A little while after he dropped asleep. Kristin went and sat by the hearth, tending the fire. But well on in the morning, when she was nigh dozing off herself, of a sudden Brother Edvin spoke from the bed:
“Glad am I, Kristin, that this matter of you and Erlend Nikulaussön is brought to a good end.”
Kristin burst out weeping:
“We have done so much wrong before we came so far. And what gnaws at my heart most is that I have brought my father so much sorrow. He has no joy in this wedding either. And even so he knows not—did he know all—I trow he would take his kindness quite from me.”
“Kristin,” said Brother Edvin gently, “see you not, child, that ’tis therefore you must keep it from him, and ’tis therefore you must give him no more cause of sorrow—because he never will call on you to pay the penalty. Nothing you could do could turn your father’s heart from you.”
A few days later Brother Edvin was grown so much better that he would fain set out on his journey southward. Since his heart was set on this, Lavrans had a kind of litter made, to be slung between two horses, and on this he brought the sick man as far south as to Lidstad; there they gave him fresh horses and men to tend him on his way, and in this wise was he brought as far as Hamar. There he died in the cloister of the Preaching Friars, and was buried in their church. Afterward the Barefoot Friars claimed that his body should be delivered to them; for that many folks all about in the parishes held him to be a holy man, and spoke of him by the name of Saint Evan. The peasants of the Uplands and the Dales, all the way north to Trondheim, prayed to him as a saint. So it came about that there was a long dispute between the two Orders about his body.
Kristin heard naught of this till long after. But she grieved sorely at parting from the monk. It seemed to her that he alone knew all her life—he had known the innocent child as she was in her father’s keeping, and he had known her secret life with Erlend; so that he was, as it were, a link, binding together all that had first been dear to her with all that now filled her heart and mind. Now was she quite cut off from herself as she had been in the time when she was yet a maid.
VII
“Aye,” said Ragnfrid, feeling with her hand the lukewarm brew in the vats, “methinks ’tis cool enough now to mix in the barm.”
Kristin had been sitting in the brew-house doorway spinning, while she waited for the brew to cool. She laid down the spindle on the threshold, unwrapped the rug from the pail of risen yeast, and began measuring out.
“Shut the door first,” bade her mother, “so the draught may not come in—you seem walking in your sleep, Kristin,” she said testily.
Kristin poured the yeast into the vats, while Ragnfrid stirred.
—Geirhild Drivsdatter called on Hatt, but he was Odin. So he came and helped her with the brewing; and he craved for his wage that which was between the vat and her—’Twas a saga that Lavrans had once told when she was little.
—That which was between the vat and her—
Kristin felt dizzy and sick with the heat and the sweet, spicy-smelling steam that filled the dark close-shut brew-house.
Out in the farm-place Ramborg and a band of children were dancing in a ring, singing:
“The eagle sits on the topmost hill-crag
Crooking his golden claws. …”
Kristin followed her mother through the little outer room where lay empty ale-kegs and all kinds of brewing gear. A door led from it out to a strip of ground between the back wall of the brew-house and the fence round the barley-field. A herd of pigs jostled each other, and bit and squealed as they fought over the lukewarm grains thrown out to them.
Kristin shaded her eyes against the blinding midday sunlight. The mother looked at the pigs and said:
“With less than eighteen reindeer we shall never win through.”
“Think you we shall need so many?” said her daughter absently.
“Aye, for we must have game to serve up with the pork each day,” answered Ragnfrid. “And of wildfowl and hare we shall scarce have more than will serve for the table in the upper hall. Remember, ’twill be well on toward two hundred people we shall have on the place—counting serving-folk and children—and the poor that have to be fed. And even should you and Erlend set forth on the fifth day, some of the guests, I trow, will stay out the week—at least.”
“You must stay here and look to the ale, Kristin,” she went on. “ ’Tis time for me to get dinner for your father and the reapers.”
Kristin fetched her spinning gear and sat herself down there in the back doorway. She put the distaff with the bunch of wool up under her armpit, but her hands, with the spindle in them, sank into her lap.
Beyond the fence the ears of barley gleamed silvery and silken in the sunshine. Above the song of the river she heard now and again from the meadows on the river-island the ring of a scythe—sometimes the iron would strike upon a stone. Her father and the house-folk were hard at work on the haymaking, to get it off their hands. For there was much to get through and to make ready against her wedding.
The scent of the lukewarm grains, and the rank smell of the swine—she grew qualmish again. And the midday heat made her
