Ragnfrid brought the child and placed him on his mother’s breast. She took the silk coverlet, which had been spread over Kristin’s bed during the day, folded it up, and laid it aside. Then she stood there for a moment, looking down at her daughter and touching the thick, dark-blonde braids which lay between her white breasts.
“Your father asked me often whether your hair was still thick and beautiful. It was such a joy to him that you didn’t lose your looks from giving birth to so many children. And you made him so happy during the last few years because you had become such a capable wife and looked so healthy and lovely with all your fair young sons around you.”
Kristin tried to swallow back her tears.
“He often told me, Mother, that you were the best wife—he told me to tell you that.” She paused, embarrassed, and Ragnfrid laughed softly.
“Lavrans should have known that he didn’t need anyone else to tell me of his good will toward me.” She stroked the child’s head and her daughter’s hand which was holding the infant. “But perhaps he wanted . . . It’s not true, my Kristin, that I have ever en-vied your father’s love for you. It’s right and proper that you should have loved him more than you loved me. You were such a sweet and lovely little maiden—I could hardly believe that God would let me keep you. But I always thought more about what I had lost than what I still had.”
Ragnfrid sat down on the edge of the bed.
“They had other customs at Skog than I was used to back home. I can’t remember that my father ever kissed me. He kissed my mother when she lay on her bier. Mother would kiss Gudrun during the mass, because she stood next to her, and then my sister would kiss me; otherwise that was not something we ever did.
“At Skog it was the custom that when we came home from church, after taking the corpus domini, and we got down from our horses in the courtyard, then Sir Bj?rgulf would kiss his sons and me on the cheek, while we kissed his hand. Then all the married couples would kiss each other, and we would shake hands with all the servants who had been to the church service and ask that everyone might benefit from the sacrament. They did that often, Lavrans and Aasmund; they would kiss their father on the hand when he gave them gifts and the like. Whenever he or Inga came into the room, the sons would always get to their feet and stand there until asked to sit down. At first these seemed to me foolish and foreign ways.
“Later, during the years I lived with your father when we lost our sons, and all those years when we endured such great anguish and sorrow over our Ulvhild—then it seemed good that Lavrans had been brought up as he had, with gentler and more loving ways.”
After a moment Kristin murmured, “So Father never saw Sigurd?”
“No,” replied Ragnfrid, her voice equally quiet. “Nor did I see him while he was alive.”
Kristin lay in silence; then she said, “And yet, Mother, it seems to me that there has been much good in your life.”
The tears began to stream down Ragnfrid Ivarsdatter’s pale face.
“God help me, yes. It seems that way to me, too.”
A little later she carefully picked up the infant, who had fallen asleep at his mother’s breast, and placed him in the cradle. She fastened Kristin’s shift with the little silver brooch, caressed her daughter’s cheek, and told her to go to sleep now.
Kristin put out her hand. “Mother . . .” she implored.
Ragnfrid bent down, gathered her daughter into her arms, and kissed her many times. She hadn’t done that in all the years since Ulvhild died.
It was the most beautiful springtime weather on the following day, as Kristin stood behind the corner of the main house looking out toward the slopes beyond the river. There was a verdant smell in the air, the singing of creeks released everywhere, and a green sheen over all the groves and meadows. At the spot where the road went along the mountainside above Laugarbru, a blanket of winter rye shimmered fresh and bright. Jon had burned off the saplings there the year before and planted rye on the cleared land.
When the funeral procession reached that spot, she would be able to see it best.
And then the procession emerged from beneath the scree, across from the fresh new acres of rye.
She could see all the priests riding on ahead, and there were also vergers among the first group, carrying the crosses and tapers. She couldn’t see the flames in the bright sunlight, but the candles looked like slender white streaks. Two horses followed, carrying her father’s coffin on a litter between them, and then she recognized Erlend on the black horse, her mother, Simon and Ramborg, and many of her kinsmen and friends in the long procession.