The Road To Jerusalem (17 page)

With a little shame Arn felt that he was now experiencing true and pure joy, and this was something he should not forget to bring up with Father Henri at his next confession. It was as if the horse’s life and power were flowing through him, even though the colt was so young and so far from being an accomplished steed. And if he hadn’t been broken for riding, which he certainly could not have been since he was so young, and if he had never had a rider on his back, then this in truth was a miracle.

“You see, my young chevalier, the horse is in truth man’s best friend,” said Brother Guilbert much later, when the nightingales had begun their evening song and it would soon be time for vespers, as they sat in the grass in the garden simply enjoying watching the new horses. “But these new horses are not like others, as you have already seen. They are the most noble, intelligent, fast, and tolerant horses that exist. Praise God for this gift, because they are horses from the Holy Land, Outremer.”

Brother Guilbert was red in the face with excitement, and he was still breathing hard after his wild exhibition of the stallion’s great power.

Arn had already begun to understand what distinguished these horses from others, not only in their appearance and their bearing and movements, but also in how they could be used. Yet he still asked and then received the answer he was expecting.

These horses were horses of war. What was true of swords was also true of horses: agility, agility, and more agility.

Since the men up here in the barbaric North had not yet adopted the art of fighting on horseback, Brother Guilbert went on, Nordic men needed strong, slow horses that could carry a heavy load to the battlefield. There the Nordic men would dismount, tether their horses, and then enter the fray on foot. If the Christians had attempted to meet the accursed Saracens in that manner, Jerusalem never would have been liberated.

But in the rest of the world, men fought on horseback; it was only the barbaric North that had not seized upon that strategy. And that’s why Brother Guilbert had a clear, simple idea for using these horses, whose bloodlines he could now spread throughout Denmark. He would introduce the techniques associated with the new horses, and thus bring in a great deal of silver to the cloister. Almost the same way they did so by forging better swords for the men of the North. The one method ought to be as logical and profitable as the other.

Still sensing the wind in his hair and the speed on the horse, Arn now asked eagerly and without the proper courtesy to be taught the art of fighting on horseback, as the Christians did out in the great civilized world.

Brother Guilbert laughed silently to himself, grabbed Arn playfully by the tonsure, and explained that he had been doing that all along. From the beginning. Everything that Arn had learned about horses since the day he had been put to work was directed toward that goal.

What was of foremost importance was balance, above all balance. When Arn had practiced with his wooden swords, sometimes with one in each hand, he had stood on a pole with leather sacks full of sand swinging back and forth above him, always threatening to knock him to the ground. In the same way he had practiced riding horses from the beginning, always riding bareback without a saddle. All this was for the sake of balance, so that he would be able to sit his horse no matter which way it moved.

Now his task was to break the colt, at first without a saddle, and get to know the horse, talk to him, stroke him, and always take care of him. And his name had to be a secret name, not secret from God but otherwise just between the two of them. The colt would be called Khamsiin, which was the name of a desert wind, a wind that could blow for fifty days and never grow weary. The two mares would be called Aisha and Khadiya, and the stallion Nasir. Brother Guilbert did not explain the names, saying only that each name came from the secret language of the horses. It was not something that concerned other monks in the cloister, but only the two who were chevaliers.

A saddle would be made as soon as Khamsiin was grown, but until then it was the fundamentals that were important: trust, love, and balance.

The bell rang for vespers and they had to run to the lavatorium. As they dashed off, Arn asked whether it would be possible for him to learn the secret language of the horses too. If he spoke three languages already, surely he could speak four? Brother Guilbert smiled to himself and muttered something to the effect that the day would no doubt come. But that was all he said.

Arn had always been obedient. He loved the brothers as much as he loved books. He loved hard work as much as the easier tasks. He had set stones up in the tower of the cloister church, he had caught fish in the fjord. He loved the work with sword and bow as much as the work of following the path of faith in the Holy Scriptures, verse by verse and with the help of the
Glossa
Ordinaria
. He may have loved Aristotle somewhat less and Ovid somewhat more, although in secret he occasionally composed imitations of the unchaste verses he had managed to read before they were taken away and locked up. Naturally he confessed afterward and took his punishment for the sin, but it was worth it. What were a few extra Pater Nosters compared with the hot rushing sensation in his body at the thought of Ovid?

Father Henri had no difficulty tolerating Arn’s flagging interest in the philosopher and his somewhat overheated interest in writings that were inappropriate for boys. As far as Ovid was concerned, more than one God-fearing man of his acquaintance had put more emphasis on these studies than was suitable, both as a youth and as a man. It was nothing to cause alarm; he be longed to that category himself, at least when he looked back on his time as a novice. These were the normal fluctuations of life, nothing more. God in his wisdom had created life so that there was constant variation. If the boy did not find the philosopher very interesting—he sometimes made little impertinent objections, especially to the logical arguments—it was no wonder that, if this was a sin, it would be a sin that the boy shared with Brother Lucien, for example. Brother Lucien was devoted to the art of better enriching the world, in God’s name, with plants that could be grown for the table, or to cure the ills of humankind, or perhaps merely to bring beauty into people’s lives. But he was not very interested in reading Aristotle. Yet Father Henri would never dream of thinking of Brother Lucien as any less worthy because of that, or a brother to love less than the other brothers.

On the other hand, if someone in jest was to argue the logic the way the philosopher would have done, it might seem that the boy belonged to those who were also devoted to Brother Lucien’s teaching. It was very exacting and meticulous but important work that lay behind the monastery’s demonstration of the beauty that God could create on earth with the help of faithful brothers. The white snowdrops were the first flowers, pushing up through winter’s still hard and inhospitable shell; then with the warmth came the Easter lilies, the white narcissus, and the tulips, all of them new to the barbaric North. Visitors who came at the right time would gasp in enchantment at the blossoms on the fruit trees, all of them unknown to the barbarians, fruits such as apples, pears, and cherries. The sales of these fruits had gone wonderfully in recent years, and Arn was also the one who helped Brother Lucien fetch the wares and translate into the Nordic tongue.

Arn had maintained a balance with everything that he’d learned, and there was nothing to worry about in that respect. As long as one didn’t believe, like some of the more rigid brothers, that sword and lance had nothing to do with God’s work on earth. But brothers who thought this way had not sufficiently studied the father of them all, Saint Bernard, who had been the leading creator of the Knights Templar, more than the Pope or any other man of the cloth.

And yet. There was now a problem with the boy. Since the new horses had arrived he seemed to have gone a bit crazy. It seemed fair to say that he had acquired a vice or an urge, an interest that overshadowed all other interests. And the question then became, in a higher and strategic perspective, whether God truly wanted this or whether God wanted to see his chosen lad reprimanded. And in a more tactical perspective, how should a wise prior go about handling such a rebuke?

Father Henri had summoned Brother Guilbert on more than one occasion in order to discuss the problem. But it seemed as though the good Guilbert wanted to defuse the matter with cliches such as “boys will be boys” and “what would you have done or thought at that age?” He also said they needed to understand the delight of novelty, and mentioned that it was all part of the general education he was giving Arn.

Perhaps that was true. And yet the boy’s infatuation was so strong that it obviously risked overshadowing, at least temporarily, even his interest in books. As Arn’s confessor, Father Henri knew much more about this than Brother Guilbert. Arn was no more capable than anyone else of lying when he made confession to his prior.

Arn saw the problem simply as a matter of confessing and admitting his sinful disposition and then doing penance. He had no idea that it was something that actually worried Father Henri; that would have made him feel both sad and ashamed. For now it led only to the minor punishments of extra prayers and maybe a few days on bread and water.

When Khamsiin had grown so much that he was no longer a colt but a real horse, the love between Arn and the young stallion grew. One night when the summer was in full bloom, so that the nights were light and mild in Jutland, Arn got up after only a few hours of sleep following the midnight mass. He sneaked out to the stable, took down the saddle and bridle, and whispered some words into the darkness of night. Khamsiin came to him at once, bending his head down and accepting the boy’s hot kisses and caresses on his soft muzzle.

Then Arn mounted the horse, and cautiously they moved off toward the fence, which Khamsiin gently jumped over in almost feline silence. They walked slowly for a while, finally increasing speed so much that they must have been the fastest horse and rider ever to cross Danish soil. They stormed along like the horsemen of the apocalypse through the soft, rolling landscape and the sparse beech woods. Some nights they went all the way out to the sea, knowing that they risked having to keep up the same pace on the way back to be able to arrive in time for morning mass.

Rumors soon spread in the region about a ghost rider, an omen, a bad sign, a spirit who rode as no mortal man could ride even in dreams, a dwarf with evil sharp teeth and a glittering sword of fire.

The sword, however, was made of wood with an iron core inside for the sake of weight. But in his fantasies Arn rode with a sword that could well have been of fire. He swung it back and forth with his left hand, switched the sword and reins at full gallop and then brandished the weapon in his right hand. But the sword was not the most important thing. It was more as if he were placating his guilty conscience by doing a little work while he was out riding for pleasure instead of sleeping the sleep of the just, which was recommended by God.

It was the speed that captivated him. As young as he was, Khamsiin had a power in his legs that no other horse Arn had ridden could ever match. Arn imagined that Khamsiin was being carried forward by a supernatural power, as if this speed was something that only God could have created, and as if on Khamsiin he was flying closer to God than at any other time.

It was a sinful thought, of course. Arn knew that. He said the prayers and denied himself what he must to seek forgiveness.

But what speed! he thought. Shamefully enough, even during his most remorseful prayers.

On Christmas Day in the year of Grace 1144, the Christians in the Kingdom of Jerusalem suffered their greatest defeat since they conquered the Holy Land. In Christian Europe there were many people who realized that the fall of the city of Odessa was a catastrophe. But nobody could imagine that what had happened was the beginning of the end of the Christian occupation.

At that time, a half century after the victory that had cost the Christians more than 100,000 lives, the Kingdom of Jerusalem consisted of a cohesive coastal region that stretched from Gaza in southern Palestine through Jerusalem and Haifa to the coast of Lebanon and up to Antioch. But north of Antioch, there was a large Christian enclave around the city of Odessa, which together with Antioch on the coast controlled all the roads between the Christian Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople and the three cities of Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Damascus. Second only to Jerusalem itself, Odessa had been the Christians’ most important fortress.

But now the city had been conquered, plundered, and relegated to the oblivion of history by a commander whose name hardly anyone in Europe knew. He was called Unadeddin Zinki. The conquest ended in a bloodbath in which 5,000 Franks and 6,000 Armenians and other local Christians were massacred after the walls fell. In their stead Zinki let 300 Jews move into the city in an attempt to bring Odessa back to life. The Jews were much closer to the Muslims than to the Christians, since the Christians had the peculiar custom of murdering all the Jews they encountered.

Zinki was a powerful, ambitious, and ruthless commander. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted to take Damascus, the next most important city after Jerusalem, and from there draw the noose tighter around the Christians.

The Muslim inhabitants of Damascus, however, felt not the slightest enthusiasm at the thought of having this unpredictable and cruel ruler inside their high city walls. And when Zinki was on his way to Damascus, he was forced to stop and lay siege to the town of Baalbek. He grew angry that it was taking so long, so when Baalbek finally capitulated after the garrison had been given the usual assurances of safe conduct, he had all the defenders beheaded and the commander flayed alive.

Perhaps he thought that such actions would strike terror into the inhabitants of Damascus and encourage them to offer less resistance. But the effect was the direct opposite. Damascus formed an alliance with the Christian king of Jerusalem, because both cities, regardless of religion, had just as much to fear from a conqueror such as Zinki.