The Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter #1)(50)
“Didn’t you know that he’s her son?” asked Erlend.
“Fru Aashild’s son?” said Kristin in astonishment.
“Yes, the children couldn’t take their mother’s fair looks, since they took everything else,” said Erlend.
“I didn’t even know the name of her first husband,” said Kristin.
“They were two brothers who married two sisters,” said Erlend. “Baard and Nikulaus Munans?n. My father was the older one; Mother was his second wife, but he had no children by his first wife. Baard, who married Aashild, wasn’t a young man either, and apparently they never got on well. I was a child when it all happened, and they kept as much from me as they could. But she left the country with Herr Bj?rn and married him without the counsel of her kinsmen—after Baard was dead. Then people wanted to annul their marriage. They claimed that Bj?rn had slept with her while her first husband was still alive and that they conspired together to get rid of my father’s brother. But they couldn’t find any proof of this, and they had to let the marriage stand. But they had to give up all their possessions. Bj?rn had killed their nephew too—the nephew of my mother and Aashild, I mean.”
Kristin’s heart was pounding. At home her parents had taken strict precautions to keep the children from hearing impure talk. But things had occurred in their village, too, that Kristin had heard about—a man who lived in concubinage with a married woman. That was adultery, one of the worst of sins. They were also to blame for the husband’s violent death, and then it was a case for excommunication and banishment. Lavrans had said that no woman had to stay with her husband if he had been with another man’s wife. And the lot of offspring from adultery could never be improved, even if the parents were later free to marry. A man could pass on his inheritance and name to his child by a prostitute or a wandering beggar woman, but not to his child from adultery—not even if the mother was the wife of a knight.
Kristin thought about the dislike she had always felt toward Herr Bj?rn, with his pallid face and his slack, corpulent body. She couldn’t understand how Fru Aashild could always be so kind and amenable toward the man who had lured her into such shame; to think that such a gracious woman could have allowed herself to be fooled by him. He was not even nice to her; he let her toil with all the work on the farm. Bj?rn did nothing but drink ale. And yet Aashild was always so gentle and tender when she spoke to her husband. Kristin wondered whether her father knew about this, since he had invited Herr Bj?rn into their house. Now that she thought about it, it seemed odd to her that Erlend would speak in this manner of his close kinsmen. But he probably thought that she knew about it already.
“It would please me,” said Erlend after a moment, “to visit her, my Aunt Aashild, sometime—when I journey north. But is he still a handsome man, my kinsman Bj?rn?”
“No,” said Kristin. “He looks like a mound of hay that has lain on the ground all winter long.”
“Ah yes, it must wear on a man,” said Erlend with the same bitter smile. “Never have I seen a more handsome man—that was twenty years ago, and I was only a small boy back then—but I have never seen his equal.”
A short time later they reached the hospice. It was an enormous and grand estate with many buildings of both stone and wood: a hospital, an almshouse, a guest inn for travelers, the chapel, and the rectory. There was a great tumult in the courtyard, for food was being prepared for the banquet in the hospice’s cookhouse, and the poor and the sick guild members were also to be served the very best on that day.
The guild hall was beyond the gardens of the hospice, and people were heading that way through the herb garden, for it was quite famous. Fru Groa had brought in plants that no one in Norway had ever heard of before and, besides that, all the plants that usually grew in such gardens seemed to thrive better in hers—flowers and cooking herbs and medicinal herbs. She was the most skilled woman in all such matters, and she had even translated herbals from Salerno into the Norwegian language. Fru Groa had been particularly friendly toward Kristin ever since she noticed that the maiden knew something of the art of herbs and wanted to know more about it.
So Kristin pointed out to Erlend what plants were growing in the beds on both sides of the green lane as they walked. In the noonday sun there was a hot, spicy fragrance of dill and celery, onions and roses, southernwood and wallflowers. Beyond the shadeless, sun-baked herb garden, the rows of fruit trees looked enticingly cool; red cherries gleamed in the dark foliage, and apple trees bowed their branches, weighted down by green fruit.
Surrounding the garden was a hedge of sweetbriar. There were still some roses left—they looked no different from other hedge roses, but the petals smelled of wine and apples in the heat of the sun. People broke off twigs and pinned them to their clothing as they passed. Kristin picked several roses too, tucking them into the circlet at her temples. She held one in her hand, and after a moment Erlend took it from her, without saying a word. He carried it for a while and then stuck it into the filigree brooch on his chest. He looked self-conscious and embarrassed, and did it so clumsily that he scratched his fingers and drew blood.
In the banquet loft several wide tables had been set up: one for the men and one for the women along the walls. In the middle of the floor there were two tables where the children and the young people sat together.
At the women’s table Fru Groa sat in the high seat; the nuns and most of the wives of high standing sat along the wall, and the unmarried women sat on the opposite bench, with the maidens from Nonneseter closest to the head of the table. Kristin knew that Erlend was looking at her, but she didn’t dare turn her head even once, either when they were standing or after they sat down. Not until they rose and the priest began to read the names of the deceased guild brothers and sisters did she cast a hasty glance toward the men’s table. She caught a glimpse of him as he stood near the wall, behind the burning candle on the table. He was looking at her.