The Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter #1)(30)
She stayed there on her knees, aware of all the sounds of the night. The wind was sighing so oddly, the river was roaring beyond the groves on the other side of the church, and the stream was flowing nearby, right across the road—and everywhere, both close at hand and far away in the dark, her eyes and her ears caught hints of tiny rivulets of running and dripping water. The river flashed white down in the village. The moon glided up over a small gap in the mountains; stones and leaves wet with dew shimmered faintly, and the newly tarred timbers of the bell tower near the cemetery gate shone dull and dark. Then the moon vanished again where the ridge of the mountain rose higher. Many more gleaming white clouds appeared in the sky.
She heard a horse approaching at a slow pace higher up the road, and the sound of men’s voices, speaking evenly and softly. Kristin was not afraid of people so close to home where she knew everyone; she felt quite safe.
Her father’s dogs came rushing toward her, turned around and bounded back to the grove, then turned again and raced back to her; then her father called a greeting as he emerged from among the birches. He was leading Guldsvein by the bridle; a bunch of birds dangled in front of the saddle, and Lavrans was carrying a hooded hawk on his left hand. He was in the company of a tall, hunchbacked man in monk’s clothing, and before Kristin had even seen his face, she knew it was Brother Edvin. She went to greet them, and she couldn’t have been more surprised than if she had dreamed it. She merely smiled when Lavrans asked her whether she recognized their guest.
Lavrans had met the monk up by Rost Bridge. Then he had persuaded him to come home with him and stay the night at the farm. But Brother Edvin insisted on being allowed to sleep in the cowshed: “For I’ve picked up so many lice that you can’t have me lying in your good beds.”
And no matter how much Lavrans begged and implored, the monk was adamant; at first he even wanted them to bring his food out into the courtyard. But finally they coaxed him inside the house, and Kristin put wood in the fireplace in the corner and set candles on the table, while a maid brought in food and drink.
The monk sat down on the beggar’s bench near the door, but he would only take cold porridge and water for his evening meal. And he refused to accept Lavrans’s offer to prepare a bath for him and to have his clothes washed.
Brother Edvin scratched and rubbed himself and his gaunt old face beamed with glee.
“No, no,” he said. “The lice bite better at my proud hide than any scourges or the guardian’s words. I spent this summer under an overhang up on the mountain. They had given me permission to go into the wilderness to fast and pray, and there I sat, thinking that I was as pure as a holy hermit, and the poor people over in Setna valley brought food up to me and thought they beheld a pious monk, living a pure life. ‘Brother Edvin,’ they said, ‘if there were more monks like you, then we would soon mend our ways, but when we see priests and bishops and monks shoving and fighting like piglets at the trough ...’ Well, I told them that was not a Christian way to talk—but I liked hearing it all the same, and I sang and prayed so my voice resounded in the mountains. Now it will be to my benefit to feel how the lice are biting and fighting on my skin and to hear the good housewives, who want to keep their houses clean and neat, shouting that the filthy monkhide can just as well sleep in the barn during the summer. I’m heading north to Nidaros now, to celebrate Saint Olav’s Day, and it will do me good to see that people aren’t so keen to come near me.”
Ulvhild woke up. Then Lavrans went over and lifted her up in his cape.
“Here is the child I told you about, dear Father. Place your hands on her and pray to God for her, the way you prayed for the boy up north in Meldal—we heard he regained his health.”
The monk gently put his hand under Ulvhild’s chin and looked into her eyes. Then he lifted one of her hands and kissed it.
“You should pray instead, you and your wife, Lavrans Bj?rg ulfs?n, that you will not be tempted to bend God’s will with this child. Our Lord Jesus himself has set these small feet on a path so that she can walk safely toward the house of peace—I can see in your eyes, blessed Ulvhild, that you have your intercessors in that other house.”
“I heard that the boy in Meldal got well,” said Lavrans quietly.
“He was the only child of a poor widow, and there was no one to feed or clothe him when the mother passed away, except the village. And yet the woman only asked that God give her a fearless heart so that she might have faith that He would let happen whatever was best for the boy. I did nothing more than pray alongside her.”
“It’s not easy for Ragnfrid and me to be content with that,” said Lavrans gloomily. “Especially since she’s so pretty and so good.”
“Have you seen the child they have over in Lidstad, in the south of the valley?” asked the monk. “Would you rather your daughter were like that?”
Lavrans shuddered and pressed the child close.
“Don’t you think,” Brother Edvin went on, “that in God’s eyes we are all like children for whom He has reason to grieve, crippled as we are by sin? And yet we don’t think that things are the worst in the world for us.”
He walked over to the painting of the Virgin Mary on the wall, and everyone knelt down as he said the evening prayer. They felt that Brother Edvin had offered them great comfort.
But after he had left the house to find his sleeping place, Astrid, who was in charge of all the maids, vigorously swept the floor everywhere the monk had stood and hastily threw the sweepings into the fire.