She stood up and said goodnight. Then her father told her to stay a while.
“I have some other news,” said Lavrans. “I might have kept it from you, Kristin, but it’s better that you hear it. Here it is: That man you have set your heart on, you must try to forget.”
Kristin had been standing with her arms at her sides and her head bowed. Now she raised her head and looked into her father’s face. Her lips moved, but she couldn’t manage a single audible word.
Lavrans turned away from his daughter’s gaze; he threw out his hand.
“You know I wouldn’t be against it if I sincerely believed that it would be to your benefit,” he said.
“What news have you heard on this journey, Father?” asked Kristin, her voice steady.
“Erlend Nikulauss?n and his kinsman Sir Munan Baards?n came to me in Tunsberg,” replied Lavrans. “Sir Munan asked me for your hand on Erlend’s behalf, and I told him no.”
Kristin stood in silence for a moment, breathing heavily.
“Why won’t you give me to Erlend Nikulauss?n?” she asked.
“I don’t know how much you know about this man you want for your husband,” said Lavrans. “If you don’t know the reason yourself, it won’t be pleasant for you to hear it from my lips.”
“Is it because he was excommunicated and outlawed?” asked Kristin in the same tone as before.
“Do you know what it was that caused King Haakon to drive his close kinsman from his court? And do you know that he was banned by the Church in the end because he defied the archbishop’s decree? And that he did not leave the country alone?”
“Yes,” said Kristin. Her voice grew uncertain. “I know too that he was eighteen years old when he met her—his mistress.”
“That’s how old I was when I was married,” said Lavrans. “When I was young, we reckoned that from a man’s eighteenth birthday he could answer for himself and be responsible for his own welfare and that of others.”
Kristin stood in silence.
“You called her his mistress, that woman he has lived with for ten years and who has borne him children,” said Lavrans after a moment. “I would regret the day I sent my daughter off with a husband who had lived openly with a mistress for years on end before he married. But you know it was more than merely living in sin.”
“You weren’t so harsh to judge Fru Aashild and Herr Bj?rn,” said Kristin quietly.
“Yet I cannot say I would willingly join families with them,” replied Lavrans.
“Father,” said Kristin, “have you and Mother been so without sin all your lives that you dare judge Erlend so harshly?”
“God knows,” replied Lavrans sternly, “that I judge no man to be a greater sinner than I am myself. But one cannot expect me to give my daughter to any man who wishes to ask for her, just because we all need God’s mercy.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” said Kristin hotly. “Father, Mother, you were both young once. Don’t you remember that it’s not easy to guard yourself against the sin that love provokes?”
Lavrans turned blood-red.
“No,” he said curtly.
“Then you don’t know what you’re doing,” screamed Kristin in despair, “if you separate Erlend Nikulauss?n and me!”
Lavrans sat down on the bench again.
“You’re only seventeen years old, Kristin,” he continued. “It might be that the two of you are more fond of each other than I thought. But he’s not so young a man that he shouldn’t have realized … If he were a good man, then he wouldn’t have approached such a young, immature child as you with words of love. He seems to have considered it trivial that you were promised to someone else.
“But I will not betroth my daughter to a man who has two children with another man’s true wife. Don’t you realize that he has children?
“You’re too young to understand that such an injustice breeds endless quarrels and strife among kinsmen. The man cannot abandon his own offspring; neither can he claim them. It will be difficult for him to find a way to present his son in society, or to marry off his daughter to anyone other than a servant boy or a smallholder. And his children would not be made of flesh and blood if they didn’t despise you and your children…
“Don’t you see, Kristin? Sins like this … God may forgive such sins more readily than many others, but they damage a lineage so severely that it can never be redeemed. I was thinking about Bj?rn and Aashild myself. There stood that Munan, her son. He was dripping with gold and he sits on the King’s council. He and his brothers control the inheritance from their mother, and yet he hasn’t visited Aashild in her poverty in all these years. Yes, this was the man that your friend chose as his spokesman.