The Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter #1)(43)
As they came out near the bishop’s citadel, they joined a great throng at the marketplace in front of Halvard’s Cathedral and Olav’s cloister. Booths had been set up on the grassy slope and there were strolling players who were making trained dogs jump through barrel hoops. But Haakon wouldn’t let the maidens stop to watch, nor would he allow Kristin to enter the church; he said it would be more fun for her to see it on the great festival day itself.
On the road in front of Clement’s Church, Haakon took them both by the hand, for here the crowd was even bigger, with people coming in from the wharves or from the lanes between the townyards. 1 The girls were going to Miklegaard, where the shoemakers worked. Ingebj?rg thought the dresses that Kristin had brought from home were pretty and nice, but she said that the footwear Kristin had with her from the village could not be worn on fine occasions. And when Kristin saw the foreign-made shoes, of which Ingebj?rg had many pairs, she thought she could not rest until she had bought some for herself.
Miklegaard was one of the largest townyards in Oslo. It extended all the way from the wharves up toward Shoemaker Lane, with more than forty buildings surrounding two big courtyards. Now booths with homespun canopies had also been set up in the courtyards, and above the tents towered a statue of Saint Crispin. There was a great crush of people shopping. Women were running back and forth to the cookhouses with pots and buckets, children were getting tangled up in people’s feet, horses were being led in and out of the stables, and servants were carrying loads in and out of the storage sheds. Up on the galleries of the lofts where the finest wares were sold, the shoemakers and hawkers in the booths called to the maidens below, dangling toward them small, colorful, gold-stitched shoes.
But Ingebj?rg headed for the loft where Shoemaker Didrek had his workshop; he was German but had a Norwegian wife and owned a building in Miklegaard.
The old man was conducting business with a gentleman wearing a traveling cape and a sword at his belt, but Ingebj?rg stepped forward boldly, bowed, and said, “Good sir, won’t you allow us to speak with Didrek first? We must be back home at our convent before vespers, and you perhaps have more time?”
The gentleman greeted her and stepped aside. Didrek gave Inge bj?rg a poke with his elbow and asked her with a laugh whether they were dancing so much at the cloister that she had already worn out all the shoes she had bought the year before. Ingebj?rg gave him a poke back and said that they were hardly used at all, good heavens, but here was another maiden—and she pulled Kristin over to him. Then Didrek and his apprentice brought a chest out to the gallery, and he started taking out the shoes, each pair more beautiful than the last. Kristin sat down on a box and he tried the shoes on her feet. There were white shoes, and brown and red and green and blue shoes; shoes with painted heels made of wood, and shoes with no heels at all; shoes with buckles, shoes with silken ties, and shoes made from two or three different colored leathers. Kristin almost thought she liked them all. But they were so expensive that she was shocked—not a single pair cost less than a cow back home. Her father had given her a purse with one mark of silver counted out in coins when he left; this was to be her spending money, and Kristin had thought it a great sum. But she could see that Ingebj?rg didn’t think she could buy much with it at all.
Ingebj?rg also had to try on shoes, just for fun. It didn’t cost anything, said Didrek with a laugh. She bought a pair of leaf-green shoes with red heels, but she had to take them on credit; Didrek knew her, after all, as well as her family.
But Kristin could see that Didrek did not much care for this, and he was also dismayed because the tall gentleman in the traveling cape had left the loft; they had spent a long time trying on shoes. So Kristin chose a pair of shoes without heels made of thin, blue-violet leather; they were stitched with silver and rose-colored stones. But she didn’t like the green silk straps. Then Didrek said that he could change them, and he took them along to a room at the back of the loft. There he had boxes of silk ribbons and small silver buckles—things which shoemakers were actually not allowed to sell, and many of the ribbons were too wide and the buckles too big for shoes anyway.
Both Kristin and Ingebj?rg had to buy a few of these odds and ends, and by the time they had drunk a little sweet wine with Didrek and he had wrapped up their purchases in a homespun cloth, it had grown quite late, and Kristin’s purse had grown much lighter.
When they came out onto East Lane again, the sun was quite gold, and the dust from all the traffic in the town hung like a faint haze over the street. It was so warm and lovely, and people were arriving from Eikaberg with great armfuls of new foliage to decorate their houses for the holiday. Then Ingebj?rg decided that they should walk out toward Gjeita Bridge. On market days there was always so much entertainment going on in the paddocks along the river, with jugglers and fiddlers. Ingebj?rg had even heard that a whole ship full of foreign animals had arrived, and they were being displayed in cages down on the shore.
Haakon had had some German beer at Miklegaard and was now quite amenable and in good spirits, so when the maidens took him by the arm and begged so nicely, he relented, and the three of them walked over toward Eikaberg.
On the other side of the river there were only a few small farms scattered across the green slopes between the river and the steep incline. They went past the Minorites’ cloister, and Kristin’s heart shrank with shame, for she suddenly remembered that she had wanted to offer most of her silver for Arne’s soul. But she had not wanted to speak of this to the priest at Nonneseter; she was afraid of being questioned. She had thought that perhaps she could go out to visit the barefoot friars in the pastures to see whether Brother Edvin had returned—she would have liked so much to meet him. But she didn’t know how properly to approach one of the monks or to broach the topic. And now she had so little money left that she didn’t know whether she could afford a mass; maybe she would have to settle for offering a thick wax candle.