by Jan Guillou
Arn obediently said his prayers, and Father Henri was grateful for the respite, which he spent thinking further, and not without a certain amount of guilt. He found to his shock that he was no longer sure of his counterargument.
Wouldn't it be exaggerating to say that Brother Guilbert would have had to be God to foresee that measured violence, without anger, could in that situation have done a greater good than the usual peaceful response enjoined by Christ?
Wasn't it true instead that Brother Guilbert had once lived a life in which, with God on his side, he could smite anyone who attacked him when he was protecting the church's property? But afterwards he had imposed on himself such strict penance for sins he'd committed in the Holy War that he had to refrain from violence in any situation. Wasn't it simply that Brother Guilbert was now closed off, or had closed himself off, from any sort of intellectual examination in such a context and blindly followed his self-imposed penance?
In that case Brother Guilbert was certainly pure and without sin with regard to the way he had acted. But little Arn had also for the first time shown proof of theological acumen and, what was even better, a genuine insight into the faith.
However, it was the larger problem that Arn had touched on that would be easier to take up just now. They would come back to the other issue a week later when Father Henri had had time to collect his thoughts and read up on it.
"Now let's take up your second problem," Father Henri said, displaying great friendliness to Arn after he had rattled off his ten Pater Nosters. "Saint Bernard pointed out quite rightly that whatsoever is done with good intent—you know what I mean, let's skip the definitions—whatsoever is done with good intent cannot lead to evil. In what context does this assurance have the greatest practical significance? "
"When it applies to the crusades, obviously," replied Arn obediently.
"Correct! But a crusade involves killing large numbers of Saracens, doesn't it? So, doesn't the commandment against killing apply here? And if not, why not? "
"It doesn't apply because it is done, always done, with the blessing of the Holy Father in Rome," Arn replied cautiously.
"Yes, but that's a circular argument, my son. I asked why?"
"Because we have to imagine that the good is very good, that the good in preserving the Holy Sepulchre for believers is so much greater than the evil of killing Saracens," Arn ventured hesitantly.
"Yes, you're on the right track," Father Henri assured him with a thoughtful nod. "But even when the Lord Jesus drove the moneylenders out of the temple he was never close to killing them, was he? "
"No, but that could be because, through his Father's wrath, which naturally is much different from our human wrath, he used only as much force as was necessary. He actually did drive the moneylenders out of the temple. He didn't need to kill them; it's as if Brother Guilbert had—"
"All right! Let's get back to the question at hand," Father Henri interrupted him brusquely. But behind his stern mask he was secretly smiling at how Arn had suddenly and as if by chance managed to find an almost devastating argument that would strengthen his earlier position that Brother Guilbert should have used limited force. He should have simply acted as did the Lord Jesus himself in the temple.
"Did the Lord Jesus repudiate the soldiers, did he ever condemn them for being soldiers?" asked Father Henri in a deliberately subdued tone of voice.
"No, not that I know of . . ." Arn pondered. "Like that part about the coin, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what . . . something like that. And then of course we have almost the same thing in the gospel of Luke, 3:14, I think . . . 'Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely— be content with your pay." ' If the soldiers behave like honest men when they're not soldiers . . . then it's not wrong to be a soldier? "
"Correct! And what do soldiers do?"
"They kill people. Like the ones who came in response to your letter to the king, Father. But soldiers and kings out there in the base world, what do they have to do with us? "
"Your question is very interesting, my son. Because you're simply asking the following: Is there a situation when such as you or I would be able to kill? I see that you are doubtful, and before you say anything foolish that you might regret I will answer you. There is indeed an exception. The Lord Jesus in his ineffable kindness of course meant that we should not kill other children of God, not even Roman soldiers, or Danish ones for that matter. But there is a people not included in the Lord's prohibition, and I think you can guess who they are, can't you?" "The Saracens!" Arn said at once.
"Right again! Because the Saracens are the most nefarious race that the Devil has put on our earth. They are not human beings, they are devils in human form. They do not hesitate to impale Christian babies on their spears and roast them over fires and then eat their fill. They are known for their dissolute lives, their excessive drinking, and their constant habit of sodomy and fornication with animals. They are the scum of the earth, and every dead Saracen is a pleasing sight for Our Lord, and whoever kills Saracens has committed a holy act and is therefore assured of a place in Paradise!"
Father Henri had gradually grown more agitated as he enumerated the heinous ways of the Saracens, and Arn's eyes had grown wider and wider as he listened to these comments. What Arn had heard surpassed his understanding. His mind refused even to picture such a scene with these detestable creatures eating roasted Christian babies from their spear points. He couldn't conceive how such devils could take the form of human beings.
But he could easily understand that it would be a pleasing deed to God, even for brothers within walls, to kill such evil. He also drew the conclusion that there was a vast distance between the Danish riffraff that had so unfortunately turned to the path of robbery and the Saracens. In that one case the commandment Thou shalt not kill was valid without exception. In the second case it was the direct opposite.
Although such a simple and clear conclusion had little practical importance up here in the North.
During the years Arn had not been able to sing, he had changed, just as his work had changed. The time that he previously would have spent with Brother Ludwig and the choir brothers, several hours each day, had now become time spent with Brother Guy down by the shore. Brother Guy soon taught him the methods from his home district for knotting nets, catching fish, and maneuvering small boats. For safety's sake Brother Guy had also seen to it that Arn learned how to dive and swim.
With Brother Guilbert he had now become both a worker and a pupil. He was given all the heavier tasks in the smithies, and his arms grew in bulk almost as fast as his body shot up in height. He mastered most of the everyday smithing activities so that he could make good and marketable items. Only when it came to forging swords did he still lag far behind Brother Guilbert.
The two mares, Khadiya and Aisha, had now given birth to three foals, and Khamsiin had grown into a stallion as powerful as Nasir. It was Arn's job to take care of all the horses from Outremer, to break the new foals, and make sure that Nasir and Khamsiin were each kept isolated in a fenced pasture so that they wouldn't mate with Nordic mares in an order other than what Brother Guilbert had determined after precise studies.
Yet Brother Guilbert's great hope that these horses from Outremer would bring in much silver was fulfilled only slowly. The Danish magnates who came to visit primarily to buy new swords for themselves and herbs for their women regarded the foreign horses with suspicion. They thought that these animals were too spindly and didn't look like they could do very much. At first Brother Guilbert had a hard time taking such objections seriously and actually suspected that the Danes were joking with him. Then he realized that the barbarians were quite serious, sometimes even leading in their own animals to show him proudly how a real horse should look. Brother Guilbert grew dejected.
Finally circumstances led him to devise a trick that did indeed work well, but which made him feel guilty an
d contrite. One of these Danes led in his chubby, unruly Nordic horse to compare its advantages to those of the "skinny" ones. The man extolled both his steed's strength and his speed, which far surpassed anything foreign. Brother Guilbert at once had a bright idea. He suggested that the honorable Danish knight should race down to the shore and back to the cloister, and that only a little cloister boy would ride one of the new horses. And if the honorable Danish gentleman won the race, he wouldn't have to pay anything for the sword he had just purchased.
To his wide-eyed surprise Arn was told that he was to ride Khamsiin, and race a fat old man on a horse that looked very similar to the man. Arn had a hard time believing his ears, but he had to obey. When the two riders were ready outside the cloister walls, Arn asked Brother Guilbert, speaking in Latin out of sheer nervousness although the two of them always spoke French together, whether he was supposed to ride full tilt or take it easy so that the sausage-looking horse could keep up. Oddly enough, Brother Guilbert gave him strict orders to ride at full speed. He obeyed, as always.
Arn was already back at the cloister when the Danish knight had made it only halfway and was down by the shore turning around.
Then some rich men from Ringsted, who enjoyed racing horses and betting money on them, now found that the skinny horses from Vitskol were at least good for one thing. The rumor then spread to Roskilde, and soon horses from Vitae Schola were commanding large sums of money. But that was not what Brother Guilbert had had in mind.
The exercises Brother Guilbert was now asking Arn to try on horseback were no longer simply about balance and speed, but had to do with matters of considerably greater finesse. They spent about an hour each day in one of the stallion's pastures, riding around each other in specific patterns, backing, rearing and turning in the air, moving sideways or sideways and forward or back at the same time, teaching the horses which signals meant strike with the forehooves and jump forward at the same time, or backward kick with both legs followed by a jump to the side. It was an art that Arn liked when everything went as planned, but he could find it somewhat monotonous. At least during the obligatory practices. It was more exciting with the completely free exercises when they practiced with wooden swords or lances against each other.
The practice on foot had become much more difficult, and was mainly about striking and parrying with swords; for a long time now, Arn had been using a real steel sword. He was still humbly convinced that he was a wretched swordsman. Yet he didn't give up; he persevered with this work in this Lord's vineyard as well. Lack of faith would have been a great sin.
His work with Brother Guy down at the beach was quite another story. Brother Guy had finally given up the apparently impossible task of enticing the Danes around Limfjord to eat mussels. The mussel beds had been reduced to a fraction of their original ambitious size and now yielded only enough to meet the demand of the Provencal cooks at Vitae Schola.
Brother Guy's task was not to bring in income to Vitae Schola but to spread the blessings of civilization, and he was going to do that by setting a good example. The intentions behind his work were much the same as those for the brothers who worked in farming: not to focus on selling the produce, primarily, but to inform. In that respect he had begun by failing miserably in introducing the populace to the blessings of mussels.
But things went better with fishing gear and boat-building. When he saw the Limfjordings' fish-spears with straight tips, he went to Brother Guilbert and asked him to make some fish-spears with barbed tips, which he later distributed to the fishermen. When he discovered that the Limfjordings fished only with stationary equipment inside the fjord, he began to make movable nets and bottom seines. The difference between his nets and the nets of the Limfjordings was primarily the suppleness that came from the larger mesh and thinner material that he used.
It took Arn about a year to learn the art of tying nets well enough that Brother Guy pronounced his nets to be as good as those made by a boy from home. For Arn the work was not hard, but tedious.
Soon enough everything began functioning the way Brother Guy had intended. The Limfjordings started coming from the villages around Vitae Schola to study with curiosity, and at first with some suspicion, how to use movable nets. Brother Guy, with Arn as his interpreter, naturally offered to share his knowledge in a Christian spirit.
This meant that now and then Brother Guy would leave Arn alone at the boathouse on the shore while he took Danish fishermen out in the boats to show them how to place nets from a moving boat. But those who came to learn how to tie the new nets were all women, young and old, since nettying was women's work around the Limfjord.
And that was how Arn, whose only experience of women was what resembled a mirage in his evening prayers when he prayed for his mother's soul, now suddenly found himself almost daily surrounded by women. At first all the women, young and old, made merry at the expense of the gangly young man with the strong arms who, blushing and stammering, kept his eyes fixed on the ground so that he always showed his shaved pate instead of his blue eyes.
Arn knew in theory how a teacher should behave, since he had had so many. But what he thought he knew about the art of teaching did not match what he now experienced, since his pupils did not behave with the obedience and dignity that befitted pupils. They joked and giggled, and the older women sometimes even unchastely stroked his head.
But Arn gritted his teeth, because he had a task to carry out responsibly. After a while he dared raised his eyes somewhat. And then he raised his eyes unavoidably to their breasts under thin summer shifts and their happy, coquettish smiles and their curious eyes.
Her name was Birgite and she had thick copper-red hair gathered in a single braid down her back; she was the same age as he was, and she often wanted him to show her something over again even though he was sure she had already learned it. When he sat down next to her he could feel the warmth of her thigh, and when she pretended to fumble he took her hands to show her one more time how to knot and crochet the net.
He didn't know that now he was a sinner, so it took a while before Father Henri realized what was happening. But by then it was too late.
She was the most beautiful creature Arn had ever seen in his life, with the possible exception of Khamsiin. And he began dreaming of her at night, so that he awoke self-defiled without having consciously done it. He began dreaming of her in the day-time too, when he was supposed to be busy with other things. When Brother Guilbert once gave him a box on the ear because he wasn't paying attention during practice, he hardly knew what had happened.
When Birgite shyly asked him to bring some of the herbs that they had in the cloister, the ones that smelled like a dream, he assumed that she must mean lemon balm or lavender. A brief furtive question to Brother Lucien quickly decided the choice;
all women were crazy about lavender, muttered Brother Lucien absentmindedly, having no idea what a fire he had just ignited.
At first Arn smuggled out a twig or two now and then. But when she kissed him on the forehead, quickly so that no one would see, he lost his wits completely. The next time he brought her a whole armful, which Birgite, chirping with glee, at once carried off home. He watched her nimble bare feet moving so swiftly that the sand sprayed around them.
It was in that state, pining with an absent look and gaping mouth, that Brother Guy found his young apprentice. And with that there was a brusque stop to the infatuation, because at the same time Brother Lucien, to his perplexity, had found big, mysterious holes in his supply of lavender.
Arn was punished with two weeks on bread and water and isolation for meditation and prayer during the first week. Since he didn't have his own cell but shared one with several lay brothers, he now had to do his penance in a free cell inside the closed section of the monastery. With him he took the Holy Scriptures, the oldest and most worn-out copy, and nothing else.
Of his two great sins he could understand one of them, but the other one he could not. No matter how much he honestly tr
ied, no matter how much he prayed for the Holy Virgin's forgiveness.
He had stolen lavender; that was something concrete and understandable. Lavender was a desirable product outside the cloister, and Brother Lucien sold it with much success. Arn had simply mistaken something that was gratia, such as teaching the method for knotting nets, with something that existed for income, such as Brother Guilbert's sword-forging or Brother Lucien's plants—although not all the plants, by any means. Some of them, like chamomile, were gratia as well.
Father Henri had also noticed this. Even though theft was theft, and thus an abominable breach of the cloister's rules, this
was something that, to say the least, had occurred out of youthful ignorance. Father Henri had carefully listened to Brother Guy's view of what had happened. Yet this led to Brother Guy also receiving a reprimand since he had not taken Arn's errors very seriously, and had even slipped in an explanation that if Father Henri had seen the girl himself then the whole matter would not have seemed so mysterious.
Arn's second and worse sin was that he had felt lust. Had he been a brother admitted to the order, he would have been punished with half a year of bread and water, and he would have been allowed to work only with the kitchen garbage and the latrines.
In his isolation Arn now had to repent for his sin of stealing the lavender, a sin that he easily could regret sincerely. But it was impossible for him to understand why it was worse than theft to long for and dream about Birgite. He couldn't stop himself. His hair shirt didn't help, the cold of night in his cell didn't help, nor did the hard wooden bed without a lambskin or blanket. When he lay awake he saw her before him. If he managed to fall asleep he dreamed about her freckled face and brown eyes or her naked feet running quick as little kid-goats through the sand. And his body behaved shamefully as soon as he fell asleep. In the morning one of the brothers, without saying a word, would put a bucket of ice-cold water in Arn's cell. The first thing he did was to shove his shameful member into the water to cool off the all-too-obvious sin.
