Feelings of longing seemed to burst from her heart; they ran in all directions, like streams of blood, seeking out paths to all the places in the wide landscape where she had lived, to all her sons roaming through the world, to all her dead lying under the earth. She wondered: Had she turned cowardly? She had never felt this way before.
Then she noticed that Gaute was staring at her. She gave him a fleeting, rueful smile. It was time now for them to say goodbye and for her to continue on.
Gaute called to his horse, which had been grazing across the green hillside. He ran to get him and then came back, and they said farewell. Kristin already had her travel bag over her shoulder and her son was putting his foot into the stirrup when he turned around and took a few steps toward her.
“Mother!” For a moment she looked into the depths of his helpless, shame-filled eyes. “You haven’t been . . . no doubt you haven’t been very pleased the last few years. Mother, Jofrid means well; she has great respect for you. Even so, I should have told her more about the kind of woman you are and have been all your days.”
“Why do you happen to think about this now, my Gaute?” His mother’s voice was gentle and surprised. “I’m quite aware that I’m no longer young, and old people are supposed to be difficult to please; all the same, I haven’t aged so much that I don’t have the wits to understand you or your wife. It would trouble me greatly if Jofrid should think that it has been a thankless struggle, after all she has done to spare me work and worry. Do not think, my son, that I fail to see your wife’s virtues or your own loyal love for your mother. If I haven’t shown it as much as you might have expected, you must have forbearance and remember that’s the way old people are.”
Gaute stared at his mother, open-mouthed. “Mother . . .” Then he burst into tears and leaned against his horse, shaking with sobs.
But Kristin stood her ground; her voice revealed nothing except amazement and maternal kindness.
“My Gaute, you are young, and you’ve been my little lamb all your days, as your father used to say. But you must not carry on like this, son. Now you’re the master back home, and a grown man. If I were setting off for Romaborg or Jorsal, well . . . But it’s unlikely that I will encounter any great dangers on this journey. I will find others to keep me company, you know; if not before, then when I reach Toftar. From there groups of pilgrims leave every morning during this time.”
“Mother, Mother, don’t leave us! Now that we’ve taken all power and authority out of your hands, pushed you aside into a corner . . .”
Kristin shook her head with a little smile. “I’m afraid my children seem to think I have an overbearing desire to take charge.”
Gaute turned to face her. She took one of his hands in hers and placed her other hand on his shoulder as she implored him to believe that she was not ungrateful toward him or Jofrid; she asked God to be with him. Then she turned him toward his horse, and with a laugh she gave him a thump between his shoulders for good luck.
She stood gazing after him until he disappeared beneath the cliff. How handsome he looked riding the big blue-black horse.
She felt so strange. She sensed everything around her with such unusual clarity: the sunsated air, the hot fragrance of the pine forest, the chittering of tiny sparrows in the grass. At the same time she was looking inside herself, seeing pictures the way someone with a high fever may believe she is peering at inner images. Inside her there was an empty house, completely silent, dimly lit, and with a smell of desolation. The scene shifted: a tidal shore from which the sea had retreated far away; rounded, light-colored stones, heaps of dark, lifeless seaweed, all sorts of flotsam.
Then she shifted her travel bag to a more comfortable position, picked up her staff, and set off down toward the valley. If she was not meant to come back, then it was God’s will and useless to be frightened. But more likely it was because she was old. . . . She made the sign of the cross and strode faster, longing just the same to reach the hillside where the road passed among farms.
Only for one short section of the public road was it possible to see the buildings of Haugen high on the mountain crest. Her heart began hammering at the mere thought.
As she had predicted, she met more pilgrims when she reached Toftar late in the day. The next morning she was joined by several others as they all set off into the mountains.
A priest and his servant, along with two women, his mother and sister, were on horseback, and they soon pulled far ahead of those on foot. Kristin felt a pang in her heart as she gazed after another woman riding between her two children.