Ян Гийу – The Templar Knight (страница 9)

They talked for a long time that night. At dawn, when Fahkr found his older brother - the glorious prince, the light of religion, the commander of the faithful in the Holy War, the water in the desert, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, the hope of the faithful, the man whom the infidels for all time would call by the simple name Saladin - he was sitting with his chin resting on his knees, huddled under his cloak which was wrapped around him, and staring into the dying embers.

The white shield with the evil red cross was gone, as was the Templar knight. Saladin wearily looked up at his brother, almost as if he had awakened from a dream.

‘If all our foes were like Al Ghouti, we would never win,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘On the other hand, if all our foes were like him, victory would no longer be necessary.’

Fahkr did not understand what his brother and prince meant but supposed it was mostly meaningless weary mutterings, as had happened so many times before when Yussuf stayed up too long and brooded.

‘We must head out; we have a hard ride to Al Arish,’ said Saladin, getting stiffly to his feet. ‘War awaits, we will soon be victorious.’

It was true that war awaited; that was as written. But it was also written that Saladin and Arn Magnusson de Gothia would soon meet again on the battlefield, and that only one of them would come away victorious.

TWO

Jerusalem was located in the middle of a world from which even Rome seemed a distant place. Farther away was the kingdom of the Franks, and almost at the ends of the earth, in the cold, dark North, lay the land of Western Götaland which was known to very few. It was said among learned men that beyond was nothing but dark forest stretching to the edge of the earth, inhabited by monsters with two heads.

Nevertheless the true faith had reached up here to the cold and the dark, mostly thanks to Saint Bernard, who in his mercy and love of humankind had found that even the barbarians up in the dark North had a right to salvation of the soul. It was he who sent the first monks to the wild, unknown lands of the Goths. Soon the light and truth had spread from more than ten cloisters among the Northmen, who were now no longer lost.

A convent located in the southern part of Western Götaland had the loveliest of all cloister names. It was called Gudhem, God’s Home, and it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The convent stood atop a hill, and from there could be seen the distant blue mountain Billingen, and if a person strained his eyes a bit, he might see the two towers of the cathedral in Skara. North of Gudhem glittered Hornborga Lake, where the cranes appeared in the spring before the pike began to play. Surrounding the cloister were farms and fields and small groves of oaks. It was a very peaceful and beautiful landscape and did not at all lead the mind to thoughts of darkness and barbarity. For the older woman who had made a substantial donation and travelled here to conclude her life in peace, the name of Gudhem sounded like a caress, and the region was the loveliest that an aging eye could see.

But for Cecilia Algotsdotter, who had been locked up at Gudhem at the age of seventeen because of her sins, the convent for a long time seemed a home without God, a place that was considered more of a hell on earth.

Cecilia was familiar with cloister life, and that was not what frightened her. She also knew Gudhem, because at various intervals in her life she had spent more than two years inside among the novices, young women who were sent to the convent by wealthy families to be disciplined and taught good manners before they were married off. She already knew how to read; she knew the Book of Psalms by heart and the words tumbled from her lips like running water, because she had sung every psalm more than a hundred times. So in this there was nothing new and nothing frightening.

But this time she had been consigned to convent life, and the sentence was harsh - twenty years. She had been sentenced together with her betrothed Arn Magnusson of the Folkung clan, because they had committed a grave sin when they united in carnal love before being married before God. It was Cecilia’s sister Katarina who had reported them, and the proof of their sin was such that no argument would avail. The day that the convent gate closed behind Cecilia, she was already in her third month. Her betrothed Arn had also been sentenced to twenty years, but he was to serve his time as a monk in God’s holy army in the far reaches of the Holy Land.

Over the portal of Gudhem convent there were two sandstone sculptures depicting Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise after the Fall, hiding their shame with fig leaves. The image was meant to be a warning, and it spoke directly to Cecilia as if it had been cut and chiselled and polished out of stone expressly for her sake.

She had been separated from her beloved Arn only a stone’s throw from this portal. He had fallen to his knees and sworn with the passion that only a seventeen-year-old youth can swear, and even upon his sword that was blessed by God. He vowed to endure all fire and war and promised to come back and fetch her when their penance was paid.

That was a long time ago now. And from Arn in the Holy Land she had heard not a word.

But what frightened Cecilia from the very start, when Abbess Rikissa dragged her in through the gate with a hard and undignified grip round her wrist, as if leading a thrall to her punishment, was that Gudhem had now become an utterly different place. It was not the same as when she had previously spent time here with the novices.

That is, on the surface Gudhem was still the place she knew, and only a few new outbuildings had been added. But inside much was changed, and she truly had good reason to feel fear.

The land for Gudhem had been donated from the royal holdings by King Karl Sverkersson. Consequently, the Abbess Rikissa belonged to the Sverker clan, as did most of the consecrated sisters and almost all the novices.

But when the pretender to the throne, Knut Eriksson, the son of Saint Erik Jedvardsson, returned from his exile in Norway to reclaim his father’s crown and avenge his murder, he himself had murdered King Karl Sverkersson out on the island of Visingö. And among the men who abetted him in this deed was his friend and Cecilia’s lover Arn Magnusson.

So in the world outside the cloister walls war now raged anew. On one side were the Folkung clan and the Erik clan with their Norwegian allies; on the other were the Sverker clan and their Danish allies.

Cecilia thus felt like a butterfly dragged into a hornets’ nest, and she had good reason to feel this way. Since most of the sisters belonged to the Sverker faction, they hated her and they showed it. All the novices hated her as well and did nothing to hide their animosity. No one spoke to Cecilia, even when talking was permitted. They all turned their backs on her.

In the early days it was possible that Mother Rikissa had actually tried to drive her to her death. Cecilia had come to Gudhem in the months when the turnips had to be thinned. It was hard, hot work out in the fields, and none of the elegant sisters or the novices took part.

Mother Rikissa had put Cecilia on bread and water from the very first day. At mealtimes in the refectorium Cecilia was seated alone at an empty table at the far end of the hall, where she had to sit silently. As if this were not punishment enough, Mother Rikissa had decreed that Cecilia had to work with the lay sisters out in the turnip fields, crawling along bit by bit with the baby kicking in her belly.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, or perhaps because Mother Rikissa was cross that Cecilia hadn’t lost her child from the hard labour, the young woman was sent for bloodletting once a week during her first and hardest time at the convent. It was said that bloodletting was good for one’s health, and that it also had a salutary effect that suppressed carnal desires. And since Cecilia had obviously fallen prey to such desires, she should have her blood let often.

As Cecilia crawled along in the turnip fields, growing ever paler, she constantly murmured prayers to Our Lady to protect her, forgive her for her sin, and yet hold Her gracious hand over the child she bore inside her.

Cecilia almost gave birth to her son out in the cold November mud in the turnip fields. It was near the end of the harvest time when she suddenly sank to the ground with a sharp cry. The lay sisters and the two supervisors who stood nearby to monitor virtue and silence during the work understood at once what was about to happen. At first they acted as if they thought nothing needed to be done. But the lay sisters would not stand for this; without uttering a word, even to ask permission, they hurried to carry Cecilia to the hospitium, the guest house outside the walls. There they laid her in bed and sent a messenger to fetch Fru Helena, who was a wise woman and one of Gudhem’s pensioners who had given a large donation to the convent.