Lavrans and Ragnfrid held their peace, but Kristin turned away, and the wish she had felt but a moment before to clasp Simon round the neck, had quite left her.
Towards noon, Lavrans and Simon took their ski and went out to see to some snares up on the mountain ridges. The weather was fine outside—sunshine, and the cold not so great. Both men were glad to slip away from all the sadness and weeping at home, and so they went far—right up among the bare hilltops.
They lay in the sun under a crag and drank and ate; Lavrans spoke a little of Arne—he had loved the boy well. Simon chimed in, praised the dead lad, and said he thought it not strange that Kristin grieved for her foster brother. Then Lavrans said: maybe they should not press her much, but should give her a little time to get back her peace of mind before they drank the betrothal ale. She had said somewhat of wishing to go into a convent for a time.
Simon sat bolt upright, and gave a long whistle.
“You like not the thought?” asked Lavrans.
“Nay, but I do, I do,” said the other hastily. “Methinks it is the best way, dear father-in-law. Send her to the Sisters in Oslo for a year—there will she learn how folk talk one of the other out in the world. I know a little of some of the maidens who are there,” he said laughing. “They would not throw themselves down and die of grief if two mad younkers tore each other to pieces for their sakes. Not that I would have such an one for wife—but methinks Kristin will be none the worse for meeting new folks.”
Lavrans put the rest of the food into the wallet and said, without looking at the youth:
“Methinks you love Kristin—?”
Simon laughed a little and did not look at Lavrans:
“Be sure, I know her worth—and yours too,” he said quickly and shamefacedly, as he got up and took his ski. “None that I have ever met would I sooner wed with—”
A little before Easter, when there was still snow enough for sleighing down the Dale and the ice still bore on Mjösen, Kristin journeyed southward for the second time. Simon came up to bear her company—so now she journeyed driving in a sleigh, well wrapped in furs and with father and betrothed beside her; and after them followed her father’s men and sledges with her clothes, and gifts of food and furs for the Abbess and the Sisters of Nonneseter.
Part II
The Garland
I
Aasmund Björgulfsön’s church-boat stood in round the point of Hovedö early one Sunday at the end of April, while the bells were ringing in the cloister-church and were answered from across the bay by the chime of bells from the town, now louder and now fainter as the breeze rose or fell.
Light, fluted clouds were floating over the high, pale-blue heavens, and the sun was glittering on the dancing ripples of the water. It was quite springlike along the shores; the fields lay almost bare of snow, and over the leaf-tree thickets the light had a yellow shimmer and the shadows were blue. But in the pine-forests up on the high ridges, which framed in the settled lands of Akersbygd, there were glimpses of snow, and on the far blue fells to the westward, beyond the fjord, there still showed many flashes of white.
Kristin was standing in the bow of the boat with her father, and Gyrid, Aasmund’s wife. She gazed at the town, with all the light-hued churches and stone buildings that rose above the swarm of grey-brown wooden houses and bare treetops. The wind ruffled the skirts of her cloak and snatched at her hair beneath her hood.
They had let the cattle out at Skog the day before, and a great longing had come on her to be at Jörundgaard. It would be a long time still before they could let the cattle out there—she longed with tender pity for the lean, winter-worn cows in the dark byres; they would have to wait and suffer a long while yet. Her mother, Ulvhild, who had slept in her arms each night all these years, little Ramborg—she yearned so much for them; she longed for all the folk at home, and the horses and the dogs, for Kortelin, whom Ulvhild was to have while she was gone, and for her father’s hawks as they sat there on their perches with their hoods over their heads. She saw the horsehide gloves that hung beside them to wear when you took them on to your wrist, and the ivory staves to scratch them with.
It was as if all the woe of the last winter had gone far away from her and she only saw her home as it used to be. They had told her, too, that none thought ill of her in the parish—Sira Eirik did not believe that story; he was angry and grieved at what Bentein had done. Bentein had fled from Hamar; ’twas said he had gone to Sweden. So things were not so bad between them and their neighbour as she had feared.
On the journey down to Oslo they had stayed as guests at Simon’s home, and she had come to know his mother and sisters—Sir Andres was in Sweden still. She had not felt at ease there, and her dislike of the Dyfrin folk was all the stronger that she could think of no good ground for it. All the way thither, she had said to herself that they had no
