There was no ferryboat. Kristin talked to two men who were huddled in a space beneath a warehouse standing on posts at the water’s edge. They told her to go out to the sandbanks—there the nuns had a house, and that’s where the ferryman was.
Kristin went back up the wide street, wet and tired and with aching feet. She came to a small gray stone church; behind it stood several buildings enclosed by a fence. Naakkve was screaming furiously, so she couldn’t go inside the church. But she heard the song from the recessed paneless windows, and she recognized the antiphon: L?tare, Regina Coeli—rejoice, thou Queen of Heaven, for he whom you were chosen to bear, has risen, as he promised. Hallelujah!
This was what the Minorites4 sang after the completorium. Brother Edvin had taught her this hymn to the Lord’s Mother as Kristin kept vigil over him during those nights when he lay deathly ill in their home at J?rundgaard. She crept out to the churchyard and, standing against the wall with her child in her arms, she repeated his words softly to herself.
“Nothing you do could ever change your father’s heart toward you. This is why you must not cause him any more sorrow.”
As your pierced hands were stretched out on the cross, O precious Lord of Heaven. No matter how far a soul might stray from the path of righteousness, the pierced hands were stretched out, yearning. Only one thing was needed: that the sinful soul should turn toward the open embrace, freely, like a child who goes to his father and not like a thrall who is chased home to his stern master. Now Kristin realized how hideous sin was. Again she felt the pain in her breast, as if her heart were breaking with remorse and shame at the undeserved mercy.
Next to the church wall there was a little shelter from the rain. She sat down on a gravestone and set about quelling the child’s hunger. Now and then she would bend down and kiss his little down-covered head.
She must have fallen asleep. Someone was touching her shoulder. A monk and an old lay brother holding a spade in his hand stood before her. The barefoot brother asked if she was looking for shelter for the night.
The thought raced through her mind that she would much rather stay here tonight with the Minorites, Brother Edvin’s brothers. And it was so far to Bakke, and she was nearly collapsing with weariness. Then the monk offered to have the lay servant accompany her to the women’s hostel—“and give her a little calamus poultice for her feet; I see that they are sore.”
It was stuffy and dark at the women’s hostel, which stood outside the fence in the lane. The lay brother brought Kristin water to wash with and a little food, and she sat down near the hearth, trying to soothe her child. Naakkve could no doubt tell from her milk that his mother was worn out and had fasted all day. He fretted and whimpered in between attempts to suckle from her empty breasts. Kristin gulped down the milk that the lay brother brought her. She tried to squirt it from her mouth into the child’s, but the boy protested loudly at this new means of being fed, and the old man laughed and shook his head. She would have to drink it herself, and then it would benefit the boy.
Finally the man left. Kristin crept into one of the beds high up beneath the center roof beam. From there she could reach a hatch. There was a foul smell in the hostel—one of the women was in bed with a stomach ailment. Kristin opened the hatch. The summer night was bright and mild, the rain-washed air streamed down on her. She sat in the short bed with her head leaning back against the timbers of the wall; there were few pillows for the beds. The boy was asleep in her lap. She had meant to close the hatch after a moment, but she fell asleep.
In the middle of the night she woke up. The moon, a pale summery honey-gold, was shining down on her and the child and illuminating the opposite wall. At that moment Kristin became aware of a person standing in the midst of the stream of moonlight, hovering between the gable and the floor.
He was wearing an ash-gray monk’s cowl; he was tall and stooped. Then he turned his ancient, furrowed face toward her. It was Brother Edvin. His smile was so inexpressibly tender, and a little sly and merry, just as it was when he lived on this earth.
Kristin was not the least bit surprised. Humbly, joyfully, and filled with anticipation, she looked at him and waited for what he would say or do.
The monk laughed and held up a heavy old leather glove toward her; then he hung it on the moonbeam. He smiled even more, nodded to her, and then vanished.
PART II
HUSABY
CHAPTER 1
ONE DAY JUST after New Year’s, unexpected guests arrived at Husaby. They were Lavrans Bj?rgulfs?n and old Smid Gudleikss?n from Dovre, and they were accompanied by two gentlemen whom Kristin didn’t know. But Erlend was very surprised to see his father-in-law in their company—they were Erling Vidkunss?n from Giske and Bjark?y, and Haftor Graut from God?y. He hadn’t realized that Lavrans knew them. But Sir Erling explained that they had met at Nes; he had served with Lavrans and Smid on the six-man court, which had finally settled the inheritance dispute among Jon Haukss?n’s descendants. Then he and Lavrans happened to speak of Erlend; and Erling, who had business in Nidaros, mentioned that he had a mind to pay a visit to Husaby if Lavrans would keep him company and sail north with him.