The farmer guild of Aker had St. Margaret for their patroness, and they began their festival, each year on the twentieth of July, the day of St. Margaret’s Mass. In that day the guild-brothers and sisters, with their children, their guests and their serving-folk, gathered at Aker’s church and heard mass at St. Margaret’s Altar there; after that they wended their way to the hall of the guild which lay near the Hofvin hospital—there they were wont to hold a drinking-feast lasting five days.
But since both Aker’s church and the Hofvin spital belonged to Nonneseter, and as, besides, many of the Aker farmers were tenants of the convent, it had come to be the custom that the Abbess and some of the elder Sisters should honour the guild by coming to the feasting on the first day. And those of the young maids who were at the convent only to learn, and were not to take the veil, had leave to go with them and to dance in the evening; therefore at this feast they wore their own clothes and not the convent habit.
And so there was great stir and bustle in the novices’ sleeping rooms on the eve of St. Margaret’s Mass; the maids who were to go to the guild feast ransacking their chests and making ready their finery, while the others, less fortunate, went about something moodily and looked on. Some had set small pots in the fireplace and were boiling water to make their skin white and soft; others were making a brew to be smeared on the hair—then they parted the hair into strands and twisted them tightly round strips of leather, and this gave them curling, wavy tresses.
Ingebjörg brought out all the finery she had, but could not think what she should wear—come what might, not her best leaf-green velvet dress; that was too good and too costly for such a peasant rout. But a little, thin sister who was not to go with them—Helga was her name; she had been vowed to the convent by her father and mother while still a child—took Kristin aside and whispered: she was sure Ingebjörg would wear the green dress and her pink silk shift too.
“You have ever been kind to me, Kristin,” said Helga. “It beseems me little to meddle in such doings—but I will tell you none the less. The knight who brought you home that evening in the spring—I have seen and heard Ingebjörg talking with him since—they spoke together in the church, and he has tarried for her up in the hollow when she hath gone to Ingunn at the commoners’ house. But ’tis you he asks for, and Ingebjörg has promised him to bring you there along with her. But I wager you have not heard aught of this before!”
“True it is that Ingebjörg has said naught of this,” said Kristin. She pursed up her mouth that the other might not see the smile that would come out. So this was Ingebjörg’s way—“’Tis like she knows I am not of such as run to trysts with strange men round house-corners and behind fences,” said she proudly.
“Then I might have spared myself the pains of bringing you tidings whereof ’twould have been but seemly I should say no word,” said Helga, wounded, and they parted.
But the whole evening Kristin was put to it not to smile when anyone was looking at her.
Next morning Ingebjörg went dallying about in her shift, till Kristin saw she meant not to dress before she herself was ready.