Kristin made bold to ask where he had come from, this monk with the un-Norse name. Lady Groa was in the mood for talking; she told how he had been born here in Oslo, but his father was an Englishman, Rikard Platemaster, who had wedded a farmer’s daughter from the Skogheim Hundred, and had taken up his abode in the town—two of Edvin’s brothers were armourers of good repute in Oslo. But this eldest of the Platemaster’s sons had been a restless spirit all his days. ’Twas true he had felt a call to the life of the cloister from childhood up; he had joined the Cistercians at Hovedö as soon as he was old enough. They sent him to a monastery in France to be trained—for his gifts were good; while still there he had managed to get leave to pass from the Cistercian into the Minorite order. And at the time the unruly friars began building their church eastward in the fields in despite of the Bishop’s command, Brother Edvin had been one of the worst and most stiff-necked of them all—nay, he had half killed with his hammer one of the men the Bishop sent to stop the work.
It was a long time now since anyone had spoken so much with Kristin at one time, so when Lady Groa said that now she might go, the young girl bent and kissed the Abbess’s hand, fervently and reverently; and as she did so, tears came into her eyes. And Lady Groa, who saw she was weeping, thought it was from sorrow—and so she said: maybe she might after all let her go out one day to see Brother Edvin.
And a few days later she was told some of the convent folk had an errand to the King’s palace, and they could take her out along with them to the Brothers in the fields.
Brother Edvin was at home. Kristin had not thought she could have been so glad to see anyone, except it had been Erlend. The old man sat and stroked her hand while they talked together—in thanks for her coming. No, he had not been in her part of the country since the night he lay at Jörundgaard, but he had heard she was to wed and he wished her all good fortune. Then Kristin begged that he would go over to the church with her.
They had to go out of the monastery and round to the main door; Brother Edvin durst not take her through the courtyard. He seemed altogether exceeding downcast, and fearful of doing aught that might offend. He had grown very old, thought Kristin.
And when she had laid upon the altar her offering for the officiant monk who was in the church, and afterward asked Edvin if he would confess her, he grew very frightened. He dared not, he said, he had been strictly forbidden to hear confession.
“Aye, maybe you have heard of it,” said he. “So it was that I felt I could not deny to those poor unfortunates the gifts which God had given me of his free grace. But, ’tis true, I should have enjoined on them to seek forgiveness in the right place—aye, aye—And you, Kristin—you are in duty bound to confess to your own prior.”
“Nay, but this is a thing I cannot confess to the prior of the convent,” said Kristin.
“Think you it can profit you aught to confess to me what you would hide from your true father confessor,” said the monk more severely.
“If so be you cannot confess me,” said Kristin, “at least you can let me speak with you and ask your counsel about what lies upon my soul.”
The monk looked about him. The church was empty at the moment. Then he sat himself down on a chest which stood in a corner: “You must remember that I cannot absolve you, but I will counsel you, and keep silence as though you had told me in confession.”
Kristin stood up before him and said:
“It is this: I cannot be Simon Darre’s wife.”
“Therein you know well that I can counsel no otherwise than would your own prior,” said Brother Edvin. “To undutiful children God gives no happiness, and your father had looked only to your welfare—that you know full well.”
“I know not what your counsel will be, when you have heard me to the end,” answered Kristin. “Thus stands it now with us: Simon is too good to gnaw the bare branch from which another man has broken the blossom.”
She looked the monk straight in the face. But when she met his eyes and marked how the dry, wrinkled, old face changed, grew full of sorrow and dismay—something seemed to snap within her, tears, started to her eyes, and she would have cast herself upon her knees. But Edvin stopped her hurriedly:
“Nay, nay, sit here upon the chest by me—confess you I cannot.” He drew aside and made room for her.
She went on weeping; he stroked her hand, and said gently:
“Mind you that morning, Kristin, I first saw you there on the stairway in the Hamar church—? I heard a tale once, when I was in foreign lands, of a monk, who could not believe that God loved all us wretched sinners—Then came an angel and touched his eyes, and he beheld a stone in the bottom of the sea, and under the stone there lived a blind, white, naked creature; and he gazed at it until he came to love it, for it was so frail and weak. When I saw you sitting there, so little and so frail, within the great stone house, methought it was but reason that God should love such as you. Fair and pure you were, and, yet did you
