“Heard you what I said but now, that I had talked with my kinsfolk? Aye, they were glad enough that I was minded to wed. Then I said ’twas you I would have and none other—”
“And they liked not that?” asked Kristin at length, forlornly.
“See you not?” said Erlend gloomily, “they could say but one thing—they cannot and they will not ride with me to your father, until this bargain twixt you and Simon Andressön is undone again. It has made it none the easier for us, Kristin, that you have spent your Yule-tide with the Dyfrin folk.”
Kristin gave way altogether and wept noiselessly. She had felt ever that there was something of wrong and dishonour in her love, and now she knew the fault was hers.
She shook with the cold when she got up soon after, and Erlend wrapped her in both the cloaks. It was quite dark now without, and Erlend went with her as far as St. Clement’s Church; then Brynhild brought her the rest of the way to Nonneseter.
7
A week later Brynhild Fluga came with the word that the cloak was ready, and Kristin went with her and met Erlend in the loft-room as before.
When they parted, he gave her a cloak: “So that you may have something to show in the convent,” said he. It was of blue velvet with red silk inwoven, and Erlend bade her mark that ’twas of the same hues as the dress she had worn that day in the woods. Kristin wondered it should make her so glad that he said this—she thought he had never given her greater happiness than when he had said these words.
But now they could no longer make use of this way of meeting, and it was not easy to find a new one. But Erlend came often to the vespers at the convent church, and sometimes Kristin would make herself an errand after the service up to the commoners’ houses; and then they would snatch a few words together by stealth up by the fences in the murk of the winter evening.
Then Kristin thought of asking leave of Sister Potentia to visit some old, crippled women, alms-folk of the convent, who dwelt in a cottage standing in one of the fields. Behind the cottage was an outhouse where the women kept a cow; Kristin offered to tend it for them; and while she was there Erlend would join her and she would let him in.