Birth Of the Kingdom (2010) (28 page)

In people’s minds, honey was the very opposite of wounds and pain, just as salt was the opposite of sweet. And since salt in a wound was what caused the most pain and harm, many believed in the honey remedy. It was also said that a thick layer of honey applied to a nasty gash did provide some relief in the beginning. But after a short time, the wound would get even worse and start to putrefy.

All of the Saracen builders were sitting together at the second long table closest to the bridegroom’s seat. Arn had seen to it himself that they were placed there, since he wanted everybody to see that they were being honoured for their work. He had also been careful to ask Erika Joarsdotter more than once to provide water in the clay tankards at that section of the long table; the house thralls were also told not to serve any pork to these foreigners. And he wanted to sit close to his builders in case any quarrels should arise.

And now it looked as if some sort of trouble was indeed brewing down there, although from this distance he couldn’t hear what the row was about. Arn cast a glance at Knut, as if to indicate that it was about time for him to go out and relieve himself, and then he jumped down behind the groom’s dais and headed toward the door, until he stopped near the Saracens, as if in response to the good wishes they wanted to offer him. And they did indeed express their congratulations as soon as he approached, and their quarreling quickly died out.

Arn felt unworthy, both in the eyes of the Saracens and in his own eyes, dressed as he was in the vain Frankish attire,
which rustled under his mantle with every move. He also thought he could see a hint of derision tugging at the mouths of the builders, even though they did their best to hide it. He asked them candidly, following the Nordic manner rather than the Arab way, what the discord had concerned but received evasive answers that some of the gifts of the table might be unclean food.

He wanted to put a swift end to this dissension before rumours about these Franks who would not eat pork spread through the entire hall. There was only one way to win the immediate respect and loyalty of the Saracens. As if he were merely reciting passages from some ordinary foreign verse, he spoke to them with a smile, but using God’s own words.

‘In the name of God the Beneficent and the Merciful!’ he began, and silence fell over the table at once. ‘Hear the first verse of sura Al Maidah!
Believers! Fulfil your obligations according to the agreements you have made! Permissible food for you is meat from all plant-eating animals. Or why not God’s own words from sura Al Anam? Eat of all food over which God’s name has been pronounced, if you believe in His message. Why should you not eat of food over which God’s name has been pronounced, since you have clearly been told what He has forbidden except in a dire circumstance? Many people mislead others by what they in their ignorance believe to be right or wrong. Your Lord knows best who oversteps his commandments!
’

Arn needed say no more, nor did he have to explain how these words were meant to be understood. He gave a friendly nod, as if musing about something, as if he had simply recited some worldly verses to amuse his friends and fortress builders from the Holy Land. Then he calmly returned to his place, and more attention was paid to the most beautiful of all Folkung mantles in the land than to a bridegroom’s unexpected decision to recite verses.

At the Saracens’ table not a single spiteful grumble was heard for the rest of the evening.

As soon as King Knut began to get drunk, all honey was stripped from his speech and instead he started in on what was foremost on his mind. First he said that it was of greatest importance for Arn to be reconciled with his paternal uncle, Birger Brosa. Then he mentioned what he thought should be the next bridal banquet for the Folkungs, and that was when Arn’s son Magnus Månesköld went to the bridal bed with the Sverker daughter Ingrid Ylva, and the sooner the better. Arn immediately filled his throat with wine.

‘The bridal coverlet hasn’t even been placed over me and Cecilia, but you’re already hastening toward the next wedding. There is some purpose behind your words – what is it?’ asked Arn after choking on the wine that had gone down the wrong way.

‘That wily archbishop over there wants to make a Sverker, and more specifically Sverker Karlsson, the next king of the realm,’ replied Knut, lowering his voice even though no one nearby could hear them any longer over the great noise of the other guests.

‘First of all, power is now in the hands of you Eriks and us Folkungs,’ replied Arn. ‘And second, I don’t understand how we would appease the archbishop with my son’s wedding to a Sverker daughter.’

‘Nor is that the intention,’ replied the king. ‘But our intent is to avoid war for as long as possible. None of us wants to relive what we saw in this kingdom during so many years of war. It’s not the archbishop and his Danish friends that we need to appease, but rather the Sverkers. The more ties of marriage between us, the easier it will be to prevent another war.’

‘Those are the thoughts of Birger Brosa,’ said Arn with a nod.

‘Yes, they are Birger Brosa’s thoughts, and his wisdom has not failed us for more than twenty years. Sune Sverkersson Sik was the brother of King Karl. If the archbishop and his Danish friends want to go to war against us, they will have to win the support of Sune Sik. It will not be enough to have the backing of King Karl’s son Sverker, whom they are fattening up to be king down there in Roskilde. Sune Sik would no doubt think twice about drawing his sword against his own son-in-law Magnus Månesköld. That is our royal wish!’

‘We killed King Karl on Visingsö. His son Sverker escaped to Denmark, but now you wish us to tame him with a bridal ale. And thus it makes no difference whether I, as you and Birger Brosa first proposed, or my son Magnus should marry this Ingrid Ylva?’

‘Yes, that is the arrangement we wish to make!’

‘Have you asked Magnus what he thinks of this bridal ale that is planned for him?’ asked Arn quietly.

But the king merely snorted at such a question and turned to the house thralls to order more salt beef and ale. The king was known for eating enormous quantities of salt beef, preferring it to fresh meat, since salted meat went better with ale.

Since Magnus Månesköld was sitting less than an arm’s length from Arn, absorbed in a lively conversation with Erik jarl about some topic apparently dealing with spears and hunting, this question about another wedding could be quickly addressed. At least that was what Arn imagined when he leaned forward and placed his hand on his son’s arm. Magnus interrupted his conversation with his friend and turned around at once.

‘I have a question for you, my son,’ said Arn. ‘A simple question to ask, but perhaps more difficult to answer. Do you wish to enter into marriage with Ingrid Ylva, Sune Sik’s daughter?’

At first Magnus Månesköld was speechless with surprise at this question. But he soon gathered his wits and gave a clear answer.

‘If it is your wish, my father, and if it is also the king’s wish, you may be assured that I will immediately comply,’ he said with a slight bow of his head.

‘It was not my intention to command you but to ask you about your own wishes,’ replied Arn with a frown.

‘My wish is to do as my father and my king will, in everything that is within my power. Going to the bridal bed is among the easier services that you might demand of me,’ replied Magnus Månesköld, almost as if he were reeling off a prayer.

‘Would such a wedding make you happy or unhappy?’ Arn insisted in order to get past his son’s strange readiness to submit to their wishes.

‘Not unhappy, my father,’ said Magnus Månesköld. ‘I have seen Ingrid Ylva only twice. She is a fair maiden with a slender waist and the black tresses that many of the Sverker women have, as did my own father’s mother, from what I have heard. Her dowry would not be paltry, and she is of royal lineage. What more could I desire?’

‘A great deal more if you had such affection for another that you prayed for her well-being every evening and awoke each morning with a longing to see her,’ murmured Arn with his eyes lowered.

‘I am not like you, my father,’ replied Magnus Månesköld gently, and with an expression that was more sympathetic and loving than scornful upon hearing these strange questions, although he’d had to make an effort to answer them courteously. ‘The saga about the love between you and my mother is beautiful, and it is sung in the stables and fields. And this day has not diminished the beautiful song about faith, hope, and charity. I am truly happy about all of this.
But I am not like you, my father. When I go to my wedding, I will do as honour demands, what my clan and my father and my king require of me. I had not thought to do anything else.’

Arn fell silent, nodded, and then turned back to the king. But he stopped himself before saying what he had first intended, that a wedding with Ingrid Ylva could doubtless be arranged as soon as an agreement had been reached with Sune Sik. Several things made him hesitate. Foremost was his sudden insight that he himself would have to be the one to fetch the bride on such an occasion. He would be bringing home the daughter of the man whose brother he had helped to kill. Such matters required thought and prayer before acting hastily.

The evening was hardly more than half over before the brief darkness arrived and it was time for dancing. With drums, tin plates, and pipes accompanying them, the six white-clad maidens got up from the bride’s dais, took one another by the hand, and went in a line in between the tables, taking long sliding steps in time to the music. This was the farewell of youth to the maiden who would now leave her sisters behind. Seldom had anyone seen this dance with foreign minstrels and music, but most people thought the performance was even better.

When the maidens completed their first circuit around the tables, the music got faster and louder. For the third and last circuit the tempo increased even more, and some of the maidens had a hard time keeping their balance. According to custom, they were supposed to dance in a circle holding each other’s hands and supporting one another during the fastest steps, but the hall at Arnäs was much too crowded for them to follow this tradition.

After completing three rounds, all the maidens stopped
before the bridal seat, gasping and with flushed faces. They then invited Cecilia Rosa, the queen, and Ulvhilde Emundsdotter to come and join them. With Queen Blanca in the lead, followed by Ulvhilde and then the bride, the women slowly proceeded around the hall and out the door.

As soon as the doors were shut, shouts for more ale resounded from all directions, and there was a great tumult and murmuring; it was hard for anyone to hear even the person sitting right next to him without shouting.

No one had finished off more than a tankard before old Herr Magnus stood up. Supported by his son Eskil, he went over to the groom’s dais. Holding out his hand, he invited his son Arn to come with him, then the king, Erik jarl, Magnus Månesköld, and also the monk.

Accompanied by shouts of joy and well wishes, including some brazen remarks of the type brought on by too much ale, Arn slowly and with manly dignity walked through the hall, last in the group of men led by the king.

Out in the courtyard all of the guests were now standing atop the tables and benches in order to watch the escorting of the groom to the bridal bed. Torchbearers fell in on both sides of the short procession.

It was not a long walk, just to the far end of the longhouse where the stairs led up to the bridal chamber.

Old Herr Magnus had difficulty climbing the groom’s stairs, but he was not about to admit defeat, and he brusquely refused all helping hands.

In the antechamber upstairs there was a great crush when everyone had come inside and began to undress Arn, a process that he at first tried to resist. His father jested that it was too late to turn back now.

They hung up his foreign garb and dressed him in a white, ankle-length linen shirt loosely fitted at the neck. Then the door to the bridal chamber itself could be opened.

There lay Cecilia in a long white shift with her hair unfastened and spread out around her and with her arms pressed to her sides. At the foot of the large bridal bed stood the queen, Ulvhilde, and the six bridesmaids. The king and Herr Magnus each took Arn by the arm and led him over to the bed, inviting him to lie down next to Cecilia. As he lay down, blushing with embarrassment as she was, he too pressed his arms to his sides. Then the men who had accompanied him went to stand at the foot of the bed with the women.

They all stood there for a long time without saying a word. Arn had no idea what was expected of him or of Cecilia, so he cast a nervous glance at her and asked a question that she was unable to answer. It seemed as if all their friends and kinsmen were waiting for something, although neither Arn nor Cecilia knew what that might be.

It seemed to both of them that they had spent an unbearable length of time in silence before they discovered the reason for the wait. It was the archbishop. They could hear his gasping breath on the stairs well before he appeared in the room, with a chaplain supporting him on either side.

Finally the time had come. The archbishop raised his hand and, still panting, gave them his blessing. The queen picked up one corner of the magnificent quilted coverlet, the king seized hold of the other, and together they gently drew it over Cecilia and Arn.

The escorting of the bridal couple had now been accomplished in the presence of twelve witnesses. Cecilia Rosa and Arn Magnusson were now husband and wife. According to church rules, until death did them part. According to the laws of Western Götaland and their ancestors, until such time as there was reason for them to part.

Their friends congratulated them and then, one by one, they bowed and left the bridal couple alone on their first night together.

The room was illuminated both by tarred torches set in the iron wall brackets and wax tapers. For a long time the two lay motionless in the bed, staring up at the ceiling and without speaking.

It had been a long journey to this bed, but now they were finally here, since it was God’s will and the Holy Virgin had made them a promise. And both of them had prayed for this moment for more than twenty years. But it was also because the peace and concord of the realm demanded it, and because both of their clans had decided that it would be so. The king and queen had placed the wedding coverlet over them. No couple could be declared husband and wife in a more decisive manner.