She thought she would gladly have stayed in the quiet night-dark church forever—with the few tiny specks of light like golden stars in the night, the sweet fragrance of old incense, and the warm smell of burning wax. With herself resting inside her own star.
This sense of joy seemed to vanish when Sister Cecilia silently approached and touched her shoulder. Curtseying before the altar, the three women slipped out of the small south entrance into the convent courtyard.
Ingebj?rg was so sleepy that she got into bed without talking. Kristin was relieved; she was reluctant to be disturbed, now that she was thinking so clearly. And she was glad they had to keep their shifts on at night—Ingebj?rg was so fat and sweated heavily.
Kristin lay awake for a long time, but the deep current of sweetness which had borne her as she knelt in the church would not return. And yet she still felt its warmth inside her; she fervently thanked God, and she sensed a feeling of strength in her spirit as she prayed for her parents and her sisters and for the soul of Arne Gyrds?n.
Father, she thought. She felt such a longing for him, for all they had had together before Simon Darre had entered their lives. A new tenderness for Lavrans welled up inside her, as if there were a presentiment of maternal love and maternal sorrows in her love for her father that night. She was dimly aware that there was much in life that he had not received. She thought of the old black wooden church at Gerdarud, where at Eastertide she had seen the graves of her three little brothers and her grandmother—her father’s own mother, Kristin Sigurdsdatter—who had died as she gave birth to him.
What could Erlend Nikulauss?n be doing at Gerdarud? She could not fathom it.
She wasn’t conscious of giving any more thought to him that night, but the whole time the memory of his thin, dark face and his quiet voice had hovered somewhere in the shadows, just beyond the radiance of her soul.
When Kristin woke up the next morning, the sun was shining in the dormitory, and Ingebj?rg told her that Fru Groa herself had sent word to the lay sisters that they should not be awakened for matins. They had permission to go over to the cookhouse now to have some food. Kristin felt warm with joy at the kindness of the abbess. It was as if the whole world had been good to her.
CHAPTER 3
THE FARMERS’ GUILD at Aker was dedicated to Saint Margareta, and every year began its meeting on the twentieth of July, which was Saint Margareta’s Day. On that day the brothers and sisters would gather with their children, guests, and servants at Aker Church to attend mass at the Saint Margareta altar. Afterward they would go to the guild hall, which stood near Hofvin Hospice; there they would drink for five days.
But because both Aker Church and Hofvin Hospice belonged to Nonneseter, and since many of the Aker peasants were tenant farmers of the convent, the custom had arisen for the abbess and several of the eldest sisters to honor the guild by attending the celebrations on the first day. And the young maidens of the convent who were there to be educated but who were not going to enter the order were allowed to go along and dance in the evening; and for this celebration they would wear their own clothes and not their convent attire.
So there was a great commotion in the young novices’ dormitory on the evening before Saint Margareta’s Day. Those maidens who were to attend the banquet rummaged through their chests and laid out their finery, while the others looked on and moped. Some of the girls had set small pots on the hearth and were boiling water to make their skin soft and white. Others were brewing something that they rubbed in their hair; afterward, when they had wound strands of their hair tightly around leather straps, they would have wavy and curly tresses.
Ingebj?rg took out all that she owned of finery, but she couldn’t decide what to wear. Not her best leaf-green velvet dress, anyway; it was too costly and too elegant to wear to such a farmers’ guild. But a thin little maiden who was not going along—Helga was her name, and she had been given to the convent as a child—pulled Kristin aside and whispered that Ingebj?rg would of course wear the green dress and her pink silk shift.
“You’ve always been kind to me, Kristin,” said Helga. “It’s most improper for me to get involved in such things, but I’m going to tell you anyway. The knight who escorted you home on that evening in the spring—I have both seen and heard that Ingebj?rg has talked to him since then. They have spoken to each other in church, and he has waited for her up along the fenced road when she goes to visit Ingunn at the corrodians’ house. But it’s you that he asks for, and Ingebj?rg has promised to bring you out there with her. I’ll wager that you’ve never heard about this before, have you?”