Birth Of the Kingdom (2010) (37 page)

Herr Magnus muttered that he would have been able to think of all this himself. It was a sad but well-known fact that Christmas ale presented a danger to all men of his age.

During the time that Arn was away at Arnäs, Cecilia had grown even more bewildered by the foreigners at Forsvik. At night there was a great deal of commotion evident inside their longhouse, and from the smell of meat roasting and bread baking, it was clear to everyone that constant feasting was going on. They disdained the bread to be found at Forsvik after the great baking that took place every autumn. Instead, they had built from clay their own ovens, which looked like big upside-down wasps’ nests. Every evening they baked their own bread shaped in big flat sheets. They got up late in the morning, and only slowly did they begin their work.

Cecilia could only guess at what this all meant, and she was inclined to think that it was Arn’s absence that had encouraged this sort of idleness from the foreigners. Although this was not true of all of them. The brothers Marcus and Jacob worked just as diligently as always, as did the two English fletchers, John and Athelsten. She had long considered asking Arn about this and other matters that she hadn’t really been able to understand. But the long winter nights seemed far away, in more than one sense. She had imagined that when the north wind whistled around the corners of the house, they would lie close together in front of the fire, and he would tell her about the many wondrous and horrible things in the Holy Land, and answer all her questions.

Ever since the time when they had gone out riding alone and Our Lady had gently shown them again the joyful rights
of the flesh which they had once misused but were now fully entitled to, their nights had been so delightful that Cecilia blushed to even think of them. And so there had been very little time for talk of serious matters in their bedchamber.

When Arn returned on the river, it turned out that he had brought not only young Torgils along with him but also more foreigners, including all the stonemasons from Arnäs. They looked so wretched in their tattered clothes, but they seemed to have other and better clothing packed in big bundles. They had broken camp at Arnäs and were going to spend the winter at Forsvik. Cecilia was a bit miffed that she hadn’t been told of this in advance, since she assumed that if this many free men came to Forsvik, they should be treated as guests. She grew almost angry when, with much laughter and shaking of heads, they all declined her attempts to welcome them with salt, ale, and bread. It was truly not the custom in Western Götaland to refuse such a greeting.

She was all the more puzzled on that first night after the new foreigners arrived to hear an ever greater commotion coming from the foreigners’ house. Arn replied curtly to her questions, saying that it was a celebration called Laylat al-Qadr, which meant ‘the power of the night.’ She had then innocently asked what sort of power this meant, and she went cold inside upon hearing that it was a celebration of Muhammed’s first vision.

Arn didn’t even notice her stony reaction. Grumbling sleepily, he had shown a greater interest in the joys of fleshly love than in anything else. And since he had already displayed such an inclination, she couldn’t very well jump out of bed to stamp her foot and say that right now she’d rather have a discussion about Muhammed. Instead, she soon found herself floating into his warm stream, and she forgot all else.

But two or three days later he asked her to put on her
finest attire for the evening, since they had been invited to a banquet. She asked where they would be going, but he replied that it was not far and they could easily walk there in their banquet garb. When she cautiously tried to find out whether he was jesting, he showed her his own clothing, which he had laid out on the bed, with the blue wedding mantle underneath.

Just before sundown, the brothers Marcus and Jacob Wachtian appeared, dressed for the banquet, along with Brother Guilbert, wearing his white Cistercian robes. They had come to fetch Arn and his wife for the celebration. Out in the courtyard the smoke from roasting meat was already blending with the aroma of exotic spices.

Cecilia had not been inside the guests’ longhouse since the time when Arn had shown it to her. But that was where they were all now headed, and when she stepped through the door, she could hardly recognize the place. Even more colourful rugs had been spread on the floor, and on the walls hung tapestries with the most fanciful star patterns. Benches had been arranged in a rectangle in the room, with heaps of cushions and pillows behind them. From the ceiling hung burning lamps made of copper and iron and coloured glass, and before the long hearth stood gridirons in which trout from Lake Vättern were being grilled.

The physician Ibrahim, who was dressed in a long coat made of shimmering material and a headdress made of a length of fabric wrapped many times around his head, received the guests at the door. He then led them to the place of honour in the row of benches and cushions closest to the west.

Artfully made copper pitchers were brought forth, along with glasses made at their own glassworks; all of them were lined up along the benches. Cecilia was about to sit down on the bench, but Arn showed her with a laugh that she should
kneel down among the cushions behind the long wooden bench. He also whispered to her not to touch either food or drink until someone else did so first.

They were waiting for the sun to set, and gradually the foreigners all took their places, except for a few who tended to the grilled fish, and old Ibrahim, who went out to the courtyard.

Much to her annoyance, Cecilia discovered that Brother Guilbert, the Wachtian brothers, and Arn all seemed able to cope with these unfamiliar customs and smells and showed no sign of discomfort. They talked and laughed quietly, speaking the language that Cecilia could now recognize as Frankish.

Arn soon noticed Cecilia’s confusion, and with an apology to the other men, he turned to her and began to explain.

It was a clear and star-strewn night, one of the first nights with frost during this mild autumn, and outside in the courtyard, Ibrahim was now carefully scanning the sky to the northwest. When darkness fell, he would soon catch sight of the slender crescent moon that foretold a new month, and then the celebration called Eid al-Fitr would begin, heralding the end of the month of fasting.

Cecilia was about to object that the fasting month was in the spring, not in October, but she stopped herself when she realized this was not in truth the time for a conversation about church customs.

Ibrahim came in from the courtyard and made an announcement in his incomprehensible foreign tongue. Everyone in the room immediately said a short prayer. Arn then grabbed the tin-plated copper pitcher sitting on the table in front of him and poured a glass, which he handed to Cecilia. Then he poured some for Brother Guilbert and the Wachtian brothers. Everyone else at the table did the same, raising their glasses and drinking greedily before pouring
another. Cecilia, who had been slower and more hesitant about raising the glass to her lips began coughing when she found that there was only water in the glass and not wine, as she had thought.

The meal consisted of roast mutton, goose, and trout, along with other small dishes that Cecilia didn’t recognize; all of the food was served on large, round wooden platters. Strange-looking instruments were played, and someone began singing a song; others quickly joined in.

Arn broke off a piece of the soft flat bread and showed Cecilia how to dip it into the meat sauce surrounding the mutton. When she did so, her mouth filled with a spicy taste that at first made her hesitate. After a moment she found it palatable, and after a few more minutes, she found it to be utterly delicious. The mutton was the most tender she had ever eaten, and the trout tasted entirely different, spiced with something that reminded her of cumin.

Arn amused himself by taking tidbits from various platters and putting them in Cecilia’s mouth, as if she were a child. When she tried to resist, he laughed and said it was merely a chivalrous way for a man to show affection for his wife or close friend.

At first all the foreigners ate quickly and voraciously. But after they seemed to have sated the worst of their hunger, most of the men leaned back on the cushions and ate more slowly. With their eyes half-closed, they seemed to be enjoying the melancholy music played by two men on stringed instruments that resembled those played by the Frankish minstrels at the wedding at Arnäs.

It didn’t take long before Cecilia also leaned back against the comfortable cushions which several men, bowing politely, had brought to support her back. She no longer felt so nervous, and she slowly partook of all the delicacies, merely raising an eyebrow when she noticed how much of the estate’s
honey had been used for the sweet that was served after the meat and fish. The dessert was small pieces of bread with shredded carrots and filled with hazelnuts, drenched in honey. All the foreign aromas and smells were somehow soothing and made her feel sleepy; she even began to take pleasure in the music, although it had sounded off-key at first. She started imagining herself in foreign lands. What made this banquet so different from those she was used to was the fact that everyone became more and more quiet as the evening wore on, just as the songs played on the stringed instruments became more yearning and sorrowful. No one started brawling, and no one vomited. She brooded a bit over these foreign ways, until she recalled that it was water they were drinking and not ale or wine. She dozed and dreamed more and more about this foreign world until Arn took her arm and whispered that it would be good manners for the two guests of honour to leave the banquet first instead of last.

He led her over to the door leading to the house
lavatorium.
There he took her hand, bowed, and said something in the foreign tongue that made all the men in the room stand up and bow deeply in reply.

The night air was cold and frosty, and it revived her at once, as if breaking a spell. She thought that this was going to be the first of the winter nights when Arn explained all the foreign customs to her.

When he blew some life into the fire and they crawled into their big bed, she fluffed up their pillows so that they could sit side by side and look into the flames. Then she asked him to begin his account; the first thing she wanted to know was how it was possible that they had come to welcome the worst enemies of Christendom as guests in a Christian home.

At first sounding a bit reluctant, he told her that these
Muslims, as the followers of Muhammed were called, had worked for the Christians in the Holy Land. They would have been killed by their own kind if they hadn’t fled with him to the North. The same was true for the Wachtian brothers, who were Christians from the Holy Land. Their workshop and their trade had been on Al Hammediyah, which was the biggest business district in Damascus. So the question of who was a friend and who was an enemy in the Holy Land was not solely determined by a person’s faith.

Cecilia found this incomprehensible, even though she offered only cautious objections.

Then he began his story, which would continue for many winter nights.

In the Holy Land there were great men whose eminence far exceeded that of all others. Arn was thinking in particular about two of them; the first was a Christian named Raymond of Tripoli, and some night he would tell Cecilia about him. But it was more important to speak of the other, for he was a Muslim and his name was Yussuf Ibn Ayyub Salah ad-Din. For the sake of simplicity, the Christians called him simply Saladin.

When Arn said the name of the worst enemy of Christendom, Cecilia involuntarily gasped. She had heard thousands of oaths, reeking of brimstone, pronounced over that name by nuns and priests.

Yet Saladin was his friend, Arn went on, undaunted by her expression of alarm. And their friendship had followed such a course over the years that not even the greatest of skeptics would see anything but God’s hand behind it.

It all started when Arn unintentionally saved Saladin’s life; upon closer examination, that could not have happened without God’s hand. Because why else would a Templar knight, one of God’s most devoted warriors and defenders
of His Tomb, be the one to save the man who in the end would crush the Christians to the ground?

After that they had met as foes on the battlefield, and Arn had triumphed. But a short time later, Arn’s life ended up in Saladin’s hands when the Muslim arrived with an invincible army at the fortress in Gaza where Arn was fortress master among the Templars. And Saladin had, in turn, saved Arn’s life.

Saladin had spared his life because of their friendship, and that was how he had become Saladin’s prisoner and negotiator.

That was during his last days in the Holy Land, when Jerusalem was already lost, as were most of the Christian cities. And Arn was Saladin’s prisoner but also occasionally his messenger and negotiator, as one of the worst villains that had ever set foot on the ground of the Holy Land arrived with an army to meet Saladin on the battlefield and recapture the Holy City of Jerusalem. This man, whose name was Richard Lionheart, a name that would live on in eternal infamy, had amused himself during the negotiations by beheading three thousand prisoners rather than accepting the last of the ransom that he had demanded for them, and rather than receiving back the True Cross for Christendom.

At that sorrowful moment Arn and Saladin had parted ways for all eternity, and Arn had received as a farewell gift fifty thousand besants in gold, which Richard had refused in favour of sating his thirst for blood.

And so it was that Arn could now afford to pay for the building going on at Arnäs as well as for the new church at Forsvik and everything else that was being constructed there.

And this was just a short version of the story, said Arn. Many winter nights would be required to give a fuller account.
And it might take the rest of his life to understand the meaning behind everything that had happened.

There he stopped and got up to put more wood on the fire. It was then he discovered that Cecilia had fallen asleep.