A few days later Brother Edwin was grown so much better that he would fain set out on his journey southward. Since his heart was set on this, Lavrans had a kind of litter made, to be slung between two horses, and on this he brought the sick man as far south as to Lidstad; there they gave him fresh horses and men to tend him on his way, and in this wise was he brought as far as Hamar. There he died in the cloister of the Preaching Friars, and was buried in their church. Afterward the Barefoot Friars claimed that his body should be delivered to them; for that many folks all about in the parishes held him to be a holy man, and spoke of him by the name of Saint Evan. The peasants of the Uplands and the Dales, all the way north to Trondheim, prayed to him as a saint. So it came about that there was a long dispute between the two Orders about his body.
Kristin heard naught of this till long after. But she grieved sorely at parting from the monk. It seemed to her that he alone knew all her life—he had known the innocent child as she was in her father’s keeping, and he had known her secret life with Erlend; so that he was, as it were, a link, binding together all that had first been dear to her with all that now filled her heart and mind. Now was she quite cut off from herself as she had been in the time when she was yet a maid.
“Aye,” said Ragnfrid, feeling with her hand the lukewarm brew in the vats, “methinks ’tis cool enough now to mix in the barm.”
Kristin had been sitting in the brew-house doorway spinning, while she waited for the brew to cool. She laid down the spindle on the threshold, unwrapped the rug from the pail of risen yeast, and began measuring out.
“Shut the door first,” bade her mother, “so the draught may not come in—you seem walking in your sleep, Kristin,” she said testily.
Kristin poured the yeast in to the vats, while Ragnfrid stirred.
—Geirhild Drivsdatter called on Hatt, but he was Odin. So he came and helped her with the brewing; and he craved for his wage that which was between the vat and her—’Twas a saga that Lavrans had once told when she was little. That which was between the vat and her—
Kristin felt dizzy and sick with the heat and the sweet spicy-smelling steam that filled the dark close-shut brew-house.