by Jan Guillou
Finally she had everything in order and knew down to the penny the state of the economy at Forsvik. Then she went to find Arn, although it was only early evening and he was just finishing up his work with the cooling houses next to the big stream. He was happy to see her. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his index finger as was his habit, and immediately wanted her to praise the finished cooling houses. She couldn’t say no but was surely not as effusive as he had thought she would be when she saw the big empty room clad in brick. Rows of empty iron hooks and rods hung there, waiting to hold food that they didn’t yet have. She pointed this out so sternly that he almost ceased his lively chatter.
‘Come with me to the accounting chamber and I’ll explain everything to you, my beloved,’ she said with her eyes lowered. She was well aware that those words would soften him. But she also knew that they were true words and not merely the wiles of a woman. It was true that he was her beloved.
But that did not lessen the necessity of telling him the truth about all the foolishness she had discovered and could prove with numbers. She prayed to herself that he would have an understanding of such things, even if thus far he had shown no interest in anything other than building for the winter.
‘Look here, my love,’ she said, opening up the ledger to show how much was eaten and drunk each day by both humans and livestock at Forsvik. ‘This is what a horse needs in fodder every day. Here you see the total for a month, and here is what we have in our barns. So, sometime after Kyndelsmas in the midst of the bitterest cold of winter, we will have thirty-two starving horses. The meat we have slaughtered and can slaughter in the future will be gone by Annunciation Day. The consumption of lamb is such that we will have eaten it all before Christmas. The dried fish has not yet arrived. You can see that this is true, can’t you?’
‘Yes, these seem to be very good calculations. What do we have to do?’
‘With regard to feeding the people here, the dried fish must arrive as promised, preferably long before Lent. As far as meat is concerned, you have to hire some hunters, because there are plenty of deer and boars in the woods, and inside Tiveden Forest there is an animal as big as a cow that gives much meat. As for the horses, I assume you don’t want to see them slaughtered by Kyndelsmas.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Arn with a smile. ‘Each of those horses is worth more than twenty Gothic horses or more.’
‘Then we’ll have to buy fodder,’ Cecilia cut him off. ‘It’s not normal practice to buy fodder for animals, since everyone usually takes care of his own. So you’ll have to tend to this matter at once – before the ice begins to form and the time comes when neither boat nor sleigh can reach us. The earlier you begin in the fall, the easier it should be to buy fodder, I should think.’
‘I agree,’ said Arn. ‘I’ll deal with that problem first thing tomorrow. What else have you discovered from your calculations?’
‘That we have spent enough silver to equal almost the entire value of Forsvik without any income to balance our expenses. The gold alone that you advanced the stonecutter in Skara would have kept us alive and fat for several years.’
‘You cannot count that gold in your sums!’ said Arn vehemently, but regretted it at once and smiled to appease her and excuse his temper. ‘I have enough gold to pay for everything having to do with the church in Forshem. It’s in a coffer by itself; it has nothing to do with us. We can count that church as already paid for.’
‘Well, that changes thing a great deal for the better, of course,’ Cecilia admitted. ‘You could have told me this earlier, then I wouldn’t have wasted so much ink. Because it’s also about time you told your wife how much we own, or rather how much you own, since I own Forsvik, which increases in value with each drop of sweat you spill.’
‘I own approximately one thousand marks in gold,’ Arn said in embarrassment, looking down at the wooden floor. ‘That does not include what it will cost to build Arnäs into an impregnable fortress, which shall be a salvation for us all someday. Nor do I count what I have put aside to pay for the church in Forshem.’
He squirmed when he said this last and still looked away, as if he were well aware that he had said something that no one with wit and sense would believe.
‘A thousand marks,’ Cecilia whispered as if awestruck. ‘A thousand marks in gold; that’s more than everything owned by Riseberga, Varnhem, and Gudhem combined.’
‘That may be true, my love,’ replied Arn softly, but it seemed as if he were more ashamed of his great wealth than happy about it.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?’ Cecilia asked.
‘I’ve thought about telling you many times, but it never seemed to be the right moment. It’s a long story that isn’t easy to understand, about how this gold came to be mine in the Holy Land. Once I got started I would have to finish the tale, and there is so much that needs to be finished before winter. Gold isn’t everything; gold won’t protect us from the cold, especially my friends from the warm countries. I hadn’t intended to keep this from you. I imagined a long, cold winter night with the north wind howling outside, with you and me lying in the glow of our hearth without the slightest draft reaching us underneath our featherbeds. That’s when I would like to tell you the whole story.’
‘If you wait until winter you will wait in vain,’ said Cecilia with a little smile that lightened at once the gloom that had settled over them at this talk of riches.
‘No, I look forward to the winter,’ said Arn, also with a smile.
‘That won’t prevent gold from offering poor protection against cold and hunger. As you said, tomorrow you must start buying fodder over in Linköping or wherever you can find it.’
‘I promise. What else have you found in the merciless logic of your numbers?’
‘I have found that you should buy or build your own boat to transport clay.’
‘How so?’ asked Arn, surprised for the first time in this conversation.
‘For making bricks it takes so much fresh clay each time you fire them, that it isn’t worth the effort to ship the clay here first instead of moving the work to Braxenbolet,’ Cecilia went on. ‘But with the clay for making pottery it’s different. If you can get that sort of clay here, the potters can be kept busy all winter. It’s merely a matter of keeping the clay damp, yet warm enough so it won’t freeze.’
He looked at her with an astonished admiration that he couldn’t conceal, and she smiled back as if in triumph.
‘Don’t work anymore today,’ she said. ‘Stay with me. Let’s ride off together just for a while to enjoy the fruit of our labour. The evening is so mild.’
She went to change into her riding attire, but she frowned when she came out and saw him holding their woollen mantles over his arm as if to hide the long scabbard sticking out from under the cloth. But she didn’t say a word.
They went first to the stable, which was empty this time of year, since all the horses were in the pasture. A long row of saddles with foreign signs above them hung on the wall, and Arn chose two. He handed her the mantles when he hoisted the saddles onto his shoulder and led her out to the horse pasture. The sun was low in the sky, but it was still as warm as a summer day, and the breeze was like a mild caress on their faces.
A black mare and her foal stood by themselves in a smaller pasture. They went there first, climbing in through the rails. Arn called the mare. She pricked up her ears and came toward him at once, tossing her head. Her foal trotted after her. Cecilia marvelled at how affectionately her beloved and the mare greeted each other, how he rubbed his face against her muzzle, and how he stroked her glossy coat and spoke to her in a foreign language.
‘Come!’ he said, reaching out his hand to Cecilia. ‘I want you to make friends with Umm Anaza, for she shall henceforth be your horse. Come and say hello.’
Cecilia went over and tried to do as Arn had done, rubbing her face against the mare, who at first seemed a bit shy. Then Arn talked to the mare in the foreign language, an
d she changed at once and yielded to Cecilia’s touch.
‘What language are you speaking?’ she asked as she petted the mare and the little foal who timidly came forward.
‘The language of horses,’ said Arn with a secret smile, shaking his head happily. ‘That was what Brother Guilbert told me once when I was a boy; back then I believed that there was a language that only horses understood. It’s more correct to say that I’m speaking the language that these horses have heard from birth in Outremer. It’s Saracen.’
‘And I who can only speak my own language or Latin with her!’ Cecilia laughed. ‘At least I must know her name.’
‘Her name is Umm Anaza, which means Mother Anaza, and the little one is called Ibn Anaza, although that’s what I used to call his father. Now the stallion whom we shall meet is called Abu Anaza, and you can probably guess what Abu and Ibn mean, can’t you?’
‘Father and son Anaza,’ Cecilia said. ‘But what does Anaza mean?’
‘That’s just a name,’ said Arn, swinging a saddle with a lambskin pad onto the mare. ‘Horses named Anaza are the noblest in all the Holy Land, and when the long winter nights come I will tell you the saga of Anaza.’
Arn saddled and bridled the mare with amazing speed, and the mare didn’t object in the least, but seemed eager to go out.
Cecilia was allowed to lead Umm Anaza down to the big pasture where the stallions were kept. Arn hopped over the fence and whistled so that they all looked up from their grazing. The next moment they were all galloping toward Arn so that the ground shook. Cecilia was startled but realized she didn’t have to worry when the horses came to a halt the instant that Arn raised his arm in command. Then they all walked in a circle and crowded around Arn, who seemed to have a name for each horse and offered each a few friendly words. Finally he turned his attention to a stallion who looked much like Cecilia’s mare, with a black coat hide and silver mane. It wasn’t hard to understand that this must be Abu.
Cecilia couldn’t help being moved as she watched her husband treat these animals with such tenderness. They seemed to be much more than horses to him, almost like dear friends.
No man in the North treats his horses this way, she thought, but realized at once that there was no man in the North who could ride like Arn. That was a good thought, that loving care made better riders than arrogance and harshness.
She felt something of this love herself as they rode out from Forsvik a while later, heading north along the shore of Bottensjön. It was as though this mare enjoyed carrying her new owner, as if she spoke through her gentle movements which were not like those of other horses.
The sun had sunk below the treetops when they entered the endless conifer forest known as Tiveden. Arn led them up along a path and soon they were so high that they could see Bottensjön, and off in the distance Lake Vättern glinted in the last light of evening. The smells of horses blended enchantingly with the sweet decay of late summer inside the conifer forest.
Arn came alongside her and said that now he was too old to stand up on his horse’s back; he intended to stay in the saddle. At first Cecilia didn’t understand what he meant, but then she remembered the time up on Kinnekulle when they were riding together for the first time and he stood up on his horse at full gallop. But he had his eyes on her and not on the road when his horse rode under a mighty oak branch. Arn had been swept to the ground and lay there lifeless.
‘That time you almost made my heart stop beating,’ Cecilia whispered.
‘That wasn’t my intention,’ said Arn. ‘I wanted to win your heart, not stop it.’
‘By showing me what a rider you were? By standing up on a galloping horse you thought you could win my heart?’
‘Yes, I did. And by doing whatever it took. If it had helped to stand on my head, I would have done that too. But it worked, didn’t it?’
As he jested about courting her he raised himself on his arms in the saddle, slowly bent his body forward with his legs out to the side and finally placed them together as he stood on his hands in the saddle. All the while his stallion calmly continued on as if used to all manner of foolishness from his master.
‘You don’t have to show off like that,’ Cecilia giggled. ‘If I assure you that you have my heart as surely as if it were in a golden box, will you then sit down and ride properly?’
‘Yes, in that case,’ said Arn, instantly spinning to sit in the saddle with both feet in the stirrups. ‘I feel I may be getting a bit too old for such tricks, so it’s a good thing we’re already man and wife.’
‘You must not belittle the goodness and divine will that have made us man and wife!’ said Cecilia sternly, almost too sternly, she could hear. But she couldn’t help thinking that such jesting went too far.
‘I don’t think that Our Lady will take it amiss that in our happiness we speak humorously about the time when our love first bloomed,’ Arn replied cautiously.
Cecilia scolded herself for unnecessarily bringing the fear of God into their conversation, when for once it had turned so carefree and playful. As she feared they now rode in silence, and neither of them could find a way out of it.
They came to a clearing by a stream where the moss shone magically green, welcoming the last light of day shining between the trees. Next to a thick and half-rotted oak the moss formed a big, inviting bed scattered with tiny pink woodland flowers.
It was as though Umm Anaza let herself be guided by Cecilia’s thoughts, as if the mare had understood everything flowing through Cecilia’s memory when she saw this spot, for she veered off without a word from Cecilia. In silence Cecilia dismounted and spread out her mantle over the green moss.
Arn followed, dismounted, and swung the reins around the forelegs of their horses before he came over to her and spread out his mantle next to hers.
They didn’t need to say a word; everything was so clear between them, written on their faces.
When they kissed it was without fear, as if the difficult time after the wedding night had never happened. And when they both discovered their joy that the fear was gone, desire came back to them with the same power as when they were seventeen.
EIGHT
A woman of the Folkung clan had been lamentably killed by her own husband and master. This heinous act occurred late one afternoon, and that evening the murderer saw the sun go down for the first time after committing his evil deed.
The name of this wicked man was Svante Sniving of the Ymse clan, and the name of his Folkung wife whom he had killed was Elin Germundsdotter from Älgarås. They had only one son, Bengt, who was thirteen years old.
After seeing his mother struck down by his father, young Bengt fled to the estate of his maternal grandfather, Germund Birgersson, at Älgarås. That same night, a summons was sent out from there in all directions to the Folkung estates within a day’s ride.
It was daylight when the riders, who were young kinsmen clad in worn blue mantles, reached Forsvik. The unexpected guests were first offered bread, salt, and ale by Cecilia. They quickly quenched their thirst before explaining their errand, saying that they were carrying a Folkung summons for Sir Arn.
Cecilia said that she would quickly go in search of her husband, and she invited her guests to partake of ham and more ale while she was gone. Her heart pounding with alarm, she dashed toward the riding field where she could hear galloping horses. And there she found Arn along with the boys Sune and Sigfrid and the two Saracen horsemen. She waved urgently to Arn, who noticed her presence at once; he broke away from the other riders and raced across the field like the wind. He was riding Abu Anaza.
From a distance he’d already seen her agitation. When he reined in his horse and came to a stop, he dismounted at once and was at her side in one swift motion.
‘A summons has arrived from the Folkungs,’ she replied to his wordless question.
‘A summons from the Folkungs? What does that mean?’ asked Arn, looking puzzled.
‘Two young riders with solemn faces have arr
ived, saying only that they come bringing a summons,’ she replied. ‘I know no more than you do. Perhaps you should ask those boys over there.’
Since Arn had no better suggestion, he did as Cecilia said and called over all four riders by whistling and uttering two loud shouts. They came at once, at full gallop, reining in their horses a few paces away.
‘A summons has come from the Folkungs. Can either of you tell me what that might mean?’ he asked Sune and Sigfrid.
‘It means that all of us Folkung men at Forsvik must drop whatever we’re doing at once, arm ourselves well, and go with whoever has brought the message,’ replied Sigfrid.
‘No one in our clan can refuse a summons; that would mean eternal disgrace,’ added Sune.
‘But you’re only boys, and taking up arms doesn’t sound like something that should be required of you,’ muttered Arn crossly.
‘We are Folkungs all the same, young though we may be, and the only two of our clan that you have with you here at Forsvik, Sir Arn,’ replied Sune jauntily.
Arn sighed and thought for a moment as he stared at the ground. Then he spoke, apparently delivering orders to the two Saracen horsemen, and pointed at the blue surcoats worn by the boys. The two warriors from the Holy Land immediately bowed their heads as a sign of obedience and galloped off toward the estate.
‘Together let us seek out our kinsmen who have come with this message and find out what they want,’ said Arn. He walked over to Cecilia, pulled her up to sit in the saddle in front of him, and abruptly took off at a thundering speed for the old longhouse. Cecilia alternated between shrieking and laughing during the short ride.
Inside the longhouse the two unknown kinsmen greeted Arn with a courteous bow as he came in. After a brief pause, one of them came over and fell to his knees; with arms outstretched, he held out the summons, which was in the form of a piece of wood with the Folkung lion burned into the surface.