But now he felt an urge to show his gratitude to the holy ones with greater fervor. His mother had told him that he was supposedly born on the birthday of the Virgin Mary. He decided that he wanted to show the Lord’s Mother his veneration with a prayer he was not usually accustomed to saying. He had once had a beautiful prayer copied out, back when he was at the royal court, and he took out the small piece of parchment.
Now, much later, he feared that it was probably intended more as an appeal to King Haakon than for the sake of God or Mary that he had acquired these small epistles with prayers and learned them while he was among the king’s retainers. All the young men did so, for the king was in the habit of quizzing the pages about what they knew of such useful knowledge when he lay in bed at night, unable to sleep.
Oh yes . . . that was so long ago. The king’s bedchamber in the stone hall of the Oslo palace. On the little table next to his bed burned a single candle; the light fell across the finely etched, faded, and aging face of the man, resting above the red silken quilts. When the priest had finished reading aloud and taken his leave, the king often picked up the book himself and lay in bed, reading with the heavy volume resting against his propped-up knees. On two footstools over by the brick fireplace sat the pages; Simon nearly always had the watch with Gunstein Ingas?n. It was pleasant in the chamber. The fire burned brightly, giving heat without smoke, and the room seemed so snug with the cross-beamed ceiling and the walls always covered with tapestries. But they would grow sleepy from sitting there in that fashion, first listening to the priest read and then waiting for the king to fall asleep, as he rarely did until close to midnight. When he was sleeping, they were allowed to take turns keeping guard and napping on the bench between the fireplace and the door to the royal Council hall.
Occasionally the king would converse with them; this didn’t happen often, but when it did, he was inexpressibly kind and charming. Or he would read aloud from the book a sentence or a few stanzas of a verse that he thought the young men might find useful or beneficial to hear.
One night Simon was awakened by King Haakon calling for him in pitch-darkness. The candle had burned out. Feeling wretched with shame, Simon blew some life into the embers and lit a new candle. The king lay in bed, smiling secretively.
“Does that Gunstein always snore so terribly?”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“You share a bed with him in the dormitory, don’t you? It might be deemed reasonable if you asked for another bedfellow for a while who makes less noise when he sleeps.”
“Thank you, my Lord, but it doesn’t bother me, Your Majesty!”
“Surely you must wake up, Simon, when that thunder explodes right next to your ear—don’t you?”
“Yes, Your Grace, but then I give him a shove and turn him over a bit.”
The king laughed. “I wonder whether you young men realize that being able to sleep so soundly is one of God’s great gifts. When you reach my age, Simon my friend, perhaps you will remember my words.”
That seemed endlessly far away—still clear, but not as if he were the same man, sitting here now, who had once been that young page.
One day at the beginning of Advent, when Kristin was almost alone on the estate—her sons were bringing home firewood and moss—she was surprised to see Simon Darre come riding into the courtyard. He had come to invite her and her sons to be their guests during Christmas.
“You know quite well, Simon, that we can’t do that,” she said somberly. “We can still be friends in our hearts, you and Ramborg and I, but as you know, it’s not always possible for us to determine what we must do.”
“Surely you don’t mean that you’re going to take this so far that you won’t come to your only sister when she has to lie down to give birth.”
Kristin prayed that all would go well and bring both of them joy. “But I can’t tell you with certainty that I will come.”
“Everyone will think it remarkably strange,” admonished Simon. “You have a reputation for being the best midwife, and she’s your sister, and the two of you are the mistresses of the largest estates in the northern part of the region.”
“Quite a few children have been brought into the world on the great manors around here over the past few years, but I’ve never been asked to come. It’s no longer the custom, Simon, for a birth to be considered improperly attended if the mistress of J?rund gaard is not in the room.” She saw that he was greatly distressed by her words, and so she continued, “Give my greetings to Ramborg, and tell her that I will come to help her when it’s time; but I cannot come to your Christmas feast, Simon.”