Kristin Lavransdatter Part 24

"You seem so strange, Kristin," whispered Erlend as they danced. "I'm afraid for you, Kristin. Aren't you happy?"

They went from building to building and greeted their guests. All the rooms were filled with many candles, and people were drinking and singing and dancing everywhere. Kristin felt as though everything was so unfamiliar at home, and she had lost all sense of time; the hours and the images flowed around each other, oddly disconnected.

The autumn night was mild. There were fiddlers in the courtyard too, and people dancing around the bonfire. They shouted that the bride and groom must also do them the honor, so Kristin danced with Erlend in the cold, dew-laden courtyard. That seemed to wake her up a little and her head felt clearer.

Out in the darkness a light band of fog hovered over the rushing river. The mountains stood pitch black against the star-strewn sky.

Erlend led her away from the dance and crushed her to him in the darkness beneath an overhanging gallery.

"I haven't even told you that you're beautiful, so beautiful and so lovely. Your cheeks are as red as flames." He pressed his cheek against hers as he spoke. "Kristin, what's the matter?"

"I'm just so tired, so tired," she whispered in reply.

"Soon we'll go in and sleep," said the bridegroom, looking up at the sky. The Milky Way had swung around and was stretching almost due north and south. "Do you know we've never spent a whole night together except that one time when I slept with you in your bedchamber at Skog?"

Some time later Sira Eirik shouted across the courtyard that now it was Monday, and then the women came to lead the bride to bed. Kristin was so tired that she hardly had the energy to resist, as she was supposed to do for the sake of propriety. She let herself be led out of the loft by Fru Aashild and Gyrid of Skog. The groomsmen stood at the foot of the stairs with burning tapers and drawn swords; they formed a circle around the group of women and escorted Kristin across the courtyard, up to the old loft.

The women removed her wedding finery, piece by piece, and laid it aside. Kristin noticed that at the foot of the bed was draped the violet-blue velvet dress that she would wear the next day, and on top of it lay a long, finely pleated, snow-white linen cloth. This was the wimple that married women wore and that Erlend had brought for her; tomorrow she would bind up her hair in a bun and fasten the cloth over it. It looked so fresh and cool and rea.s.suring.

Finally she stood before the bridal bed, in her bare feet, bare-armed, dressed only in the ankle-length, golden-yellow silk shift. They had placed the crown on her head again; the bridegroom would take it off when the two of them were alone.

Ragnfrid placed her hands on her daughter's shoulders and kissed her cheek; the mother's face and hands were strangely cold, but she felt sobs bursting deep inside her breast. Then she threw back the covers of the bed and invited the bride to sit down. Kristin obeyed and leaned back on the silk pillows propped up against the headboard; she had to tilt her head slightly forward because of the crown. Fru Aashild pulled the covers up to Kristin's waist, placed the bride's hands on top of the silk coverlet, and arranged her shining hair, spreading it out over her breast and her slender, naked arms.

Then the men led the bridegroom into the loft. Munan Baardsn removed Erlend's gold belt and sword; when he hung it up on the wall above the bed, he whispered something to the bride. Kristin didn't understand what he said, but she did her best to smile.

The groomsmen unlaced Erlend's silk clothing and lifted the long, heavy garment over his head. He sat down in the high-backed armchair, and they helped him take off his spurs and boots.

Only once did the bride dare to look up and meet his eyes.

Then everyone wished the couple good night. The wedding guests left the loft. Last to leave was Lavrans Bjrgulfsn, who closed the door to the bridal chamber.

Erlend stood up and tore off his underclothes and threw them onto the bench. He stood before the bed, took the crown and silk ribbons from Kristin's hair, and placed them over on the table. Then he came back and climbed into bed. And kneeling beside her on the bed, he took her head in his hands, pressing it to his hot, naked chest as he kissed her forehead all along the red band that the crown had made.

She threw her arms around him and sobbed loudly. Sweet and wild, she felt that now it would all be chased away-the terror, the ghostly visions-now, at last, it was just the two of them again. He raised her face for a moment, looked down at her, and stroked her face and her body with his hand, strangely quick and rough, as if he were tearing away a covering.

"Forget," he begged in an ardent whisper, "forget everything, my Kristin-everything except that you're my wife, and I'm your husband."

With his hand he put out the last flame and threw himself down next to her in the dark; he was sobbing too.

"I never believed, never in all these years, that we would live to see this day."

Outside in the courtyard the noise died out, little by little. Weary from the ride earlier in the day and bleary with drink, the guests wandered around a while longer for the sake of propriety, but more and more of them began to slip away to find the places where they would sleep.

Ragnfrid escorted the most honored guests to their beds and bade them good night. Her husband, who should have been helping her with this, was nowhere to be found.

Small groups of youths, mostly servants, were the only ones remaining in the dark courtyard when she finally slipped away to find her husband and take him along to bed. She had noticed that Lavrans had grown exceedingly drunk as the evening wore on.

At last she stumbled upon him as she was walking stealthily outside the farmyard, looking for him. He was lying face down in the gra.s.s behind the bathhouse.

Fumbling in the dark, she recognized him-yes, it was him. She thought he was sleeping, and she touched his shoulder, trying to pull him up from the ice-cold ground. But he wasn't asleep-at least not completely.

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice groggy.

"You can't stay here," said his wife. She held on to him, for he was reeling as he stood there. With her other hand she brushed off his velvet clothes. "It's time for us to go to bed too, husband." She put her hand under his arm and led the staggering man up toward the farm. They walked along behind the farmyard buildings.

"You didn't look up, Ragnfrid, when you sat in the bridal bed wearing the crown," he said in the same voice. "Our daughter was less modest than you were; her eyes were not shy as she looked at her bridegroom." didn't look up, Ragnfrid, when you sat in the bridal bed wearing the crown," he said in the same voice. "Our daughter was less modest than you were; her eyes were not shy as she looked at her bridegroom."

"She has waited for him for three and a half years," said the mother quietly. "After that I think she would dare to look up."

"No, the Devil take me if they've waited!" shouted the father, and his wife hushed him, alarmed.

They were standing in the narrow lane between the back of the latrine and the fence. Lavrans slammed his fist against the lower timber of the outhouse.

"I put you here to suffer ridicule and shame, you timber. I put you here so the muck would devour you. I put you here as punishment because you struck down my pretty little maiden. I should have put you above the door of my loft and honored and thanked you with decorative carvings because you saved her from shame and from sorrow-for you caused my Ulvhild to die an innocent child."

He spun around, staggered against the fence, and collapsed against it with his head resting on his arms as he sobbed uncontrollably, with long deep moans in between.

His wife put her arms around his shoulders.

"Lavrans, Lavrans." But she could not console him. "Husband."

"Oh, I never, never, never should have given her to that man. G.o.d help me-I knew it all along-he has crushed her youth and her fair honor. I refused to believe it, no, I could not believe such a thing of Kristin. But I knew it all the same. Even so, she is too good for that weak boy, who has shamed both her and himself. I shouldn't have given her to him, even if he had seduced her ten times, so that now he can squander more of her life and happiness."

"What else was there to do?" said Ragnfrid in resignation. "You could see for yourself that she was already his."

"Yes, but I didn't need to make such a great fuss to give Erlend what he had already taken himself," said Lavrans. "It's a fine husband she has won, my Kristin." He yanked at the fence. Then he wept some more. Ragnfrid thought he had grown a bit more sober, but now the drink took the upper hand again.

As drunk as he was and as overcome with despair, she didn't think she could take him up to the hearth room where they were supposed to sleep-it was filled with guests. She looked around. Nearby was a small barn where they kept the best hay for the horses during the spring farm work. She walked over and peered inside; no one was there. Then she led her husband inside and shut the door behind them.

Ragnfrid piled the hay up all around and then placed their capes over both of them. Lavrans continued to weep off and on, and occasionally he would say something, but it was so confused that she couldn't understand him. After a while she lifted his head into her lap.

"My dear husband, since they feel such love for each other, maybe everything will turn out better than we expect. . . ."

Lavrans, who now seemed more clearheaded, replied, gasping, "Don't you see? He now has complete power over her; this man who could never restrain himself. She will find it difficult to oppose anything that her husband wishes-and if she is forced to do so one day, then it will torment her bitterly, that gentle child of mine.

"I don't understand any longer why G.o.d has given me so many great sorrows. I have striven faithfully to do His will. Why did He take our children from us, Ragnfrid, one after the other? First our sons, then little Ulvhild, and now I have given the one I love most dearly, without honor, to an unreliable and imprudent man. Now we have only the little one left. And it seems to me unwise to rejoice over Ramborg until I see how things may go for her."

Ragnfrid was shaking like a leaf. Then she touched her husband's shoulder.

"Lie down," she begged him. "Let's go to sleep." And with his head in his wife's arms Lavrans lay quietly for a while, sighing now and then, until finally he fell asleep.

It was still pitch dark in the barn when Ragnfrid stirred; she was surprised she had slept at all. She put out her hand. Lavrans was sitting up with his hands clasped around his knees.

"Are you already awake?" she asked, astonished. "Are you cold?"

"No," he replied, his voice hoa.r.s.e, "but I can't sleep anymore."

"Is it Kristin you're thinking about?" asked Ragnfrid. "It may turn out better than we think, Lavrans," she told him again.

"Yes, that's what I'm thinking about," said her husband. "Well, well. Maiden or wife, at least she lay in the bridal bed with the one she had given her love to. Neither you nor I did that, my poor Ragnfrid."

His wife gave a deep, hollow moan. She threw herself down next to him in the hay. Lavrans placed his hand on her shoulder.

"But I could could not," he said with fervor and anguish. "No, I not," he said with fervor and anguish. "No, I could could not . . . act toward you the way you wanted me to-back when we were young. I'm not the kind of man . . ." not . . . act toward you the way you wanted me to-back when we were young. I'm not the kind of man . . ."

After a moment Ragnfrid murmured, in tears, "We have lived well together all the same, Lavrans-all these years."

"So I too have believed," he replied gloomily.

His thoughts were tumbling and racing through his mind. That one naked glance which the groom and bride had cast at each other, the two young faces blushing with red flames-he thought it so brazen. It had stung him that she was his daughter. But he kept on seeing those eyes, and he struggled wildly and blindly against tearing away the veil from something in his own heart which he had never wanted to acknowledge-there he had concealed a part of himself from his own wife when she had searched for it.

He had not been able to, he interrupted himself harshly. In the name of the Devil, he had been married off as a young boy; he had not chosen her himself. She was older than he was. He had not desired her. He had not wanted to learn this from her-how to love. He still grew hot with shame at the thought of it-that she had wanted him to love her when he had not wanted that kind of love from her. That she had offered him everything that he had never asked for.

He had been a good husband to her; he believed that himself. He had shown her all the respect he could, given her full authority, asked her advice about everything, been faithful to her; and they had had six children. He had simply wanted to live with her without her always trying to seize what was in his heart-and what he refused to reveal.

He had never loved anyone. What about Ingunn, Karl's wife at Bru? Lavrans blushed in the darkness. He had always visited them when he traveled through the valley. He had probably never spoken to the woman alone even once once. But whenever he saw her-if he merely thought of her-he felt something like that first smell of the earth in the spring, right after the snow had gone. Now he realized: it could have happened to him too . . . he could have loved someone too.

But he had been married so young, and he had grown wary. Then he found that he thrived best out in the wilderness-up on the mountain plateaus, where every living creature demands wide-open s.p.a.ce, with room enough to flee. Wary, they watch every stranger that tries to sneak up on them.

Once a year the animals of the forest and in the mountains would forget their wariness. Then they would rush at their females. But he had been given his as a gift. And she had offered him everything for which he had never wooed her.

But the young ones in the nest . . . they had been the little warm spot in his desolation, the most profound and sweetest pleasure of his life. Those small blonde girls' heads beneath his hand . . .

Married off-that was what had happened to him, practically unconsulted. Friends . . . he had many, and he had none. War . . . it had been a joy, but there was no more war; his armor was hanging up in the loft, seldom used. He had become a farmer. But he had had daughters; everything he had done in his life became dear to him because he had done it to provide for those tender young lives that he held in his hands. He remembered Kristin's tiny two-year-old body on his shoulder, her flaxen soft hair against his cheek. Her little hands holding on to his belt while she pressed her hard, round forehead against his shoulder blades when he went riding with her sitting behind him on the horse.

And now she had those ardent eyes, and she had won the man she wanted. She was sitting up there in the dim light, leaning against the silk pillows of the bed. In the glow of the candle she was all golden-golden crown and golden shift and golden hair spread over her naked golden arms. Her eyes were no longer shy.

The father moaned with shame.

And yet it seemed that his heart had burst with blood-for what he had never had. And for his wife, here at his side, to whom he had been unable to give himself.

Sick with compa.s.sion, he reached for Ragnfrid's hand in the dark.

"Yes, I thought we lived well together," he said. "I thought you were grieving for our children. And I thought you had a melancholy heart. I never thought that it might be because I wasn't a good husband to you."

Ragnfrid was trembling feverishly.

"You have always been a good husband, Lavrans."

"Hm . . ." Lavrans sat with his chin resting on his knees. "And yet you might have done better if you had been married as our daughter was today."

Ragnfrid sprang up, uttering a low, piercing cry. "You know! How did you find out? How long have you known?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Lavrans after a moment, his voice strangely dispirited.

"I'm talking about the fact that I wasn't a maiden when I became your wife," replied Ragnfrid, and her voice was clear and resounding with despair.

After a moment Lavrans said, in the same voice as before, "I never knew of this until now."

Ragnfrid lay down in the hay, shaking with sobs. When the spell had pa.s.sed she raised her head. A faint gray light was beginning to seep in through the holes in the wall. She could dimly see her husband as he sat there with his hands clasped around his knees, as motionless as if he were made of stone.

"Lavrans-speak to me," she whimpered.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked, not moving.

"Oh, I don't know. You should curse me-strike me . . ."

"It's a little late for that now," replied her husband; there was the shadow of a scornful smile in his voice.

Ragnfrid wept again. "No, I didn't think I was deceiving you, so deceived and betrayed did I feel myself. No one spared me. They brought you . . . I saw you only three times before we were married. I thought you were only a boy, so pink and white . . . so young and childish."

"That I was," said Lavrans, and his voice seemed to acquire more resonance. "And that's why I would have thought that you, who were a woman, you would have been more afraid of . . . of deceiving someone who was so young that he didn't realize . . ."

"I began to think that way later on," said Ragnfrid, weeping.

"After I came to know you. Soon the time came when I would have given my soul twenty times over if I could have been without blame toward you."

Lavrans sat silent and motionless.

Then his wife continued, "You're not going to ask me anything?"

"What good would that do now? It was the man who . . . we met his funeral procession at Feginsbrekka, when we were carrying Ulvhild to Nidaros."

"Yes," said Ragnfrid. "We had to step off the road, into the meadow. I watched them carry his bier past, with priests and monks and armed men. I heard that he had been granted a good death-reconciled with G.o.d. As we stood there with Ulvhild's litter between us I prayed that my sin and my sorrow might be placed at his feet on that last day."

"Yes, no doubt you did," said Lavrans, and there was that same shadow of scorn in his quiet voice.

"You don't know everything," said Ragnfrid, cold with despair. "Do you remember when he came out to visit us at Skog that first winter after we were married?"

"Yes," said her husband.

"When Bjrgulf was struggling with death . . . Oh, no one had spared me. He was drunk when he did it to me-later he said that he had never loved me, he didn't want me, he told me to forget about it. My father didn't know about it; he didn't deceive you-you must never believe that. But Trond . . . my brother and I were the dearest of friends back then, and I complained to him. He tried to threaten the man into marrying me-but he was only a boy, so he lost the fight. Later he advised me not to speak of it and to take you. . . ."