No, she felt so uneasy. Erlend now had a good income from his position as sheriff, but he also lived with greater ostentation, with more servants and an entourage befitting a chieftain. And he had begun to shut her out of everything that didn’t concern their domestic life together. She realized that he didn’t want to have her watchful eyes on what he was doing. With other men he would talk willingly about all he had seen and experienced up north—to her he never said a word. And there were other things as well. He had met with Lady Ingebj?rg, the king’s mother, and Sir Knut Porse several times over the past few years. But it had never been opportune for Kristin to accompany him. Now Sir Knut was a duke in Denmark, and King Haakon’s daughter had bound herself to him in marriage. This had aroused bitter indignation in the souls of many Norwegian men; measures had been taken against the king’s mother which Kristin did not understand. And the bishop in Bj?rgvin had secretly sent several chests to Husaby. They were now on board Margygren, and the ship was anchored at Nes. Erlend had been given boxes of letters and was to sail to Denmark later in the summer. He wanted Kristin to go along with him, but she refused. She could see that Erlend moved among these noble people as an equal and a dear kinsman, and this worried her—it wasn’t safe with such an impetuous man as Erlend. But she didn’t dare travel with him; she wouldn’t be able to advise him in these matters, and she didn’t want to run the risk of consorting with people among whom she, a simple wife, could not assert herself. And she was also afraid of the sea. For her, seasickness was worse than the most difficult childbirth.
So she spent the days at J?rundgaard with her soul shivering and uneasy.
One day she went with her father to Skjenne. There she saw again the strange treasure which they kept on the estate. It was a spur of the purest gold, shaped in a bulky and old-fashioned style, with peculiar ornamentation. She, like every other child in the area, knew where it had come from.
It was soon after Saint Olav had brought Christianity to the valley that Audhild the Fair of Skjenne was lured into the mountain. The villagers carried the church bell up onto the slopes and rang it for the maiden. On the third evening she came walking across the meadow, adorned with so much gold that she glittered like a star. Then the rope broke, the bell tumbled down the scree, and Audhild had to return to the mountain.
But many years later, twelve warriors came to the priest—this was the first priest here at Sil. They wore golden helmets and silver coats of mail, and they rode dark-brown stallions. They were the sons of Audhild and the mountain king, and they asked that their mother might be given a Christian funeral and be buried in consecrated ground. She had tried to maintain her faith and observe the holy days of the Church inside the mountain, and this was her earnest prayer. But the priest refused. And people said that because of this, he himself had no peace in the grave. On autumn nights he could be heard walking through the grove north of the church, weeping with remorse at his own cruelty. That same night Audhild’s sons had gone to Skjenne to bring greetings from their mother to her old parents who still lived there. The next morning the golden spur was found in the courtyard. And the sons doubtless continued to regard the Skjenne men as their kin, for they always had exceptional good fortune in the mountains.
Lavrans said to his daughter as they rode home in the summer night, “The sons of Audhild repeated Christian prayers that their mother had taught them. They couldn’t mention the name of God or Jesus, but they said the Lord’s Prayer and credo like this: ‘I believe in the Almighty, I believe in the only begotten Son, I believe in the mightiest Spirit.’ And then they said: ‘Hail to the Lady, you who are the most blessed of women—and blessed is the fruit of your womb, the solace of all the earth.’ ”
Kristin timidly glanced up at her father’s gaunt, weatherbeaten face. In the bright summer night it seemed more ravaged with sorrows and worries than she had ever seen it.
“You’ve never told me that before,” she said softly.
“Haven’t I? Well, I may have thought it would give you more melancholy thoughts than your years could bear. Sira Eirik says that it is written according to Saint Paul the Apostle that humankind is not alone in sighing with agony.”
One day Kristin was sitting and sewing at the top of the stairs leading up to the high loft when Simon came riding into the courtyard and stopped just below where she sat, although he didn’t see her. Her parents both came out of the house. No, Simon wouldn’t dismount; Ramborg had merely asked him to find out, when he was passing this way, whether they had sent the sheep that had been her pet lamb up to the mountain pastures. She wanted to bring it to Formo.