Surrounded by the group of boys, she made her way down the steep paths through the Steinberg cliffs, as cowbells began ringing and herders shouted from all sides. The cows were heading home from the town pastures. At the gate in the town ramparts near Nidareid, Kristin and her young companions had to wait while the livestock was driven through. The herders hooted and yelled and scolded, the oxen butted, the cows jostled each other, and the boys told her who owned each and every bull. When they finally went through the gate and walked toward the fenced lanes, Kristin had more than enough to do watching where she set her bare feet between the cow dung in the churned-up track.
Without asking, a few of the boys followed her all the way to Christ Church. And when she stood amid the dim forest of pillars and looked toward the candles and gold of the choir, the boys kept tugging at Kristin to show her things: from the colored patches of light that the sun on the rose window cast through the arches, to the gravestones on the floor, to the canopies of costly cloth above the altars—all things that were most likely to catch a child’s eye. Kristin had no peace to collect her thoughts, but every word the boys uttered aroused a dull, deep longing in her heart: for her sons, above all else, but also for the manor, the houses, the outbuildings, the livestock. A mother’s toil and a mother’s domain.
She was still feeling reluctant to be recognized by people who might have been friends with Erlend or her in the past. They always used to spend the feast days at their town estate and have guests staying with them. She dreaded running into a whole entourage. She would have to seek out Ulf Haldorss?n, for he had been acting as her envoy with regard to the property shares she still owned up here in the north and that she now wanted to give to the Rein Convent in exchange for a corrody.1But she knew that a man who had served as one of Erlend’s guardsmen while he was sheriff was supposed to be living on a small farm out near Brat?r; he fished for white-sided dolphins and porpoises in the fjord and kept a hostel for seafarers.
All the lodgings were full, she was told, but then Aamunde, the owner himself, appeared and recognized her at once. It was strange to hear him call out her old name.
“If I’m not mistaken . . . aren’t you Erlend Nikulauss?n’s wife from Husaby? Greetings, Kristin. How is it that you’ve come to my house?”
He was more than happy if she would accept such lodgings for the night as he could offer, and he promised that he himself would sail to Tautra with her on the day after the feast.
Late into the night she sat outside in the courtyard, talking with her host, and she was greatly moved when she saw that Erlend’s former subordinate still loved and esteemed the memory of his young chieftain. Aamunde used that word about him several times: young. They had heard from Ulf Haldorss?n about his unfortunate death, and Aamunde said that he never met any of his old companions from the Husaby days without drinking a toast to the memory of their intrepid master. Twice some of them had collected money and paid for a mass to be said for his soul on the anniversary of his death. Aamunde asked many questions about Erlend’s sons, and Kristin in turn asked about old acquaintances. It was midnight before she went to bed, lying down beside Aamunde’s wife. He had wanted both of them to give up their bed for her, and in the end she had to agree to take at least his half.
The next day was the Vigil of Saint Olav. Early in the morning Kristin went down to the skerries to watch the bustle along the wharves. Her heart began pounding when she saw the lord abbot of Tautra come ashore, but the monks who accompanied him were all older men.
Just before midafternoon prayers the crowds began heading toward Christ Church, carrying and supporting the ill and the lame, to find room for them in the nave so they would be close to the shrine when it was carried past in procession the following day after high mass.
When Kristin made her way up to the stalls that had been put up near the cemetery wall—they were mostly selling food and drink, wax candles, and cushions woven from reeds or birch twigs to kneel on inside the church—she happened to meet the people from Andabu again. Kristin held the child while the young mother went to get a drink of local ale. At that moment a procession of English pilgrims appeared, singing and carrying banners and lighted tapers. In the confusion that ensued as they passed through the great crowds around the stalls, Kristin lost sight of the people from Andabu, and afterward she couldn’t find them.
For a long time she wandered back and forth on the outskirts of the throngs, hushing the screaming child. When she pressed the girl’s face against her throat, caressing and consoling her, the child would put her lips to Kristin’s skin and try to suckle. She could tell the child was thirsty, but she didn’t know what to do. It would be futile to search for the mother; she would have to go into the streets and see if she could find some milk. But when she reached Upper Langstr?te and tried to turn north, there was again a great crush of people. An entourage of horsemen was coming from the south, and at the same time a procession of guardsmen from the king’s palace had entered the square between the church and the residence of the Brothers of the Cross. Kristin was pressed back into the nearest alleyway, but there too people on horseback and on foot were streaming toward the church, and the crowds grew so fierce that she finally had to save herself by climbing up onto a stone wall.
The air above her was filled with the clanging of bells; from the cathedral the nona hora2 was rung. At the sound the child stopped screaming; she looked up at the sky, and a glimmer of understanding appeared in her dull eyes; she smiled a bit. Touched, the old mother bent down and kissed the poor little thing. Then she noticed that she was sitting on the stone wall surrounding the hops garden of Nikulaus Manor, their old town estate.
She should have recognized the brick chimney rising up from the sod roof, which was at the back of their house. Closest to her stood the buildings of the hospital, which had vexed Erlend so much because it had shared the rights to their garden.
She hugged the stranger’s child to her breast, kissing her over and over. Then someone touched her knee.
A monk wearing the white robes and black cowl of a friar. She looked down into the sallow, lined visage of an old man, with a thin, sunken mouth and two big amber eyes set deep in his face.
“Could it be . . . is that you, Kristin Lavransdatter?” The monk placed his crossed arms atop the stone wall and buried his face in them. “Are you here?”
“Gunnulf!”
Then he moved his head so that he touched her knee as she sat there. “Do you think it so strange that I should be here?”
She remembered that she was sitting on the wall of the manor that had been his first home and later her own house, and she had to agree that it was rather odd after all.
“But what child is this you’re holding on your knee? Surely this couldn’t be Gaute’s son?”
“No . . .” At the thought of little Erlend’s healthy, sweet face and strong, well-formed body, she pressed the tiny child close, overcome with pity. “This is the daughter of a woman who traveled with me over the mountains.”
But then she suddenly recalled what Andres Simonss?n had said in his childish wisdom. Filled with reverence, she looked down at the pitiful creature who lay in her arms.
Now the child was crying again, and the first thing Kristin had to do was ask the monk if he could tell her where she might find some milk. Gunnulf led her east, around the church to the friars’ residence and brought her some milk in a bowl. While Kristin fed her foster child, they talked, but the conversation seemed to halt along rather strangely.
“So much time has passed and so much has happened since we last met,” she said sadly. “And no doubt the news was hard to bear when you heard about your brother.”