by Jan Guillou
When Brother Lucien had gone, Father Stephan again took up his previous train of thought and said that it was rather obvious that the Lord God wanted something special with that boy. If he was to be just one more monk among all the other monks, then it seemed a bit extreme to resort to both a miracle and a case of leprosy, didn't it? People became monks for lesser reasons than that.
Father Henri burst out laughing at his colleague's outrageous but humorous logic. Still, there was no real counterargument. So they should take in the boy, but treat him carefully, like one of Brother Lucien's sensitive plants, and make sure that his free will was not broken. Some time in the future, perhaps, they would have a better idea of the Lord's intentions for the boy. So the boy was allowed to become an oblate. And if they had to move out of Varnhem, he would have to come along with them. But that was a matter for a later time.
The question of Fru Sigrid remained. Naturally the simplest approach would be to start by letting her confess and ask for her own opinion. Father Stephan went into the scriptorium to reread, perhaps a bit more attentively than before, the account of the miracle from Arnas. With a concerned expression Father Henri walked up toward the old guesthouse outside the cloister walls to hear Sigrid's confession.
He found mother and son in a pitiful state. There was only one bed in the room, and there lay Sigrid, panting with fever with her eyes closed. At her side sat a little fellow, his face red from crying, clutching her healthy hand. The house hadn't been cleaned; it was filled with all sorts of rubbish and there was a cold draft. While it hadn't been used in many years, it hadn't been torn down because there were more pressing things to do, or possibly because the wooden walls were old and rotten and the lumber couldn't be reused.
He draped the prayer stole over his shoulders and went over to Arn, cautiously stroking the boy's head. But Arn seemed not to notice, or else he was pretending he didn't.
Father Henri then gently asked the boy to leave for a moment while his mother made confession, but the boy just shook his head without looking up and squeezed his mother's hand all the harder.
Sigrid now awoke, and Arn left the room reluctantly, slamming the drafty door behind him. Sigrid seemed indignant at his behavior, but with a smile Father Henri put his right index finger to his lips and shushed her, indicating that she shouldn't worry. Then he asked if she was ready to confess.
"Yes, Father," she replied, her mouth dry. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. With the help of holy Saint Bernard, my lord and husband and I, together with lay brother Erlend, managed through sincere prayers to ask the Lord to return Arn to live among us. But just before this miracle occurred I made a solemn and sacred promise to the Lord to give the boy to God's holy work among the people here on earth if He saw fit to save my
son."
"I know all this; it's exactly as it was written by lay brother Erlend. Your Latin is as fluid as water, by the way. Have you been practicing lately? Well, never mind that, now back to your confession, my child."
"Well, I have studied with the boys . . ." she murmured wearily, but took a deep breath and thought intently before she went on. "I betrayed my sacred promise to the Lord God; I ignored it, and therefore He has afflicted me with leprosy as you can see. I want to do penance, if it is possible to do penance for such a grave sin. My idea is that I should live here in this house as the wife of no one and eat only scraps from the monks' table as long as I live."
"I can see, my dear Sigrid, that you who have done so much for those of us who toil here in the garden of the Lord at Var-nhem, to you it may seem that the Lord has been harsh toward you," said Father Henri pensively. "But one cannot ignore the fact that it is a grave sin to break a sacred promise to the Lord God, even if one makes this promise in a difficult moment. For is it not in our greatest difficulties that we give the Lord our great-est promises? We shall take good care of your son as both the Lord and you yourself, although in different ways, have asked us to do. The boy's name is Arn, is it not? I should know, since I was the one who baptized him. And we will also tend to your affliction and you may stay here to eat, ahem, well, as you say, the scraps from our table. But I can't give you absolution for your sins just now, and I beg you not to be unduly frightened because of this. I don't yet know what the Lord will tell us. Perhaps He merely wanted to give you a little reminder. You must say twenty Pater Nosters and twenty Ave Marias, then go to sleep and know that you are in safe and tender hands. I'll send Brother Lucien to you to take care of your sores with the utmost care, and if it then turns out, as I sense but do not know, that the Lord will make you whole again, then you will soon be without sin. Rest now. I'll take the boy with me down to the cloister."
Father Henri got up slowly and studied Sigrid's deformed face. One eye was so sealed shut by pus that it couldn't be seen: the other eye was only half open. He leaned forward and sniffed cautiously at the sores, then nodded thoughtfully and left the room as he stuffed the prayer stole in his pocket.
Outside the boy sat on a rock looking at the ground and didn't even turn around when Father Henri came out.
He stood for a moment looking at Arn, until the boy couldn't help glancing up at him. Then Father Henri gave him a kindly smile, but received only a sob in response before the boy again looked away.
"Look here, mon fils, come along with me like a good boy," said Father Henri as gently as he could, and accustomed as he was to always being obeyed, he stepped forward to pull on Arn's arm.
"Can't you even speak Swedish, you old devil?" Arn spat, kicking and struggling as Father Henri, who was quite a big and heavy man, dragged him along toward the cloister with the same ease as if he were carrying a basket of herbs from Brother Lucien's gardens.
When they reached the arcade by the cloister garden, Father Henri found his colleague from Alvastra sitting in the same place where they had held their discussion earlier.
Father Stephan's face lit up at once when he caught sight of the unruly and sullen little Arn.
"Aha!" he exclaimed. "Here we have . . . er, our jeune oblat. Enfin . . . not particularly filled with gratitude de Dieu at the moment, eh?"
Father Henri shook his head in agreement with a smile and promptly lifted Arn onto the lap of his colleague, who easily warded off a bold fist from the little boy.
"Hold him as long as you can, dear brother. I must have a little chat with Brother Lucien first," said Father Henri and left the garden to find his fellow monk in charge of medicinal matters.
"There there, don't struggel," Father Stephan hushed Arn in amusement.
"It's struggle, not strug-gell" Arn fumed, trying to get loose, but he soon discovered that he was trapped by strong arms and gave up.
"So, if you think that my Nordic language sounds bad to your little ears, maybe we should speak something that suits me better," whispered Father Stephan to him in Latin, without actu-ally expecting an answer.
"It probably suits both of us better since you can't speak our language, you old monk," replied Arn in the same language.
Father Stephan beamed, happily surprised.
"In truth I believe that we're going to get along just fine, you and I and Father Henri, much better and faster than you think, young man," the monk whispered in Arn's ear as if conveying a great secret to him.
"I don't want to sit like a slave poring over all those tedious old books all day long," Arn muttered, although less angry than a moment earlier.
"And what would you rather do?" asked Father Stephan.
"I want to go home. I don't want to be your captive and slave," said Arn, no longer able to keep up his impudent front. He burst into tears again, but leaned against Father Stephan's chest as the monk quietly stroked and patted his slender young back.
*
As so often was the case, Brother Lucien was correct with his first diagnosis. The sores on Sigrid's face had nothing to do with leprosy, and he made rapid progress with his treatment.
First he had sent some of the lay brethren up to the gue
sthouse to scour it clean and seal and whitewash the walls, even though Sigrid protested against the improvements, believing that in her misery she didn't deserve either cleanliness or adornments.
Brother Lucien had attempted to explain that it was not a matter of esthetics but of medicine, but they didn't seem to really under-stand each other on this topic.
However, Sigrid's face was soon restored with precisely the remedies Brother Lucien had prescribed in the beginning: clean, sanctified water, sunshine, and fresh air. On the other hand, he hadn't any success with the sores, which spread from her hand and up her arm, causing a nasty swelling that was tinged blue. He had tried a number of preparations that were very strong, sometimes downright dangerous, but without success. In the end he realized that there could be only one cure for this toxicity in the blood. One sure sign was that he hadn't been able to allay her fever.
But he didn't want to tell this to Sigrid herself; instead he explained to Father Henri what had to be done. They would have to cut away all the diseased flesh—take her arm from her. Otherwise the evil from the arm would soon spread to her heart. If it had been one of the brothers themselves, all they'd have to do would be to call on Brother Guilbert with his big axe, but they undoubtedly could not act in the same way toward Fru Sigrid, their benefactor.
Father Henri agreed. He would try to present the matter as best he could to Fru Sigrid, although at the moment he had other things to tend to. Then Brother Lucien rebuked him, cautiously and probably for the first time ever. Because they did not have much time; it was a matter of life or death.
And yet Father Henri postponed the difficult matter, because Fru Kristina was on her way to the cloister along with an entire retinue of armed men.
When Kristina arrived at Varnhem she was riding at the van-guard of her retainers as if she were a male commander, and she was dressed in ceremonial garb. To display her nobility she wore a queen's crown on her head.
Father Henri and five of his closest brothers met her outside the cloister gate, which they demonstratively had locked behind them.
Kristina did not dismount, for she preferred to talk down to the monks; she now announced that one of the buildings had to be torn down, and promptly, namely Father Henri's scriptorium. A good portion of that particular building was apparently situated on the land that was rightfully hers.
Kristina knew quite well where to deliver the lance blow. Her intention was to make Father Henri lose his patience once and for all, and preferably his composure as well. She now found that she had succeeded with the first, at least. Father Henri spent most of his time among the books in the scriptorium; these were his brightest hours in the murky barbarity of the North. It was the part of the cloister that more than any other was his own.
He resolutely declared that he had no intention of tearing down the scriptorium.
Kristina replied that if the building was not demolished within a week, she would return, not only with her retainers, but with thralls who under the whips of the retainers would do the work rapidly. Perhaps the thralls would be less careful than the broth-ers would be if they saw fit to carry out her orders themselves. The choice was theirs.
Father Henri was now so angry that he could hardly control himself, and he told her that instead he intended to leave Varnhem. The journey would end with an audience with the Holy Father in Rome with the intention of excommunicating her, and her husband if he was an accomplice, if she dared to do the un-thinkable and challenge God's servants on earth and His Holy Roman Church. Didn't she understand that she was about to bring eternal misfortune down upon both herself and Erik Jedvardsson?
What Father Henri threatened was true. But Kristina seemed not to comprehend what he said, just as she did not understand the threat she was posing to her own husband's ambitious plans. A king who was excommunicated would have little to hope for in the Christian world.
But she merely tossed her head reproachfully, and wheeled her horse around in a wide turn, forcing the monks to dive for cover so as not to be trampled. As she rode away she called over her shoulder that in a week her thralls would arrive, her heathen thralls for that matter, to carry out their official duties.
Arn had been treated leniently and was not forced to read more than four hours of Latin grammaticus per day. The first step was to make his Latin flawless; then they could move on to the next language. First a tool for the knowledge, then the knowledge itself.
But to assuage the boy's heavy heart, Father Henri had also seen to it that he was allowed to spend almost an equal amount of time with the mighty Brother Guilbert de Beaune, who would teach him arts altogether different from Latin and singing.
Brother Guilbert's main occupation at Varnhem was in the smithies, particularly the weapons smithy, which was the largest and best equipped of them all. The weapons smithy was run as a business and nothing else, because the swords that Brother Guilbert forged were so clearly superior to any others made in this barbaric part of the world. The fame of the monk's swords had spread rapidly and brought in goodly sums of silver to the convent.
Precisely according to intention, Arn was cajoled by watching and even occasionally helping Brother Guilbert, who took the boy in with the same gravity and precision as if he had been as-signed to teach him to be a smith, showing him everything from the simple basics to the finer arts.
But when Arn after a time became less sulky and more open-minded, he also grew bolder when it came to asking about matters other than those pertaining to the work itself. Such as whether Brother Guilbert had ever shot a bow and arrow, and if so, whether he would like to have a contest.
To Arn's dismay, Brother Guilbert found this so amusing that he burst out laughing. He laughed so hard that he lost track of what he was working on and tossed a glowing piece of metal into a bucket of water. Then he sat down to finish laughing, his eyes wet with tears.
Finally, after he had composed himself and cheerfully wiped his eyes, he admitted that he may indeed have handled a bow and arrow, and that the two of them might soon make time for such games. Then he added that of course he feared meeting a young warrior as bold as Arn de Gothia. And then he broke out laughing anew.
It would be a long time before Arn was made aware of what was so funny. Right now he merely felt indignant. He snorted that perhaps Brother Guilbert was afraid. And provoked an-other salvo of laughter from Guilbert de Beaune.
Faced with the decision between death or having her arm cut off and perhaps being able to cope with life as a cripple, Sigrid chose death. She felt that she could not understand the Lord's will in any other way. With sorrow in her heart she allowed Father Henri to hear her confession one last time, forgive her all her sins, and give her Holy Communion and extreme unction.
At Persmas, when the summer reached its apex and the time for hay-making had arrived, Sigrid died quietly up in the guest-house.
It was also time for the departure of Father Henri and the seven brothers who would accompany him on his journey to the south. Sigrid was buried inside the cloister church, beneath the floor close to the altar, and the place was marked with only tiny secret signs, for Father Henri was very distrustful of Fru Kristina and her husband. Two brothers were sent to Arnas with the news of her death, and the invitation to visit Sigrid's grave at any time.
During the four-hour-long funeral mass, Arn stood straight and still, the lone boy among all the monks. It was only the heavenly singing that now and then made his heart break so that he could no longer hold back the tears. But he was not ashamed of this, because he had noticed that he was not the only one weeping.
The next day the long journey to the south began, heading first for Denmark. Arn was now certain that his life belonged to God and that no human being, good or evil, strong or weak, would be able to do a thing to alter that fact.
He never looked back.
Chapter 4
So often things turn out much differently than people had imagined. What the poor in spirit call small coincidences, what the
faithful call God's will, can sometimes alter an event to such an extent that no one could have predicted the result. That applies to powerful men who are convinced that they are the instigators of their own fortune, men like Erik Jedvardsson. But it also ap-plies to such men who stand much closer to God than others and should be better able to understand His ways, men such as Henri of Clairvaux. For both these men the ways of the Lord had truly seemed inscrutable in recent years.
When Father Henri and his seven companions and a boy arrived in Roskilde on their way south through Denmark, he was firmly resolved to continue all the way to the general capital of the Cistercian order in Citeaux in order to present his case for the excommunication of Erik Jedvardsson and his wife Kristina. It was an extremely grave matter of principle. For the first time the Cistercians had been forced to close down a monastery be
cause of the whim of some king or king's wife. It was a question that was of crucial significance to the whole Christian world: Who controlled the Church? The Church itself or the sovereign power of the king? The strife over this had raged for a long time, but it took a Nordic barbarian queen such as Kristina to be ignorant of the matter.
Varnhem had to be regained at all costs. No compromise was acceptable in this matter.
And had Father Henri and his company come to Roskilde several years earlier, or several years later, everything would have gone as planned. There is no doubt about that.
But Father Henri and his company arrived just at the moment when a violent, ten-year-long civil war had ended and a new mighty lineage had ascended to power. The new king was named Valdemar, and he would be known in due course as Valdemar the Great.