Kristin too was calm—so calm that Simon held his breath with fear, waiting for the day when she would completely fall apart.
King Magnus was making his royal tour of Sweden, and there was little prospect that he would return to his homeland anytime soon, or that there would be any change in Erlend’s situation.
On Saint Gregor’s Day Kristin and Ulf Haldorss?n had been to church at Nonneseter. On their way home, as they crossed the bridge over the convent creek, she did not take the road to their hostel, which lay near the bishop’s citadel; instead, she turned east toward the lane near Saint Clement’s Church and headed along the narrow alleyways between the church and the river.
The day was hazy and gray, and a thaw had set in, so their footwear and the hems of their cloaks grew quickly soaked and heavy from the yellow mud near the river. They reached the fields along the riverbank. Once their eyes met. Ulf laughed softly and a kind of smirk appeared on his lips, but his eyes were sad; Kristin gave him an odd, sickly smile.
A moment later they were standing on the ridge of a hill; the earth had given way out here sometime before, and the farm now lay right below the hill—so close to the dirty-yellow slope, covered with tufts of black, dried weeds, that the rank stench from the pigsty, which they were looking down at, rose up toward them. Two fat sows were wallowing around in the dark muck. The riverbank was only a narrow strip here; the gray, murky current of the river, filled with careening ice floes, ran right up to the dilapidated buildings with the faded rooftops.
As they stood there, a man and a woman came walking over to the fenced area and looked at the pigs; the man leaned over and scratched one of the sows with the haft of the silver-chased, thin-bladed axe he was using as a staff. It was Munan Baards?n himself, and the woman was Brynhild Fluga. He looked up and noticed them. He stood there gaping, until Kristin shouted a merry greeting down to him.
Sir Munan began to bellow with laughter.
“Come down and have a hot ale in this vile weather,” he called.
On their way down to the farmyard fence, Ulf told Kristin that Brynhild Jonsdatter no longer kept an inn or an alehouse. She had been in trouble several times and was finally threatened with flogging, but Munan had come to her rescue and vouched for her; she promised to stop all her unlawful activities. And her sons now held such positions that, for their sake, their mother had to think about improving her reputation. After the death of his wife, Munan Baards?n had taken up with Brynhild again and was often over at Flugagaard.
He met them at the gate.
“All four of us are kinsmen, after a fashion,” he chuckled. He was slightly drunk, but not overly so. “You’re a good woman, Kristin Lavransdatter, pious but not at all haughty. Brynhild is now an honorable and respectable woman too. And I was an unmarried man when I produced the two sons we have together—and they’re the most splendid of all my children. That’s what I’ve told you every single day in all these years, Brynhild. I’m more fond of Inge and Gudleik than any of my other children. . . .”
Brynhild was still beautiful, but her skin was sallow and looked as if it would be clammy to the touch, thought Kristin—the way it does after standing over a pot of grease all day long. But her house was well-kept, the food and drink she set on the table were excellent, and the crockery was pleasing and clean.
“Yes, I drop by over here whenever I have business in Oslo,” said Munan. “A mother likes to hear news of her sons, you see. Inge writes to me himself, because he’s a learned man, Inge—a bishop’s envoy has to be, you know. . . . I found him a good match too: Tora Bjarnesdatter from Grjote. Do you think many men could have acquired such a woman for their bastard son? So we sit here and talk about that, and Brynhild brings in the food and ale for me, just like in the old days, when she wore my keys at Skogheim. It’s hard to sit out there now and think about my blessed wife . . . So I ride over here to find some solace—when Brynhild here has a mind to grant me a little kindness and warmth.”
Ulf Haldorss?n was sitting with his chin in his hand and gazing at the mistress of Husaby. Kristin sat and listened, answering quietly and gently and courteously—just as calm and refined as if she were a guest at one of the grand estates back home in Tr?ndelag.
“Well, Kristin Lavransdatter, you won honor and the name of wife,” said Brynhild Fluga, “even though you came willingly enough to meet Erlend up in my loft. But I was called a wanton and loose woman all my days; my stepmother sold me into the hands of that man there—I bit and fought, and the scratches from my fingernails marked his face before he had his way with me.”