The Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter #1)(14)

It was like entering the mountain, thought Kristin as they stepped inside the vestibule of the church; they were met by darkness and cold. They went through a doorway, and there they encountered the chill smell of old incense and candles. Kristin was in a dark and vast room with a high ceiling. Her eyes couldn’t penetrate the darkness, neither overhead nor to the sides, but a light was burning on an altar far in front of them. A priest was standing there, and the echo of his voice crept oddly around the room, like puffs of air and whispers. Lavrans crossed himself and his child with holy water, and then walked forward. Even though he stepped cautiously, his spurs rang loudly against the stone floor. They passed giant pillars, and looking between the pillars was like peering into coal-black holes.

Up front near the altar Lavrans knelt down, and Kristin knelt at his side. Her eyes began adjusting to the dark. Gold and silver gleamed from altars between the pillars, but on the altar before them, candles were glowing in gilded candlesticks, and the holy vessels shone, as did the great, magnificent paintings behind. Kristin again thought of the mountain—this is the way she had imagined it must be inside, so much splendor, but perhaps even more light. And the dwarf maiden’s face appeared before her. But then she raised her eyes and saw above the painting the figure of Christ himself, huge and stern, lifted high up on the cross. She was frightened. He didn’t look gentle and sad, as he did back home in their own warm, brown-timbered church, where he hung heavily from his arms, his feet and hands pierced through, and his blood-spattered head bowed beneath the crown of thorns. Here he stood on a step, his arms rigidly outstretched and his head erect; his hair was gleaming gold and adorned with a golden crown; his face was lifted upward, with a harsh expression.

Then Kristin tried to follow the priest’s words as he prayed and sang, but his speech was so rapid and indistinct. At home she was able to distinguish each word, for Sira Eirik had the clearest voice, and he had taught her what the holy words meant in Norwegian so that she could better keep her thoughts on God when she was in church.

But she couldn’t do that here, for she was constantly noticing things in the dark. There were windows high up on the wall, and they began to grow lighter with the day. And near the place where they were kneeling, a strange gallowslike structure of wood had been raised; beyond it lay light-colored blocks of stone, and troughs and tools lay there too. Then she could hear that people had arrived and were padding around in there. Her eyes fell once more on the stern Lord Jesus on the wall, and she tried to keep her thoughts on the service. The icy cold of the stone floor made her legs stiff all the way up to her hips, and her knees ached. Finally everything began to swirl around her, because she was so tired.

Then her father stood up. The service was over. The priest came forward to greet her father. While they talked, Kristin sat down on a step because she saw the altar boy do the same. He yawned, and that made her yawn too. When he noticed that she was looking at him, he stuck his tongue in his cheek and crossed his eyes at her. Then he pulled out a pouch from under his clothing and dumped out the contents onto the stone floor: fish hooks, lumps of lead, leather straps, and a pair of dice; and the whole time he made faces at Kristin. She was quite astonished.

Then the priest and Lavrans looked at the children. The priest laughed and told the boy that he should go off to school, but Lavrans frowned and took Kristin by the hand.

It was starting to get lighter inside the church. Sleepily, Kristin clung to Lavrans’s hand while he and the priest walked under the wooden scaffold, talking about Bishop Ingjald’s construction work.

They wandered through the entire church, and at last they came out into the vestibule. From there a stone stairway led up into the west tower. Kristin trudged wearily up the stairs. The priest opened a door to a beautiful side chapel, but then Lavrans told Kristin to sit down outside on the steps and wait while he went in to make his confession. Afterward she could come in to kiss the shrine of Saint Thomas.

At that moment an old monk wearing an ash-brown cowl came out of the chapel. He paused for a minute, smiled at the child, and pulled out some sacking and homespun rags that had been stuffed into a hole in the wall. He spread them out on the landing.

“Sit down here; then you won’t be so cold,” he said, and continued on down the stairs in his bare feet.

Kristin was asleep when Father Martein, as the priest was called, came out to get her. From the church rose the loveliest song, and inside the chapel, candles burned on the altar. The priest gestured for Kristin to kneel beside her father, and then he took down a little golden reliquary that stood above the altar. He whispered to her that inside was a fragment of Saint Thomas of Canterbury’s bloody clothing, and he pointed to the holy image, so that Kristin could press her lips to the feet.

Lovely tones were still streaming from the church as they went downstairs. Father Martein told them that the organist was practicing while the schoolboys sang. But they had no time to listen, for Lavrans was hungry; he had fasted before confession. Now they would go over to the guest quarters at the canons’ house2 to eat.

Outside, the morning sun gleamed gold on the steep shores of distant Lake Mj?sa, so that all of the faded leafy groves looked like golden dust in the dark blue forests. The lake was rippled with little white specks of dancing foam. The wind blew cold and fresh, making the multicolored leaves float down onto the frost-covered hill.

A group of horsemen appeared between the bishop’s citadel and the house belonging to the Brothers of the Holy Cross. Lavrans stepped aside and bowed with his hand to his breast as he nearly swept the ground with his hat; then Kristin realized that the horse-man in the fur cape had to be the bishop himself, and she sank in a curtsey almost to the ground.