Simon Andress?n was deeply grieved that he would soon be parted from his wife’s father. But he felt such joy at the birth of his little daughter. Lavrans and Ragnfrid spoke often of little Ulvhild, and Simon could answer all their questions about the child’s welfare and progress. And here too Kristin felt jealousy sting her heart—Erlend had never taken that kind of interest in their children. At the same time, it seemed to her a bit laughable when this man with the heavy, reddish-brown face who was no longer young would sit and talk so knowledgeably about an infant’s stom achaches and appetite.
One day Simon brought a sleigh to take her south to see her sister and niece.
He had rebuilt the old, dark hearth house, where the women of Formo had gone for hundreds of years whenever they were going to give birth. The hearth had been thrown out and replaced with a stone fireplace, with a finely carved bed placed snugly against one side. On the opposite wall hung a beautiful carved image of the Mother of God, so that whoever lay in the bed could see it. Flagstones had been laid down, and a glass pane was put in the window; there were lovely, small pieces of furniture and new benches. Simon wanted Ramborg to have this house as her women’s room. Here she could keep her things and invite other women in; and whenever there were banquets at the manor, the women could retire to this house if they grew uneasy when the men became overwhelmed by drink late in the evening.
Ramborg was lying in bed, in honor of her guest. She had adorned herself with a silk wimple and a red gown trimmed across the breast with white fur. She had silk-covered pillows behind her back and a flowered, velvet coverlet on top of the bedclothes. In front of the bed stood Ulvhild Simonsdatter’s cradle. It was the old Swedish cradle that Ramborg Sunesdatter had brought to Norway, the same one in which Kristin’s father and grandfather, and she herself and all her siblings had slept. According to custom, she, as the eldest daughter, should have had the cradle as part of her dowry, but it had never been mentioned at the time she was married. She thought that her parents had purposely forgotten about the cradle. Didn’t they think the children she and Erlend would have were worthy to sleep in it?
After that, she refused to go back to Formo, saying that she didn’t have the strength.
And Kristin did feel ill, but this was from sorrow and her anguished soul. She couldn’t hide from herself that the longer she stayed at home, the more painful it felt. That was just her nature: it hurt her to see that now, as her father approached his death, it was his wife who was closest to him.
She had always heard people praise her parents’ life together as an exemplary marriage, beautiful and noble, with harmony, loyalty, and good will. But she had felt, without thinking too closely about it, that there was something that kept them apart—some indefinable shadow that made their life at home subdued, even though it was calm and pleasant. Now there was no longer any shadow between her parents. They talked to each other calmly and quietly, mostly about small, everyday matters; but Kristin sensed there was something new in their eyes and in the tone of their voices. She could see that her father missed his wife whenever she was somewhere else. If he managed to convince her to take a rest, he would lie in bed, fidgeting and waiting; when Ragnfrid came back, it was as if she brought peace and joy to the ill man. One day Kristin heard them talking about their dead children, and yet they looked happy. When Sira Eirik came over to read to Lavrans, Ragnfrid would always sit with them. Then he would take his wife’s hand and lie there, playing with her fingers and twisting her rings around.
Kristin knew that her father loved her no less than before. But she had never noticed until now that he loved her mother. And she could see the difference between the love of a husband for the wife he had lived with all his life, during good days and bad—and his love for the child who had shared only his joys and had received his greatest tenderness. And she wept and prayed to God and Saint Olav for help—for she remembered that tearful, tender farewell with her father on the mountain in the autumn, but surely it couldn’t be true that she now wished it had been the last.
On Summer Day3 Kristin gave birth to her sixth son. Five days later she was already out of bed, and she went over to the main house to sit with her father. Lavrans was not pleased by this; it had never been the custom on his estate for a woman who had recently given birth to go outdoors under open sky until the first time she went to church. She must at least agree not to cross the courtyard unless the sun was up. Ragnfrid listened as Lavrans talked about this.
“I was just thinking, husband,” she said, “that your women have never been very obedient; we’ve usually done whatever we wanted to do.”