The Bridal Wreath

by Sigrid Undset

  She began to seek for tokens that other folk were not without sin any more than they. She hearkened more to tale-bearing, and marked all the little things about her which showed that not even the Sisters in the convent here were altogether godly and unworldly. These were only little things — under Lady Groa’s rule Nonneseter to the world was a pattern of what a godly sisterhood should be. Zealous in their devotions, diligent, full of care for the poor and sick, were the nuns. Their aloofness from the world was not so strict but that the Sisters both had visits from their friends and kin in the parlour, and themselves were given leave to visit these in the town when aught was afoot; but no nun had brought shame upon the house by her life all the years of Lady Groa’s rule.

  But Kristin had now an ear alive to all the little jars within the convent walls — little wranglings and spites and vanities. Save in the nursing of the sick, none of the Sisters would help with the rough housework — all were minded to be women of learning or skilled in some craft; the one strove to outdo the other, and the Sisters who had no turn for learning or the nobler crafts, lost heart and mooned through the hours as though but half awake.

  Lady Groa herself was wise as well as learned; she kept a wakeful eye on her spiritual daughters’ way of life and their diligence, but she troubled herself little about their souls’ health. She had been kind and friendly to Kristin at all times — she seemed to like her better than the other young girls, but that was because Kristin was apt at books and needlework, diligent and sparing of words. Lady Groa never looked for an answer from any of the Sisters; but, on the other hand, she was ever glad to speak with men. They came and went in her parlour — tenant farmers and bailiffs of the convent. Preaching Friars from the Bishop, stewards of estates on Hovedö with whom she was at law. She had her hands full with the oversight of the convent’s great estates, with the keeping of accounts, sending out church vestments, and taking in books to be copied and sending them away again. Not the most evil-minded of men could find aught unseemly in Lady Groa’s way of life. But she liked only to talk of such things as women seldom know about.

  The prior, who dwelt in a house by himself, northward of the church, seemed to have no more will of his own than the Abbess’s writing-reed or her scourge. Sister Potentia looked after most things within the house; and she thought most of keeping such order as she had seen in the far-famed German convent where she had passed her noviciate. She had been called Sigrid Ragnvaldsdatter before, but had taken a new name when she took the habit of the order, for this was much the use in other lands; it was she, too, who had thought of making the maidens, who were at Nonneseter as pupils, and for a time only, wear novice’s dress.

  Sister Cecilia Baardsdatter was not as the other nuns. She went about quietly, with downcast eyes, answered always gently and humbly, was serving-maid to all, did for choice all the roughest work, fasted much more than she need — as much as Lady Groa would let her — and knelt by the hour in the church after evensong or went thither before matins.

  But one evening, after she had been all day at the beck with two lay-sisters washing clothes, she suddenly burst into a loud sobbing at the supper-table. She cast herself upon the stone floor, crept among the Sisters on hands and knees, beat her breast, and with burning cheeks and streaming tears begged them all to forgive her. She was the worst sinner of them all — she had been hard as stone with pride all her days; pride, and not meekness or thankfulness for Jesus’s redeeming death, had held her up, when she had been tempted in the world; she had fled thither not because she loved a man’s soul, but because she loved her own vainglory. She had served her sisters out of pride, vanity had she drunken from her water-cup, self-righteousness had she spread thick upon her dry bread, while the other Sisters were drinking their beer and eating their bread-slices with butter.

  Of all this Kristin understood no more than that not even Cecilia Baardsdatter was truly godly at heart. An unlit tallow candle that has hung from the roof and grown foul with soot and cobweb — to this she herself likened her unloving chastity.

  Lady Groa went herself and lifted up the sobbing woman. Sternly she said, that for this disorder Cecilia should as a punishment move from the Sisters’ dormitory into the Abbess’s own bed, and lie there till she was free of this fever.

  “And thereafter, Sister Cecilia, shall you sit in my seat for the space of a week; we will seek counsel of you in spiritual things and give you such honour for your godly life, that you may have your fill of the homage of sinful mankind. Thus may you judge if it be worth so much striving, and thereafter choose whether you will live by the rules, as do we others, or keep on in exercises that no one demands of you. Then can you ponder whether you will do for love of God, that He may look down upon you in His mercy, all those things which you say you have done that we should look up to you.”

  And so it was done. Sister Cecilia lay in the Abbess’s room for fourteen days; she had a high fever, and Lady Groa herself tended her. When she got up again, she had to sit for a week at the side of the Abbess in the high-seat, both in the church and in the convent, and all waited on her — she wept all the time as though she were being beaten with whips. But afterwards she was much calmer and happier. She lived much as before, but she blushed like a bride if anyone looked at her, whether she was sweeping the floor or going alone to the church.

  None the less did this matter of Sister Cecilia awake in Kristin a great longing for peace and atonement with all wherefrom she had come to feel herself cast out. She thought of Brother Edvin, and one day she took courage and begged leave of Lady Groa to go out to the barefoot friars and visit a friend she knew there.

  She marked that Lady Groa misliked this — there was scant friendship between the Minorites and the other cloisters in the bishopric. And the Abbess was no better pleased when she heard who was Kristin’s friend. She said this Brother Edvin was an unstable man of God — he was ever wandering about the country and seeking leave to pay begging visits to strange bishoprics. The common folk in many places held him to be a holy man, but he did not seem to understand that a Franciscan’s first duty was obedience to those set over him. He had shriven freebooters and outlaws, baptized their children and chanted them to their graves, without asking leave — yet, doubtless, he had sinned as much through ignorance as in despite, and he had borne meekly the penances laid upon him on account of these things. He was borne with, too, because he was skilled in his handicraft — but even in working at this, he had fallen out with his craft-fellows; the master-limners of the Bishop of Bergen would not suffer him to come and work in the bishopric there.

  Kristin made bold to ask where he had come from, this monk with the un-Norse name. Lady Groa was in the mood for talking; she told how he had been born here in Oslo; but his father was an Englishman, Rikard Platemaster, who had wedded a farmer’s daughter from the Skogheim Hundred, and had taken up his abode in the town — two of Edvin’s brothers were armourers of good repute in Oslo. But this eldest of the Platemaster’s sons had been a restless spirit all his days. ’Twas true he had felt a call to the life of the cloister from childhood up; he had joined the Cistercians at Hovedö as soon as he was old enough. They sent him to a monastery in France to be trained — for his gifts were good; while still there he had managed to get leave to pass from the Cistercian into the Minorite Order. And at the time the unruly friars began building their church eastward in the fields in despite of the Bishop’s command, Brother Edvin had been one of the worst and most stiffnecked of them all — nay, he had half killed with his hammer one of the men the Bishop sent to stop the work.

  It was a long time now since any one had spoken so much with Kristin at one time, so when Lady Groa said that now she might go, the young girl bent and kissed the Abbess’s hand, fervently and reverently; and as she did so, tears came into her eyes. And Lady Groa, who saw she was weeping, thought it was from sorrow — and so she said: maybe she might, after all, let her go out one day to see Brother Edvin.

  And a few days l
ater she was told some of the convent folk had an errand to the King’s palace, and they could take her out along with them to the Brothers in the fields.

  Brother Edvin was at home. Kristin had not thought she could have been so glad to see any one, except it had been Erlend. The old man sat and stroked her hand while they talked together, in thanks for her coming. No, he had not been in her part of the country since the night he lay at Jörundgaard, but he had heard she was to wed, and he wished her all good fortune. Then Kristin begged that he would go over to the church with her.

  They had to go out of the monastery and round to the main door; Brother Edvin durst not take her through the courtyard. He seemed altogether exceeding downcast, and fearful of doing aught that might offend. He had grown very old, thought Kristin.

  And when she had laid upon the altar her offering for the officiant monk who was in the church, and afterward asked Edvin if he would confess her, he grew very frightened. He dared not, he said; he had been strictly forbidden to hear confession.

  “Ay, maybe you have heard of it,” said he. “So it was that I felt I could not deny to those poor unfortunates the gifts which God had given me of His free grace. But, ’tis true, I should have enjoined on them to seek forgiveness in the right place — ay, ay.… And you, Kristin, you are in duty bound to confess to your own prior.”

  “Nay, but this is a thing I cannot confess to the prior of the convent,” said Kristin.

  “Think you it can profit you aught to confess to me what you would hide from your true father confessor?” said the monk more severely.

  “If so be you cannot confess me,” said Kristin, “at least you can let me speak with you and ask your counsel about what lies upon my soul.”

  The monk looked about him. The church was empty at the moment. Then he sate himself down on a chest which stood in a corner: “You must remember that I cannot absolve you, but I will counsel you, and keep silence as though you had told me in confession.”

  Kristin stood up before him, and said:

  “It is this: I cannot be Simon Darre’s wife.”

  “Therein you know well that I can counsel no otherwise than would your own prior,” said Brother Edvin. “To undutiful children God gives no happiness, and your father has looked only to your welfare — that you know full well.”

  “I know not what your counsel will be, when you have heard me to the end,” answered Kristin. “Thus stands it now with us: Simon is too good to gnaw the bare branch from which another man has broken the blossom.”

  She looked the monk straight in the face. But when she met his eyes and marked how the dry, wrinkled old face changed, grew full of sorrow and dismay — something seemed to snap within her, tears started to her eyes, and she would have cast herself upon her knees. But Edvin stopped her hurriedly:

  “Nay, nay, sit here upon the chest by me — confess you I cannot” He drew aside and made room for her.

  She went on weeping; he stroked her hand, and said gently:

  “Mind you that morning, Kristin, I first saw you there on the stairway in the Hamar church …? I heard a tale once, when I was in foreign lands, of a monk who could not believe that God loved all us wretched sinners.… Then came an angel and touched his eyes, and he beheld a stone in the bottom of the sea, and under the stone there lived a blind, white, naked creature; and he gazed at it until he came to love it, for it was so frail and weak. When I saw you sitting there, so little and so frail, within the great stone house, methought it was but reason that God should love such as you. Fair and pure you were, and yet did you need a helper and a protector. Methought I saw the whole church, with you in it, lying in the hollow of God’s hand.”

  Kristin said low:

  “We have bound ourselves one to the other with the dearest oaths — and I have heard that, in the eyes of God, such a pact hallows our coming together as much as if our fathers and mothers had given us one to the other.”

  The monk answered sadly:

  “I see well, Kristin, some one who knew it not to the full has spoken to you of the canonical law. You could not bind yourself by oath to this man without sinning against your father and mother: them had God set over you before you met him. And is it not a sorrow and a shame for his kin, too, if they learn that he has lured astray the daughter of a man who has borne his shield with honour at all seasons — betrothed, too, to another? I hear by your words, you deem you have not sinned so greatly — yet dare you not confess this thing to your appointed priest. And if so be you think you are as good as wed to this man, wherefore set you not on your head the linen coif of wedlock, but go still with flowing hair amidst the young maids with whom you can have no great fellowship any more — for now must the chief of your thoughts be with other things than they have in mind?”

  “I know not what they have in their minds,” said Kristin wearily. “True it is that all my thoughts are with the man I long for. Were it not for my father and mother, I would gladly bind up my hair this day — little would I care if I were called wanton, if only I might be called his.”

  “Know you if this man means so to deal toward you, that you may be called his with honour some day?” asked Brother Edvin.

  Then Kristin told of all that had passed between Erlend Nikulaussön and herself. And while she spoke, she seemed not even to call to mind that she had ever doubted the outcome of it all.

  “See you not, Brother Edvin,” she began again, “we could not help ourselves. God help me, if I were to meet him without here, when I go from you, and should he pray me to go with him, I would go. I wot well, too, I have seen now there be other folk who have sinned as well as we.… When I was a girl at home ’twas past my understanding how aught could win such power over the souls of men that they could forget the fear of sin; but so much have I learnt now: if the wrongs men do through lust and anger cannot be atoned for, then must heaven be an empty place. They tell of you, even, that you, too, once struck a man in wrath —”

  “ ’Tis true,” said the monk. “God’s mercy alone have I to thank that I am not called manslayer. ’Tis many years agone — I was a young man then, and methought I could not endure the wrong the Bishop would have put upon us poor friars. King Haakon — he was Duke then — had given us the ground for our house, but we were so poor we had to work upon our church ourselves — with some few workmen who gave their help more for heavenly reward than for what we could pay them. Maybe ’twas sinful pride in us beggar-monks to wish to build our church so fair and goodly — but we were happy as children in the fields, and sang songs of praise while we hewed and built and toiled. Brother Ranulv — God rest his soul — was master-builder — he was a right skilful stonecutter; nay, I trow the man had been granted skill in all knowledge and all arts by God Himself. I was a carver of stone panels in those days; I had but just finished one of St. Clara, whom the angels were bearing to the church of St. Francis in the dawn of Christmas Day — a most fair panel it had proved, and all of us joyed in it greatly — then the hellish miscreants tore down the walls, and a stone fell and crushed my panels — I struck at a man with my hammer, I could not contain me.…

  “Ay, now you smile, my Kristin. But see you not that ’tis not well with you now, since you would rather hear such tales of other folks’ frailties than of the life and deeds of good men, who might serve you as a pattern …?

  “ ’Tis no easy matter to give you counsel,” he said, when it was time for her to go. “For were you to do what were most right, you would bring sorrow to your father and mother and shame to all your kin. But you must see to it that you free yourself from the troth you plighted to Simon Andressön — and then must you wait in patience for the lot God may send you, make in your heart what amends you can — and let not this Erlend tempt you to sin again, but pray him lovingly to seek atonement with your kin and with God.

  “From your sin I cannot free you,” said Brother Edvin, as they parted, “but pray for you I will with all my might …”

  He laid his thin, old hands u
pon her head and prayed, in farewell, that God might bless her and give her peace.

  6

  AFTERWARD, there was much in what Brother Edvin had said to her that Kristin could not call to mind. But she left him with a mind strangely clear and peaceful.

  Hitherto she had striven with a dull, secret fear and tried to brave it out; telling herself she had not sinned so deeply. Now she felt Edvin had shown her plainly and clearly that she had sinned indeed; such and such was her sin, and she must take it upon her and try to bear it meekly and well. She strove to think of Erlend without impatience — either because he did not send word of himself, or because she must want his caresses. She would only be faithful and full of love for him.

  She thought of her father and mother, and vowed to herself that she would requite them for all their love, once they had got over the sorrow she must bring upon them by breaking with the Dyfrin folk. And well-nigh most of all, she thought of Brother Edvin’s words of how she must not seek comfort in looking on others’ faults; she felt she grew humble and kind, and now she saw at once how easy it was for her to win folks’ friendship. Then was she comforted by the thought that after all ’twas not so hard to come to a good understanding with people — and so it seemed to her it surely could not be so hard for her and Erlend either.

  Until the day she gave her word to Erlend, she had always striven earnestly to do what was right and good — but she had done all at the bidding of others. Now she felt she had grown from maid to woman. ’Twas not only by reason of the fervent secret caresses she had taken and given, not only that she had passed from her father’s ward and was now under Erlend’s will. For Edvin had laid upon her the burden of answering for her own life, ay, and for Erlend’s too. And she was willing to bear it well and bravely. Thus she went about among the nuns at Yuletide; and throughout the goodly rites and the joy and peace of the holy time, though she felt herself unworthy, yet she took comfort in thinking that the time would soon come when she could set herself right again.