Ingebj?rg was completely unperturbed.
That night, after they had gone to bed, Ingebj?rg lay there talking, right up until Kristin fell asleep. Two elderly lay sisters slept in a corner of the room. They were supposed to see to it that the maidens did not remove their shifts at night—for it was against the rules for the girls to undress completely—and that they got up in time for matins at the church. But otherwise they didn’t concern themselves with keeping order in the dormitory, and they pretended not to notice when the maidens lay in bed talking or eating treats they had hidden in their chests.
When Kristin awoke the next morning, Ingebj?rg was already in the middle of a long story, and Kristin wondered whether she had been talking all night.
CHAPTER 2
THE FOREIGN MERCHANTS who spent the summer trading in Oslo arrived in the city in the spring, around Holy Cross Day, which was ten days before the Vigil of Saint Halvard. For that celebration, people came in throngs from all the villages from Lake Mj?sa to the Swedish border, so the town was teeming with people during the first weeks of May. It was best to buy goods from the foreigners during that time, before they had sold too many of their wares.
Sister Potentia was in charge of the shopping at Nonneseter, and on the day before the Vigil of Saint Halvard she had promised Ingebj?rg and Kristin that they could go along with her into town. But around noon some of Sister Potentia’s kinsmen came to the convent to visit her; she would not be able to go out that day. Then Ingebj?rg managed to beg permission for them to go alone, although this was against the rules. As an escort, an old farmer who received a corrody from the cloister was sent along with them. His name was Haakon.
By this time, Kristin had been at Nonneseter for three weeks, and in all that time she had not once set foot outside the convent’s courtyards and gardens. She was astonished to see how springlike it had become outside. The small groves of leafy trees out in the fields were shiny green, and the wood anemones were growing as thick as a carpet beneath the lustrous tree trunks. Bright fair-weather clouds came sailing above the islands in the fjord, and the water looked fresh and blue, rippled by small gusts of spring wind.
Ingebj?rg skipped along, snapping off clusters of leaves from the trees and smelling them, turning to stare at the people they passed, but Haakon reproached her. Was that the proper way for a noble maiden to act, and one who was wearing convent attire, at that? The maidens had to take each other by the hand and walk along behind him, quietly and decorously; but Ingebj?rg let her eyes wander and her mouth chatter all the same, since Haakon was slightly deaf. Kristin now wore the garb of a young sister: an undyed, pale-gray homespun dress, a woolen belt and headband, and a simple dark-blue cloak with the hood pulled forward so that her braided hair was completely hidden. Haakon strode along in front of them with a big brass-knobbed stick in his hand. He was dressed in a long black coat, with an Agnus Dei made of lead hanging on his chest and a picture of Saint Christopher on his hat. His white hair and beard were so well-brushed that they glinted like silver in the sun.
The upper part of the town, from the nuns’ creek and down toward the bishop’s citadel, was a quiet neighborhood. There were no market stalls or hostelries, only farms belonging mostly to gentry from the outlying villages. The buildings faced the street with dark and windowless timbered gables. But on this day, the lane was already crowded up there, and servants were hanging over the farm fences, talking to the people walking past.
As they came out near the bishop’s citadel, they joined a great throng at the marketplace in front of Halvard’s Cathedral and Olav’s cloister. Booths had been set up on the grassy slope and there were strolling players who were making trained dogs jump through barrel hoops. But Haakon wouldn’t let the maidens stop to watch, nor would he allow Kristin to enter the church; he said it would be more fun for her to see it on the great festival day itself.
On the road in front of Clement’s Church, Haakon took them both by the hand, for here the crowd was even bigger, with people coming in from the wharves or from the lanes between the townyards. 1 The girls were going to Miklegaard, where the shoemakers worked. Ingebj?rg thought the dresses that Kristin had brought from home were pretty and nice, but she said that the footwear Kristin had with her from the village could not be worn on fine occasions. And when Kristin saw the foreign-made shoes, of which Ingebj?rg had many pairs, she thought she could not rest until she had bought some for herself.
Miklegaard was one of the largest townyards in Oslo. It extended all the way from the wharves up toward Shoemaker Lane, with more than forty buildings surrounding two big courtyards. Now booths with homespun canopies had also been set up in the courtyards, and above the tents towered a statue of Saint Crispin. There was a great crush of people shopping. Women were running back and forth to the cookhouses with pots and buckets, children were getting tangled up in people’s feet, horses were being led in and out of the stables, and servants were carrying loads in and out of the storage sheds. Up on the galleries of the lofts where the finest wares were sold, the shoemakers and hawkers in the booths called to the maidens below, dangling toward them small, colorful, gold-stitched shoes.
But Ingebj?rg headed for the loft where Shoemaker Didrek had his workshop; he was German but had a Norwegian wife and owned a building in Miklegaard.
The old man was conducting business with a gentleman wearing a traveling cape and a sword at his belt, but Ingebj?rg stepped forward boldly, bowed, and said, “Good sir, won’t you allow us to speak with Didrek first? We must be back home at our convent before vespers, and you perhaps have more time?”
The gentleman greeted her and stepped aside. Didrek gave Inge bj?rg a poke with his elbow and asked her with a laugh whether they were dancing so much at the cloister that she had already worn out all the shoes she had bought the year before. Ingebj?rg gave him a poke back and said that they were hardly used at all, good heavens, but here was another maiden—and she pulled Kristin over to him. Then Didrek and his apprentice brought a chest out to the gallery, and he started taking out the shoes, each pair more beautiful than the last. Kristin sat down on a box and he tried the shoes on her feet. There were white shoes, and brown and red and green and blue shoes; shoes with painted heels made of wood, and shoes with no heels at all; shoes with buckles, shoes with silken ties, and shoes made from two or three different colored leathers. Kristin almost thought she liked them all. But they were so expensive that she was shocked—not a single pair cost less than a cow back home. Her father had given her a purse with one mark of silver counted out in coins when he left; this was to be her spending money, and Kristin had thought it a great sum. But she could see that Ingebj?rg didn’t think she could buy much with it at all.