Birth Of the Kingdom (2010) (21 page)

The first workers from Forsvik they met were the ones busy with the hay harvest, cutting grass and raising hayracks. They all stopped what they were doing when they saw the gleaming trappings of the approaching riders. Then they lined up to kneel in greeting until Erik jarl ordered them back to work.

In one of the fields lying fallow close to Forsvik itself, a more surprising sight greeted them. Two young boys were practicing on horseback with two older foreigners. All four were riding in close formation, and at a cry from one of the dark-skinned strangers all four turned like lightning to the left or right or stopped short, rearing and turning on the spot in the other direction. Then they sped up and suddenly cast themselves all together in a new direction. It was a peculiar sight, a style of riding that none of the four friends had ever seen. The horses also looked foreign, smaller than regular horses but much quicker in their movements.

Soon they were discovered by the four riders practicing. One of the foreigners then drew an unusually narrow sword and yelled some warning to the other. He too drew his sword, signalling to the two boys to ride back into the farmyard at once. Then followed a moment of confusion when it looked as though the foreigners were preparing to attack, while the two boys protested and scolded without really being able to make themselves understood.

Erik jarl and his friends sat still, like their retainers, with their hands resting on the hilts of their swords. It was an astonishing sight, if what they were seeing was correct, that two men were preparing to attack a group of eight.

Before they managed to decide how to behave at this unexpected welcome, one of the two boys in the field spurred his horse and rode toward them at such high speed that it was hard for them to believe their eyes. In a few seconds he was upon them. Then he stopped abruptly and bowed.

‘Forgive me, Erik jarl, that our foreign teachers took you for our foes,’ he gasped. ‘I am Sune Folkesson and am apprenticed here at Forsvik to Sir Arn, and that’s my brother over there, Sigfrid Erlingsson.’

‘I know who you are. I knew your father when I was your age,’ replied Erik jarl. ‘Since you are the one who came to meet us, you may now take us to your lord.’

Young Sune nodded eagerly. He wheeled his horse around with a single odd leap and rode ahead at a canter as he waved to Sigfrid and the two foreign teachers that there was no danger. The teachers bowed and turned their horses toward Forsvik.

The sound of hammers and axes thundered along with the ringing of metal from smithies as the four noble youths neared the bridge over the rapids with their retainers, the two boys, and the foreign riders behind them. They saw
thralls and workers transporting timber although it was the middle of summer. Others were loading bricks and stones and carrying heavy yokes laden with masonry supplies in every direction. It seemed that no one had time to look up at the visitors.

They rode across the courtyard between the buildings, and nobody came to greet them; they continued out the other side where two new longhouses and two smaller buildings were being raised. Most of the residents of Forsvik who were not out at the hay harvest seemed to be there working together.

As the four visitors came around the gable of the new longhouse, they finally aroused the attention they had no doubt expected much earlier.

A man who was way up on the wall and dressed in dirty leather clothes swung down from the wooden scaffolding in two long, nimble leaps. Everyone made way for him as he wiped the sweat from his brow and flung away the trowel, looking gravely from one visitor to the next. When his gaze fell upon Magnus Månesköld he nodded as if in affirmation and went straight over to him and held out his hand. Everyone was quiet. Nobody moved.

Magnus’s head spun when he saw the warrior’s filthy hand covered with mortar extended toward him, and almost with horror his gaze sought out the man’s scarred face. His friends sat mute, just as amazed as he was.

‘If your father offers you his hand, I think you ought to take it,’ said Arn with a broad smile, wiping the sweat once more from his brow.

Magnus Månesköld immediately dismounted, took his father’s hand, and quickly dropped one knee to the ground. Then he hesitated before he fell into his father’s embrace.

His friends instantly got off their horses and handed the reins to the servants, who now seemed wakened from their
paralysis and hurried over from all directions. One by one the four youths politely greeted this Arn Magnusson who did not resemble any of the images they had envisioned and discussed with each other.

The guests’ horses were taken away. Ale and wine, bread and salt were brought out, and then Arn and his four guests entered the hall of the old longhouse and sat down for a meal.

‘I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow,’ Arn explained, motioning to his dirty work clothes. ‘A message came from Näs that you are the four who shall escort me to my bachelor evening, and for that honour I thank you warmly.’

‘It’s an honour for us to do so,’ replied Erik jarl with a curt bow, but his expression did not match his words.

‘You have come to a building site that is hardly suited for guests,’ said Arn after a moment. He had no difficulty seeing through their embarrassed reticence. ‘So I suggest that we leave at once, stop to rest in Askeberga, and arrive at Arnäs early tomorrow morning.’ He was expecting their astonished expressions.

‘You probably shouldn’t leave right away, Father,’ said Magnus glumly. ‘Thrall clothing and mortar in your hair are not the proper attire for a bachelors’ evening.’

‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Arn as if not noticing that he’d been reprimanded by his own son. ‘So perhaps you might enjoy the meager entertainments that Forsvik has to offer today, while I change my attire for a new fate!’

He got up, bowed to his guests, and left, aware of the silence that remained in his wake. Their unmistakable disappointment was written in stone on their faces.

Arn was in a hurry when he came out of the longhouse. He was sure that they should all saddle up and get away from Forsvik as soon as they could. He called together all the workers and told them what he expected to see finished by
the time he and his bride returned in less than a week. Then he ordered Sune and Sigfrid to ready his horse Ibn Anaza, decking him out like the horses of the four guests. Sune objected that there was no such Folkung caparison at Forsvik, so Arn went into one of the new buildings and fetched a white cloth that he tossed to the boys. Then he commanded that the guests’ retainers be given ale, and he summoned the Saracen who was handiest with a razor and ordered hot water to be brought to the bathhouse.

Inside the longhouse Erik jarl and his friends were served smoked meat, bread, and ale, but all declined to partake of the wine that was offered.

Their good mood from the trip to Forsvik was gone. They had a hard time talking, since none of them wanted to add to Magnus Månesköld’s embarrassment. Finding his father with a trowel in his hand was not something they envied him.

‘Your father is as strong and agile as any of us. Did you see the way he came down from the top of the roof in only two leaps?’ said Torgils Eskilsson in an attempt to say something positive.

‘He must have fought many battles to have so many scars on his hands and face,’ Folke Jonsson added.

Magnus Månesköld at first said nothing, just looked down into his ale and sighed. Then he muttered something to the effect that perhaps it wasn’t so odd that those who had lost the Holy Land had taken some lumps before it was over. His disappointment spread like the cold to the others.

‘But it was he who once met Emund Ulvbane in single combat at the
ting
of all Goths, sparing the berserker but hacking off his hand,’ Torgils attempted to console him once more.

‘Back then he was a young man like we are, and it wasn’t a trowel he was holding in his hand,’ Magnus muttered.

Their conversation faltered even more.

Less than an hour had passed when a completely different Arn Magnusson stepped through the door. His face was rosy from a hot bath, his blond hair that had been a matted gray mass of mortar and dirt was slicked back shiny and clean, and his face was now free of whiskers so that the white scars gleamed even more clearly than when they first saw him. But this was not what had changed him most.

His chain mail was of a foreign type, shining like silver and clinging to his body like cloth. On his feet he wore a type of steel shoes that none of the four had ever seen before, and spurs of gold glittered at his heels. He wore the Folkungs’ surcoat over his chain mail, and at his side hung a long, narrow sword in a black scabbard with a cross stamped on it in gold. On a chain from his left shoulder dangled a gleaming helmet.

‘The horses have been brought out to the courtyard,’ he said curtly, motioning to them to get up and follow him.

Outside, the thralls stood holding the reins of five horses. Their retainers were already mounted and waiting a short distance away.

Arn strode straight over to a black horse with a silver mane and mounted it in a single leap as the horse turned and set off at a trot. It all seemed to happen in one fluid movement.

Just outside the barnyard Arn wheeled his horse around, and it reared on its hind legs as he drew his long flashing sword and shouted something in a foreign language. The many foreigners responded with shouts and cheers.

‘He who judges too soon judges himself,’ said Torgils knowingly to Magnus as they hurried to mount their horses and catch up with Arn.

Magnus was just as confused by what he now saw as he was at his first meeting with his father. The man riding ahead
of him was not the same one who had met him with the trowel in his hand.

The four urged their horses on until they came up alongside Arn, the way equal brothers ride through the land. Now they saw that it was not merely a white cloth covering his horse like those who lacked their own clan’s coat of arms. On both hind-quarters shone a great red cross, the same as that on Arn’s white shield. They knew what that meant even though none of them had ever actually seen a Templar knight in person.

They rode for a long while in silence, each man subdued by his own embarrassment. Arn made not the slightest move to start a conversation to help them out of this difficulty. He thought he had a good idea what their expressions had meant when they saw him
working like a thrall
, as they probably would have said in their language. But he had been so young when he was sent to Varnhem cloister that he hadn’t had time to develop such pride. And yet he had a hard time imagining that he would have turned out like these young men even if he had grown up outside the cloister walls along with Eskil.

Then Magnus came riding up beside him and asked timidly about the long, light sword they all had seen when he saluted farewell to the farm folk.

‘Hand me your sword and take mine and I’ll explain,’ said Arn, drawing his sword in a lightning-quick motion and holding it out with his iron glove around the blade by the hilt. ‘But be careful of the blade, it’s very sharp!’

When Arn took the Nordic sword in his hand he swung it a few times and nodded to himself with a smile.

‘You’re still forging in iron that you bend back and forth,’ he said before he explained.

Magnus’s sword was very beautiful, he admitted at once. It also lay well in the hand. But it was too short to use
from horseback, demonstrating with a swift downward slash. Yet the iron was too soft to cut through the modern chain mail and would easily get stuck in the enemy’s shield. The edge was far too dull, and after a few blows against another man’s sword or shield it wouldn’t be of much use. So the important thing was to win quickly, and then go home and whet the blade anew, he said in an attempt to jest.

Magnus took some tentative swings with his father’s sword and then cautiously felt the edge. He flinched when he cut himself. As he was about to hand back the sword, his eyes fell on a long inscription in gold that was impossible to read. He asked what it meant, whether it was only for decoration or something that made the sword better.

‘Both,’ said Arn. ‘It’s a greeting from a friend and a blessing, and one day, but not today, I’ll tell you what it says.’

The sun was on its way up to its zenith, and Arn surprised his young companions by leaning back in the saddle and untying his mantle, which he slung over his shoulders. Arn told the wondering youths that if it was heat they wanted to protect themselves from, they should do as he did. They all hesitantly did the same, except for Erik jarl, who had ermine lining his mantle and thought the heat was bad enough without wrapping himself in fur. By the time they reached Askeberga resting place late that afternoon, he was the one who had sweated most.

On the day of the maidens’ celebration at Husaby the entire royal estate was transformed into an armed camp. At least that was Cecilia’s impression, and it made her even more agitated to hear the sound of horses’ hoofs, clanging weapons, and rough male voices everywhere. A dozen retainers had been sent from Arnäs, and more than twice as many warriors had been brought from the villages that were subject to Arnäs.
A ring of tents sprouted up around Husaby, groups of riders searched through the oak woods far and wide, and scouts were sent out in every direction. Nothing must happen to the bride before she was safely under feather-bed and covers.

During the weeks at Midsummer when Cecilia felt like a guest on her own land she had spent most of her time in the weaving chamber with old Suom. Their friendship, which had developed after such a brief time, was not usual between a thrall and an unmarried noblewoman. Suom could perform miracles with her loom, making the sun and moon, images of the Victorious Bridegroom, and various churches appear as if in their actual settings, with some close and some far away. From Riseberga Cecilia had brought some of the dyes she had worked with for many years, and a sort of blended linen and woollen yarn. Suom said she had never seen such lovely colours, and everything she had done in her life would have been so much better if she’d had this knowledge from the start. Cecilia explained the origin of the dyes and how to boil and blend them; Suom showed with her hands how to weave figures right into the cloth.