Each summer it was Lavrans Björgulfsön’s wont to ride southward and see to his manor in Follo. These journeys of her father were landmarks of each year in Kristin’s life—the long weeks while he was gone, and the joy of his homecoming with brave gifts: fine outlandish stuffs for her bride-chest, figs, raisins and honey-bread from Oslo—and many strange things to tell her.
But this year Kristin marked that there was something more than common afoot toward the time of her father’s going. ’Twas put off and off; the old men from Loptsgaard rode over at odd times and sat about the board with her father and mother; spoke of heritage, and freehold and redemption rights, and hindrances to working the estate from so far off, and the bishop’s seat and the King’s palace in Oslo, which took so much labour from the farms round about the town. They scarce ever had time to play with her, and she was sent out to the kitchen-house to the maids. Her mother’s brother, Trond Ivarsön of Sundbu, came over to them more often than was his wont—but he had never been used to play with Kristin or pet her.
Little by little she came to have some inkling of what it was all about. Ever since he was come to Sil, Lavrans had sought to gather to himself land here in the parish, and now had Sir Andres Gudmundsön tendered him Formo in Sil, which was Sir Andres’ heritage from his mother, in change for Skog, which lay more fittingly for him, since he was with the King’s bodyguard and rarely came hither to the Dale. Lavrans was loth to part with Skog, which was his freehold heritage, and had come to his forebears by royal gift; and yet the bargain would be for his gain in many ways. But Lavran’s brother, Aasmund Björgulfsön, too, would gladly have Skog—he dwelt now in Hadeland, where he had wedded an estate—and ’twas not sure that Aasmund would waive the right his kinship gave him.
But one day Lavrans told Ragnfrid that this year he would have Kristin with him to Skog—she should see the manor where she was born, and which was his fathers’ home, now that it was like to pass from their hands. Ragnfrid deemed this but right, though she feared not a little to send so young a child on such a long journey, where she herself could not be by.
For a time after Kristin had seen the Elf-maid she was so fearful that she kept much within doors by her mother—she was afraid even when she saw the folk who had been with them on the fells and knew what had befallen her, and she was glad her father had forbidden all talk of that sight of hers.
But when some little time was gone by she began to think she would like to speak of it. In her thoughts she told the story to someone—she knew not whom—and, ’twas strange, the more time went by, the better it seemed she remembered it, and the clearer and clearer grew the memory of the fair lady.
But, strangest of all, each time she thought of the Elf-maid there came upon her such a longing for the journey to Skog, and more and more fear that her father would not take her with him.
At last she woke one morning in the loft-room and saw her mother and old Gunhild sitting on the threshold looking over a heap of Lavrans’ squirrel-skins. Gunhild was a widow who went the round of the farms and sewed fur lining into cloaks and the like. And Kristin guessed from their talk that now it was she should have a new cloak, lined with squirrel-skin and edged with marten. And then she knew she was to go with her father, and she sprang up in bed and shrieked with gladness.
Her mother came over to her and stroked her cheek:
“Are you so glad then, my daughter, you are going so far from me?”
Ragnfrid said the same that morning they were to set out. They were up at cock-crow; it was dark without, with thick mist between the houses, as Kristin peeped out of the door at the weather. The mist billowed like grey smoke round the lanterns, and out by the open house-doors. Folk ran twixt stables and outhouses, and women came from the kitchen with steaming porridge-pots and trenchers of meat and pork—they were to have a plenty of good, strong food before they rode out into the morning cold.
Indoors, saddlebags were shut and opened, and forgotten things packed inside. Ragnfrid called to her husband’s mind all the errands he must do for her, and spoke of kin and friends upon the way—he must greet this one and not forget to ask for that one.
Kristin ran out and in; she said farewell many times to all in the house, and could not hold still a moment in any place.
“Are you so glad then, Kristin, you are going from me so far and for so long?” asked her mother. Kristin was abashed and uneasy, and wished her mother had not said this. But she answered as best she could:
“No, dear my mother, but I am glad that I am to go with father.”
“Aye, that you are indeed,” said Ragnfrid, sighing. Then she kissed the child and put the last touches to her dress.
At last they were in the saddle, the whole train—Kristin rode on Morvin, who ere now had been her father’s saddle-horse—he was old, wise and steady. Ragnfrid held up the silver stoup with the stirrup-cup to her husband, and laid a hand upon her daughter’s knee and bade her bear in mind all her mother had taught her.
And so they rode out of the courtyard in the grey light. The fog lay white as milk upon the parish. But in a while it began to grow thinner and the sunlight sifted through. And dripping with dew there shone through the white haze hillsides, green with the aftermath, and pale stubble fields, and yellow trees, and rowans bright with red berries. Glimpses of blue mountain-sides seemed rising through the steamy haze—then the mist broke and drove in wreaths across the slopes, and they rode down the Dale in the most glorious sunshine, Kristin in front of the troop at her father’s side.
They came to Hamar one dark and rainy evening, with Kristin sitting in front on her father’s saddle-bow, for she was so weary that all things swam before her eyes—the lake that gleamed wanly on their right, the gloomy trees which dripped wet upon them as they rode beneath, and the dark, leaden clusters of houses on the hueless, sodden fields by the wayside.
She had stopped counting the days—it seemed as though she had been an endless time on the journey. They had visited kindred and friends all down the Dale; she had made acquaintance with children on the great manors and had played in strange houses and barns and courtyards, and had worn many times her red dress with the silk sleeves. They had rested by the roadside by day when the weather was fair; Arne had gathered nuts for her and she had slept after meals upon the saddlebags wherein were their clothes. At one great house they had silk-covered pillows in their beds, but one night they lay at an inn, and in one of the other beds was a woman who lay and wept softly and bitterly each time Kristin was awake. But every night she had slumbered safely behind her father’s broad, warm back.
Kristin awoke with a start—she knew not where she was, but the wondrous ringing and booming sound she had heard in her dream went on. She was lying alone in a bed, and on the hearth of the room a fire was burning.
She called upon her father, and he rose from the hearth where he had been sitting, and came to her along with a stout woman.
“Where are we?” she asked, and Lavrans laughed and said:
“We’re in Hamar now, and here is Margret, the wife of Fartein the shoemaker—you must greet her prettily now, for you slept when we came hither. But now Margret will help you to your clothes.”
“Is it morning then?” said Kristin. “I thought you were even now coming to bed.—Oh! do you help me,” she begged; but Lavrans said, something sternly, that she should rather be thankful to kind Margret for helping her.
“And see what she has for you for a gift!”
’Twas a pair of red shoes with silken latchets. The woman smiled at Kristin’s glad face, and drew on her shift and hose up on the bed, that she should not need to tread barefoot upon the clay floor.
“What is it makes such a noise,” asked Kristin, “like a church bell, but many bells?”
“Aye, those are our bells,” laughed Margret. “Have you heard not of the great minster here in the town—’tis there you are going now. There goes the great bell! And now ’tis ringing in the cloister and in the Church of Holy Cross as well.”
Margret spread the butter thick upon Kristin’s bread and gave her honey in her milk, that the food she took might stand in more stead—she had scant time to eat.
Out of doors it was still dark and the weather had fallen frosty. The fog was biting cold. The footprints of folk and of cattle and horses were hard as though cast in iron, so that Kristin bruised her feet in the thin, new shoes, and once she trod through the ice on the gutter in the middle of the street and her legs got wet and cold. Then Lavrans took her on his back and carried her.
She strained her eyes in the gloom, but there was not much she could see of the town—she caught a glimpse of black house-gables and trees through the grey air. Then they came out upon a little meadow that shone with rime, and upon the further side of the meadow she dimly saw a pale-grey building, big as a fell. Great stone houses stood about, and at points lights glimmered from window-holes in the walls. The bells, which had been silent for a time, took to ringing again, and now it was with a sound so strong that a cold shiver ran down his back.
’Twas like going into the mountain-side, thought Kristin, when they mounted into the church forehall; it struck chill and dark in there. They went through a door, and were met by the stale, cold smell of incense and candles. Now Kristin was in a dark and vastly lofty place. She could not see where it ended, neither above nor to the sides, but lights burned upon an altar far in front. There stood a priest, and the echoes of his voice stole strangely round the great place, like breathings and whisperings. Her father signed the cross with holy-water upon himself and the child, and so they went forward; though he stepped warily, his spurs rang loudly on the stone floor. They passed by giant pillars, and betwixt the pillars it was like looking into coal-black holes.
Forward, nigh to the altar, the father bent his knee, and Kristin knelt beside him. She began to be able to make things out in the gloom—gold and silver glittered on altars in between the pillars, but upon that before them shone tapers which stood and burned on gilt candlesticks, while the light streamed back from the holy vessels and the big, beautiful picture-panel behind. Kristin was brought again to think of the mountain-folk’s hall—even so had she dreamed it must be, splendid like this, but maybe with yet more lights. And the dwarf-maid’s face came up before her—but then she raised her eyes and spied upon the wall above the altar, Christ himself, great and stern, lifted high upon the cross. Fear came upon her—he did not look mild and sorrowful as at home in their own snug timber-brown church, where he hung heavily, with pierced feet and hands, and bowed his blood-besprinkled head beneath the crown of thorns.
Here, he stood upon a footboard with stiff, outstretched arms and upright head; his gilded hair glittered; he was crowned with a crown of gold, and his face was upturned and harsh.
Then she tried to follow the priest’s words as he read and chanted, but his speech was too hurried and unclear. At home she was wont to understand each word, for Sira Eirik had the clearest speech, and had taught her what the holy words betokened in Norse, that she might the better keep her thoughts with God while she was in church.
But she could not do that here, for every moment she grew aware of something new in the darkness. There were windows high up in the walls, and these began to shimmer with the day. And near by where they knelt there was raised a wondrous scaffolding of timber, but beyond lay blocks of light-coloured stone; and there stood mortar-troughs and tools—and she heard folks coming tiptoeing about in there. But then again her eyes fell upon the stern Lord Christ upon the wall, and she strove to keep her thoughts fixed upon the service. The icy cold from the stone floor stiffened her legs right up to the thighs, and her knees gave her pain. At length everything began to sway about her, so weary was she.
Then her father rose; the mass was at an end. The priest came forward and greeted her father. While they spoke, Kristin sate herself down upon a step, for she saw the choirboy had done the like. He yawned—and so she too fell a yawning. When he marked that she looked at him, he set his tongue in his cheek and twisted his eyes at her. Thereupon he dug up a pouch from under his clothing and emptied upon the flags all that was in it—fish-hooks, lumps of lead, leather thongs and a pair of dice, and all the while he made signs to her. Kristin wondered mightily.
But now the priest and her father looked at the children. The priest laughed, and bade the boy be gone back to school, but Lavrans frowned and took Kristin by the hand.
It began to grow lighter in the church now. Kristin clung sleepily to Lavrans’ hand, while he and the priest walked beneath the pile of timber and talked of Bishop Ingjald’s building-work.
They wandered all about the church, and in the end went out into the forehall. Thence a stone stairway led to the western tower. Kristin tumbled wearily up the steps. The priest opened a door to a fair chapel, and her father said that Kristin should set herself without upon the steps and wait while he went to shrift; and thereafter she could come in and kiss St. Thomas’s shrine.
At that there came an old monk in an ash-brown frock from out the chapel. He stopped a moment, smiled at the child, and drew forth some sacks and wadmal cloths which had been stuck into a hole in the wall. These he spread upon the landing:
“Sit you here, and you will not be so cold,” said he, and passed down the steps upon his naked feet.
Kristin was sleeping when Canon Martein, as the priest was called, came out and waked her with a touch. Up from the church sounded the sweetest of song, and in the chapel candles burned upon the altar. The priest made sign that she should kneel by her father’s side, and then he took down a little golden shrine which stood above the communion-table. He whispered to her that in it was a piece of St. Thomas of Canterbury’s bloody garments, and he pointed at the saint’s figure on the shrine that Kristin might press her lips to his feet.
The lovely tones still streamed from the church as they came down the steps; Canon Martein said ’twas the organist practising his art and the school-boys singing; but they had not the time to stay and listen, for her father was hungry—he had come fasting for confession—and they were now bound for the guest-room of the canons’ close to take their food.
The morning sun without was gilding the steep shores on the further side of the great lake, and all the groves of yellowing leaf-trees shone like gold-dust amid the dark-blue pinewoods. The lake ran in waves with small dancing white caps of foam to their heads. The wind blew cold and fresh and the many-hued leaves drifted down upon the rimy hillsides.
A band of riders came forth from between the bishop’s palace and the house of the Brothers of Holy Cross. Lavrans stepped aside and bowed with a hand upon his breast, while he all but swept the sward with his hat, so Kristin could guess the nobleman in the fur cloak must be the bishop himself, and she curtsied to the ground.
The bishop reined in his horse and gave back the greeting; he beckoned Lavrans to him and spoke with him a while. In a short space Lavrans came back to the priest and child and said:
“Now am I bidden to eat at the bishop’s palace—think you Canon Martein, that one of the serving-men of the canonry could go with this little maid of mine home to Fartein the shoemaker’s and bid my men send Halvdan to meet me here with Guldsveinen at the hour of nones.”
The priest answered, doubtless what he asked could be done. But on this the bare-footed monk who had spoken to Kristin on the tower stairs came forward and saluted them:
“There is a man here in our guest-house who has an errand of his own to the shoemaker’s; he can bear your bidding thither, Lavrans Björgulfsön, and your daughter can go with him or bide at the cloister with me till you yourself are for home. I shall see to it that she has her food there.”
Lavrans thanked him but said, “’Twere shame you should be troubled with the child, brother Edwin—”
“Brother Edwin draws to himself all the children he can lay hands upon,” said Canon Martein and laughed. “’Tis in this wise he gets someone to preach to—”
“Aye, before you learnéd lords here in Hamar I dare not proffer my poor discourses,” said the monk without anger, and smiling. “All I am fit for is to talk to children and peasants, but even so, ’tis not well, we know, to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.”
Kristin looked up at her father beseechingly; she thought there was nothing she would like more than to go with brother Edwin. So Lavrans gave thanks again, and while her father and the priest went after the bishop’s train, Kristin laid her hand in the monk’s, and they went down towards the cloister, a cluster of wooden houses and a light-hued stone church far down by the lake-side.
Brother Edwin gave her hand a little squeeze, and as they looked at one another they had both to laugh. The monk was thin and tall, but very stoop-backed; the child thought him like an old crane in the head, for ’twas little, with a small, shining, bald pate above a shaggy, white rim of hair, and set upon a long, thin, wrinkled neck. His nose was large too, and pointed like a beak. But ’twas something which made her light of heart and glad, only to look up into the long, narrow, deep-lined face. The old, sea-blue eyes were red-rimmed and the lids brown and thin as flakes. A thousand wrinkles spread out from them; the wizened cheeks with the reddish network of veins were scored with furrows which ran down towards the thin-lipped mouth, but ’twas as though Brother Edwin had grown thus wrinkled only through smiling at mankind.—Kristin thought she had never seen anyone so blithe and gentle; it seemed he bore some bright and privy gladness within which she would get to know of when he began to speak.
They followed the fence of an apple-orchard where there still hung upon the trees a few red and golden fruit. Two Preaching Brothers in black and white gowns were raking together withered beanshaws in the garden.
The cloister was not much unlike any other farm steading, and the guest-house whither the monk led Kristin was most like a poor peasant’s house, though there were many bedsteads in it. In one of the beds lay an old man, and by the hearth sat a woman swathing a little child; two bigger children, boy and girl, stood beside her.
They murmured, both the man and the woman, that they had not been given their breakfast yet: “None will be at the pains to bear in food to us twice in the day, so we must e’en starve while you run about the town, Brother Edwin!”
“Nay, be not peevish, Steinulv,” said the monk, “—Come hither and make your greetings, Kristin—see this bonny, sweet little maid who is to stay and eat with us to-day.”
He told how Steinulv had fallen sick on the way home from a fair, and had got leave to lie here in the cloister guest-house, for he had a kinswoman dwelling in the spital and she was so curst he could not endure to be there with her.
“But I see well enough, they will soon be weary of having me here,” said the peasant. “When you set forth again, Brother Edwin, there will be none here that has time to tend me, and they will surely have me to the spital again.”
“Oh! you will be well and strong long before I am done with my work in the church,” said Brother Edwin. “Then your son will come and fetch you—” He took up a kettle of hot water from the hearth and let Kristin hold it while he tended Steinulv. Thereupon the old man grew somewhat easier, and soon after there came in a monk with food and drink for them.
Brother Edwin said grace over the meat, and set himself on the edge of the bed by Steinulv that he might help him to take his food. Kristin went and sat by the woman and gave the boy to eat, for he was so little he could not well reach up to the porridge-dish, and he spilled upon himself when he tried to dip into the beer-bowl. The woman was from Hadeland, and she was come hither with her man and her children to see her brother who was a monk here in the cloister. But he was away wandering among the country parishes, and she grumbled much that they must lie here and waste their time.
Brother Edwin spoke the woman fair: she must not say she wasted time when she was here in Bishopshamar. Here were all the brave churches, and the monks and canons held masses and sang the livelong day and night—and the city was fine, finer than Oslo even, though ’twas somewhat less; but here were gardens to almost every dwelling-place: “You should have seen it when I came hither in the spring—’twas white with blossom over all the town. And after, when the sweet-brier burst forth—”
“Aye, and much good is that to me now,” said the woman sourly. “And here are more of holy places than of holiness, methinks—”
The monk laughed a little and shook his head. Then he routed amidst the straw of his bed and brought forth a great handful of apples and pears which he shared amongst the children. Kristin had never tasted such good fruit. The juice ran out from the corners of her mouth every bite she took.
But now Brother Edwin must go to the church, he said, and Kristin should go with him. Their path went slantwise across the close, and, by a little side wicket, they passed into the choir.
They were still building at this church as well, so that here too there stood a tall scaffolding in the cross where nave and transepts met. Bishop Ingjald was bettering and adorning the choir, said Brother Edwin—the bishop had great wealth, and all his riches he used for the adornment of the churches here in the town; he was a noble bishop and a good man. The Preaching Friars in the Olav’s cloister were good men too, clean-living, learned and humble; ’twas a poor cloister, but they had made him most welcome—Brother Edwin had his home in the Minorite cloister at Oslo, but he had leave to spend a term here in Hamar diocese.
“But now come hither,” said he, and led Kristin forward to the foot of the scaffolding. First he climbed up a ladder and laid some boards straight up there, and then he came down again and helped the child up with him.
Upon the grey-stone wall above her Kristin saw wondrous fluttering flecks of light; red as blood and yellow as beer, blue and brown and green. She would have turned to look behind her, but the monk whispered: “Turn not about.” But when they stood together high upon the planking, he turned her gently round, and Kristin saw a sight so fair she almost lost her breath.
Right over against her on the nave’s south wall stood a picture and shone as if it were made of naught but gleaming precious stones. The many-hued flecks of light upon the wall came from rays which stood out from that picture; she herself and the monk stood in the midst of the glory; her hands were red as though dipped in wine; the monk’s visage seemed all golden, and his dark frock threw the picture’s colours softly back. She looked up at him questioningly, but he only nodded and smiled.
’Twas like standing far off and looking into the heavenly kingdom. Behind a network of black streaks, she made out little by little the Lord Christ himself in the most precious of red robes, the Virgin Mary in raiment blue as heaven, holy men and maidens in shining yellow and green and violet array. They stood below arches and pillars of glimmering houses, wound about with branches and twigs of strange bright leafage—
The monk drew her a little further out upon the staging:
“Stand here,” he whispered, “and ’twill shine right upon you from Christ’s own robe.”
From the church beneath there rose to them a faint odour of incense and the smell of cold stone. It was dim below, but the sun’s rays slanted in through a row of window-bays in the nave’s south wall. Kristin began to understand that the heavenly picture must be a sort of windowpane, for it filled just such an opening. The others were empty or filled with panes of horn set in wooden frames. A bird came, set itself upon a windowsill, twittered a little and flew away, and outside the wall of the choir they heard the clank of metal on stone. All else was still; only the wind came in small puffs, sighed a little round about the church walls and died away.
“Aye, aye,” said Brother Edwin and sighed. “No one here in the land can make the like—they paint on glass, ’tis true, in Nidaros, but not like this—But away in the lands of the south, Kristin, in the great minsters, there they have such picture-panes, big as the doors of the church here—”
Kristin thought of the pictures in the church at home. There was St. Olav’s altar and St. Thomas of Canterbury’s altar with pictures on their front panels and on the tabernacles behind—but those pictures seemed to her dull and lustreless as she thought of them now.
They went down the ladder and up into the choir. There stood the altar table, naked and bare, and on the stone slab were set many small boxes and cups of metal and wood and earthenware; strange little knives and irons, pens and brushes lay about. Brother Edwin said these were his gear; he plied the crafts of painting pictures and carving altar-tabernacles, and the fine panels which stood yonder by the choir-stalls were his work. They were for the altarpieces here in the Preaching Friars’ church.
Kristin watched how he mixed up coloured powders and stirred them into little cups of stoneware, and he let her help him bear the things away to a bench by the wall. While the monk went from one panel to another and painted fine red lines in the bright hair of the holy men and women so that one could see it curl and crinkle, Kristin kept close at his heels and gazed and questioned, and he explained to her what it was that he had limned.
On the one panel sat Christ in a chair of gold, and St. Nicholas and St. Clement stood beneath a roof by his side. And at the sides was painted St. Nicholas’ life and works. In one place he sat as a suckling child upon his mother’s knee; he turned away from the breast she reached him, for he was so holy that from the very cradle he would not suck more than once on Fridays. Alongside of that was a picture of him as he laid the money-purses before the door of the house where dwelt the three maids who were so poor they could not find husbands. She saw how he healed the Roman knight’s child, and saw the knight sailing in a boat with the false chalice in his hands. He had vowed the holy bishop a chalice of gold which had been in his house a thousand years, as guerdon for bringing his son back to health again. But he was minded to trick St. Nicholas and give him a false chalice instead; therefore the boy fell into the sea with the true beaker in his hands. But St. Nicholas led the child unhurt underneath the water and up on to the shore just as his father stood in St. Nicholas’ church and offered the false vessel. It all stood painted upon the panels in gold and the fairest colours.
On another panel sat the Virgin Mary with the Christ-child on her knee; he pressed his mother’s chin with the one hand and held an apple in the other. Beside them stood St. Sunniva and St. Christina. They bowed in lovely wise from their waists, their faces were the fairest red and white and they had golden hair and golden crowns.
Brother Edwin steadied himself with the left hand on the right wrist, and painted leaves and roses on the crowns.
“The dragon is all too small, methinks,” said Kristin, looking at her holy namesake’s picture. “It looks not as though it could swallow up the maiden.”
“And that it could not either,” said Brother Edwin. “It was not bigger. Dragons and all such-like that serve the devil, seem great only so long as fear is in ourselves. But if a man seek God fervently and with all his soul so that his longing wins into his strength, then does the devil’s power suffer at once such great downfall that his tools become small and powerless—dragons and evil spirits sink down and become no bigger than sprites and cats and crows. You see that the whole mountain St. Sunniva was in is no larger than that she can wrap it within the skirt of her gown.”
“But were they not in the caves then,” asked Kristin, “St. Sunniva and the Selje-men? Is not that true?”
The monk twinkled at her and smiled again:
“’Tis both true and untrue. It seemed so to the folk who found the holy bodies. And true it is that it seemed so to Sunniva and the Selje-men, for they were humble and thought only that the world is stronger than all sinful mankind, and they thought not that they themselves were stronger than the world, because they loved it not. But had they but known it, they could have taken all the hills and slung them forth into the sea like so many pebbles. No one, nor anything, can harm us child, save what we fear or love.”
“But if a body doth not fear nor love God?” asked Kristin, affrighted.
The monk took her yellow hair in his hand, bent Kristin’s head back gently and looked down into her face; his eyes were wide open and blue.
“There is no man nor woman, Kristin, who does not love and fear God, but ’tis because our hearts are divided twixt love of God and fear of the devil and fondness for the world and the flesh, that we are unhappy in life and death. For if a man had not any yearning after God and God’s being, then should he thrive in hell, and ’twould be we alone who would not understand that there he had gotten what his heart desired. For there the fire would not burn him if he did not long for coolness, nor would he feel the torment of the serpents’ bite, if he knew not the yearning after peace.”
Kristin looked up in his face; she understood none of all this. Brother Edwin went on:
“’Twas God’s loving-kindness towards us that, seeing how our hearts are drawn asunder, He came down and dwelt among us, that He might taste in the flesh the lures of the devil when he decoys us with power and splendour, as well as the menace of the world when it offers us blows and scorn and sharp nails in hands and feet. In such wise did He show us the way and make manifest His love—”
He looked down upon the child’s grave, set face—then he laughed a little and said with quite another voice:
“Do you know who ’twas that first knew our Lord had caused himself to be born? ’Twas the cock; he saw the star and so he said—all the beasts could talk Latin in those days; he cried: ‘Christus natus est!’”
He crowed these last words so like a cock that Kristin fell to laughing heartily. And it did her good to laugh, for all the strange things Brother Edwin had just been saying had laid a burden of awe on her heart.
The monk laughed himself:
“Aye, and when the ox heard that, he began to low: ‘Ubi, ubi, ubi.’
“But the goat bleated and said: ‘Betlem, Betlem, Betlem!’
“And the sheep longed so to see Our Lady and her Son that she baa-ed out at once: ‘Eamus, eamus!’
“And the new-born calf that lay in the straw, raised itself and stood upon its feet. ‘Volo, volo, volo!’ it said.
“You never heard that before? No, I can believe it; I know that he is a worthy priest, that Sira Eirik that you have up in your parts, and learned; but he knows not this, I warrant; for a man does not learn it except he journey to Paris—”
“Have you been to Paris then?” asked the child.
“God bless you, little Kristin, I have been in Paris and have travelled round elsewhere in the world as well; and you must not believe aught else than that I am afraid of the devil, and love and covet like any other fool. But I hold fast to the Cross with all my might—one must cling to it like a kitten to a lath when it has fallen in the sea—
“And you, Kristin—how would you like to offer up this bonny hair and serve Our Lady like these brides I have figured here?”
“We have no child at home but me,” answered Kristin. “So ’tis like that I must marry. And I trow mother has chests and lockers with my bridal gear standing ready even now.”
“Aye, aye,” said Brother Edwin, and stroked her forehead. “’Tis thus that folk deal with their children now. To God they give the daughters who are lame or purblind or ugly or blemished, or they let Him have back the children when they deem Him to have given them more than they need. And then they wonder that all who dwell in the cloisters are not holy men and maids—”
Brother Edwin took her into the sacristy and showed her the cloister books which stood there in a book-case; there were the fairest pictures in them. But when one of the monks came in, Brother Edwin made as though he were but seeking an ass’s head to copy. Afterward he shook his head at himself:
“Aye, there you see what fear does, Kristin—but they’re so fearful about their books in the house here. Had I the true faith and love, I would not stand here as I do and lie to Brother Aasulv—But then I could take these old fur mittens here and hang them upon yonder sunbeam—”
She was with the monk to dinner over in the guest-house, but for the rest she sat in the church the whole day and watched his work and chatted with him. And first when Lavrans came to fetch her, did either she or the monk remember the message that should have been sent to the shoemaker.
Afterwards Kristin remembered these days in Hamar better than all else that befell her on the long journey. Oslo, indeed, was a greater town than Hamar, but now that she had seen a market town, it did not seem to her so notable. Nor did she deem it as fair at Skog as at Jörundgaard, though the houses were grander—but she was glad she was not to dwell there. The manor lay upon a hillside; below was the Botnfjord, grey, and sad with dark forest, and on the further shore and behind the houses the forest stood with the sky right down upon the tree-tops. There were no high, steep fells as at home, to hold the heavens high above one and to keep the sight sheltered and in bounds so that the world might seem neither too big nor too little.
The journey home was cold; it was nigh upon Advent; but, when they were come a little way up the Dale, snow was lying, and so they borrowed sleighs and drove most of the way.
With the affair of the estates it fell out so that Lavrans made Skog over to his brother Aasmund, keeping the right of redemption for himself and his heirs.