How Sira Eiliv happened to come to Rein as priest and adviser, Kristin never knew, but this much she did know: From the very beginning the abbess and the sisters had received a secular priest with reluctance and suspicion. Sira Eiliv’s position at Rein was such that he was the nuns’ priest and spiritual adviser; he was also supposed to see about putting the estate back on its feet and restoring order to the convent’s finances. All the while he was to acknowledge the supremacy of the abbess, the independence of the sisters, and the supervisory right of Tautra. He was also supposed to maintain a friendship with the other priest at the church, a monk from Tautra. Sira Eiliv’s age and renown for unblemished moral conduct, humble devotion to God, and insight into both canonical laws and the laws of the land had certainly served him well, but he had to be constantly vigilant about everything he did. Along with the other priest and the vergers, he lived on a small manor that lay northeast of the convent. This also served as the lodgings for the monks who came from Tautra from time to time on various errands. When Nikulaus was eventually ordained as a priest, Kristin knew that if she lived long enough, she would also one day hear her eldest son say mass in the cloister church.
Kristin Lavransdatter was first accepted as a corrodian. Later she had promised Fru Ragnhild and the sisters, in the presence of Sira Eiliv and two monks from Tautra, to live a chaste life and obey the abbess and nuns. As a sign that she had renounced all command over earthly goods she had placed in Sira Eiliv’s hands her seal, which he had broken in half. Then she was allowed to wear the same attire as the sisters: a grayish white woolen robe—but without the scapular—a white wimple, and a black veil. After some time had passed, the intention was for her to seek admittance into the order and to take the vows of a nun.
But it still was difficult for her to think too much about things of the past. For reading aloud during meals in the refectory, Sira Eiliv had translated into the Norwegian language a book about the life of Christ, which the learned and pious Doctor Bonaventura had written. While Kristin listened, her eyes would fill with tears whenever she thought about how blessed a person must be who could love Christ and his Mother, the cross and its torment, poverty and humility, in the way the book described. And then she couldn’t help thinking about that day at Husaby when Gunnulf and Sira Eiliv had shown her the book in Latin from which this one had been copied. It was a thick little book written on such thin and dazzling white parchment that she never would have believed calfskin could be prepared so finely, and it had the most beautiful pictures and capital letters; the colors glowed like gemstones against gold. All the while Gunnulf had talked merrily—and Sira Eiliv had nodded in agreement with his quiet smile—about how the purchase of this book had made them penniless, so they had been forced to sell their clothes and take their meals with those receiving alms at a cloister until they received word of some Norwegian clerics who had come to Paris; from them they could borrow funds.
After matins, when the sisters went back to the dormitory, Kristin always stayed behind in the church. On summer mornings it seemed to her sweet and lovely inside, but during the winter it was terribly cold, and she was afraid of the darkness among all the gravestones, even though she steadily fixed her eyes on the little lamp which always burned in front of the ivory tower containing the Host. But winter or summer, as she lingered in her corner of the nuns’ choir, she always thought that now Naakkve and Bj?rg ulf must also be praying for their father’s soul; it was Nikulaus who had asked her to say these prayers and psalms of penance as they did every morning after matins.
Always, always she would then picture the two of them as she had seen them on that gray, rainy day when she went out to the monastery. Nikulaus had suddenly appeared before her in the parlatory, looking oddly tall and unfamiliar in the grayish white monk’s robes, with his hands hidden under his scapular—her son—and yet he had changed so little. It was mostly his resemblance to his father that seized her so strongly; it was like seeing Erlend in a monk’s cowl.
As they sat and talked and she told him everything that had happened on the estate since he left home, she kept waiting and waiting. Finally she asked anxiously if Bj?rgulf would be coming soon.
“I don’t know, Mother,” replied her son. A moment later he added, “It has been a hard struggle for Bj?rgulf to submit to his cross and serve God. And it seemed to worry him when he heard you were here, that too many thoughts might be torn open.”
Afterward she felt only deadly despair as she sat and looked at Nikulaus while he talked. His face was very sunburned, and his hands were worn with toil; he mentioned with a little smile that he had been forced to learn after all to guide a plow and use a sickle and scythe. She didn’t sleep that night in the hostel, and she hurried to church when the bells rang for matins. But the monks were standing so that she could see only a few faces, and her sons were not among them.