“Bear you well now, Kristin,” said she, “’twill not be long now till you are safe under the linen coif.”
Kristin nodded helplessly. She felt how deathly white her face must be.
“Methinks I am all too pale a bride,” she said in a low voice.
“You are the fairest bride,” said Lady Aashild; “and there comes Erlend, riding—fairer pair than you twain would be far to seek.”
Now Erlend himself rode forward under the balcony. He sprang lightly from his horse, unhindered by his heavy, flowing garments. He seemed to Kristin so fair that ’twas pain to look on him.
He was in dark raiment, clad in a slashed silken coat falling to the feet, leaf-brown of hue and inwoven with black and white. About his waist he had a gold-bossed belt, and at his left thigh hung a sword with gold on hilt and sheath. Back over his shoulders fell a heavy dark-blue velvet cloak, and pressed down on his coal-black hair he wore a black French cap of silk that stood out at both sides in puckered wings, and ended in two long streamers, whereof one was thrown from his left shoulder right across his breast and out behind over the other arm.
Erlend bowed low before his bride as she stood above; then went up to her horse and stood by it with his hand on the saddle-bow, while Lavrans went up the stairs. A strange dizzy feeling came over Kristin at the sight of all this splendour—in this solemn garment of green velvet, falling to his feet, her father might have been some stranger. And her mother’s face, under the linen coif, showed ashen-grey against the red of her silken dress. Ragnfrid came forward and laid the cloak about her daughter’s shoulders.
Then Lavrans took the bride’s hand and led her down to Erlend. The bridegroom lifted her to the saddle, and himself mounted. They stayed their horses, side by side, these two, beneath the bridal balcony, while the train began to form and ride out through the courtyard gate. First the priests: Sira Eirik, Sira Tormod from Ulvsvolden, and a Brother of the Holy Cross from Hamar, a friend of Lavrans. Then came the groomsmen and the bridesmaids, pair by pair. And now ’twas for Erlend and her to ride forth. After them came the bride’s parents, the kinsmen, friends and guests, in a long line down betwixt the fences to the highway. Their road for a long way onward was strewn with clusters of rowan-berries, branches of pine, and the last white dogfennel of autumn, and folk stood thick along the waysides where the train passed by, greeting them with a great shouting.
On the Sunday, just after sunset, the bridal train rode back to Jörundgaard. Through the first falling folds of darkness the bonfires shone out red from the courtyard of the bridal-house. Minstrels and fiddlers were singing and making drums and fiddles speak as the crowd of riders drew near to the warm red glare of the fires.