Behind her on the path leading up over the castle’s summit several boys now appeared, gathering around the portal to see if they could find a way into the fortress ruins. When they caught sight of Kristin, they began shouting crude words at her while they laughed and hooted. She pretended not to hear until a small boy—he couldn’t have been more than eight—happened to roll down the steep incline and nearly rammed into her, uttering several loathsome words he had boldly learned from the older ones.
Kristin turned around and said with a little laugh, “You don’t need to scream for me to know you’re a troll child; I can see that by the tumbling pants that you’re wearing.”
When the boys noticed the woman was speaking, they came bounding down, the whole pack of them. But they fell silent and grew shamefaced when they saw she was an older woman wearing pilgrim’s garb. She didn’t scold them for their coarse words but sat there looking at them with big, clear, calm eyes and a secretive smile on her lips. She had a round, thin face with a broad forehead and a small, curving chin. She was sunburned and had many wrinkles under her eyes, yet she didn’t look particularly old.
Then the most fearless of the boys started talking and asking questions in order to conceal the confusion of the others. Kristin felt so merry. These boys seemed to her much like her own daredevils, the twins, when they were small, although she hoped to God that her sons had never had such filthy mouths. These boys seemed to be the children of smallholders from town.
When the moment came that she had longed for during the whole journey, when she stood beneath the cross on Feginsbrekka and looked down at Nidaros, she wasn’t able to muster her soul for prayers and devotion. All the bells of the town began pealing at once, summoning everyone to vespers, and the boys all started talking at once, eager to point out to her everything in sight.
She couldn’t see Tautra because a squall was blowing across the fjord toward Frosta, bringing fog and torrents of rain.
Surrounded by the group of boys, she made her way down the steep paths through the Steinberg cliffs, as cowbells began ringing and herders shouted from all sides. The cows were heading home from the town pastures. At the gate in the town ramparts near Nidareid, Kristin and her young companions had to wait while the livestock was driven through. The herders hooted and yelled and scolded, the oxen butted, the cows jostled each other, and the boys told her who owned each and every bull. When they finally went through the gate and walked toward the fenced lanes, Kristin had more than enough to do watching where she set her bare feet between the cow dung in the churned-up track.
Without asking, a few of the boys followed her all the way to Christ Church. And when she stood amid the dim forest of pillars and looked toward the candles and gold of the choir, the boys kept tugging at Kristin to show her things: from the colored patches of light that the sun on the rose window cast through the arches, to the gravestones on the floor, to the canopies of costly cloth above the altars—all things that were most likely to catch a child’s eye. Kristin had no peace to collect her thoughts, but every word the boys uttered aroused a dull, deep longing in her heart: for her sons, above all else, but also for the manor, the houses, the outbuildings, the livestock. A mother’s toil and a mother’s domain.
She was still feeling reluctant to be recognized by people who might have been friends with Erlend or her in the past. They always used to spend the feast days at their town estate and have guests staying with them. She dreaded running into a whole entourage. She would have to seek out Ulf Haldorss?n, for he had been acting as her envoy with regard to the property shares she still owned up here in the north and that she now wanted to give to the Rein Convent in exchange for a corrody.1But she knew that a man who had served as one of Erlend’s guardsmen while he was sheriff was supposed to be living on a small farm out near Brat?r; he fished for white-sided dolphins and porpoises in the fjord and kept a hostel for seafarers.
All the lodgings were full, she was told, but then Aamunde, the owner himself, appeared and recognized her at once. It was strange to hear him call out her old name.
“If I’m not mistaken . . . aren’t you Erlend Nikulauss?n’s wife from Husaby? Greetings, Kristin. How is it that you’ve come to my house?”
He was more than happy if she would accept such lodgings for the night as he could offer, and he promised that he himself would sail to Tautra with her on the day after the feast.
Late into the night she sat outside in the courtyard, talking with her host, and she was greatly moved when she saw that Erlend’s former subordinate still loved and esteemed the memory of his young chieftain. Aamunde used that word about him several times: young. They had heard from Ulf Haldorss?n about his unfortunate death, and Aamunde said that he never met any of his old companions from the Husaby days without drinking a toast to the memory of their intrepid master. Twice some of them had collected money and paid for a mass to be said for his soul on the anniversary of his death. Aamunde asked many questions about Erlend’s sons, and Kristin in turn asked about old acquaintances. It was midnight before she went to bed, lying down beside Aamunde’s wife. He had wanted both of them to give up their bed for her, and in the end she had to agree to take at least his half.