Текст книги "The Road to Jerusalem"

Автор книги: Ян Гийу

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   Magnus spoke with Sigrid about this on several light spring nights, after the boys had gone to bed. It was taken for granted that Eskil would inherit Arnäs; that was God's will since Eskil was the firstborn son. Eskil would manage the estate and their trade. But what did God have in mind for Arn?

   Sigrid agreed that it looked as though God intended a warrior's training for Arn, but she was not entirely sure that she liked that explanation, no matter how obvious it might seem. And inside she felt guilt nagging at her because she had promised God—in a moment when tears were streaming down and her mind was racked with despair, to be sure—but she had still promised Him that Arn's life would be dedicated to God's work on earth.

   She hadn't spoken with Magnus about this matter; it seemed as though the promise was something that Magnus had wiped from his memory, although he must remember it as well as Sigrid did. And he was a man who prided himself on always keeping his word. But right now Magnus envisioned his son's future as a mighty warrior in the foremost phalanx of the clan, and that image certainly gave him more joy than the thought of Arn as a bishop in Skara or the prior of some cloister. That's how men thought. This did not surprise Sigrid.

   But soon God sent a severe reminder of His will. It began as a slightly annoying cut on Sigrid's hand, which as far as she could recall came from a splinter of wood in one of the livestock buildings when an unruly heifer shoved her and she had to grab hold of the wall so as not to fall into the muck. The wound would not heal; it swelled and began to grow more and more foul.

   And one morning Magnus noticed something odd on her face. When she went to a tub of water and looked at her reflection, she saw a new sore like the one she had on her hand, and when she touched it she found that it was full of pus and mucus.

   After that her illness quickly grew worse. The sore on her face spread, and soon she could no longer see out of the eye closest to it. The spot began to itch fiercely and she often had to rub it. She began hiding her face, and she offered up fervent prayers every dawn, midday, and evening. But nothing seemed to help. Her husband and the boys began looking at her with alarm.

   When lay brother Erlend came riding back from Varnhem he was full of news both good and bad. The good news, which he related first, was that the report about the miracle at Arnäs had been welcomed so heartily at Varnhem that it had now been printed on real parchment in manuscript lettering in the cloister's diary.

   The bad news concerned Erik Jedvardsson's wife Kristina. She had been staying at one of her slaughtering farms in the vicinity with a mighty retainer provided to her by her husband, the Swedish king. Yes, it was true after all, Erik Jedvardsson was the king of Svealand.

   Kristina had instigated one devilish trick after another and incited her peasants against the brothers. She had even persuaded the occasional priest to take her side. She claimed that the cloister was built on unlawfully captured land, that a large portion of the land rightfully belonged to her, and if they didn't want to yield willingly according to her wishes, things would not be pleasant when King Erik arrived in Western Götaland.

   On one occasion in the middle of a mass, a crowd of women had forced their way into the cloister clad only in their shifts and danced and sang indecent songs in this immodest garb. Then they had sat down in the midst of the cloister, thus defiling it. It had been a hard task for the brothers to clean and bless the cloister anew.

   Sigrid now understood God's reminder. And she took her husband and Erlend aside in the hall, told all the house thralls to leave, and revealed her deformed face to Erlend, who turned pale, frightened by what he saw. Then she said what had to be said.

   "Magnus, my dear lord and husband. Surely you recall just as well as I what we promised Saint Bernard and the Lord God just before the Lord recalled Arn to life. We promised to dedicate him to God's holy work on earth if he was allowed to live. But then we never spoke of the matter again. Now God is telling us what He thinks of our neglect. We must repent and do penance, don't you understand that?"

   Magnus wrung his hands and admitted that he actually did remember the promise very well, but it was a promise made at a very difficult moment, and surely God would understand that, wouldn't He?

   Sigrid now turned to Erlend, who was much more familiar with all things holy than were she and Magnus. Erlend could do nothing but agree. It looked like leprosy, he had to say straight out. And that plague did not exist at Arnäs or anywhere else in Western Götaland, so it couldn't have come from anywhere but from the Lord Himself. And the fact that Sigrid's most pleasing deed before God, her donation of the land to the Varnhem cloister, was now in jeopardy, must also be viewed as a clear warning.

   God demanded they make good on their promise. And He was punishing Sigrid for her ambivalence in that matter. What had happened could not be interpreted any other way.

   The next day, sorrow hung heavy over Arnäs. In the farmyards and the castle courtyard, no laughter or squabbling was heard from playing children. The house thralls moved like silent forest beasts in the hall, and several of them had a hard time hiding their tears.

   Magnus was at a loss as to how he would present the weighty news to his youngest son. But while Sigrid was busy packing for the journey, he took Arn up to the tower where they could be alone. Arn, who still did not understand what was going to happen to him, looked more pensively curious than afraid.

   Magnus lifted him up onto one of the arrow slits so he could look at his son face to face. Then it occurred to him that Arn might be afraid of this high ledge from which he had plummeted all the way into the realm of the dead.

   But Arn showed no fear. Instead he leaned out over the parapet so he could look straight down at where he had fallen, since his father seemed to be lost in his own thoughts.

   Magnus carefully pulled Arn back and embraced him, and then began his difficult explanation. He pointed out over the district, where as far as the eye could see work was being done on the spring planting. Then he said that all this would be Eskil's realm one day when he was no longer alive, but that Arn's inheritance would be an even greater kingdom—the kingdom of God here on earth.

   Arn didn't seem to understand his words. Perhaps to the young boy's ears it sounded like the usual church talk when people wanted to sound solemn and said things that meant nothing for a while before they ventured to say something that really did have meaning. Magnus had to start over.

   He talked about the difficult time when Arn was not with them among the living, and how he and Sigrid in their despair had promised God to give their son to God's work on earth if only he would be allowed to come back to life. Then they had hesitated in fulfilling their promise, but now God had punished them harshly for this disobedience, so the promise had to be honored at once.

   Arn slowly began to sense that something unpleasant was coming. And his father immediately confirmed this when he revealed what was going to happen. Arn must now travel to Varnhem with his mother and Erlend. There he would enter the cloister as an oblate, which is what children were called who entered the service of God. God would assuredly watch over him, just as his patron saint, Saint Bernard, always did, for God most certainly had great plans for him.

   Now Arn began to understand. His parents were going to offer him to God. Not like in the olden days, not like in the sagas from the heathen times, but they would still offer him to God. And he could do nothing at all about it, since children always had to obey their father and their mother. He started to cry, and no matter how ashamed he was to cry in front of his father, he could not stop.

   Magnus took him in his arms and tried awkwardly to console him with words about God's good will and protection, about Saint Bernard who would watch over him, and anything else he could think of. But the boy's little body shook with sobs in his embrace, and Magnus felt that he too, God forbid, would eventually show his sorrow.

   Then the wagons came driving up and the retainers reined in the horses as they waited in the courtyard before the door to the longhouse. Sigrid came out first with her face covered and went over to the lead wagon. Then Erlend emerged, looked about shyly, and slipped into the second wagon.

   Last came Magnus with the two small boys, who were holding each other and crying, clinging to each other as if the strength of their little child-arms might prevent what was going to happen. Magnus separated them gently but firmly, lifted up Arn and carried him over to Sigrid's wagon and set him down next to his mother. Then he took a deep breath and slapped the horses so that the wagon started with an abrupt lurch while he turned around and walked back toward the door, making a vain attempt to catch Eskil, who managed to escape.

   Magnus went inside and closed the door behind him without turning around. Eskil ran behind the wagons for a while, crying, until he fell and helplessly watched his brother vanish in the dust from the road.

   Arn cried bitterly as he knelt in the wagon and looked back toward Arnäs, which grew smaller and smaller in the distance. He understood that he would never see his home again, and it was impossible for Sigrid to console him.

Sigrid's visit came at an inopportune time for Father Henri. His old friend and colleague from Clairvaux, Father Stéphan, who was now the prior in Alvastra, was visiting so that they could discuss the difficult situation that had arisen with Queen Kristina, who was stirring up trouble and inciting the people against the monks at Varnhem. Naturally Stéphan was the one with whom Father Henri most wanted to discuss complicated questions. They had been together ever since their youth, and they were part of the first group that had received the terrible orders from holy Saint Bernard himself, that they should depart for the cold, barbaric North to start a daughter cloister. It had been a long journey, horrendously cold and gloomy.

   Father Stéphan had already read the account of the miracle from Arnäs and was familiar with Sigrid's problem. To be sure, both at Alvastra and Varnhem, as well as in the mother cloister in Burgundy, they had stopped accepting oblates, and the thought behind the change was logical and easy to understand. The free will of a human being to choose either God's way or the path of perdition was eliminated if they accepted small children and raised them in the cloister. Such children would already be molded into monks by the age of twelve, since they knew no other life than that of the cloister. Such an upbringing might rob the children of their free will, and therefore it was a wise decision no longer to accept oblates.

   On the other hand, the miracle at Arnäs could not be ignored, because it was definitely no small event. If the parents had promised their child to God at the most critical moment, and they did so clearly and openly, and God had then let the miracle happen, the parents' promise had to be construed as so sanctified that it would be impossible to break.

   But what if they, God's servants, now made the promise impossible to fulfill by refusing to accept the boy because the custom of oblates had been abolished?

   Then the parents might be released from their promise. But in that case, the monks at the same time would be placing themselves, knowingly and willingly, above the clearly manifested will of God. That could not happen. So they had to accept the boy.

   And how should they respond to Fru Sigrid? It seemed that God had punished her severely for her ambivalence, and now she was here wanting to do penance. There was also the much bigger question of whether the monks might simply have to abandon Varnhem, return home to Clairvaux, and from there seek to have Kristina and even her husband excommunicated so that they could be rid of the problem and start over again. Factoring in travel time and everything else, that process might take a couple of years.

   The two men sat inside in the shade of the covered arcade that connected the church to the monks' quarters. Before them out in the sunshine, Brother Lucien's garden was blazing with color. Father Henri had sent Brother Lucien, who had a knowledge of medicinal herbs, up to the guesthouse of the old farm, where Sigrid and her son were staying. Right now their grave and difficult conversation was interrupted as Brother Lucien returned with a worried look on his face.

   "Well," he said with a sigh, sinking down on the stone bench next to them. "I don't know quite what to believe. I don't think it's leprosy; it's much too watery and ulcerous. I think it's some variant of swine pox, something that comes from the uncleanness of the animals. But it looks bad, I have to admit."

   "If it is only some sort of swine pox, what can you do for her, dear Brother Lucien?" asked Father Henri with interest.

   "Well now . . . do you really think, Father, that I should try to do something for it?" wondered Brother Lucien dubiously.

   "How do you mean?" asked the other two at the same time, both equally astonished.

   "I mean . . . if the Lord Himself has visited this illness upon her, who am I to revoke the Lord's will?"

   "Look here, Brother Lucien, don't make a fool of yourself now!" snorted Father Henri in irritation. "You are the Lord's instrument, and if you do the best you can and He finds your work good, then it will help. Otherwise nothing at all will help and nothing will make any difference. So what had you thought to do about the matter?"

   The monk explained that as far as he understood it was a question of cleaning and drying out the sores. Boiled and consecrated water for washing, then clean air and sunshine, should dry out the abscesses in about a week. Her hand looked more dire, and in the worst case it might turn out to be something other than harmless swine pox.

   Father Henri nodded in agreement, showing great interest. As usual when Brother Lucien described his initial medical diagnosis, he sounded quite convincing. What Father Henri especially admired was the monk's ability to stay calm when confronting problems and not rush off at once to slap on all sorts of herbs in the hope that one of them might do some good. According to Brother Lucien, such ill-considered conduct could easily cause an illness to go from bad to worse.

   When Brother Lucien had gone, Father Stéphan 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 Stéphan went into the scriptorium to reread, perhaps a bit more attentively than before, the account of the miracle from Arnäs. 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 Varnhem, 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 greatest 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 Stéphan'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 Dieuat 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 strug-gél," Father Stéphan hushed Arn in amusement.

   "It's struggle, not strug-gél!" 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 Stéphan to him in Latin, without actually 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 Stéphan 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 Stéphan.

   "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 Stéphan'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 guesthouse 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 understand 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 vanguard 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 brothers 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 unthinkable 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 assigned 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 openminded, 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 another salvo of laughter from Guilbert de Beaune.