The last notes of the church bells’ noon greeting to the Mother of God died away in the light-sated air up among the peaks. The countryside seemed to be settling into sleep beneath the flood of white sunlight. Ever since the dew-soaked dawn, scythes had been ringing in the flowery meadows; the scrape of iron against whet-stones and the shouting of voices could be heard from every farm, near and far. Now all the sounds of busy toiling fell away; it was time for the midday rest. Kristin sat down on a pile of stones and listened. Only the roar of the river could be heard now, and a slight rustling of the leaves in the grove, along with the faint rubbing and soft buzzing of flies over the meadow, and the clinking bell of a solitary cow somewhere off in the distance. A bird flapped its way, swift and mute, along the edge of the alder thicket; another flew up from a meadow tussock and with a harsh cry perched atop a thistle.
But the drifting blue shadows on the hillsides, the fair-weather clouds billowing up over the mountain ridges and melting into the blue summer sky, the glitter of the Laag’s water beyond the trees, the white glint of sunlight on all the leaves—these things she noticed more as silent sounds, audible only to her inner ear, rather than as visible images. With her wimple pulled forward over her brow, Kristin sat and listened to the play of light and shadow across the valley.
All fires burn out sooner or later.
In the alder woods along the marshy riverbank, pockets of water sparkled in the darkness between the dense willow bushes. Star grass grew there, along with tufts of cotton grass and thick carpets of marshlocks with their dusty green, five-pointed leaves and reddish brown flowers. Kristin had picked an enormous pile of them. Many times she had pondered whether this herb might possess useful powers; she had dried it and boiled it and added it to ale and mead. But it didn’t seem good for anything. And yet Kristin could never resist going out to the marsh and getting her shoes wet to gather the plant.
Now she stripped all the leaves from the stalks and plaited a wreath from the dark flowers. They had the color of both red wine and brown mead, and in the center, under the knot of red filaments, they were as moist as honey. Sometimes Kristin would plait a wreath for the picture of the Virgin Mary up in the high loft; she had heard from priests who had been to the southern lands that this was the custom there.
Otherwise she no longer had anyone to make wreaths for. Here in the valley the young men didn’t wear wreaths on their heads when they went out to dance on the green. In some areas of Tr?ndelag the men who came home from the royal court had introduced the custom. Kristin thought this thick, dark red wreath would be well suited to Gaute’s fair face and flaxen hair or Lavrans’s nut-brown mane.
It was so long ago that she used to walk through the pasture above Husaby with the foster mothers and all her young sons on those long, fair-weather days in the summer. Then she and Frida couldn’t make wreaths fast enough for all the impatient little children. She remembered when she still had Lavrans at her breast, but Ivar and Skule thought the infant should have a wreath too; the four-year-olds thought it should be made from very tiny flowers.
Now she had only grown-up children.
Young Lavrans was fifteen winters old; he couldn’t yet be considered full-grown. But his mother had gradually realized that this son was in some ways more distant from her than all the other children. He didn’t purposely shun her, as Bj?rgulf had done, and he wasn’t aloof, nor did he seem particularly taciturn, the way the blind boy was. But he was apparently much quieter by nature, although no one had noticed this when all the brothers were home. He was bright and lively, always seemed happy and kind, and everyone was fond of the charming child without thinking about the fact that Lavrans nearly always went about in silence and alone.
He was considered the handsomest of all the handsome sons of Kristin of J?rundgaard. Their mother always thought that the one she happened to be thinking about at the moment was the most handsome, but she too could see there was a radiance about Lavrans Erlendss?n. His light brown hair and apple-fresh cheeks seemed gilded, sated with sunshine; his big dark gray eyes seemed to be strewn with tiny yellow sparks. He looked much the way she had looked when she was young, with her fair coloring burnished tan by the sun. And he was tall and strong for his age, capable and diligent at any task he was given, obedient to his mother and older brothers, merry, good-natured, and companionable. And yet there was this odd sense of reserve about the boy.
During the winter evenings, when the servants gathered in the weaving room to pass the time with talk and banter as each person was occupied with some chore, Lavrans would sit there as if in a dream. Many a summer evening, when the daily work on the farm was done, Kristin would go out and sit with the boy as he lay on the green, chewing on a piece of resin or twirling a sprig of sorrel between his lips. She would look at his eyes as she spoke to him; he seemed to be shifting his attention back from far away. Then he would smile up at his mother’s face and give her a proper and sensible reply. Often the two of them would sit together for hours on the hillside, talking comfortably and with ease. But as soon as she stood up to go inside, it seemed as if Lavrans would let his thoughts wander again.