Suddenly she thought about a summer night many years before. She was standing on the loft gallery at Finsbrekken, the same loft where she had been struck down this evening. Arne was playing ball with some boys down in the courtyard, and the ball came sailing up to her on the gallery. She held it behind her back and refused to give it up when Arne came to retrieve it. Then he tried to take it from her by force, and they had fought over it on the gallery, then inside the loft among the chests. The leather sacks full of clothes that were hanging there knocked them on the head when they ran into them during the chase. They had fought and tumbled over that ball.
And now she finally seemed to realize that he was dead and gone, and that she would never see his brave, handsome face or feel his warm hands again. She had been so childish and heartless that it had never occurred to her how he would feel about losing her. She wept in despair and thought she deserved her own unhappiness. But then she started thinking again about everything that still awaited her, and she wept because she thought the punishment that would befall her was too severe.
Simon was the one who told Ragnfrid about what had happened at the vigil at Brekken the night before. He made no more of the matter than was necessary. But Kristin was so dazed from grief and a sleepless night that she felt a purely unreasonable bitterness toward him, because he could speak of it as if it were not so terrible after all. She also felt a great displeasure at the way her parents let Simon act as if he were the master of the house.
“So you don’t think anything of it, Simon?” asked Ragnfrid anxiously.
“No,” replied Simon. “And I don’t think anyone else will either; they know you and her and they know this Bentein. But there’s not much to talk about in this remote village; it’s perfectly reasonable for people to help themselves to this juicy tidbit. Now we’ll have to teach them that Kristin’s reputation is too rich a diet for the peasants around here. But it’s too bad that she was so frightened by his coarseness that she didn’t come to you at once, or go to Sira Eirik himself. I think that whorehouse priest would have gladly testified that he had meant no more than some innocent teasing if you had spoken to him, Lavrans.”
Both parents agreed that Simon was right. But Kristin gave a shriek and stamped her foot.
“But he knocked me to the ground. I hardly know what he did to me. I was out of my senses; I no longer remember a thing. For all I know, it might be as Inga says. I haven’t been well or happy for a single day since. . . .”
Ragnfrid gave a cry and pressed her hands together; Lavrans leaped to his feet. Even Simon’s face changed expression; he gave Kristin a sharp look, went over to her, and put his hand under her chin. Then he laughed.
“God bless you, Kristin. You would have remembered it if he had done you any harm. It’s no wonder she’s been feeling melancholy and unwell since that unlucky evening when she was given such a fright—she who has never met with anything but kindness and goodwill before,” he said to the others. “Anyone can see from her eyes, which bear no ill intent and would rather believe in good than evil, that she is a maiden and not a woman.”
Kristin looked up into the small, steady eyes of her betrothed. She raised her arms halfway up; she wanted to place them around his neck.
Then Simon went on. “You mustn’t think, Kristin, that you won’t forget all about this. I don’t intend for us to settle at Formo right away and never allow you to leave this valley. ‘No one has the same color of hair or temperament in the rain as in the sun,’ said old King Sverre when they accused his ‘Birch-Leg’ followers2 of growing arrogant with success.”
Lavrans and Ragnfrid smiled. It amused them to hear the young man speak as if he were a wise old bishop.
Simon continued. “It would not be proper for me to admonish you, the man who is to be my father-in-law, but perhaps I might say this much: we were dealt with more strictly, my siblings and I. We were not allowed to move so freely among the servants as I see it is Kristin’s custom. My mother used to say that if you play with the cottager’s children, in the long run you’ll end up with lice in your hair; and there is some truth to that.”
Lavrans and Ragnfrid said nothing to this. But Kristin turned away, and the desire she had felt for a moment to put her arms around Simon Darre’s neck had vanished completely.
Around midday Lavrans and Simon put on their skis and went off to tend to several traps up on the ridge. Outdoors it was now beautiful weather, sunny and not nearly as bitter cold. Both men were relieved to slip away from all the sorrow and tears at home, so they skied a great distance, all the way up to the bare rock.
They lay in the sun under a steep cliff and drank and ate. Then Lavrans talked a little about Arne; he had been very fond of the boy. Simon joined in, praising the dead man, and said that he didn’t find it strange that Kristin should grieve for her foster brother. Then Lavrans mentioned that perhaps they should not pressure her so much, but give her a little more time to regain her composure before they celebrated the betrothal ale. She had said that she would like to go to a cloister for a while.
Simon sat up suddenly and gave a long whistle.
“You don’t care for the idea?” asked Lavrans.
“Oh, yes, yes,” replied the other man hastily. “This seems to be the best counsel, dear father-in-law. Send her to the sisters in Oslo for a year; then she’ll learn how people talk about each other out in the world. I happen to know a little about several of the maidens who are there,” he said and laughed. “They wouldn’t lie down and die of grief over two mad boys tearing each other apart for their sake. Not that I would want such a maiden for my wife, but I don’t think it would do Kristin any harm to meet some new people.”
Lavrans put the rest of the food in the knapsack and said, without looking at the young man, “You are fond of Kristin, I think.”
Simon laughed a little but did not look at Lavrans.
“You must know that I have great affection for her—and for you, as well,” Simon said brusquely, and then he stood up and put on his skis. “I have never met any maiden I would rather marry.”
Right before Easter, while it was still possible to drive a sleigh down the valley and across Lake Mj?sa, Kristin made her second journey to the south. Simon came to escort her to the cloister. So this time she traveled with her father and her betrothed, sitting in the sleigh, wrapped in furs. And accompanying them were servants and sleighs full of her chests of clothing and gifts of food and furs for the abbess and the sisters of Nonneseter.
PART II
THE WREATH
CHAPTER 1
EARLY ONE SUNDAY morning at the end of April, Aasmund Bj?rg ulfs?n’s church boat glided past the point on the island of Hoved? as the bells rang in the cloister church, and bells from the town chimed their reply out across the bay, sounding louder, then fainter as the wind carried the notes.
The sky was clear and pale blue, with light fluted clouds drifting across it, and the sun was glinting restlessly on the rippling water. It seemed quite springlike along the shore; the fields were almost bare of snow, and there were bluish shadows and a yellowish sheen on the leafy thickets. But snow was visible in the spruce forest atop the ridges framing the settlements of Aker, and to the west, on the distant blue mountains beyond the fjord, many streaks of white still gleamed.