1
AASMUND BJÖRGULFSÖN’S church-boat stood in round the point of Hovedö early one Sunday at the end of April, while the bells were ringing in the cloister-church and were answered from across the bay by the chimes of bells from the town, now louder and now fainter as the breeze rose or fell.
Light, fluted clouds were floating over the high, pale-blue heavens, and the sun was glittering on the dancing ripples of the water. It was quite spring-like along the shores; the fields lay almost bare of snow, and over the leaf-tree thickets the light had a yellow shimmer and the shadows were blue. But in the pine-forests up on the high ridges, which framed in the settled lands of Akersbygd, there were glimpses of snow, and on the far blue fells to the westward, beyond the fjord, there still showed many flashes of white.
Kristin was standing in the bow of the boat with her father, and Gyrid, Aasmund’s wife. She gazed at the town, with all the light-hued churches and stone buildings that rose above the swarm of grey-brown wooden houses and bare tree-tops. The wind ruffled the skirts of her cloak and snatched at her hair beneath her hood.
They had left the cattle out at Skog the day before, and a great longing had come on her to be at Jörundgaard. It would be a long time still before they could let the cattle out there—she longed with tender pity for the lean, winter-worn cows in the dark byres; they would have to wait and suffer a long while yet. Her mother, Ulvhild, who had slept in her arms each night all these years, little Ramborg—she yearned so much for them; she longed for all the folk at home, and the horses and the dogs, for Kortelin, whom Ulvhild was to have while she was gone, and for her father’s hawks as they sat there on their perches with their hoods over their heads. She saw the horse-hide gloves that hung beside them to wear when you took them on to your wrist, and the ivory staves to scratch them with.
It was as if all the woe of the last winter had gone far away from her and she only saw her home as it used to be. They had told her, too, that none thought ill of her in the parish—Sira Eirik did not believe that story; he was angry and grieved at what Bentein had done. Bentein had fled from Hamar; ’twas said he had gone to Sweden. So things were not so bad between them and their neighbour as she had feared.
On the journey down to Oslo they had stayed as guests at Simon’s home, and she had come to know his mother and sisters—Sir Andres was in Sweden still. She had not felt at ease there, and her dislike of the Dyfrin folk was all the stronger that she could think of no good ground for it. All the way thither, she had said to herself that they had no cause to be proud or to think themselves better than her kin—no man knew aught of Reidar Darre, the Birch-leg, before King Sverre got him the widow of the Dyfrin Baron to wife. But lo! they were not proud at all; and when Simon himself spoke one night of his forefather: “I have found out now for sure—he was a comb-maker—so ’tis as though you were to come into a kingly stock—almost, Kristin,” said he. “Take heed to your tongue, boy,” said his mother but they all laughed together. It vexed her strangely when she thought of her father; he laughed much, if Simon gave him the least cause—a thought came to her dimly that maybe her father would gladly have had more laughter in his life—But ’twas not to her mind that he should like Simon so much.
They had all been at Skog over Easter. She had found that her uncle was a hard master to his farmers and serving-folk—she had met one and another who asked after her mother and spoke lovingly of Lavrans: they had better times when he lived here. Aasmund’s mother, Lavrans’ step-mother, lived on the manor in a house by herself; she was not so very old, but sickly and failing. Lavrans had but seldom spoken of her at home. Once when Kristin asked him if he had had a hard step-mother, her father answered: “She never did much to me of either good or ill.”
Kristin felt for her father’s hand, and he pressed hers: