Your father came home early one morning. The evening before, he had asked in Oslo how things stood at home, and then he set off for Skog at once. I was still keeping to my bed; I was so full of grief that I didn’t have the strength to get up, and I thought I would prefer never to get up again. God forgive me—when they brought you in to me, I turned to the wall and refused to look at you, my poor little child. But then Lavrans said, as he sat on the edge of my bed, still wearing his cape and sword, that now we would try to see if things might be better for us living here at J?rundgaard, and that’s how we came to move from Skog. But now you can see why I don’t want to live here any longer, now that Lavrans is gone.”
Ragnfrid brought the child and placed him on his mother’s breast. She took the silk coverlet, which had been spread over Kristin’s bed during the day, folded it up, and laid it aside. Then she stood there for a moment, looking down at her daughter and touching the thick, dark-blonde braids which lay between her white breasts.
“Your father asked me often whether your hair was still thick and beautiful. It was such a joy to him that you didn’t lose your looks from giving birth to so many children. And you made him so happy during the last few years because you had become such a capable wife and looked so healthy and lovely with all your fair young sons around you.”
Kristin tried to swallow back her tears.
“He often told me, Mother, that you were the best wife—he told me to tell you that.” She paused, embarrassed, and Ragnfrid laughed softly.
“Lavrans should have known that he didn’t need anyone else to tell me of his good will toward me.” She stroked the child’s head and her daughter’s hand which was holding the infant. “But perhaps he wanted . . . It’s not true, my Kristin, that I have ever en-vied your father’s love for you. It’s right and proper that you should have loved him more than you loved me. You were such a sweet and lovely little maiden—I could hardly believe that God would let me keep you. But I always thought more about what I had lost than what I still had.”
Ragnfrid sat down on the edge of the bed.