Birth Of the Kingdom (2010) (18 page)

‘Milady has nothing to apologize for. We have sworn to obey the king’s orders to the death, and until then we do not lead a hard life.’

‘You can see that I ride with a stirrup on each side, like a man,’ Cecilia went on. ‘Haven’t you wondered about this?’

‘Yes, I have, because it is most unusual for a wench, milady.’

‘I ride a great deal on my errands from Riseberga. I might even spend as much time on horseback as a royal guard,’ Cecilia continued innocently. ‘So I’ve sewn a woman’s outfit with two skirts, one around each leg. And over them I wear an apron. I look like a woman, but I can ride like a man. And you should know one thing. If the danger comes that you mentioned, I can flee faster than most of the guards here
with their heavy horses. If you want to protect me from attack, we mustn’t stand and fight but ride off as fast as we can.’

Finally Cecilia had said something that made Adalvard regard her as a person with her own thoughts and not as a pile of silver. Excusing himself politely, he rode off and spoke animatedly to some of his men, waving his arms. Those he talked to fell back and spread the word.

When he rode back to Cecilia he seemed pleased and more amenable to conversation than during the previous part of the journey. Then Cecilia saw that the ground had been prepared for what she really wanted to ask.

‘Tell me, Adalvard, my faithful defender, and as a man at the king’s Näs who knows so much more than a simple woman from the cloister, why should I, a poor woman from the weak Pål clan, be the target of foul play?’

‘Poor?’ Adalvard laughed and gave her a searching glance, as if to see whether she was jesting. ‘That may be the case now,’ he grumbled, ‘but soon there will be a wedding and as the wife of a Folkung a third of his property will become yours. You’ll soon be rich, milady. Anyone who kidnapped such a bride would also get rich from the ransom.’

‘Well, it gives me a safe feeling to have such powerful giants by my side,’ Cecilia replied, only half satisfied with what she had learned. ‘But that can’t be the whole story, can it? To protect me from poor highwaymen and kidnappers with poor weapons it shouldn’t take this many men. Wouldn’t it be enough that they saw our banner with the three crowns?’

‘Yes, that’s true, milady,’ said Adalvard. And enlivened by their conversation he continued to explain, as Cecilia had hoped he would.

‘I am of the clan of King Knut and his father Saint Erik. But my older brothers inherited all my father’s farms, so becoming a retainer was my fate. I’m not complaining.
Any man from the Erik clan knows how things stand in the kingdom when it comes to the struggle for power. Your life, milady, is in the centre of this struggle for power – as is your death.’

‘I don’t understand very much of the world of men,’ Cecilia said humbly. ‘So much the greater will be my pleasure at riding beside a member of the Erik clan if he can explain to me things that are beyond the comprehension of a cloister woman. What does my death or my life have to do with the struggle for power?’

‘Well, I can’t tell you anything that you won’t find out later anyway,’ said Adalvard, pleased to be the one who possessed the truth about life. ‘You should have become the abbess; then I could never have spoken to you as irreverently as I do now. But as abbess you would have sworn against the testament of the previous abbess, and then King Knut’s eldest son would have inherited the crown. But this is all something you already know, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is. But if that’s not going to happen, then why would any of the Sverkers wish me any harm?’

‘If they kill us all – you, milady, myself, and all my men – then every man in the kingdom would believe that it was the Sverkers who were responsible for the foul deed, even if it wasn’t true,’ Adalvard replied with sudden distaste. He regretted the turn the discussion had taken.

‘In that case wouldn’t the wisest thing be to kill Arn Magnusson?’ asked Cecilia without the slightest quaver in her voice.

‘Yes, it would. Everyone knows that we Eriks would gain from such a murder, because there would be no wedding between the two of you. You, milady, could become abbess even more quickly since both grief and loneliness would drive you to the cloister. But I swear that we’re thinking no such thing, because that would mean breaking our alliance with
the Folkungs, which has been sealed with many oaths. If the Eriks and the Folkungs start to feud, both clans will have ceded all power to the Sverkers.’

‘So now the Sverkers would most like to kill Arn Magnusson and make it look as though you Eriks were guilty of the deed,’ Cecilia filled in his thoughts. Her voice was firm, but she felt a lightning bolt strike her heart when she spoke the words.

‘That is true,’ Adalvard said with a smile. ‘If the Sverkers could kill Arn Magnusson and put the blame on us Eriks, they would gain a great deal. But who would they send to Arnäs or Forsvik to commit such a treacherous crime? Odin, who could make himself invisible? Or Thor, whose hammer could make the whole world rumble? No, there is no killer who can sneak up on Arn Magnusson in secret, you may rest assured of that, milady.’

Adalvard had a long laugh at his suggestion of Odin and Thor. Although these jests seemed ill-placed to Cecilia, she still found great comfort in them.

When they finally arrived at Riseberga, Cecilia went straight to her chambers and stood a long while with her hand on an abacus, taking in the scent of parchment and ink. A room full of documents had a special smell that was unmistakable, and she knew that later in life she would always be able to recall it.

But she still had a hard time grasping that this was really a moment of farewell. She had lived so long among these account books that in her heart she had imagined doing so for the rest of her life. No, she had imagined it as the only life available to her in this world, while Arn Magnusson belonged in the world of dreams.

Her farewell was difficult and a bit tearful. The two Sverker maidens who had been granted asylum at Riseberga, despite the fact that Birger Brosa later disapproved of this action,
wept more than the others. For they had stood closest to Cecilia and were the ones she had taught most lovingly about needlework, gardening, and bookkeeping. Now the two would be alone without the yconoma’s protection, and their hope that Cecilia would return as the new abbess had been crushed.

Cecilia consoled them both as best she could, assuring them that they could always send her messages and that she would stay informed about what was happening at Riseberga. But her words did not offer as much solace as she intended. Yet she promised to keep them in her thoughts.

Now Cecilia had to take her leave. She considered the abacus that she had made herself to be her own property, and so she took it with her. She owned a horse, saddle, and tack. She had paid out of her own salary for her winter mantle and boots lined with dog furs. Beyond this she owned only the clothing she was wearing at present and a few garments for feasts held at Näs.

When she and Cecilia Blanca were young they had worn the same size clothes. But now, with seven childbirths separating them, it was only Cecilia Rosa who could wear the same clothes as in her youth. It may not have been only the childbirths. At Näs there was a constant diet of pork, or even worse, salt pork, which required a great deal of ale. In the cloisters where Cecilia Rosa had mostly lived in recent years, anything resembling gluttony was forbidden.

She also owned one and a half marks in silver, the wages she had earned honestly during the time she had been yconoma at Riseberga as a free woman and not as a penitent. She took out the silver, weighed it, and made a note in the account book that she had now taken what belonged to her.

At that moment she realized how little she knew about her own poverty or wealth. It was as though she had long
been heading toward taking the cloister vows. Because of this she knew much more about each and every
örtug
owed to the cloister than she knew about any wealth she herself might possess.

When her father Algot died, he had left only two daughters as his heirs, Cecilia and Katarina. So each of them should have inherited half of the estates belonging to the clan around Husaby and Kinnekulle. But Katarina had been sent to Gudhem convent for her sins and there she had renounced all earthly possessions. Had she also renounced her inheritance? If so, to whom had it gone, to Cecilia or to Gudhem? And how much, in either case, did Cecilia own of the estates around Husaby?

She had never asked herself these questions. It was as though she had never thought of herself as the owner of worldly goods, merely as the administrator of the Church’s property.

The one and a half marks in silver that she held in her hand would be enough to buy a lovely mantle. But there was a Folkung mantle she had worked on for three years, the most beautiful of all, lined with marten fur. The lion on the back was sewn with gold and silver thread from Lübeck, and red Frankish thread had been used for the lion’s mouth and tongue. No mantle in the entire kingdom had such a brilliant sheen; it was the most magnificent work she had ever sewn in all her years at the convent. And she had never been able to conceal her dream from those around her, or from herself: to see this mantle worn by Arn Magnusson.

Such a mantle, she knew very well, was worth as much as a farm with both thralls and livestock. The mantle belonged to Riseberga cloister, even though she had sewn it with her own hands.

But it had been her dream; it could never be worn by any but a Folkung, and by no Folkung other than Arn. For a
long time she sat with the quill in her hand before she conquered her doubt. Then she wrote a promissory note for fifteen marks in silver, fanned the ink dry, and stuffed the note into the correct pigeonhole.

Then she went to the storeroom and found the mantle. She held it against her cheek and breathed in the strong scent that was meant to keep moths away rather than to promote sweet dreams of love. She folded it up and put it under her arm.

At the farewell mass she took Communion.

For young Sune Folkesson and his foster brother Sigfrid, the ride between Arnäs and Forsvik was like having their most fervent wish fulfilled.

Each was now riding one of the foreign horses; Sune on a roan with a black mane and tail, Sigfrid on a sorrel with mane and tail that were almost white. Sir Arn had carefully selected the two young stallions and tried them both out first, ridden them, and played with them before deciding which boy should have which horse. He had curtly but gravely explained that both horses were young, like their new owners, and that it was important for them to grow older along with their horses, that this was the beginning of a friendship that would last until death, for only death could separate them from a horse from Outremer.

Arn hadn’t spent much time explaining the difference between these horses and Nordic horses, perhaps because he could see in the eyes of his two kinsmen that they already understood. Unlike grown men in Western Götaland, the two boys realized at once that these horses were almost like fairy-tale horses compared with the Gothic horses that the retainers rode.

Sune and Sigfrid, like nearly all their contemporaries from clans with a coat of arms, had been riding horses almost
since they could walk; riding for them was like breathing or drinking water, something they no longer had to learn.

Until now, that is. Now they had to start over from scratch. The first difference they noted was the pacing. If they urged on these horses like a Nordic horse, the speed after only two or three leaps would be so dizzying that the wind filled their eyes with tears and swept their long hair straight back. The other difference they could see at once was the liveliness of their new steeds. Whereas a Nordic horse might take three steps to move sideways, these horses would take ten. This gave the rider the feeling of floating as if on water; he didn’t feel the movement but simply noted the change in position. Where a Nordic horse would move straight forward, following his head, these horses would move to the side or diagonally as if they were frolicking their way forward. It was a bit like taking a boat down rapids without really being able to steer; the slightest careless movement could lead to totally different results than those one intended.

To this extent it was like starting over, learning to ride all over again, since there were a thousand new possibilities to learn to control. The boys recalled how Sir Arn had done just that in the barnyard at Forsvik when he rode his horse with movements that looked impossible, toying with the guards as if they were kittens.

They were thirteen men riding through the forest, if Sune and Sigfrid could be counted as men. At Arnäs, Herr Eskil had given them each a small, faded blue mantle for which he had no more use; he and his brother had worn them when they were young. So now there were three men riding in blue Folkung mantles, with Sir Arn in the lead.

The foreigners had wrapped themselves in several layers of cloth and wore either headdresses made of thick bundles of cloth or strange pointed helmets with cloth around the bottom. The ones who wore such helmets were the best horsemen,
and they also carried peculiar curved swords, bows on their backs, and quivers at their hips.

The group rode in a loose circle formation, and in the centre was the flock of horses with no riders. It wasn’t easy to understand how this was done, but after only an hour it became clear that all the loose horses were following the slightest variation in course made by Sir Arn.

This cavalcade of horses toward Forsvik rode straight through the forest where there were no roads. It was hard to see how Sir Arn could be so sure of the direction in a trackless wood; now and then he glanced up at the sun, that was all. And yet toward the end of the day it turned out that he had ridden straight for the Utter ford on the River Tidan, just above where the Askeberga
ting
met. When the beech forest thinned out and the landscape opened, they could see the river below them like a long, glittering snake. And they approached it at precisely the spot where the horses could make their way across without difficulty.