Kristin blew out the candle, pinched the wick, and returned the stump to its place between the uppermost logs in the wall. She went back over to the peephole. It was already daylight outside, but gray and dead. On the lower rooftops, upon which she gazed, the dirty, sun-bleached grass stirred faintly from a gust of wind; a little, rustling sound passed through the leaves of the birches across from the roof of the high loft building.
She looked down at her hands, holding on to the sill of the peephole. They were rough and worn; her arms were tanned all the way up to her elbows, and her muscles were swollen and as hard as wood. In her youth the children had sucked the blood and milk from her until every trace of maidenly smoothness and fresh plumpness had been sapped from her body. Now each day of toil stripped away a little more of the remnants of beauty that had distinguished her as the daughter, wife, and mother of men with noble blood. The slender white hands, the pale, soft arms, the fair complexion, which she had carefully shielded from sunburn with linen kerchiefs and protected with specially brewed cleansing concoctions . . . She had long ago grown indifferent to whether the sun shone directly on her face, sweaty from work, and turned it as brown as that of a poor peasant woman.
Her hair was the only thing she had left of her girlish beauty. It was just as luxuriant and brown, even though she seldom found time to wash or tend to it. The heavy, tangled braid that hung down her back hadn’t been undone in three days.
Kristin pulled it forward over her shoulder, undid the plait, and shook out her hair, which still enveloped her like a cloak and reached below her knees. She took a comb from her chest, and shivering now and then, she sat in her shift beneath the peephole, open to the coolness of the morning, and gently combed out her tangled tresses.
When she was done with her hair and had rebraided it in a tight, heavy rope, she felt a little better. Then she cautiously lifted the sleeping Munan into her arms, placed him next to the wall in her husband’s bed, and then crawled in between them. She held her youngest child in her arms, rested his head against her shoulder, and fell asleep.
She slept late the next morning. Erlend and the boys were already up when she awakened. “I think you’ve been suckling at your mother’s breast when nobody’s looking,” said Erlend when he saw Munan lying next to his mother. The boy grew cross, ran outside, and crept across the gallery, out onto a carved beam atop the posts holding up the gallery. He would prove he was a man. “Run!” shouted Naakkve from down in the courtyard. He caught his little brother in his arms, turned him upside down, and tossed him to Bj?rgulf. The two older boys wrestled with him until he was laughing and shrieking at the same time.
But the following day when Munan cried because his fingers had been stung by the recoil of the bowstring, the twins rolled him up in a coverlet and carried him over to their mother’s bed; in his mouth they stuffed a piece of bread so big that the boy nearly choked.
CHAPTER 2
ERLEND’S HOUSE PRIEST at Husaby had taught his three oldest sons their lessons. They were not very diligent pupils, but all three learned quickly, and their mother, who had been raised with this kind of book learning, kept an eye on them so that the knowledge they gained was not altogether paltry.
During the year that Bj?rgulf and Naakkve spent with Sira Eiliv at the monastery on Tautra, they had eagerly suckled at the breasts of Lady Wisdom, as the priest expressed it. Their teacher was an exceedingly old monk who had devoted his life with the zeal of a bee to gleaning knowledge from all the books he came across, both in Latin and in Old Norse. Sira Eiliv was himself a lover of wisdom, but during his years at Husaby he had had little opportunity to follow his inclination for bookish pursuits. For him the time spent with Aslak, the teacher, was like pasture grazing for starved cattle. And the two young boys, who kept close to their own priest while staying with the monks, followed the learned conversations of the men with their mouths agape. Then Brother Aslak and Sira Eiliv found joy in feeding these two young minds with the most delectable honey from the monastery’s book treasures, which Brother Aslak had supplemented with many copied versions and excerpts of the most magnificent books. Soon the boys grew so clever that the monk seldom had to speak to them in Norwegian, and when their parents came to get them, both could answer the priest in Latin, fluently and correctly.
Afterward the brothers kept up what they had learned. There were many books at J?rundgaard. Lavrans had owned five. Two of them had been inherited by Ramborg when his estate was settled, but she had never wanted to learn to read, and Simon was not so practiced with written words that he had any desire to read for his own amusement, although he could decipher a letter and compose one himself. So he asked Kristin to keep the books until his children were older. After they were married, Erlend gave Kristin three books that had belonged to his parents. She had received another book as a gift from Gunnulf Nikulauss?n. He had had it copied for his brother’s wife from a book about Holy Olav and his miracles, several other saint legends, and the missive the Franciscan monks of Oslo had sent to the pope about Brother Edvin Rikardss?n, seeking to have him recognized as a saint. And finally, Naakkve had been given a prayer book by Sira Eiliv when they parted. Naakkve often read to his brother. He read fluently and well, with a slight lilt to his voice, the way Brother Aslak had taught him; he was most fond of the books in Latin—his own prayer book and one that had belonged to Lavrans Bj?rgulfs?n. But his greatest treasure was a big, exceptionally splendid book that had been part of the family inheritance ever since the days of the ancestor who was his namesake, Bishop Nikulaus Arness?n.