The Road to Jerusalem - Crusades Trilogy 01

by Jan Guillou

  And when he had to compose himself so he could devote himself to the Holy Scriptures, it was as if the Devil himself were leading him to the very passages that he shouldn't read. He could find his way around in the Holy Scriptures so well that he tried looking up verses at random with his eyes closed. And yet he found verses such as:

  Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.

  Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.

  No matter how Arn tried to use his knowledge of how God's word should be read and interpreted, he could not view love as a sin. This power, which God the Father called a blessing to humanity, which was so strong that an ocean could not drown it, and no man, no matter how rich, could buy it for himself for coins of silver, this power that was as impossible to subdue as death itself, how could that be a sin?

  During Arn's second week of penance on bread and water, when he was allowed to speak, Father Henri sternly brought up the subject, since they had soon agreed about the theft of the lavender. He wanted to try to get the overheated young man to understand what love was. Hadn't Saint Bernard himself described it all as clearly as water?

  A human being begins by loving himself for his own sake. The next stage in development is that humans learn to love God, but still for their own sake and not for God's sake. Then humanity does learn to love God, and no longer for their own sake but for God's sake. Finally, humanity learns to love humanity, but only for God's sake.

  What happened in that process of development was that cupiditas, or desire, which lies at the heart of all human appetite, ended up in control and was converted into caritas, so that all base desire was cleansed away and love became pure. All this was elementary, wasn't it?

  Arn reluctantly agreed that it was indeed elementary; like almost everyone else at Vitae Schola he was quite familiar with all the texts of Bernard de Clairvaux. But as Arn understood it, there must be two types of love. It was true that he loved Father Henri, Brother Guilbert, Brother Lucien, Brother Guy, Brother Ludwig, and all the other monks. Without hesitation he could fix his blue eyes on Father Henri's brown eyes and confirm this, and he knew that Father Henri could see straight into his soul.

  But that couldn't be the whole truth . . . and so he suddenly, without being able to stop, began citing long passages from the Song of Songs.

  What was God's intention with this? And what had Ovid been talking about in those texts that Arn had read by mistake as a boy? Wasn't Ovid's text suspiciously similar to God's Word in certain respects?

  After his uncontrollable outburst Arn bowed his head in shame. He had never before uttered such an insubordinate polemic to Father Henri. He wouldn't have found it unfair to receive another two weeks on bread and water as punishment, since he had shown himself to be unrepentant.

  But Father Henri's reaction was not what he expected. He almost seemed glad about what he'd heard, although naturally he couldn't share Arn's view.

  "Your will is strong, your mind is still free and at times intractable, like something in those horses you break. I have certainly watched you do it, let me tell you," said Father Henri thoughtfully. "This is good, because more than anything I was afraid that I'd broken your will so that you would not understand God the day He calls you. So much for that. Now to why you are wrong."

  Father Henri explained the whole thing calmly and quietly. It was true that God had given human beings a libido which was not shameful, and it was this that the Song of Songs, for example, talked about. The divine order behind this, of course, was that humankind had the task of replenishing the earth, and that goal was better served by the fact that the special activity required to fulfill this duty was pleasant. And in a bond sanctified by God, within the sanctity of marriage, with the purpose of begetting children, this desire was pleasing to God and not at all a sin.

  From this explanation Arn immediately drew the completely absurd conclusion that a man and a woman should wait until they found someone they loved and then have their libido blessed by marriage. Father Henri was much amused by this bizarre idea.

  But Arn did not yield, encouraged by Father Henri's unexpectedly tempered disposition. Because, Arn went on, if love in itself, that is, the form of love talked about in the Song of Songs, was not something evil but quite the opposite, under certain given premises, something pleasing to God—why was all such activity forbidden for those who toiled in God's garden? In short, how could love be a gross sin punishable by bread and water and a hair shirt if one was enticed by it, and yet at the same time be a blessing for humanity?

  "Well," said Father Henri, clearly amused by the question. "To begin with, one must of course distinguish between the higher world and the lower. Plato, you know. We belong to the higher world, that is the basic theoretical starting point, but I presume you want more meat on the bones than that, because you do know your Plato. Imagine then all the greening fields around Vitae Schola, think of all of Brother Lucien's herbs and fruits and the knowledge he spreads to our neighbors, think of Brother Guilbert's forging art and horse training, or Brother Guy's fishery. Observe now that I'm not speaking in metaphors but keeping to the practical plane. When you think about all this, what does it mean?"

  "We do good for our neighbors. Just as the Lord is always our shepherd, we can at least be the shepherds of humanity. We give people a better life through our knowledge and our work, is that what you mean, father? "

  "Yes, my son, that's exactly what I mean. We are like God's knowledge-bearers going out into the unknown—who said that, by the way? "

  "Holy Saint Bernard, of course."

  "Yes, that's right. We test the unknown, we tame nature, we bend the steel in new ways, we find a remedy for evil, and we make the bread last longer. That is what we do in a purely practical sense. Added to that is the knowledge we disseminate, in the same way as we sow wheat, about the Word of God and how it is to be understood. Are you with me so far? "

  "Yes, of course, but how can that . . ." Arn began, but he was much too filled with the argumentative spirit and had to restrain himself and start over. "Forgive me, father, but let me ask the question anew and from a purely concrete perspective. Forgive me if I'm impertinent, I understand all that you say about our good work. But why can't the brothers in the order ever enjoy the pleasures of love? If love is good, why do we have to refrain from it? "

  "That can be explained on two levels," said Father Henri, seemingly still equally untroubled and amused by his pupil's brooding. "Our high calling, our work as God's most assiduous servants on earth, has a price. And that price is that we must devote both our soul and our body to the service of God. Otherwise we could never accomplish anything lasting. Imagine if the brothers here had women and children in every nook and cranny! At least half our time would be spent on things other than what we now are able to achieve. And we would start looking around anxiously for property, since our children would need an inheritance from us—and that's only one thing! Our vow of poverty thus has much the same function as our vow of chastity. We own nothing, and when we die the Church owns everything we have used and created."

  Arn fell silent. He saw the logic in what Father Henri had said; he was also grateful that Father Henri had chosen to explain using base earthly examples instead of casting himself into the teachings of Plato and Saint Bernard's theories about different human souls at different stages. But he was still not satisfied; it felt as though something was missing in the logic. If nothing else, one might ask why self-defilement should be so terrible. Was it like a sort of gluttony of the soul, perhaps? Or merely something that drew one's thoughts away from God? Actually it was impossible, he admitted with a blush, to think about God at the same time he was doing that.

  When Father Henri saw that Arn seemed to have understood and at least largely accepted the simple explanations he had received, Fa
ther Henri, clearly in high spirits, decided that the rest of Arn's week of penance should take place in the cookhouses with the Provencal brothers. Still on a diet of bread and water, however, which could be a very difficult test in a cookhouse, but strengthening for the will of the soul.

  The cookhouses were the most intense workplaces in all of Vitae Schola. The brothers who worked in the fields went home to vespers, the brothers who worked in the smithies and carpentry shops, those who did stonecutting or spinning, those who worked in the farrieries, the brickworks, or the barns, the monks in charge of sheep tending or beekeeping or the herb gardens or the vegetable field—all had their nightly pauses from work, and they all had time for their reading without getting behind in their daily tasks.

  Yet in the cookhouses there were only two quiet hours in the day, after midnight mass when the fires were banked and all was silent and shining clean. Long before dawn the work began again, first with the bread-baking for the day. Gradually the cook-houses were filled with more and more monks and lay brothers. The hours before the big midday meal were the most intense, with ten monks and lay brothers working simultaneously and in a great rush. Each day there were between fifty and sixty mouths to feed, depending on how many brothers happened to be away and how many guests they had. In the cookhouses Brother Rugiero de Nimes ruled with absolute power, and serving under him were his own brothers Catalan and Luis. They however had not yet been accepted as members of the order, possibly because they never had enough time left over for their studies.

  The morning that Arn showed up for service, the midday meal was going to be lamb. So Arn's first task was go down to the shepherds and fetch two young lambs, then lead them back up to the slaughterhouse next to the cookhouses. These particular animals were not the ones to be served that day. Two lambs had been slaughtered ten days earlier and were then hung up and cured for the day's meal. They were now to be replaced in the cooling room next to the big cookhouse with two freshly slaughtered animals, which in turn would be served in ten days. Only barbarians ate uncured meat.

  Arn didn't enjoy leading the two unsuspecting lambs up to the cookhouses. He had put a leather thong around their necks and was gently pulling them along, now and then coaxing them onward when they stopped to nibble at a tuft of grass that looked particularly tasty. He thought of all the metaphors in the Holy Scriptures that depicted this very relationship between the good shepherd and his flock; right now he was truly no good shepherd.

  When he reached the slaughterhouse with the lambs, they were at once taken in hand by a sullen lay brother, who without much ado hung them up on big hooks by one rear hoof and slit their throats. While the life ran out of the lambs and the whites of their eyes rolled up in terror, the lay brother took a reed broom and opened a wooden gate to a water channel so that the blood was flushed from the brick floor into an underground drain. When this was done another lay brother came in, and using a knife each man rapidly transformed the animals into something that more resembled meat and food.

  Arn then had to take the still-warm skins to the tannery and the guts to the gut-cleaners. Then he went to the big stack of ice and dug out new ice blocks that he wheeled over to the cooling room, where the new, numbered carcasses already hung at the end of the row of calves, pigs, cows, ducks, and geese. The blocks of ice had to be placed by a flume in the middle of the cooling room so that the meltwater could run off into the drainage system. It was dark in there and cold. Arn shivered as he used something resembling holy-water sprinklers to splash the porous brick walls with cold water. The room had a high ceiling, and way at the top there were small holes that let in light and allowed all the unclean vapors from the animal carcasses to escape.

  When Arn entered the big cookhouse the well-cured lamb carcasses had already been cut up and placed in basins to marinate with olive oil, garlic, mint, and various strong herbs from the home region of the Provencal cooks. The big baking ovens were being fired up. The roasts and ribs would be baked in the oven after they had soaked long enough in their marinade, but in the meantime the shoulders and the rest of the animals were cut into smaller pieces and placed in big iron pots. For supper there would be lamb soup with root vegetables and cabbage, and then some cherries with honey and roasted hazelnuts. The lamb would be served with white bread, olive oil, and fresh goat cheese.

  It wasn't usual to drink wine every day at Vitae Schola. This had nothing to do with the cloister rules, but rather with the difficulties of transporting wine in large enough quantities from Burgundy all the way to the North. So it was Brother Rugiero who decided when wine would be served with the meals, and when water would suffice. He found that wine would go best with the roast lamb, and Arn was sent out to the wine cellars to fetch half a cask. He was admonished to take it from the far end of the wine cellar, where the oldest wine was stored. They always drank the wine in a specific order, and he was carefully instructed how the cask would be marked. Yet Arn still returned with the wrong wine cask on his wheelbarrow, and so he had to go back and do the task properly.

  When the midday meal was served and everyone else began to eat, Arn went back out to the cookhouse and took a scoop of water from the pure water stream that ran straight into the cookhouse and was not to be confused with the drainage stream that came from the lavatorium. He drank the cold water, savoring it as a gift from God. Then he prayed an extra long grace before he took some of the white bread.

  He felt neither hunger nor envy for the brothers. They were merely eating a normal meal, about the same as they always ate at Vitae Schola. When he was done he began cleaning up and tending to the big pots that contained the next meal.

  After midnight mass the cookhouses had to be scoured carefully with water and all the waste had to be removed. It was put either into the drainage channel to be transported further to the stream and then down to the fjord, or it was taken out to the big compost heap behind the cookhouses among all the stinging nettles. Brother Lucien was very finicky about how the compost heaps were tended, since it meant so much for his work to keep making the earth more fruitful.

  When Arn was done he was supposed to have two hours of sleep before baking the bread. But tonight he had worked so hard inside the hot cookhouses that he couldn't calm down; he still had the heat and the bustling pace in his body.

  It was a cool summer night but he could smell the first scent of autumn in the air. The stars were out, the wind was still, and there was a half moon.

  First he sat for a while on the stone steps of the big cookhouse and looked up at the stars without thinking about anything in particular. His thoughts flitted from the day's intense work to all the strong aromas in the cookhouses, and then to the morning's talk with Father Henri. He was sure that there was still something he didn't understand about love.

  Then he went down to see Khamsiin and called him over. The powerful stallion snorted mightily as he recognized the boy and came trotting over at once, with legs lifted high and his tail in the air. Khamsiin was still a young stallion, but fully grown, and his color had now changed from the slightly childish white to a shimmering of gray and white. In the moonlight he looked like he was colored silver.

  Without knowing why, Arn threw his arms around the stallion's strong neck and hugged him and caressed him. Then he began to cry. His chest shook with an emotion that he could not understand.

  "I love you, Khamsiin, I truly do love you," he whispered, and his tears fell like a flowing stream. Inside he felt that he had thought something sinful and forbidden that he couldn't explain.

  For the first time ever, he decided that there was something that he could not confess.

  Chapter 6

  Monasterio Beatae Mariae de Varnhemio became the name of the cloister in Varnhem. Father Henri, who now sat in his old scriptorium, felt a shiver of pleasure when he printed the name. It was only right that the Blessed Virgin should have this monastery dedicated to her, since it was she who, by sending Fru Sigrid a vision during the dedication of Skara Cathedral, w
as most responsible for the genesis of this cloister. And now at last there would be better order here.

  Father Henri in truth had much to rejoice about, and he was now trying to express it all in his long letter. The Cistercians had won a complicated and dangerous game against the emperor of Germany, Frederick I Barbarossa himself. And Father Henri had been allowed to attend in a corner, since his two good friends Archbishop Eskil of Lund and Father Stephan from Alvastra were present too. Who could have imagined such a development twenty years ago when he and Stephan had come wandering the long, cold, and gloomy road to the North?

  Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had deposed Pope Alexander III and named his own more docile antipope in Rome. The Christian world thus had to choose sides, either the true pope, Alexander, or the usurper in Rome. The outcome of this strife was in no way certain.

  Many kings feared the German emperor and thus wanted to stand with him; among them unfortunately was King Valdemar of Denmark and several of his more timorous bishops. But Archbishop Eskil of Lund, the friend of the Cistercians, had taken a stand against his king and for the true pope, Alexander III. Because of this, Eskil had been forced into exile.

  The strife, of course, actually dealt with the old story about whether kings and emperors should have power over the Church, or whether the Church would remain exempt from worldly power.

  The Cistercians' countermove had been Svealand and Gotaland. King Karl Sverkersson, who did not know enough about Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to fear him, was persuaded to go along with the creation of a new archbishopric comprising Svealand and the two Goth lands. As the situation now stood, it did not make much difference in which city the archbishop's see was placed, as long as it was done. King Sverker had wisely avoided his own city of Linkoping in favor of the Swedish city of Ostra Aros. That was fine, the Cistercians had reasoned, because the main thing was to strike while the iron was hot.