And so was it done. Sister Cecilia lay in the Abbess’s room for fourteen days; she had a high fever, and Lady Groa herself tended her. When she got up again, she had to sit for a week at the side of the Abbess in the high seat both in the church and in the convent, and all waited on her—she wept all the time as though she were being beaten with whips. But afterward she was much calmer and happier. She lived much as before, but she blushed like a bride if anyone looked at her, whether she was sweeping the floor or going alone to the church.
None the less did this matter of Sister Cecilia awake in Kristin a great longing for peace and atonement with all wherefrom she had come to feel herself cast out. She thought of Brother Edwin, and one day she took courage and begged leave of Lady Groa to go out to the barefoot friars and visit a friend she knew there.
She marked that Lady Groa misliked this—there was scant friendship between the Minorites and the other cloisters in the bishopric. And the Abbess was no better pleased when she heard who was Kristin’s friend. She said this Brother Edwin was an unstable man of God—he was ever wandering about the country and seeking leave to pay begging visits to strange bishoprics. The common folk in many places held him to be a holy man, but he did not seem to understand that a Franciscan’s first duty was obedience to those set over him. He had shriven freebooters and outlaws, baptised their children, chanted them to their graves without asking leave—yet, doubtless, he had sinned as much through ignorance as in despite, and he had borne meekly the penances laid upon him on account of these things. He was borne with too because he was skilled in his handicraft—but even in working at this, he had fallen out with his craft-fellows; the master-limners of the Bishop of Bergen would not suffer him to come and work in the bishopric there.
Kristin made bold to ask where he had come from, this monk with the un-Norse name. Lady Groa was in the mood for talking; she told how he had been born here in Oslo, but his father was an Englishman, Rikard Platemaster, who had wedded a farmer’s daughter from the Skogheim Hundred, and had taken up his abode in the town—two of Edwin’s brothers were armourers of good repute in Oslo. But this eldest of the Platemaster’s sons had been a restless spirit all his days. ’Twas true he had felt a call to the life of the cloister from childhood up; he had joined the Cistercians at Hovedö as soon as he was old enough. They sent him to a monastery in France to be trained—for his gifts were good; while still there he had managed to get leave to pass from the Cistercian into the Minorite order. And at the time the unruly friars began building their church eastward in the fields in despite of the Bishop’s command, Brother Edwin had been one of the worst and most stiff-necked of them all—nay, he had half killed with his hammer one of the men the Bishop sent to stop the work.
—It was a long time now since anyone had spoken so much with Kristin at one time, so when Lady Groa said that now she might go, the young girl bent and kissed the Abbess’s hand, fervently and reverently; and as she did so, tears came into her eyes. And Lady Groa, who saw she was weeping, thought it was from sorrow—and so she said maybe she might after all let her go out one day to see Brother Edwin.
And a few days later she was told some of the convent folk had an errand to the King’s palace, and they could take her out along with them to the Brothers in the fields.
Brother Edwin was at home. Kristin had not thought she could have been so glad to see anyone, except it had been Erlend. The old man sat and stroked her hand while they talked together—in thanks for her coming. No, he had not been in her part of the country since the night he lay at Jörundgaard, but he had heard she was to wed and he wished her all good fortune. Then Kristin begged that he would go over to the church with her.
They had to go out of the monastery and round to the main door; Brother Edwin durst not take her through the courtyard. He seemed altogether exceeding downcast, and fearful of doing aught that might offend. He had grown very old, thought Kristin.
And when she had laid upon the altar her offering for the officiant monk who was in the church, and afterward asked Edwin if he would confess her, he grew very frightened. He dared not, he said, he had been strictly forbidden to hear confession.