Birth Of the Kingdom (2010) (8 page)

‘God’s peace unto you, Ibrahim Abd al-Malik and Ibrahim Yussuf, you who here in the land of the infidel must be called Abraham and Joseph.’ Arn greeted them with a bow. ‘I hope the food from my home was to your liking.’

‘The lamb was fat and delicious, and the water very cold and fresh,’ replied the older of the two.

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Arn. ‘Now it is time to work. Gather the brethren!’

Soon a strange procession of foreign men began walking around the walls of Arnäs, pointing and gesticulating and arguing. They agreed on some things, but other matters had to be investigated further before they could reach a consensus. Accuracy was required to build a fortress that could not be taken by storm by an enemy. The soil around the walls had to be examined with test digs. Much had to be measured and calculated, and the many waterways around Arnäs also had to be measured and inspected closely so that the men could determine the course of the new moats around the walls. The marsh that divided the fortress out on the point from the mainland was a big advantage, and it was important not to drain the area or unintentionally dam it with dikes. Considering the present condition of the soil, it would be impossible to roll up siege towers or catapults to the fortress. All such heavy equipment would sink helplessly into the waterlogged ground. So an important part of the fortress’s defence was provided by nature itself, as He who sees all and hears all had created it.

When Arn thought that he had explained his thoughts and desires sufficiently as to what the master builders would need to test and calculate, he took the two physicians over to his father’s little cookhouse. On the way he stressed to them that here in the North their names were to be Joseph and Abraham and nothing else. They were the same names in both the Bible and in the Holy Koran; only the pronunciation was different. The two physicians nodded that they understood, or at least were resigned to this decision.

As Arn expected, his father was already awake when they entered his chamber. Herr Magnus tried to prop himself up on his healthy elbow, but it was stiff, and Arn hurried over to help him.

‘Take out those foreigners for a minute, I have to piss,’ Herr Magnus said to him in greeting. Arn was so filled with joy at hearing his father speak clearly that he was not bothered by this brusque way of saying good morning. He asked the two physicians to leave the room for a minute, and then found the pisspot and clumsily helped his father attend to his needs.

When it was done he lifted his father over into the chair with the dragon coils and asked the physicians to come back inside. They repeated their examination from the day before and whispered occasionally to Arn. He translated what was said, although he skipped most of the circumlocutions and drawn-out courtesies that were so characteristic of the Arabic language.

What had befallen Herr Magnus came as a result of blood that was too thick becoming caught in the brain. When this complaint did not lead to immediate death, which sometimes happened, then there was good reason to hope. Some people healed completely, others almost completely, and others so well that only a few signs of illness remained. However, this had nothing at all to do with the old man’s wits; only ignorant people believed such a thing.

What was needed now, besides certain restorative herbs that first had to be prepared and brewed together, were fortifying prayers and exercise. The paralysed muscles had to be put into motion one by one, but great patience was required. As for his speech, there was only one exercise, and that was to speak, which was surely the easiest demand.

On the other hand, he must never creep away to shame and darkness and stop speaking or moving. That would just make matters worse.

Yussuf, the younger of the two medical men, went outside for a moment. He came back with a round stone the size of half a fist and gave it to Arn. Then he explained that within
a week, Sir Al-Ghouti’s honoured father had to learn to lift the stone with his weak left hand over his lap and place it in his healthy right hand. Each time he failed he had to pick up the stone with his good hand, place it back in the sick one, and start over. He must not give up. With determination and prayer much could be accomplished. In a week the next exercise would begin. Most important were practice and a strong will; the restorative herbs were secondary.

That was all. The two physicians bowed first to Arn and then to his father and left without another word.

Arn put the stone in his father’s left hand and explained the exercise again. Herr Magnus tried but dropped the stone at once. Arn then put it back in his hand. And his father dropped it again and angrily hissed something. Arn heard only the words ‘foreign men.’

‘Don’t speak that way to me, Father. Say it again in clear words. I know that you can, just as I know that you understand everything I say,’ said Arn, looking him sternly in the eye.

‘It’s no use…listening to…foreign men,’ his father said then, with such an effort that his head trembled a bit.

‘You’re wrong about that, Father. You proved it yourself just now. They said that you would get your speech back. And you spoke, so now we know that they were right. In medicine these men are among the best I encountered in the Holy Land. They have both been in service with the Knights Templar, and that’s why they are here with me now.’

Herr Magnus did not reply, but he nodded to show that he agreed that for the first time in three years he was wrong.

Arn put the stone back in his father’s left hand and said almost as a command that now he must practice, as the physicians had told him to do. Herr Magnus made a halfhearted attempt but then grabbed the stone with his right
hand, raised it straight out over the floor, and dropped it. Arn picked it up with a laugh and put it back in his father’s lap.

‘Tell me what you want to know about the Holy Land and I will tell you, Father.’ Arn knelt down before Herr Magnus so that their faces were close together.

‘Can’t sit…long…like that,’ said Herr Magnus with difficulty, though he tried to smile. His smile was crooked because one corner of his mouth drooped.

‘My knees are more tempered by prayer than you will ever know, Father. In the Holy Land a warrior of God also has to do a great deal of praying for help. But tell me now what you want to know about, and I will tell you.’

‘Why did we lose…Jerusalem?’ asked Herr Magnus, at the same time moving the stone halfway to his good hand before he dropped it.

Arn carefully placed the stone back in his weak hand and said that he would tell him how Jerusalem was lost. But only on the condition that his father practiced with the stone while he listened.

It was not difficult for Arn to begin his story. When it came to the Lord’s inscrutable ways there was nothing he had brooded over as much as the question of why the Christians had been punished with the loss of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre.

It was because of their sins. That answer now seemed clear to him. And then he gave a detailed account of those sins. He told the story about a patriarch of the Holy City of Jerusalem who had poisoned two bishops to death, about a whoring queen mother who had installed first one and then the other of her newly arrived lovers from Paris as supreme commander of the Christian army, about greedy men who were said to fight for God’s cause but merely grabbed things
for themselves; they stole, murdered, and burned, only to return home as soon as their purses were stuffed, and with what they thought was forgiveness for their sins.

As Arn described the Christians’ sins, citing the worst examples he could think of, he would now and then pick up the stone and put it once again in his father’s left hand.

But when the catalogue of sins seemed to repeat itself, his father waved his good hand to put a stop to the list of miseries. Then he took a deep breath and gathered his forces for a new question.

‘Where were you…my son…when Jerusalem was lost?’

Arn was taken aback by the question, since he had grown agitated at the thought of evil men such as the patriarch Heraclius, men who sent others to their deaths at a whim or for the sake of their vanity, like the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Gérard de Ridefort, or scoundrels like the whoremonger commander, Guy de Lusignan.

Then Arn replied, truth be told, that he had been in Damascus, a captive of the enemy. Jerusalem was lost not after a brave stand at the walls of the city; Jerusalem was lost in a foolish battle at Tiberias, when the entire Christian army was led to its death by fools and whoremongers who knew nothing of war. Few prisoners had survived; of the Knights Templar there were only two.

‘You…came home…rich?’ Herr Magnus put in.

‘Yes, that’s true, Father. I came home and I am rich, richer than Eskil. But it’s because I was a friend of the Saracens’ king.’ Arn had answered truthfully but soon regretted it when he saw anger flare up in his father’s eyes.

Herr Magnus lifted the stone in a single motion from his left to his right hand and then returned it to his sick hand, so that he could raise his good hand in a gesture cursing this son who was a traitor and had thereby grown rich.

‘No, no, that was not how it happened at all,’ Arn lied
hastily to calm his father. ‘I just wanted to see if you could move the stone from one hand to the other. Your anger gave you unexpected strength. Forgive me this little trick!’

Herr Magnus relaxed at once. He looked down in surprise at the stone, which was already back in his sick hand. Then he smiled and nodded.

Eskil was evidently not in a very good mood, even though he was doing his best not to show it. Not only would he have to ride up to the stone quarry and back, which would take this whole hot summer day and a good bit of the evening, but he no longer felt like the lord of his own house, as he had grown accustomed to being for so many years.

The scaffolding had already been erected along the wall at Arnäs, and more lumber was being brought from the woods by people who’d been set to work without asking his permission. Arn seemed to have become a stranger in many ways. He apparently didn’t understand that a younger brother could not usurp the place of his older brother, or why a Folkung in the king’s council had to travel with a sizable armed guard even though there was peace in the kingdom.

Behind them rode ten men fully armed, wearing as Arn did unbearably hot chain mail under their surcoats. Eskil himself had dressed as if riding to hunt or to a banquet, with a short surcoat and a hat with a feather. The old monk rode in his monk’s habit of thick white wool, which must have made the journey hard to bear, though his face revealed no
sign of it. But he didn’t look happy, since he’d had to roll his habit up to his knees so that his bare calves were visible. Like Arn he was riding one of the smaller, foreign horses that were so restless.

On the lower slopes of Kinnekulle they reached pleasant shade as they rode in under the tall beech trees. This put Eskil instantly into a better mood, and he thought that now was the time to start discussing the good sense or lack thereof in all the construction going on. In his many years in business he’d learned that it was unwise to dispute even trifles when one was too hot or too thirsty or in a bad mood. Things would go better in the cool shade of the trees.

He urged on his horse to come up alongside Arn, who seemed to be riding with his thoughts far away, surely farther off than any stone quarry.

‘You must have ridden during hotter summer days than this, I suppose?’ Eskil began innocently.

‘Yes,’ Arn replied, obviously tearing himself away from quite different thoughts. ‘In the Holy Land the heat in summer was sometimes so great that no man could set his bare foot on the ground without burning himself badly. Riding in the shade like this is like riding in the pastures of Paradise in comparison.’

‘Yet you insist on dressing in chain mail, as if you were still riding out to battle.’

‘It’s been my custom for more than twenty years; I might even feel cold if I rode dressed like you, my brother,’ said Arn.

‘Yes, that might be so,’ said Eskil, now that he had turned the conversation onto the desired track. ‘I suppose you’ve seen nothing but war ever since you left us as a youth.’

‘That’s true,’ said Arn pensively. ‘It’s almost like a miracle to ride in such a beautiful country, in such coolness, without refugees and burned houses along the roads, and without
peering continually into the woods or glancing to the rear for enemy horsemen. It’s hard enough just to describe to you how that feels.’

‘Just as it’s hard for me to describe to you how it feels after fifteen years of peace. When Knut became king and Birger Brosa his jarl, peace came to our land, and there has been peace ever since. You ought to keep that in mind.’

‘Indeed?’ said Arn, casting a glance at his brother, because he sensed that this conversation was about more than sunshine and heat.

‘You’re imposing great expenses on us now with all your construction,’ Eskil clarified. ‘I mean, it might seem unwise to prepare for war at such cost when peace prevails.’

‘As far as the expense goes, I brought the payment with me in three coffers of gold,’ Arn retorted.

‘But we’re losing great sums on all the stone we’re now using for ourselves instead of selling. Why have war expenses when there is peace?’ Eskil said patiently.

‘You’ll have to explain yourself better,’ said Arn.

‘I mean…it’s true that we own all the quarries. So we don’t need to spend silver for the stone you want to use. But in these years of peace, many stone churches are being built all over Western Götaland. And much of the stone that’s needed comes from our quarries.’

‘And if we take stone for our own use we’ll lose that profit, you mean?’

‘Yes, in business that’s how one has to think.’

‘That’s true. But if we didn’t own these quarries, I would have paid for the stone in any case. Now we can save that expense. One also has to think like that in business.’

‘Then the question remains whether it’s wise to spend so much wealth building for war when there is peace,’ Eskil sighed, displeased that for once he was making no headway
with his explanations of how everything in life could be calculated in silver.

‘In the first place, we’re not building for war but for peace. When there is war one has neither the time nor the money to build.’

‘But if war
doesn’t
come,’ Eskil argued, ‘then haven’t all these efforts and expenses been to no avail?’

‘No,’ said Arn. ‘Because in the second place, no one can see into the future.’

‘Nor can you, no matter how wise you are in all matters concerning war.’

‘That’s quite true. And that’s why it’s the wisest course to build strong defences while we have time and peace prevails. If you want peace, prepare for war. Do you know what the greatest success of this construction would be? If a foreign army never pitches camp outside Arnäs. Then we will have built our defences as we should.’

Eskil was not entirely convinced, but a seed of doubt had been sown. If they could truly look into the future and see that the time of war was past, then strengthening their fortifications as Arn planned would not be worth all the effort and silver.

As things now stood in the kingdom, it looked as though the time of war was indeed past. Going back to the very beginning of the sagas there had never been a longer peace than under King Knut.

Eskil realized that he now wanted to exclude war as a means to be used in the struggle for power. He would rather see the sort of power that came from putting the right sons and daughters into the right bridal beds, and he would rather see the wealth created by trade with foreign lands as a protection against war. Who would want to demolish his own business? Silver was mightier than the sword, and men who
had married into each other’s clans were loath to take up the sword against each other.

This was the wise manner in which they had sought to arrange things during King Knut’s reign. But no one could be completely secure, because no one could see into the future.

‘How strong can we make the castle at Arnäs?’ he asked, emerging from his long reverie.

‘Strong enough that no one can take it,’ replied Arn confidently, as though it were a given. ‘We can make Arnäs so strong that we could house a thousand Folkungs and servants within the walls for more than a year. Not even the most powerful army could endure such a long siege outside the walls without great suffering. Just think of the cold of winter, the rains of autumn, and the wet snow and mud of spring.’

‘But what would we eat and drink for so long a time?’ Eskil exclaimed with such a terrified expression that Arn had to give him a broad smile.

‘I’m afraid that the ale would be gone after a couple of months,’ said Arn. ‘And towards the end we might have to live on bread and water like penitents in the cloister. But we’d have a water supply within the walls if we dug a couple of new wells. And the advantage of grain and wheat, the same as dried fish and smoked meat, is that they can be stored for a long time in great quantities. But then we’d have to build new types of barns out of stone, which would keep all moisture out. Storing up such supplies is as important as building strong walls. If you then keep strict accounts of what you have, it’s possible that you might even be able to brew new ale.’

Eskil felt instant relief at these last words from Arn. His suspicion began to change into admiration, and with increased interest he asked how war was conducted in France and the Holy Land and Saxony, and in other countries that had bigger
populations and greater riches than they did up here in the North. Arn’s replies took him into a new world, in which the armies consisted mostly of cavalry and in which mighty wooden catapults hurled blocks of stone against walls that were twice as high and twice as thick as the walls of Arnäs. Finally Eskil’s queries grew so importunate that they stopped to take a rest. Arn scraped away leaves and twigs from the ground next to a thick beech tree and smoothed out the area with his steel-clad foot. He bade Eskil sit down on one of the tree’s thick roots and called to the monk, who bowed and then took a seat next to Eskil.

‘My brother is a man of affairs who wants to create peace by using silver. Now we have to tell him how to do the same thing with steel and stone,’ Arn explained. He drew his dagger and began drawing a fortress in the brown dirt he had smoothed out.

The fortress he drew was called Beaufort and was located in Lebanon, in the northern reaches of the kingdom of Jerusalem. It had been besieged more than twenty times for varying periods, several times by the most feared Saracen commanders. But none had been able to take it, not even the great Nur al-Din, who once made the attempt with ten thousand warriors and kept at it for a year and a half. Both Arn and the monk had visited the fortress of Beaufort and remembered it well. They helped each other recall the tiniest details as Arn sketched in the dirt with his dagger.

They explained everything by turns, starting with the most important facts. The location was crucial, either up on a mountain like Beaufort or out in the water like Arnäs. But no matter how good the position for defensive war, they needed to have water inside the walls, not a spring outside that the enemy could find and cut off.

Equally important as access to water and a good position was the ability to store sufficiently large supplies of food,
most importantly grain for bread and fodder for the horses. Only then could they begin to think about the construction of the walls and moats that would prevent the enemy from raising siege towers or bringing up trebuchets to fling stones and offal into the castle. And the next most important thing was the placement of the towers and firing positions so that they could cover all the angles along the walls with as few archers as possible.

Arn drew towers that protruded beyond the walls on every corner, explaining how from such towers they could shoot along the walls and not merely outward. In this way they could minimize the number of archers needed up on the ramparts, which would be a great advantage. Better shooting angles and fewer archers were essential.

Here Eskil interrupted, a bit reluctant to show his ignorance at not understanding the advantage of having fewer archers, which seemed to be a given for Arn and the monk. What did they gain by reducing their forces atop the walls?

Endurance, Arn explained. A siege was not like a three-day banquet. The point was to endure, not to let weariness reduce their vigilance. Those who laid siege to a castle wanted to take it by storm in the end, if not by negotiation. The besiegers could choose any time at all: after a day, a week, or a month; in the morning, at night, or in the broad daylight of the afternoon. Suddenly they would all appear at the walls with siege ladders, coming from every direction simultaneously, and if they had been diligent in hiding their intentions the defenders would be taken completely by surprise.

That was the decisive moment. Then it would be crucial that the defenders positioned up on the walls would have been on duty only a few hours. And that two-thirds of the defending force were rested or sleeping. When the alarm bell rang it should not take many seconds before all those who had rested
were at their battle stations. If they practiced this several times, the defensive force of the castle would increase from one-third to full force in the same time it took the attackers to bring forward their siege ladders. So sleep was an important part of their defence. With this arrangement they also saved many sleeping berths, since a third of the defenders were always on the walls. And they also had a spot warmed up when they came down from duty.

But back to the fortress of Beaufort. It was indeed one of the strongest in the world, but it was located in a country where it was important to defend against the mightiest armies in the world. It would take ten years to build such a castle at Arnäs, and it would entail much extra work for no good purpose. Or, as Arn explained with a glance at Eskil, it would involve spending too much silver. A war such as that in the Holy Land, with such armies, would never come to Arnäs.

Arn erased the picture of Beaufort with his foot and began to draw Arnäs as it would one day become, with a wall enclosing more than twice the present area. The entire tip of the point would be fortified, and where the point turned into marshland a new gate would be built, but higher up on the wall. Then they would also have to build an equally high ramp of stone and earth with a moat between the wall and the bridgehead on the other side. In this way no one would be able to bring up battering rams against the gate, which would be much weaker than the stone walls no matter how strongly it was constructed. A gate at ground level, like they had now, was an invitation for the enemy to hold a victory feast.

If all this was done according to plan, Arn assured them that with less than two hundred men inside he would be able to defend Arnäs against any existing Nordic army.

Eskil then asked about the danger of fire, and both the
monk and Arn nodded and said it was a good question. Arn started drawing again, describing how the courtyards inside the walls would be paved in stone, and all the sod roofs would be replaced with clay slate. Everything flammable would be replaced with stone, or in the event of siege they would be protected by ox-hides that would constantly be kept wet.

And these were just the ‘defensive’ measures that needed to be taken, Arn continued eagerly now that he saw he had captured Eskil’s interest. The other part was to mount an attack themselves. It was best to do that with troops on horseback, and long before the enemy began a siege. It would be an immense and slow undertaking to move an army to lay siege to Arnäs. On the way there the enemy’s supply column could be attacked by mounted troops on horses much faster than their own, and this alone would take a toll on the enemy’s strength and will to fight.