“Aye ’twould be best for you if you took after Lavrans both in mind and body, too. Yet ’twould be pity were they to wed you up here in the Dale. Plainness and country ways let no man scorn, but they think, themselves, these big folk up here, they are so fine that their like is not to be found in Norway’s land. They wonder much, belike, that I can live and thrive though they bar their doors against me. But they are lazy and proud and will not learn new ways—and they put the blame on the old strife with the King in Sverre’s days. ’Tis all lies; your mother’s forefather made friends with King Sverre and received gifts from him; but were your mother’s brother to become one of our King’s men and wait upon his Court, he would have to trim himself up both without and within, and that Trond would not be at pains to do. But you, Kristin,—you should be wedded to a man bred in knightly ways and courteisie—”
Kristin sat looking down into the Formo yard, at Arne’s red back. She scarce knew it herself, but when Lady Aashild talked of the world she had once moved in, Kristin ever thought of the knights and earls in Arne’s likeness. Before, when she was little, she had always seen them in her father’s shape.
“My sister’s son, Erlend Nikulaussön of Husaby, he might have been a fitting bridegroom for you—he has grown comely, has the boy. My sister Magnhild looked in on me last year as she passed through the Dale, and he with her. Aye ’tis not like you could get him, but I had gladly spread the coverlid over you two in the bridal bed—he is as dark-haired as you are fair, and he has goodly eyes.—But if I know my brother-in-law aright, he has bethought him already for sure of a better match for Erlend than you.”
“Am I not a good match then?” asked Kristin wondering. She had never thought of being hurt by anything Lady Aashild said, but she felt humbled and sad that the Lady should be in some way better than her own folks.
“Aye, you are a good match,” said the other. “Yet you could scarce look to come into my kindred. Your forefather in this land was an outlaw and a stranger, and the Gjeslings have sat and grown moulded on their farms so long that soon they’ll be forgotten outside the Dale. But I and my sister had for husbands the nephews of Queen Margret Skulesdatter.”
Kristin could not even pluck up heart to say it was not her forefather, but his brother, who had come to the land an outlaw. She sat and gazed at the dark hillsides across the dale, and she thought of the day many years gone by, when she had been up on the upland wastes and seen how many fells there were twixt her own valley and the outer world. Then Lady Aashild said they must go home now, and bade her call on Arne. So Kristin put her hands to her mouth, and hallooed and waved her kerchief, till she saw the red spot in the farm-place move and wave back.
Not long after this Lady Aashild went home, but through the autumn and the first part of the winter, she came often to Jörundgaard to spend some days with Ulvhild. The child was taken out of bed in the daytime now, and they tried to get her to stand, but her legs gave way beneath her when she put her feet to the ground. She was fretful, white and weary, and the laced jacket of horsehide and thin withes, which Lady Aashild had made for her, plagued her sorely, so that she would rather lie still in her mother’s lap. Ragnfrid had her sick daughter for ever in her arms, so that Tordis had the whole care of the house now, and at her mother’s bidding, Kristin went with Tordis to learn and to help.
Kristin longed for Lady Aashild between whiles, and sometimes the Lady would chat much with her, but at other times the child would wait in vain for a word beyond the other’s greeting when she came and when she went—Lady Aashild sat and talked with the grown-up folk only. That was always the way when she had her husband with her, for it happened now at times that Björn Gunnarsön came with his wife. Lavrans had ridden to Haugen one day in the autumn to take the Lady her leech’s fee—it was the very best silver tankard they had in the house, with a plate to match. He had slept there the night, and ever since he praised the farm mightily; it was fair and well ordered, and not so small as folks would have it, he said. And within the house all spoke of well-being and the customs of the house were seemly, following the ways of great folks’ houses in the South. What he thought of Björn, Lavrans said not, but he welcomed him fairly at all times when he came with his wife to Jörundgaard. But the Lady Aashild, Lavrans liked exceeding well, and he said he deemed most of the tales that had been told of her were lies. He said, too, ’twas most sure that twenty years since she could have had small need of witchcraft to bind a man to her—she was near the sixties now, yet she still looked young and had a most fair and winning bearing.
Kristin saw well that her mother liked all this but little. Of Lady Aashild, it is true, Ragnfrid said naught, but once she likened Björn to the yellow, flattened grass one sometimes finds growing under big stones, and Kristin thought this fitted him well. Björn looked strangely faded; he was somewhat fat, pale and sluggish, and a little bald, although he was not much older than Lavrans. Yet one saw he had once been a very comely man. Kristin never came to speech with him—he spoke little, and was wont to sit in the same place where he first settled down, from the time he stepped into the room till he went to bed. He drank hugely, but one marked it but little on him; he ate scarce any food, but gazed now and again at one or another in the room with a fixed, brooding look in his strange, pale eyes.