At the time he dwelt at Skog Lavrans Björgulfsön had made gifts of land to Gerdarud church that masses for the souls of his father and mother might be said on their death-days. Björgulf Ketilsön’s day was the thirteenth of August, and Lavrans had settled with his brother that this year Aasmund should bring Kristin out to Skog that she might be at the mass.
She went in fear that something should come in the way, so that her uncle would not keep his promise—she thought she had marked that Aasmund did not care over much about her. But the day before the mass was to be, Aasmund Björgulfsön came to the convent to fetch his brother’s daughter. Kristin was told to clothe herself in lay garb, but simply and in dark garments. There had been some carping at the Sisters of Nonneseter for going about too much without the convent walls; therefore the bishop had given order that the maidens who were not to take the veil must wear naught like to the habit of the order when they went visiting their kinsfolk—so that laymen could not mistake them for novices or nuns.
Kristin’s heart was full of gladness as she rode along the highway with her uncle, and Aasmund grew more friendly and merry with her when he saw the maid was not so tongue-tied after all, with folk. Otherwise Aasmund was somewhat moody and downcast; he said it looked as though there would be a call to arms in the autumn and that the King would lead an army into Sweden to avenge the slaying of his son-in-law and the husband of his niece. Kristin had heard of the murder of the Swedish Dukes, and thought it a most foul deed—yet all these questions of state seemed far away from her. No one spoke much of such things at home in the Dale; she remembered, too, that her father had been to the war against Duke Eirik at Ragnhildarholm and Konungahella. Then Aasmund told her of all that had come and gone between the King and the Dukes. Kristin understood but little of this, but she gave careful heed to all her uncle told of the making and breaking of the betrothals of the King’s daughters. It gave her comfort to think ’twas not everywhere as it was at home in her countryside, that a betrothal once fixed by word of mouth was held to bind nigh as fast as a wedding. Then she took courage to tell of her adventure on the evening before Halvard-wake, and asked her uncle if he knew Erlend of Husaby. Aasmund spoke well of Erlend—said, he had guided his affairs unwisely, but his father and the King were most to blame; they had borne themselves as though the young lad were a very limb of the devil only because he had fallen into this misfortune. The King was over pious in such matters, and Sir Nikulaus was angry because Erlend had lost much good land, so they had thundered about whoredom and hell fire—“and there must be a bit of the dare-devil in every likely lad,” said Aasmund Björgulfsön. “And the woman was most fair. But you have no call now to look Erlend’s way, so trouble yourself no more about his doings.”
Erlend came not to the mass, as he had promised Kristin he would, and she thought about this more than of God’s word. She felt no sorrow that this was so—she had only that strange new feeling that she was cut off from all the ties that she had felt binding on her before.
She tried to take comfort—like enough Erlend deemed it wisest that no one in whose charge she was should come to know of their friendship at this time. She could understand herself that ’twas wise. But her heart had longed so for him, and she wept when she had gone to rest in the loft-room where she was to sleep with Aasmund’s little daughters.
The day after, she went up into the wood with the youngest of her uncle’s children, a little maid of six years. When they were come to the pastures among the woods a little way off, Erlend came running after them. Kristin knew it was he before she had seen who was coming.
“I have sat up here on the hill spying down into the courtyard the whole day,” said he. “I thought surely you would find a chance to come out—”
“Think you I came out to meet you then?” said Kristin, laughing. “And are you not afraid to beat about my uncle’s woods with dogs and bow?”
“Your uncle gave me leave to take my pastime hunting here,” said Erlend. “And the dogs are Aasmund’s—they found me out this morning.” He patted them and lifted the little girl up in his arms.
“You know me, Ragndid? But say not you have spoken with me, and you can have this”—and he took out a bunch of raisins and gave them to the child. “I had brought them for you,” he said to Kristin. “Think you this child can hold her tongue?”
They talked fast and laughed together. Erlend was dressed in a short close-fitting brown jacket and had a small red silk cap pulled down over his black hair—he looked so young; he laughed and played with the child; but sometimes he would take Kristin’s hand, and press it till it hurt her.
He spoke of the rumours of war and was glad: “’Twill be easier for me to win back the King’s friendship,” said he, “and then will all things be easy,” he said vehemently.
At last they sat down in a meadow up among the woods. Erlend had the child on his lap; Kristin sat by his side; under cover of the grass he played with her fingers. He pressed into her hand three gold rings bound together by a cord:
“By and by,” he whispered, “you shall have as many as will go on your fingers—”
“I shall wait for you here on this field each day about this time, as long as you are at Skog,” he said as they parted. “And you must come if you can.”
The next day Aasmund Björgulfsön set out with his wife and children to the manor of Gyrid’s kin in Hadeland. They had been scared by the talk of war; the folk about Galo still went in terror since Duke Eirik’s harrying of that countryside some years before. Aasmund’s old mother was so fearful, she was minded to seek shelter in Nonneseter—besides she was too weak to travel with the others. So Kristin was to stay at Skog with the old woman—she called her grandmother—till Aasmund came back from Hadeland.
About the midday hour, when the folk on the farm were resting, Kristin went to the loft-room where she slept. She had brought some clothes with her in a sheepskin bag, and now she changed her garments, humming to herself the while.
Her father had given her a dress of thick cotton stuff from the East, skyblue with a close pattern of red flowers; this she put on. She brushed and combed out her hair and bound it back from her face with a red silk ribbon, wound a red silk belt tightly about her waist and put Erlend’s rings upon her fingers; all the time she wondered if he would think her fair.
The two dogs that had been with Erlend in the forest had slept in the loft-room over night—she called them to go with her now. She stole out round the houses and took the same path as the day before up through the hill-pastures.
The field amid the forest lay lonely and silent in the burning midday sun; the pine woods that shut it in on all sides gave out a hot strong scent. The sun stung, and the blue sky seemed strangely near and close down upon the tree-tops.
Kristin sat down in the shade in the borders of the wood. She was not vexed that Erlend was not there; she was sure he would come, and it gave her an odd gladness to sit there alone a little and to be the first.
She listened to the low hum of tiny life above the yellow, scorched grass, pulled a few dry, spicy-scented flowers that she could reach without moving more than her hand, and rolled them between her fingers and smelt them—she sat with wide open eyes sunk in a kind of drowse.
She did not move when she heard a horse in the woods. The dogs growled and the hair on their necks bristled—then they bounded up over the meadow, barking and wagging their tails. Erlend sprang from his horse at the edge of the forest, let it go with a clap on its flank and ran down towards her with the dogs jumping about him. He caught their muzzles in his hands and came to her leading the two elk-grey, wolflike beasts. Kristin smiled and held out her hand without getting up.
Once, while she was looking at the dark head that lay in her lap, between her hands, something bygone flashed on her mind. It stood out, clear yet distant, as a homestead far away on a mountain slope may start to sight of a sudden from out dark clouds, when a sunbeam strikes it on a stormy day. And it was as though there welled up in her heart all the tenderness Arne Gyrdsön had once begged for while as yet she did not understand his words. With timid passion, she drew the man up to her and laid his head upon her breast, kissing him as if afraid he should be taken from her. And when she saw his head upon her arm, she felt as though she clasped a child—she hid his eyes with one of her hands and showered little kisses upon his mouth and cheek.
The sunshine had gone from the meadow—the leaden colour above the tree-tops had thickened to dark-blue and spread over the whole sky; little, coppery flashes like fire-tinged smoke flickered within the clouds. Bayard came down to them, neighed loudly once and then stood stock still, staring before him. Soon after came the first flash of lightning, and the thunder followed close, not far away.
Erlend got up and took hold of the horse. An old barn stood at the lowest end of the meadow; they went thither, and he tied Bayard to some woodwork just inside the door. At the back of the barn lay some hay; Erlend spread his cloak out, and they seated themselves with the dogs at their feet.
And now the rain came down like a sheet before the doorway. It hissed in the trees and lashed the ground—soon they had to move further in, away from the drips from the roof. Each time it lightened and thundered, Erlend whispered:
“Are you not afraid, Kristin—?”
“A little—” she whispered back and drew closer to him.
They knew not how long they had sat—the storm had soon passed over—it thundered far away, but the sun shone on the wet grass outside the door, and the sparkling drops fell more and more rarely from the roof. The sweet smell of the hay in the barn grew stronger.
“Now must I go,” said Kristin, and Erlend answered: “Aye, ’tis like you must.” He took her foot in his hand: “You will be wet—you must ride and I must walk—out of the woods—” and he looked at her so strangely.
Kristin shook—it must be because her heart beat so, she thought—her hands were cold and clammy. As he kissed her vehemently she weakly tried to push him from her. Erlend lifted his face a moment—she thought of a man who had been given food at the convent one day—he had kissed the bread they gave him. She sank back upon the hay....
She sat upright when Erlend lifted his head from her arms. He raised himself suddenly upon his elbow:
“Look not so—Kristin!”
His voice sent a new, wild pang into Kristin’s soul—he was not glad—he was unhappy too—!
“Kristin, Kristin—
“—Think you I lured you out here to me in the woods meaning this—to make you mine by force—” he asked in a little.
She stroked his hair and did not look at him:
“’Twas not force, I trow—you had let me go as I came, had I begged you—” said she in a low voice.
“I know not,” he answered and hid his face in her lap—
“Think you that I would betray you?” asked he, vehemently. “Kristin—I swear to you by my Christian faith—may God forsake me in my last hour, if I keep not faith with you till the day of my death—”
She could say naught, she only stroked his hair again and again.
“’Tis time I went home, is it not?” she asked at length, and she seemed to wait in deadly terror for his answer.
“May be so,” he answered dully. He got up quickly, went to the horse, and began to loosen the reins.
Then she too got up. Slowly, wearily and with crushing pain it came home to her—she knew not what she had hoped he might do—set her upon his horse, maybe, and carry her off with him so she might be spared from going back amongst other people. It was as though her whole body ached with wonder—that this ill thing was what was sung in all the songs. And since Erlend had wrought her this, she felt herself grown so wholly his, she knew not how she should live away from him any more. She was to go from him now, but she could not understand that it should be so—
Down through the woods he went on foot, leading the horse. He held her hand in his, but they found no words to say.
When they had come so far that they could see the houses at Skog, he bade her farewell.
“Kristin—be not so sorrowful—the day will come or ever you know it, when you will be my wedded wife—”
But her heart sank as he spoke:
“Must you go away, then—?” she asked, dismayed.
“As soon as you are gone from Skog,” said he, and his voice already rang more bright. “If there be no war, I will speak to Munan—he has long urged me that I should wed—he will go with me and speak for me to your father.”
Kristin bent her head—at each word he said, she felt the time that lay before grow longer and more hard to think of—the convent, Jörundgaard—she seemed to float upon a stream which bore her far from it all.
“Sleep you alone in the loft-room, now your kinsfolk are gone?” asked Erlend. “Then will I come and speak with you to-night—will you let me in?”
“Aye,” said Kristin low. And so they parted.
The rest of the day she sat with her father’s mother, and after supper she took the old lady to her bed. Then she went up to the loft-room, where she was to lie. There was a little window in the room; Kristin sat herself down on the chest that stood below it—she had no mind to go to bed.
She had long to wait. It was quite dark without when she heard the soft steps upon the balcony. He knocked upon the door with his cloak about his knuckles, and Kristin got up, drew the bolt and let Erlend in.
She marked how glad he was, when she flung her arms about his neck and clung to him.
“I have been fearing you would be angry with me,” he said.
“You must not grieve for our sin,” he said sometime after. “’Tis not a deadly sin. God’s law is not like to the law of the land in this—Gunnulv, my brother, once made this matter plain to me—if two vow to have and hold each other fast for all time, and thereafter lie together, then they are wedded before God and may not break their troths without great sin. I can give you the words in Latin when they come to my mind—I knew them once....”
Kristin wondered a little why Erlend’s brother should have said this—but she thrust from her the hateful fear that it might have been said of Erlend and another—and sought to find comfort in his words.
They sat together on the chest, he with his arm about her, and now Kristin felt that ’twas well with her once more and she was safe—beside him was the only spot now where she could feel safe and sheltered.
At times Erlend spoke much and cheerfully—then he would be silent for long while he sat caressing her. Without knowing it Kristin gathered up out of all he said each little thing that could make him fairer and dearer to her, and lessen his blame in all she knew of him that was not good.
Erlend’s father, Sir Nikulaus, had been so old before he had children, he had not patience enough nor strength enough left to rear them up himself; both the sons had grown up in the house of Sir Baard Petersön at Hestnæs. Erlend had no sisters and no brother save Gunnulv; he was one year younger and was a priest at Christ’s Church in Nidaros. “He is dearest to me of all mankind save only you.”
Kristin asked if Gunnulv were like him, but Erlend laughed and said they were much unlike both in mind and body. Now Gunnulv was in foreign lands studying—he had been away these three years, but had sent letters home twice, the last a year ago, when he thought to go from St. Geneviève’s in Paris and make his way to Rome. “He will be glad, Gunnulv, when he comes home and finds me wed,” said Erlend.
Then he spoke of the great heritage he had had from his father and mother—Kristin saw he scarce knew himself how things stood with him now. She knew somewhat of her father’s dealings in land—Erlend had dealt in his the other way about, sold and scattered and wasted and pawned, worst of all in the last years when he had been striving to free him of his paramour, thinking that, this done, his sinful life might in time be forgotten and his kin stand by him once more; he had thought he might some day come to be Warden of half the Orkdöla county, as his father had been before him.
“But now do I scarce know what the end will be,” said he. “Maybe I shall sit at last on a mountain croft like Björn Gunnarsön, and bear out the dung on my back as did the thralls of old, because I have no horse.”
“God help you,” said Kristin, laughing. “Then I must come to you for sure—I trow I know more of farm work and country ways than you.”
“I can scarce think you have borne out the dung-basket,” said he, laughing too.
“No; but I have seen how they spread the dung out—and sown corn have I, well nigh every year at home. ’Twas my father’s wont to plough himself the fields nearest the farm, and he let me sow the first piece that I might bring good fortune—” the thought sent a pang through her heart, so she said quickly: “—and a woman you must have to bake, and brew the small beer, and wash your one shirt, and milk—and you must hire a cow or two from the rich farmer near by—”
“Oh, God be thanked that I hear you laugh a little once more!” said Erlend and caught her up so that she lay on his arms like a child.
Each of the six nights which passed ere Aasmund Björgulfsön came home, Erlend was in the loft-room with Kristin.
The last night he seemed as unhappy as she; he said many times they must not be parted from one another a day longer than needful. At last he said very low:
“Now should things go so ill that I cannot come back hither to Oslo before winter—and if it so falls out you need help of friends—fear not to turn to Sira Jon here at Gerdarud, we are friends from childhood up, and Munan Baardsön, too, you may safely trust.”
Kristin could only nod. She knew he spoke of what she had thought on each single day; but Erlend said no more of it. So she too said naught, and would not show how heavy of heart she was.
On the other nights he had gone from her when the night grew late, but this last evening he begged hard that he might lie and sleep by her an hour. Kristin was fearful, but Erlend said haughtily: “Be sure that were I found here in your bower, I am well able to answer for myself—” She herself, too, was fain to keep him by her yet a little while, and she had not strength enough to deny him aught.
But she feared that they might sleep too long. So most of the night she sat leaning against the head of the bed, dozing a little at times, and scarce knowing herself when he caressed her and when she only dreamed it. Her one hand she held upon his breast, where she could feel the beating of his heart beneath, and her face was turned to the window that she might see the dawn without.
At length she had to wake him. She threw on some clothes and went out with him upon the balcony—he clambered over the railing on the side that faced on to another house near by. Now he was gone from her sight—the corner hid him. Kristin went in again and crept into her bed; and now she quite gave way and fell to weeping for the first time since Erlend had made her all his own.