Birth Of the Kingdom (2010) (32 page)

The stonemaster grew even more attentive when he heard this. For many years, as he said, he had carved the Virgin Mary in every conceivable situation: gentle and good, strict and admonishing, with Her dead Son, with Her Son as a babe, at the Annunciation by the Holy Spirit, on the road
to Bethlehem, before the star, in the manger, and in whatever other scenes could be imagined.

But God’s Grave? Then he would have to rethink the whole design. It would take the right man, and it would also take time to contemplate the design. But as to time, the stonemaster, whose name was Marcellus, unfortunately had commitments all over the land which would keep him occupied for a year and a half. Before that it would be impossible to leave without breaking contracts.

Sir Arn didn’t think that the delay would be any problem; it was more important that the work would be beautiful for all eternity, since what was carved in stone was meant to endure. So he agreed to hire the stonemaster.

Both Marcus and Jacob felt alarmed when they heard how hastily Sir Arn allowed himself to be persuaded to put down an advance, and a shamelessly large sum at that. But they saw no opportunity to interfere in the matter. The negotiation ended with Sir Arn paying the outrageous sum of ten besants in gold as an advance on one year’s work, and he promised another ten for each additional year the work would take. Stonemaster Marcellus was not slow in accepting this proposal.

On the return journey to Varnhem cloister in the early evening, it seemed at first that Sir Arn’s wife reproached him, although mildly, for his irresponsible way of handling silver and gold. He was not in the least fazed by this, but answered her with a happy expression and eager gestures; even for someone who did not speak Norse it was obvious that he was describing his grandiose plans.

Finally he began to sing, and then she could not help singing along with him. It was a beautiful song, and both brothers understood that it was churchly and not worldly.

In this way they approached the cloister of Varnhem with heavenly singers leading the way before the sun set and the
raw evening cold swept in. The brothers agreed that this journey had not only presented surprises, but also more good than either of them would have expected.

The next day their departure was delayed while Sir Arn’s wife did business buying parchment and also roses that she bought in wet leather sacks with earth inside, pruned down so that only the stalks stuck up from the packing material. They didn’t have to understand Norse to see that this woman was better than her husband at business. But they did have to wait while she and the cloister’s garden-master bargained over every little coin. Sir Arn made no move to intervene. At last his wife had in the cart the plants she wanted, and judging by the roses climbing up the walls of Varnhem in red and white, she had purchased much beauty for the adornment of Forsvik.

Between the bustling days of Bartelsmas, when the last of the harvest was brought in, and Morsmas, the summer returned briefly to Western Götaland with a week of stubborn south winds.

This time was just as busy for Cecilia as it was for Arn. Everything had to be harvested in the gardens, and then she had to try to save whatever she could. She toiled as hard as the thralls she had engaged to dig up the apple trees with their roots to replant them on the slope down toward Bottensjön. There the water would always be plentiful.

After supervising all the gardening work, she went to the Wachtian brothers at their workshop and asked about what they intended to start with and what would come later. She also persuaded them to accompany her to the smithies and pottery workshop to translate. Besides their own language and Latin the brothers had also mastered the completely foreign tongue that many of the men from the Holy Land spoke. They showed her arrow points of various types, some
long and sharp as needles to penetrate chain mail, some with broad cutting edges that were meant for hunting or the enemy’s horses, and others that served purposes she didn’t understand. She visited the sword smithy and the workshop where they made wire for chain mail. And she went to the glassworks where she asked which of the glass samples that were set up along a bench they might make at Forsvik and which were still beyond their skill. She went to the stable thralls and asked how much fodder a horse consumed, to the livestock barn and learned how much milk a cow gave, and to the slaughterhouse to ask about salt and storage barrels.

After each such visit she returned to her abacus and writing implements. The best thing about their visit to Varnhem was not the purchase of the famous Varnhem roses, but the fact that she had laid in a good stock of parchment for making her account books. It was accounting, after all, that she knew best, even better than gardening and sewing, because for more than ten years she had kept books and taken care of all the business at two cloisters.

Finally she had everything in order and knew down to the penny the state of the economy at Forsvik. Then she went to find Arn, although it was only early evening and he was just finishing up his work with the cooling houses next to the big stream. He was happy to see her. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his index finger as was his habit, and immediately wanted her to praise the finished cooling houses. She couldn’t say no but was surely not as effusive as he had thought she would be when she saw the big empty room clad in brick. Rows of empty iron hooks and rods hung there, waiting to hold food that they didn’t yet have. She pointed this out so sternly that he almost ceased his lively chatter.

‘Come with me to the accounting chamber and I’ll explain
everything to you, my beloved,’ she said with her eyes lowered. She was well aware that those words would soften him. But she also knew that they were true words and not merely the wiles of a woman. It was true that he was her beloved.

But that did not lessen the necessity of telling him the truth about all the foolishness she had discovered and could prove with numbers. She prayed to herself that he would have an understanding of such things, even if thus far he had shown no interest in anything other than building for the winter.

‘Look here, my love,’ she said, opening up the ledger to show how much was eaten and drunk each day by both humans and livestock at Forsvik. ‘This is what a horse needs in fodder every day. Here you see the total for a month, and here is what we have in our barns. So, sometime after Kyndelsmas in the midst of the bitterest cold of winter, we will have thirty-two starving horses. The meat we have slaughtered and can slaughter in the future will be gone by Annunciation Day. The consumption of lamb is such that we will have eaten it all before Christmas. The dried fish has not yet arrived. You can see that this is true, can’t you?’

‘Yes, these seem to be very good calculations. What do we have to do?’

‘With regard to feeding the people here, the dried fish must arrive as promised, preferably long before Lent. As far as meat is concerned, you have to hire some hunters, because there are plenty of deer and boars in the woods, and inside Tiveden Forest there is an animal as big as a cow that gives much meat. As for the horses, I assume you don’t want to see them slaughtered by Kyndelsmas.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Arn with a smile. ‘Each of those horses is worth more than twenty Gothic horses or more.’

‘Then we’ll have to buy fodder,’ Cecilia cut him off. ‘It’s not normal practice to buy fodder for animals, since everyone
usually takes care of his own. So you’ll have to tend to this matter at once – before the ice begins to form and the time comes when neither boat nor sleigh can reach us. The earlier you begin in the fall, the easier it should be to buy fodder, I should think.’

‘I agree,’ said Arn. ‘I’ll deal with that problem first thing tomorrow. What else have you discovered from your calculations?’

‘That we have spent enough silver to equal almost the entire value of Forsvik without any income to balance our expenses. The gold alone that you advanced the stonecutter in Skara would have kept us alive and fat for several years.’

‘You cannot count that gold in your sums!’ said Arn vehemently, but regretted it at once and smiled to appease her and excuse his temper. ‘I have enough gold to pay for everything having to do with the church in Forshem. It’s in a coffer by itself; it has nothing to do with us. We can count that church as already paid for.’

‘Well, that changes thing a great deal for the better, of course,’ Cecilia admitted. ‘You could have told me this earlier, then I wouldn’t have wasted so much ink. Because it’s also about time you told your wife how much we own, or rather how much
you
own, since I own Forsvik, which increases in value with each drop of sweat you spill.’

‘I own approximately one thousand marks in gold,’ Arn said in embarrassment, looking down at the wooden floor. ‘That does not include what it will cost to build Arnäs into an impregnable fortress, which shall be a salvation for us all someday. Nor do I count what I have put aside to pay for the church in Forshem.’

He squirmed when he said this last and still looked away, as if he were well aware that he had said something that no one with wit and sense would believe.

‘A thousand marks,’ Cecilia whispered as if awestruck.
‘A thousand marks in gold; that’s more than everything owned by Riseberga, Varnhem, and Gudhem combined.’

‘That may be true, my love,’ replied Arn softly, but it seemed as if he were more ashamed of his great wealth than happy about it.

‘Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?’ Cecilia asked.

‘I’ve thought about telling you many times, but it never seemed to be the right moment. It’s a long story that isn’t easy to understand, about how this gold came to be mine in the Holy Land. Once I got started I would have to finish the tale, and there is so much that needs to be finished before winter. Gold isn’t everything; gold won’t protect us from the cold, especially my friends from the warm countries. I hadn’t intended to keep this from you. I imagined a long, cold winter night with the north wind howling outside, with you and me lying in the glow of our hearth without the slightest draft reaching us underneath our featherbeds. That’s when I would like to tell you the whole story.’

‘If you wait until winter you will wait in vain,’ said Cecilia with a little smile that lightened at once the gloom that had settled over them at this talk of riches.

‘No, I look forward to the winter,’ said Arn, also with a smile.

‘That won’t prevent gold from offering poor protection against cold and hunger. As you said, tomorrow you must start buying fodder over in Linköping or wherever you can find it.’

‘I promise. What else have you found in the merciless logic of your numbers?’

‘I have found that you should buy or build your own boat to transport clay.’

‘How so?’ asked Arn, surprised for the first time in this conversation.

‘For making bricks it takes so much fresh clay each time
you fire them, that it isn’t worth the effort to ship the clay here first instead of moving the work to Braxenbolet,’ Cecilia went on. ‘But with the clay for making pottery it’s different. If you can get that sort of clay here, the potters can be kept busy all winter. It’s merely a matter of keeping the clay damp, yet warm enough so it won’t freeze.’

He looked at her with an astonished admiration that he couldn’t conceal, and she smiled back as if in triumph.

‘Don’t work anymore today,’ she said. ‘Stay with me. Let’s ride off together just for a while to enjoy the fruit of our labour. The evening is so mild.’

She went to change into her riding attire, but she frowned when she came out and saw him holding their woollen mantles over his arm as if to hide the long scabbard sticking out from under the cloth. But she didn’t say a word.

They went first to the stable, which was empty this time of year, since all the horses were in the pasture. A long row of saddles with foreign signs above them hung on the wall, and Arn chose two. He handed her the mantles when he hoisted the saddles onto his shoulder and led her out to the horse pasture. The sun was low in the sky, but it was still as warm as a summer day, and the breeze was like a mild caress on their faces.

A black mare and her foal stood by themselves in a smaller pasture. They went there first, climbing in through the rails. Arn called the mare. She pricked up her ears and came toward him at once, tossing her head. Her foal trotted after her. Cecilia marvelled at how affectionately her beloved and the mare greeted each other, how he rubbed his face against her muzzle, and how he stroked her glossy coat and spoke to her in a foreign language.

‘Come!’ he said, reaching out his hand to Cecilia. ‘I want you to make friends with Umm Anaza, for she shall henceforth be your horse. Come and say hello.’

Cecilia went over and tried to do as Arn had done, rubbing her face against the mare, who at first seemed a bit shy. Then Arn talked to the mare in the foreign language, and she changed at once and yielded to Cecilia’s touch.

‘What language are you speaking?’ she asked as she petted the mare and the little foal who timidly came forward.

‘The language of horses,’ said Arn with a secret smile, shaking his head happily. ‘That was what Brother Guilbert told me once when I was a boy; back then I believed that there was a language that only horses understood. It’s more correct to say that I’m speaking the language that these horses have heard from birth in Outremer. It’s Saracen.’

‘And I who can only speak my own language or Latin with her!’ Cecilia laughed. ‘At least I must know her name.’

‘Her name is Umm Anaza, which means Mother Anaza, and the little one is called Ibn Anaza, although that’s what I used to call his father. Now the stallion whom we shall meet is called Abu Anaza, and you can probably guess what Abu and Ibn mean, can’t you?’

‘Father and son Anaza,’ Cecilia said. ‘But what does Anaza mean?’

‘That’s just a name,’ said Arn, swinging a saddle with a lambskin pad onto the mare. ‘Horses named Anaza are the noblest in all the Holy Land, and when the long winter nights come I will tell you the saga of Anaza.’

Arn saddled and bridled the mare with amazing speed, and the mare didn’t object in the least, but seemed eager to go out.