Arn had even tried to object that he'd been promoted to marshal in the king's council and so could not leave Nas. Queen Blanca laughed heartily at this, telling him not to worry about that. Birger Brosa, in his wrath, had declared that he would not sit on the same council with the promise-breaker Arn Magnusson.

She would explain everything to Eskil, she told him as she hurried off, dismissing any further questions. And so Arn had taken her at her word.

Eskil too had objected that Arn's presence in the council was unavoidable, but she explained that Arn would never a.s.sume the rank of marshal of the realm. Any chance of that had been ruined as soon as the jarl declared that it would take place only over his dead body.

The council meeting had otherwise gone well, and the bishops were not in the least surprised that there was no further talk of a new abbess at Riseberga. They were pleased, however, to learn that the king had donated land and forests worth six gold marks for a new cloister at Julita in Svealand.

It was clear that the queen had been in cahoots with the archbishop. Eskil had no doubt that Arn had been as much in the dark as he was about what was happening behind their backs. What they couldn't understand was why the queen could do all these things that were so clearly contrary to her own benefit. If Cecilia Rosa really did go to the bridal bed with Arn, the whole idea of her bearing witness against the perjury of the evil Mother Rikissa would be dead. In that case it would be uncertain whether the queen's own son Erik could inherit the crown. Queen Blanca's husband and king might well view this as treason.

Yet there was no denying the shrewdness of the two Cecilias. In less than a day they had fooled all the men: the king, the jarl, Eskil, and Arn himself.

But there was a more important matter that was bothering Eskil. He now had the responsibility of arranging the wedding at Arnas, for there and nowhere else should it be held.

If he arranged this wedding he would make an enemy of Birger Brosa; if not, his own brother would become his foe. It was not a good choice.

When Eskil explained his concern, Arn said, 'I understand your anguish, but you could never be my enemy no matter what you decide. Naturally the bridal procession would be long and perilous from Cecilia's Husaby to Forsvik, instead of to Arnas. But we could arrange it that way.'

'No!' said Eskil bluntly. 'You shall never choose Ingrid Ylva instead of Cecilia as our uncle wished. Nothing shall stop you and Cecilia Rosa. I no longer care why this is so, I just know it is. What must occur shall not take place in secret and shame. It shall take place at Arnas with pipes and drums and wedding guests lined up three deep!'

When they got beyond this rough spot in the conversation, they soon began talking easily about what would be done in the immediate future. Harald had received a letter with both Birger Brosa's and King Knut's seals to take to King Sverre in Norway. The ship down south in Lodose had to be outfitted and manned, for soon Harald must start his first journey to fetch dried fish, if he wanted to make two trips to Lofoten that summer before the autumn storms arrived with the north wind that made it difficult to sail so far north. But even two trips should produce a good profit, and Harald would not be left without a good share of it.

It was good that Harald needed a crew, said Arn. Because at Arnas there were five Norwegian retainers who would certainly want to sail with Harald, especially since he was travelling with a royal letter of safe conduct. And here at Forsvik there were five retainers who had lost all desire to continue in Arn's service. They could replace the five Norwegians at Arnas as early as tomorrow.

Arn was also going to need some thralls skilled in construction from Arnas, and he tried to remember the names of the two who had been among the best when he was a boy. Eskil thought hard and recalled that one of them was probably dead; the other, named Gur, was still alive but very old. Yet he still lived at Arnas with full right to bed and board, even though he could no longer work. His son, named Gure, was just as skilled as his father had once been at masonry and wood construction. There were other thralls who were good builders, although Eskil couldn't remember their names at the moment.

Half of the foreigners at Arnas would be moving to Forsvik, Arn went on. Only half of them were good stonemasons, but the others had skills that would be more useful at Forsvik.

After they had disposed of these matters, Eskil had a more difficult question for Arn. It was about Eskil's only son Torgils.

Naturally Eskil had wanted Torgils to turn out like himself, a man of trade and silver, wealth and cunning. He had pondered this matter long and hard, but he realized that he couldn't change Torgils. By the age of seventeen the youth was already riding in the king's retinue, and his reputation was more for his skill with the bow and sword than for any interest in trade, like his father. Instead Torgils was going to take after his uncle Arn. So it was, and nothing could be done about it.

'And what is it you'd like to tell me about this matter?' Arn asked.

'My son Torgils does not yet know that you've come back to our realm. He knows all the ballads about you, and there are times when I think he loves the saga about you more than he loves his own father.'

'I'm sure that's not true. But young men would rather dream about swords than about counting chambers, and we can't take their dreams away from them. Nor should we, but rather turn their dreams to something good. Now to your question.'

'Torgils is up at Bjalbo right now with the king's eldest son Erik and your son Magnus,' said Eskil. 'They're having a feast and competing in archery. That's why none of them was at Nas-'

'I already know that,' Arn cut him off impatiently. 'Cecilia told me about it. But now...your question?'

'May Torgils be apprenticed to you?' Eskil hastened to ask. 'My thought is that if he has to live by the sword, then he ought to have the best of teachers, and-'

'Yes!' Arn interrupted him. 'You don't seem to have noticed how close I was to asking you the same thing first, although I feared that such a question might displease you. Send Torgils to me and I'll make him the warrior he probably could never become among the king's retainers. Young Sigfrid Erlingsson and Sune Folkesson are already in my service!'

Eskil bowed his head in relief, gazing into his empty ale tankard. Suddenly an idea struck him.

'You're planning to build up a force of Folkung knights!' he said, his face brightening.

'Yes, that is precisely my idea,' Arn admitted with a glance at Harald. 'And now I must tell you something that no other ears may hear, except for Harald who is my closest friend. Here at Forsvik I shall build a cavalry that can stand against Franks or Saracens, if only I'm able to get the men while they're still young enough to learn. But they may only be Folkungs, for the force I'm planning must not end up outside our clan. And with your son Torgils that's especially important, since he will become the lord of Arnas. It is he who one day shall stand on the walls and look down on the Sverker army. And by that time he will know everything that a victor must know. But only Folkungs, remember that, Eskil!'

'But what about Eriks?' Eskil wondered. 'The Eriks are our brothers, aren't they?'

'At the moment they are, and I have personally sworn loyalty to King Knut,' Arn said calmly. 'But we know nothing about the future. Perhaps the Eriks and Sverkers will join forces against us some day, for reasons we can't predict. But one thing is certain. If we build Arnas to be a strong fortress, and G.o.d blesses our efforts to form a Folkung cavalry, no one will be able to defeat us. In this way we can avoid war, or at least shorten it, and power will be ours. My friend Harald has now heard what we intended only for the ears of close kinsmen. But if you ask him, he'll agree that I'm right.'

'What Arn says is true,' said Harald. 'Arn is the one who taught me to be a warrior, though I may have been too old when I went into his service. Arn taught many squadrons to wage war both forward in attack and backward in retreat, just as he and other knights like him do. He taught archers, sappers, foot soldiers, and both light and heavy cavalry, as well as the master armourers and sword smiths. If any clan in the North is taught these secrets of the Knights Templar, be they Birchlegs or Folkungs, Eriks or Sverkers, then all power will reside with that clan. Believe me, Eskil, for I've seen all this with my own eyes. Everything I say is true. I'm the son of a Norwegian king and I stand by my word!'

Queen Cecilia Blanca did not give her husband the king a peaceful moment until she got her way. He sighed at the fact that the calm that usually settled over Nas after a three-day council meeting was scant this time. But no matter what objections he thought up, she had at least two counter-arguments for him. He found it much too great an honour for an unmarried woman such as Cecilia Rosa to ride with more than a dozen of the king's retainers as protection. That was befitting a jarl, not an unmarried woman.

But the queen replied that nothing prevented her from sending her own retainers, for Cecilia Rosa was her dearest friend in life and everyone knew it. Who could be opposed to that?

King Knut insisted that it was excessive to send so many armed men with one woman. It would be a sign that they were expecting foul play.

The queen countered that no worse fate could befall the kingdom right now than for something to happen to Cecilia Rosa on the perilous journey she was about to undertake. With a sigh the king said that Cecilia Rosa could probably do no more harm with her death than she was doing by going to the bridal bed instead of to Riseberga cloister.

Showing not the least wifely kindness, the queen told him what would happen to the kingdom if Cecilia Rosa were killed or wounded. It would divide the Folkungs at once, with Eskil and Arn Magnusson on one side, and Birger Brosa and his Bjalbo branch on the other. And where would Magnus Mneskold stand in the dispute? He was both Birger Brosa's foster kinsman and Arn Magnusson's son. And what if Folkung support for the crown began to waver? What would happen to the power in the kingdom then?

King Knut had to admit that the very thought of a schism among the Folkungs was a nightmare. It would throw him and his Erik clan into the midst of a conflict that could endanger his son Erik's claim to the crown. Even worse, the crown might soon sit loosely on his own head. In this much he admitted she was right. But a split had already occurred, since Birger Brosa had set off for Bjalbo with many harsh words for both Arn and Eskil.

Queen Blanca thought that time would soon heal this rift. Once G.o.d's will had made it clear that nothing could be changed, all the excitement would die down. But if anything happened to Cecilia Rosa before the bridal night, they would have a fearsome foe in Arn Magnusson.

King Knut had no problem with agreeing that things could not get any worse than that. In a world where so much was decided by the sword, it was crucial to have a man like Arn Magnusson on his side. So it was even worse that Birger Brosa in his unusual fit of wrath had sworn that he would rather resign the power of the jarl than welcome Arn into the council as the new marshal. Any way they twisted and turned these questions, the pain remained like a rotting tooth.

As if nothing more need be said, the queen replied that the only sure cure for a toothache was to pull the bad tooth, and the sooner the better.

For Cecilia Rosa the following weeks pa.s.sed as though they had taken from her both her freedom and her free will as if she were floating with the current without being able to make the slightest decision for herself. She couldn't even decide about something as simple as travelling between Nas and Riseberga cloister, as she had done so many times before.

Because she was accompanied by twelve retainers, the journey took two days longer. Normally she would have simply sailed north on Lake Vattern to mmeberg and continued from there in a smaller riverboat up to mmelangen and through the lakes to ostansjo. From there it would have been only a day's ride to Riseberga.

But with twelve guards and their horses and all their gear, it was impossible to take the water route. They had to ride all the way from mmeberg.

She usually would have ridden with one or two men over whom she had authority. Now the guards from the king's castle spoke of her like an item of cargo, although she was sitting on her horse right next to them. They called her 'the wench,' arguing about what was best for the wench's safety and how best the wench could seek lodging for the night. The journey kept being delayed when the leader of the guards ordered men to ride ahead to scout a stretch of woods or check a ford before they rode over it. With all this extra trouble it took more than four days to reach Riseberga.

At first she had tried to close her ears and turn inward to her own dreams, sending prayers of thanksgiving to Our Lady every hour. By the second day she could no longer stand being referred to and treated like a load of silver instead of a human being. She rode up alongside Adalvard, the leader of the expedition, a man from the Erik clan.

She told him that she had made this journey many times, and only once had encountered highwaymen. The highwaymen had let her pa.s.s undisturbed when she explained that she came from the cloister and that her cargo was merely ma.n.u.scripts and church silver. The bandits, who were young and had few weapons, had not frightened her in the least. Then how was it that a royal guard riding with the sign of the three crowns in the lead, a sight which should have scared off most highwaymen, was making such a fuss and displaying such timidity at every bend in the road?

Looking surly, Adalvard replied that it was his job to judge what was safe or not safe on this route, according to his own experience and knowledge. Naturally a woman of the convent would know all sorts of things that he did not. But now they had to make it through the woods of Tiveden alive, and that was something he knew best how to accomplish.

Cecilia Rosa was not satisfied with this answer, but she let it drop when their retinue came upon a farm that seemed large enough to house a dozen guards, their horses, and a wench.

The next morning, when they had proceeded a short distance along the road, she rode up to Adalvard and complained that it was not flattering to be treated like a prisoner being led to the ting ting to be hanged. Those words made more of an impression on him than her queries about their safety. He excused himself by saying that they were all responsible for her with their own lives. to be hanged. Those words made more of an impression on him than her queries about their safety. He excused himself by saying that they were all responsible for her with their own lives.

It was a while before she spoke with Adalvard again. She was on her way to her wedding with Arn because Our Lady had listened to their prayers and allowed Herself to be persuaded. She had spared Arn for some other purpose besides the direct path to Paradise achieved through a martyr's death. What sort of safety did Cecilia need on her simple journey to Riseberga, other than the gentle, protective hands of Our Lady?

Cecilia Rosa was well aware that such religious reasoning would hardly impress a man like Adalvard. He was acting under the king's orders, and his first priority was man's will, and then possibly G.o.d's will. Or perhaps he considered it a man's obligation to do his utmost and in that way fulfil G.o.d's will.

But something wasn't right. There must be some danger that she didn't understand, while the men accompanying her feared for their lives because they were aware of the peril.

Once again she left her place in the column and rode up next to Adalvard.

'I've been thinking a lot about what you told me, Adalvard; that you are all responsible for me with your lives,' she began. 'I certainly should have displayed less impatience and more grat.i.tude. I hope you will forgive me.'

'Milady has nothing to apologize for. We have sworn to obey the king's orders to the death, and until then we do not lead a hard life.'

'You can see that I ride with a stirrup on each side, like a man,' Cecilia went on. 'Haven't you wondered about this?'

'Yes, I have, because it is most unusual for a wench, milady.'

'I ride a great deal on my errands from Riseberga. I might even spend as much time on horseback as a royal guard,' Cecilia continued innocently. 'So I've sewn a woman's outfit with two skirts, one around each leg. And over them I wear an ap.r.o.n. I look like a woman, but I can ride like a man. And you should know one thing. If the danger comes that you mentioned, I can flee faster than most of the guards here with their heavy horses. If you want to protect me from attack, we mustn't stand and fight but ride off as fast as we can.'

Finally Cecilia had said something that made Adalvard regard her as a person with her own thoughts and not as a pile of silver. Excusing himself politely, he rode off and spoke animatedly to some of his men, waving his arms. Those he talked to fell back and spread the word.

When he rode back to Cecilia he seemed pleased and more amenable to conversation than during the previous part of the journey. Then Cecilia saw that the ground had been prepared for what she really wanted to ask.

'Tell me, Adalvard, my faithful defender, and as a man at the king's Nas who knows so much more than a simple woman from the cloister, why should I, a poor woman from the weak Pl clan, be the target of foul play?'

'Poor?' Adalvard laughed and gave her a searching glance, as if to see whether she was jesting. 'That may be the case now,' he grumbled, 'but soon there will be a wedding and as the wife of a Folkung a third of his property will become yours. You'll soon be rich, milady. Anyone who kidnapped such a bride would also get rich from the ransom.'

'Well, it gives me a safe feeling to have such powerful giants by my side,' Cecilia replied, only half satisfied with what she had learned. 'But that can't be the whole story, can it? To protect me from poor highwaymen and kidnappers with poor weapons it shouldn't take this many men. Wouldn't it be enough that they saw our banner with the three crowns?'

'Yes, that's true, milady,' said Adalvard. And enlivened by their conversation he continued to explain, as Cecilia had hoped he would.

'I am of the clan of King Knut and his father Saint Erik. But my older brothers inherited all my father's farms, so becoming a retainer was my fate. I'm not complaining. Any man from the Erik clan knows how things stand in the kingdom when it comes to the struggle for power. Your life, milady, is in the centre of this struggle for power as is your death.'

'I don't understand very much of the world of men,' Cecilia said humbly. 'So much the greater will be my pleasure at riding beside a member of the Erik clan if he can explain to me things that are beyond the comprehension of a cloister woman. What does my death or my life have to do with the struggle for power?'

'Well, I can't tell you anything that you won't find out later anyway,' said Adalvard, pleased to be the one who possessed the truth about life. 'You should have become the abbess; then I could never have spoken to you as irreverently as I do now. But as abbess you would have sworn against the testament of the previous abbess, and then King Knut's eldest son would have inherited the crown. But this is all something you already know, isn't it?'

'Yes, it is. But if that's not going to happen, then why would any of the Sverkers wish me any harm?'

'If they kill us all you, milady, myself, and all my men then every man in the kingdom would believe that it was the Sverkers who were responsible for the foul deed, even if it wasn't true,' Adalvard replied with sudden distaste. He regretted the turn the discussion had taken.

'In that case wouldn't the wisest thing be to kill Arn Magnusson?' asked Cecilia without the slightest quaver in her voice.

'Yes, it would. Everyone knows that we Eriks would gain from such a murder, because there would be no wedding between the two of you. You, milady, could become abbess even more quickly since both grief and loneliness would drive you to the cloister. But I swear that we're thinking no such thing, because that would mean breaking our alliance with the Folkungs, which has been sealed with many oaths. If the Eriks and the Folkungs start to feud, both clans will have ceded all power to the Sverkers.'

'So now the Sverkers would most like to kill Arn Magnusson and make it look as though you Eriks were guilty of the deed,' Cecilia filled in his thoughts. Her voice was firm, but she felt a lightning bolt strike her heart when she spoke the words.

'That is true,' Adalvard said with a smile. 'If the Sverkers could kill Arn Magnusson and put the blame on us Eriks, they would gain a great deal. But who would they send to Arnas or Forsvik to commit such a treacherous crime? Odin, who could make himself invisible? Or Thor, whose hammer could make the whole world rumble? No, there is no killer who can sneak up on Arn Magnusson in secret, you may rest a.s.sured of that, milady.'

Adalvard had a long laugh at his suggestion of Odin and Thor. Although these jests seemed ill-placed to Cecilia, she still found great comfort in them.

When they finally arrived at Riseberga, Cecilia went straight to her chambers and stood a long while with her hand on an abacus, taking in the scent of parchment and ink. A room full of doc.u.ments had a special smell that was unmistakable, and she knew that later in life she would always be able to recall it.

But she still had a hard time grasping that this was really a moment of farewell. She had lived so long among these account books that in her heart she had imagined doing so for the rest of her life. No, she had imagined it as the only life available to her in this world, while Arn Magnusson belonged in the world of dreams.

Her farewell was difficult and a bit tearful. The two Sverker maidens who had been granted asylum at Riseberga, despite the fact that Birger Brosa later disapproved of this action, wept more than the others. For they had stood closest to Cecilia and were the ones she had taught most lovingly about needlework, gardening, and bookkeeping. Now the two would be alone without the yconoma's protection, and their hope that Cecilia would return as the new abbess had been crushed.

Cecilia consoled them both as best she could, a.s.suring them that they could always send her messages and that she would stay informed about what was happening at Riseberga. But her words did not offer as much solace as she intended. Yet she promised to keep them in her thoughts.

Now Cecilia had to take her leave. She considered the abacus that she had made herself to be her own property, and so she took it with her. She owned a horse, saddle, and tack. She had paid out of her own salary for her winter mantle and boots lined with dog furs. Beyond this she owned only the clothing she was wearing at present and a few garments for feasts held at Nas.

When she and Cecilia Blanca were young they had worn the same size clothes. But now, with seven childbirths separating them, it was only Cecilia Rosa who could wear the same clothes as in her youth. It may not have been only the childbirths. At Nas there was a constant diet of pork, or even worse, salt pork, which required a great deal of ale. In the cloisters where Cecilia Rosa had mostly lived in recent years, anything resembling gluttony was forbidden.

She also owned one and a half marks in silver, the wages she had earned honestly during the time she had been yconoma at Riseberga as a free woman and not as a penitent. She took out the silver, weighed it, and made a note in the account book that she had now taken what belonged to her.

At that moment she realized how little she knew about her own poverty or wealth. It was as though she had long been heading toward taking the cloister vows. Because of this she knew much more about each and every ortug ortug owed to the cloister than she knew about any wealth she herself might possess. owed to the cloister than she knew about any wealth she herself might possess.

When her father Algot died, he had left only two daughters as his heirs, Cecilia and Katarina. So each of them should have inherited half of the estates belonging to the clan around Husaby and Kinnekulle. But Katarina had been sent to Gudhem convent for her sins and there she had renounced all earthly possessions. Had she also renounced her inheritance? If so, to whom had it gone, to Cecilia or to Gudhem? And how much, in either case, did Cecilia own of the estates around Husaby?

She had never asked herself these questions. It was as though she had never thought of herself as the owner of worldly goods, merely as the administrator of the Church's property.

The one and a half marks in silver that she held in her hand would be enough to buy a lovely mantle. But there was a Folkung mantle she had worked on for three years, the most beautiful of all, lined with marten fur. The lion on the back was sewn with gold and silver thread from Lubeck, and red Frankish thread had been used for the lion's mouth and tongue. No mantle in the entire kingdom had such a brilliant sheen; it was the most magnificent work she had ever sewn in all her years at the convent. And she had never been able to conceal her dream from those around her, or from herself: to see this mantle worn by Arn Magnusson.

Such a mantle, she knew very well, was worth as much as a farm with both thralls and livestock. The mantle belonged to Riseberga cloister, even though she had sewn it with her own hands.

But it had been her dream; it could never be worn by any but a Folkung, and by no Folkung other than Arn. For a long time she sat with the quill in her hand before she conquered her doubt. Then she wrote a promissory note for fifteen marks in silver, fanned the ink dry, and stuffed the note into the correct pigeonhole.

Then she went to the storeroom and found the mantle. She held it against her cheek and breathed in the strong scent that was meant to keep moths away rather than to promote sweet dreams of love. She folded it up and put it under her arm.

At the farewell ma.s.s she took Communion.

For young Sune Folkesson and his foster brother Sigfrid, the ride between Arnas and Forsvik was like having their most fervent wish fulfilled.

Each was now riding one of the foreign horses; Sune on a roan with a black mane and tail, Sigfrid on a sorrel with mane and tail that were almost white. Sir Arn had carefully selected the two young stallions and tried them both out first, ridden them, and played with them before deciding which boy should have which horse. He had curtly but gravely explained that both horses were young, like their new owners, and that it was important for them to grow older along with their horses, that this was the beginning of a friendship that would last until death, for only death could separate them from a horse from Outremer.

Arn hadn't spent much time explaining the difference between these horses and Nordic horses, perhaps because he could see in the eyes of his two kinsmen that they already understood. Unlike grown men in Western Gotaland, the two boys realized at once that these horses were almost like fairy-tale horses compared with the Gothic horses that the retainers rode.

Sune and Sigfrid, like nearly all their contemporaries from clans with a coat of arms, had been riding horses almost since they could walk; riding for them was like breathing or drinking water, something they no longer had to learn.

Until now, that is. Now they had to start over from scratch. The first difference they noted was the pacing. If they urged on these horses like a Nordic horse, the speed after only two or three leaps would be so dizzying that the wind filled their eyes with tears and swept their long hair straight back. The other difference they could see at once was the liveliness of their new steeds. Whereas a Nordic horse might take three steps to move sideways, these horses would take ten. This gave the rider the feeling of floating as if on water; he didn't feel the movement but simply noted the change in position. Where a Nordic horse would move straight forward, following his head, these horses would move to the side or diagonally as if they were frolicking their way forward. It was a bit like taking a boat down rapids without really being able to steer; the slightest careless movement could lead to totally different results than those one intended.

To this extent it was like starting over, learning to ride all over again, since there were a thousand new possibilities to learn to control. The boys recalled how Sir Arn had done just that in the barnyard at Forsvik when he rode his horse with movements that looked impossible, toying with the guards as if they were kittens.

They were thirteen men riding through the forest, if Sune and Sigfrid could be counted as men. At Arnas, Herr Eskil had given them each a small, faded blue mantle for which he had no more use; he and his brother had worn them when they were young. So now there were three men riding in blue Folkung mantles, with Sir Arn in the lead.