Brother Edvin 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 Edvin 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 sweetbrier 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 Edvin 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 Edvin—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 Edvin 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 Edvin 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 Edvin said these were
