“And yet no one need wish anything better for you, my Erlend, than that you should take after him!” He picked up his child, now properly swaddled, and touched his chin to the tiny red face framed by the light-colored wool cloth. “This gifted and promising boy, Erlend Gautess?n of J?rundgaard—you should tell your grandmother that you aren’t afraid your father will fail you.” He made the sign of the cross over the child and put him back in Kristin’s arms, then went over to the bed and looked down at the slumbering young mother.
“My Jofrid is as well as she can be, you say? She looks pale, but I suppose you must know best. Sleep well in here, and may God’s peace be with you.”
One month after the birth of the boy, Gaute held a splendid christening feast, and his kinsmen came from far away to attend the celebration. Kristin assumed that Gaute had asked them to come in order to counsel him on his position; it was now spring, and he could soon expect to hear news from Jofrid’s kin.
Kristin had the joy of seeing Ivar and Skule come home together. And her cousins came to J?rundgaard too: Sigurd Kyrning, who was married to her uncle’s daughter from Skog, Ivar Gjesling of Ringheim, and Haavard Trondss?n. She hadn’t seen the Trondss?ns since Erlend had brought misfortune down upon the men of Sundbu. Now they were older; they had always been carefree and reckless, but intrepid and magnanimous, and they hadn’t changed much at all. They greeted the sons of Erlend and Sir Sigurd, who was their cousin and successor at Sundbu, with a free and open manner befitting kinsmen. The ale and mead flowed in rivers in honor of little Erlend. Gaute and Jofrid welcomed their guests as unrestrainedly as if they had been wed and the king himself had married them. Everyone was joyous, and no one seemed to consider that the honor of these two young people was still at stake. But Kristin learned that Jofrid had not forgotten.
“The more bold and swaggering they are when they meet my father, the more easily he will comply,” she said. “And Olav Piper could never hide the fact that he would be pleased to sit on the same bench as men from the ancient lineages.”
The only one who did not seem to feel quite comfortable in this gathering of kin was Sir Jamm?lt Halvardss?n. King Magnus had made him a knight at Christmas; Ramborg Lavransdatter was now the wife of a knight.
This time Sir Jamm?lt had brought his eldest son, Andres Si monss?n, along with him. Kristin had asked him to do so the last time Jamm?lt came north, for she had heard a rumor that there was supposedly something strange about the boy. Then she grew terribly frightened; she wondered whether some harm might have been done to his soul or body because of what she had done in his behalf when he was a child. But his stepfather said no, the boy was healthy and strong, as good as gold, and perhaps cleverer than most people. But it was true that he had second sight. Sometimes he seemed to drift away, and when he came back, he would often do peculiar things. Such as the year before. One day he took his silver spoon, the one Kristin had given to him at his birth, and a torn shirt that had belonged to his father, and he left the manor and went down to a bridge that stretches across the river along the main road near ?lin. There he sat for many hours, waiting. Eventually three poor people came walking across the bridge: an old beggar and a young woman holding an infant. Andres went over and gave the things to them, and then asked if he might carry the child for the woman. Back home everyone was desperate with anguish when Andres didn’t appear for meals or by nightfall. They went out looking for him, and at last Jamm?lt heard that Andres had been seen far north in the next parish, in the company of a couple known as Krepp and Kraaka; he was carrying their infant. When Jamm?lt finally found the boy on the following day, Andres explained that he had heard a voice during mass on the previous Sunday while he was looking at the images painted on the front of the altar. It showed the Mother of God and Saint Joseph leaving the land of Egypt and carrying a child, and he wished that he had lived back then, for he would have asked to accompany them and carry the child for the Virgin Mary. Then he heard a voice, the gen tlest and sweetest voice in the world, and it promised to show him a sign if he would go out to Bjerkheim Bridge on a certain day.
Otherwise Andres was reluctant to speak of his visions, because their parish priest had said they were partly imagined and partly due to a confused and muddled state of mind, and he frightened his mother out of her wits with his strange ways. But he talked to an old servant woman, an exceedingly pious woman, and to a friar who used to wander through the countryside during Lent and Advent. The boy would doubtless choose the spiritual life, so Simon Simonss?n was sure to be the one who would settle at Formo when the time came. He was a healthy and lively child who looked a great deal like his father, and he was Ramborg’s favorite.