The Templar Knight

by Jan Guillou

  The two Cecilias held each other tight as they sank to the floor beneath the window. They didn’t know whether to pray to the Holy Virgin Mary and give thanks for their rescue or to laugh out loud with joy. Cecilia Rosa began to pray; Cecilia Blanca let her do so while she herself used the time to think hard about what they had witnessed. Finally she leaned over, embraced Cecilia Rosa once again, even tighter, and kissed her on both cheeks, as if she had already left this stern world.

  “Cecilia, my beloved friend,” she whispered excitedly, “my only friend in this evil place they so unfairly call Gudhem, the home of God. I think we just saw our salvation arrive.”

  “But those were the enemy’s retainers,” Cecilia Rosa whispered uncertainly. “They came to abduct us, and we were fortunate that the bishop was here. What was so good about that? Imagine if they come back when the bishop isn’t here.”

  “They won’t come back. Didn’t you see that they were defeated?”

  “Yes, many of them were wounded…”

  “That’s right. And what does that mean? Who do you think defeated them?”

  “Our men?”

  Just as she uttered the simple answer to that simple question, Cecilia Rosa felt a pain and sorrow that she couldn’t understand, since she should have been happy. If the Folkungs and the Eriks had now won, she ought to be happy, but that also meant that she would be separated from Cecilia Blanca. And she herself had many years left to serve.

  That day a dark mood of fear descended over Gudhem. Not a single woman dared look them in the eye except for Sister Leonore, who was probably the one who knew least, along with the two Cecilias.

  Mother Rikissa had retreated to her own rooms and did not emerge until the following day. Bishop Bengt had left in a great hurry, and then they all carelessly tended to the work, the songs, and to holding mass. At evensong the two Cecilias sang together as they had never done before, and now there were absolutely no false notes from the one called Blanca. And the one called Rosa sang louder, more boldly, almost with a worldly boldness, sometimes putting entirely new variations into her voice. No one corrected her, and there was no Mother Rikissa to frown at this song of joy.

  The next morning riders came galloping from Skara to Gudhem to bring a message to Mother Rikissa. She received the messengers out in the hospitium and then shut herself in the abbess’s quarters without meeting anyone until prime, which would be followed by the first mass of the day.

  The Host had been blessed out in the sacristy by an unknown vicarius or someone else from the cathedral in Skara, and it was distributed in the usual order, first the sisters, then the lay sisters, and the worldly maidens last.

  The sacred wine was brought in, the bell rang to proclaim the miracle, and the chalice was passed from one to the next by the prioress, with her other hand giving each her own fistula, a straw to use for the wine.

  When it was Cecilia Rosa’s turn to drink of God’s blood, she did it demurely and with a genuine feeling of thanksgiving inside, for what was now happening confirmed her greatest hopes. But when it was Cecilia Blanca’s turn to drink there was a loud slurping, perhaps because she was the last to drink and there was little wine left. Or perhaps because she again wanted to show her contempt, not for God but for Gudhem. The two Cecilias never talked about it, or discussed which was the truth.

  After that everyone was so tense when they headed out to the chapter hall that they moved as stiffly as puppets. Out there Mother Rikissa was waiting, looking exhausted with dark circles under her eyes and almost a bit shrunken in her chair, where she usually sat like an evil queen.

  The prayer session was short. As was the reading of the Scripture, which this time dealt with grace and mercy, which made Cecilia Blanca give her friend an encouraging wink to signify that everything seemed to be going as they might hope. Mercy and grace were certainly not Mother Rikissa’s favorite topics during the Scripture reading.

  Then there was silence and the mood was tense. Mother Rikissa began in a quiet voice, not at all like her normal one, to read aloud the names of brothers and sisters who were now wandering the fields of Paradise. Cecilia Rosa briefly listened for any name of Templar knights to be added to the list, but there was none.

  Then there was silence again. Mother Rikissa wrung her hands and looked almost on the verge of tears, something that neither of the Cecilias would have believed possible from the evil witch. After sitting a while in silence and trying to collect herself, Mother Rikissa plucked up her courage and unrolled a parchment. Her hands trembled a bit as she recited in a monotone, “In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Virgin, we must pray for all those, friends or not, who have fallen on the fields of blood, as these sites are always called, outside of Bjälbo.”

  Here she paused to collect herself once more, and when the two Cecilias heard the word Bjälbo, their hearts contracted in fear. Bjälbo was the mightiest fortress of the Folkungs; it was Birger Brosa’s estate and home. So the war had reached that far.

  “Among those who fell, and they were many…” Mother Rikissa went on, but she had to force herself to continue. “Among the many who fell were the jarls of God’s grace Boleslav and Kol, and so many of their kinsmen that I cannot count them all. We will now pray for the souls of the dead. We will be in mourning for a week and take nothing but bread and water; we will now…suffer a great sadness.”

  There Mother Rikissa fell silent and sat with the text held loosely in her hand, as if she no longer felt like reading. Sniffling was already heard in the hall.

  Then Cecilia Blanca stood up and took her friend boldly by the hand; they were sitting together at the back of the hall closest to the door. And without hesitation in her voice, but also without showing contempt or malice, she now broke her vow of silence.

  “Mother Rikissa, I beg your forgiveness,” she said. “But Cecilia Algotsdotter and I will be leaving you now to the sorrow in which the two of us cannot participate. We’re going out to the arcade to reflect in our own way on what has happened.”

  It was an unheard-of way of speaking, but Mother Rikissa merely waved her hand weakly in acknowledgment. Cecilia Blanca then took a step closer to her friend and bowed with courtly dignity, as if she were the queen herself, before she left the hall, still holding her friend’s hand.

  When they reached the arcade they quickly ran as far away as they could so as not to be heard by the mourners. Then they stopped, embraced, kissed each other in the most immodest way, and spun round and round with their arms around each other’s waists, moving along the arcade as if they were dancing. Nothing needed to be said; now they knew all that they needed to know.

  If Boleslav and Kol were dead, then the battle was over. If the Sverkers had attacked Bjälbo itself, then the Folkungs, even though they had hesitated before, must have emerged with all their forces, either to conquer or die. There would have been no other choice if the battle was at Bjälbo.

  And if both the pretenders to the throne on the other side had fallen, it meant that not many of their men had escaped the battle alive, since the noble lords were the last to fall in war. Birger Brosa and Knut Eriksson must have won a great and decisive victory. So that’s why the fleeing Sverkers had come to Gudhem in the belief that they would be able to purchase safe conduct for themselves by kidnapping Knut Eriksson’s betrothed.

  The war was over, and their side had won. In the first moment of joy when they danced down the arcade with their arms around each other, this was the thought that filled their minds.

  Only later did they realize that what had happened on the bloody fields outside Bjälbo also meant that now they would be separated from each other. Cecilia Blanca’s hour of release would soon arrive.

  Chapter 3

  Armand de Gascogne, sergeant of the Order of the Knights Templar, was a man who knew neither fear nor dread. Not only was it against the Rule—a Templar knight was forbidden to feel fear—it was also against his image of himself and against his most fervent wish in life, to be taken in
to the Order as a full-fledged brother in arms.

  But when he spied the walls of Jerusalem in the setting sun, the center of the world, looming up before them, it seemed that he did feel dread, and as if a chill went through him and the hairs on his forearms stood on end. But instantly the heat was back in his face.

  Their ride had been very hard; his master Arn had allowed them only a brief rest at midday, and they had ridden in silence without any stops except to dismount now and then for a moment and rearrange the cumbersome loads on the horses. The six corpses had grown rigid in awkward positions, and as the sun climbed in the sky and the heat increased, they had gathered greater and greater clouds of flies around them. But the corpses were not the most difficult things to handle; they could be bent to fit better among the packs. On the other hand, the robbers’ loot in the little grotto had been sizable and hard to load. There was everything from Turkish weapons to Christian communion goblets of silver, silks and brocades, jewelry and Frankish arms ornaments, spurs of silver and gold, blue stones of the Egyptian sort, and gemstones that Armand had never seen before colored violet and blue-green, small golden crucifixes affixed to leather cords or chains of hammered gold. These items alone told them that more than a score of the faithful souls, peace be upon them, must now be in Paradise after meeting a martyr’s death on their way to or from the place where John the Baptist had immersed the Lord Jesus Christ in the waters of the Jordan.

  Armand’s tongue had swollen up so that it felt like a piece of thick leather in his mouth, and it was as dry as desert sand. This wasn’t because their water had run out, for with each step the horse took, Armand could hear water sloshing in the leather sack by his right thigh. But it was the Rule. A Templar knight controlled himself. A Templar knight must be able to withstand situations that other people could not endure. And above all, a sergeant could not drink without the permission of his lord, just as he could not speak without being spoken to or halt without orders.

  Armand sensed that his lord Arn was tormenting him, but not without purpose, since he was also tormenting himself. It had something to do with that morning. That morning he had responded truthfully, as the Rule demanded. The question he was asked was whether he wished to be admitted as a knight and bear the white mantle. His lord Arn had merely nodded pensively at his reply without showing any emotion, and since then they had not spoken a word. They had ridden for eleven hours with only one brief stop to rest; they had halted occasionally whenever they found water to give the horses, but not themselves, and all this during one of the hottest days of the year. For the past hour Armand had seen how the horses’ quarter muscles had quivered with each step as they moved forward; for the horses too it had been a very hard day. But the Rule also seemed to apply to the horses of the Knights Templar. One never gave up. One obeyed orders. One endured what others could not.

  When they finally neared the port in the city wall that was called the Lion’s Gate, a fog clouded Armand’s eyes briefly and he had to grab the pommel of the saddle so as not to fall off his horse. But then he rallied, if for no other reason than out of curiosity to see the tumult that arose at the city gate as he and his lord and their unusual cargo approached. Or perhaps it was because he thought that he would soon get something to drink, in which case he was mistaken.

  By the city gate stood guards who were the king’s soldiers, but also a Templar knight and his sergeant. One of the royal soldiers came over to Arn de Gothia’s horse to take it by the bridle as he questioned the rider about his intentions and right to enter the city. The white-clad Templar knight behind him instantly drew his sword and held it in his path, ordering his sergeant to keep the curious away. And then Armand and his lord rode into the center of the city without needing to utter a word, because they belonged to God’s holy army, and they obeyed no person on earth except the Holy Father in Rome.

  The sergeant from the city gate escorted them down narrow cobblestone streets toward the temple square, shooing off street urchins and other bystanders who, if they were Christian, wanted to flock around their cargo and spit on the corpses; or if they were unbelievers, wanted to see whether they recognized any of the dead. A myriad of foreign languages buzzed around Armand’s head; he heard Aramaic, Armenian, and Greek, but many others he failed to recognize.

  When they neared the temple square they rode down toward the stables located beneath the Temple of Solomon. Down there was a high vault furnished with huge wooden gates, and more guards stood there who were all sergeants in the Order of the Knights Templar.

  Now Armand’s lord slowly dismounted, handed the reins to one of the sergeants waiting politely, and whispered something before he turned to Armand and in a rough voice issued the order to dismount and keep a tight rein on the horses. A white-clad Templar knight came hurrying up and bowed to Arn de Gothia, who bowed in return, and then they were allowed to enter the long colonnade of huge stables. They halted inside at a table where green-clad sub-chaplains did the bookkeeping. Sir Arn and his brother knights in white had a brief conversation which Armand couldn’t hear, and then the sergeants began to unload the horses and prepare to show object after object to the scribes, while Arn beckoned to Armand to follow him.

  They passed through the endless stables. The stables were very beautiful and clean; not a horse-dropping in the corridors, not even a wisp of straw, nothing but clean cobblestones. Row after row of horses stood either lost in their own dreams or being curried, shoed, watered, and fed by an army of brown-clad grooms. Here and there a black-clad sergeant was working with his horse, or a white-clad brother knight with his. Each time they passed by a sergeant, Armand bowed. Each time they passed a Templar knight, Arn did the same. What Armand saw was a power and a force he never could have imagined. He had been to Jerusalem only once before, to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher with a group of recruits; every recruit was required to have visited the church at least once. But he had never been inside the Templars’ own quarters in Jerusalem. Despite all the rumors he had heard, it was larger and mightier than he could have ever imagined. The value in gold of these beautiful and well-cared-for horses of Arabian or Frankish or Andalusian blood would be enough to defray the cost of a small army.

  When they came to the end of the stables they saw narrow spiral staircases leading upward. Armand’s lord seemed to know his way like the back of his hand. He had no need to ask directions of anyone, and he chose the third or fourth staircase without hesitation. They walked up the stairs in the dark in silence. When they suddenly emerged in a large courtyard, Armand’s eyes were blinded by the light as the setting sun flashed off a great cupola of gold and a smaller one of silver. His lord stopped and pointed, without saying a word. Armand crossed himself before the holy sight and then was amazed, now that he stood so close, to discover that the golden dome he had previously seen from a distance was covered with rectangular plates of something that could only be solid gold. He had always imagined that it was made of tiles with a gold-colored glaze. That the entire roof of a church could be made of pure gold was beyond comprehension.

  His lord still said nothing, signaling after a while that they should move on. Armand now followed him into a separate world of gardens and fountains nestled inside a network of buildings constructed in every color and style. Some of them looked like Saracen dwellings, others like Frankish ones; some had plain whitewashed facades, others were covered in blue, green, and white-glazed Saracen tiles in patterns that were obviously not Christian. Several houses of the type with small, round but simply whitewashed domes were attached in a row, and this was where they now entered, Armand two paces behind his lord.

  They stopped outside wooden doors that all looked the same—three or four white doors with the red cross of the Knights Templar on the surface, but no larger than the palm of a hand. Arn turned and gave his sergeant a searching and slightly amused glance for a moment before he said anything. Armand’s head felt utterly empty and he hadn’t the slightest idea what was going to happen; he knew o
nly that he would be given an order which he had to obey. And he was almost dying of thirst.

  “Now, my good sergeant, you shall do as I say, and nothing more,” said Arn at last. “You will go in through this door. There you will find a room that is empty except for a wooden bench. There you shall…”

  Arn paused and cleared his throat. His mouth was too dry to be able to speak without difficulty.

  “There you shall remove all your clothes. All your clothes: your surcoat, chain mail, hose, shoes, and…and even the outer lambskin girdle covering the impure parts of a man’s body, and even more, also the inner part of the lambskin girdle which you never take off. And then you will remove the shirt that you wear under the chain mail and the belt around it so that you stand there completely naked. Have you understood what I’m telling you?”

  “Yes, lord, I understand,” whispered Armand, blushing as he bowed his head. Then he had to make an effort to get his dry mouth to squeeze out more words. “But you tell me, lord, that I must take off all my clothes. The Rule says that—”

  Arn cut him off. “You are in Jerusalem; you are in the holiest of cities in the holiest of our quarters in the entire world, and here other rules apply! So, when you have done as I command, you will walk through the next door into the next room. There you will find water in which you can immerse your whole body, and oils which you shall use, and you will find things for washing yourself. You will wash, you will immerse your body completely in water, also your hair, and you will clean yourself thoroughly. Have you understood all I say?”