The Road to Jerusalem - Crusades Trilogy 01

by Jan Guillou

  And so it came to pass that Father Henri was allowed to attend the meeting in the cathedral in Sens when Eskil, in the presence of the pope himself, anointed Stephan as archbishop over the new archdiocese of Svealand and the two Goth lands. Since the archdiocese of Norway was also faithful to the true pope, the struggle now turned to the disadvantage of Frederick Barbarossa and his antipope. Eskil had recently been able to return to Denmark in triumph, and Stephan was already installed in Ostra Aros. The battle was won.

  A Cistercian brother holding the position of the third Nordic archbishop was truly no small thing. Varnhem, of course, had already been restored to favor by King Erik Jedvardsson, but now his successor Karl Sverkersson had assured the monastery new properties and new privileges. He had even donated some of his own land to establish a Cistercian nunnery up in Vreta in Eastern Gotaland.

  Now that the monastery was finally secure, it was time to make a new attempt to restore it to its former state. For Varnhem had long been languishing with only twelve brothers, whose task it was to repair and maintain the cloister and prevent the property from going to ruin.

  During the years that had passed, Vitae Schola in Denmark had surpassed Varnhem in every respect. For that very reason it was also natural, now that Father Henri had taken on the management of the restoration work at Varnhem, to draw the first new monks from Vitae Schola itself.

  Among those who were called to Varnhem were Brother Guilbert and Arn.

  For Arn nowhere was home. Varnhem was not home, just as little as Vitae Schola by the Limfjord was home, or any other place. His home was wherever the brothers were, and, most important, where Brother Guilbert and Father Henri happened to be.

  The difficult part about leaving Vitae Schola had been to leave Khamsiin. Brother Guilbert had decided that Khamsiin had to stay behind for breeding at Vitae Schola. He had explained this to Arn by drawing complicated patterns in the sand showing which horses had been sired by Khamsiin and which had been sired by Nasir, and why Nasir and a young stallion sired by Khamsiin and Aisha had to go with the caravan to Varnhem, while Khamsiin had to stay at Vitae Schola. Arn had not been able to question this decision.

  The young stallion was dappled red and gray, and after the farewell mass at Vitae Schola Brother Guilbert had told Arn that the young stallion would be named Shimal, which in the secret language of horses meant the North. But when Brother Guilbert saw the sorrow in Arn's eyes he took him aside and explained that this was not a sin, nothing to be ashamed of, to miss his horse. Those who said that a horse was only a thing, a possession without a soul, and therefore not worthy of love, knew nothing. They were correct only in formal terms, but the world was full of men, also good men of God, who were formally right about one thing or another, and yet lacked true understanding. Before God and for many of God's men, it was entirely proper to love a horse such as Khamsiin. This Brother Guilbert swore.

  On the other hand, Arn had to realize that his horses, like his neighbors and his brothers and kinsmen, would all eventually die. Even the simple fact that horses did not live as long as human beings meant that Arn would most likely have to mourn more than one horse. Grief was a part of life, such as God had ordered it.

  Arn let himself be consoled somewhat, but only because it was not sinful to grieve when he was forced to leave Khamsiin behind.

  Although he was now reckoned as a man and not a boy, he couldn't help shedding a tear as the column left Vitae Schola. No one saw it but Brother Guilbert. And no one but Brother Guilbert would have understood the reason. Like Arn, the other brothers and lay brothers had no home anywhere except where brothers resided in God's good world. And what did the others know about horses from Outremer?

  Just before Bartelsmas in late August, the busiest harvesttime and also when the goats were slaughtered in Western Gotaland, Arn saw Varnhem's church tower rising up in the distance, at first indistinct like some oddly scraggly or dried-up treetop or one that had been struck by lightning, in the midst of a luxuriant grove of oaks. Later it became very clear.

  He recognized the church tower from his childhood, but that was not what moved him. He knew that buried inside the church lay his mother, whom he still talked to every evening in his prayers. He felt as though she might be found alive in there, although only her bones remained. From the recesses of his memory he retrieved a vague image of himself as a child standing alone among strange men, not yet his beloved brothers, at the funeral mass. Now, filled with solemnity, he rode in through the cloister gate, paying scant attention to whether he recognized the place, which he no doubt did, or to how dilapidated everything had become. When Arn greeted Father Henri coming to meet the newcomers just inside the cloister gate, he begged forgiveness and hurried into the church, falling to his knees at the entrance, and crossing himself before he continued up the aisle toward the altar.

  At the front of the church knelt two lay brothers who were working with hammer and chisel on the stone block that covered his mother's grave. Previously it had been provided only with a small, almost unnoticeable symbol. Now that the Cistercians had won their great victory over the worldly power, and Monasterio Beatae Mariae de Varnhemio was a safe place for both the brothers and the bones of the dead, Father Henri had decided that the grave should be marked. The thought had been for the work to be completed before the caravan from Vitae Schola arrived, but the weather during their journey had been unexpectedly favorable.

  Arn shyly greeted the lay brothers, first in Latin, which they didn't know very well; then in French, which they didn't understand at all; and finally in Norse, which was their language, although it was more lilting than he remembered. Then he fell to his knees and prayed in thanksgiving for arriving successfully.

  When he read the text on the gravestone, both that which had already been carved and that which was only sketched in, he felt as if his mother were still alive. Not only her soul but also her flesh and blood self, as if she lay there beneath the limestone, smiling up at him. "Under this stone rests Sigrid, our most highly valued donor, in eternal peace, born in the year of the Lord 1127, died 1155, in blessed remembrance," he read. After the text there was a sketch of a lion and something else that he didn't recognize. He saw her hands before him and smelled her scent and thought he could hear her voice.

  At the welcome mass when all were gathered, his mother was mentioned time after time in the prayers of thanksgiving. It filled him with feelings that he couldn't quite understand, which he at once decided to confess. He feared that he had been struck by pride.

  In the weeks before Father Henri's reinstallation as prior at Varnhem, which Archbishop Stephan himself would attend on a visitation, Brother Guilbert and Arn worked feverishly along with a couple of local lay brothers to get the water supply fixed. The big millpond had silted up and had to be dredged; the aqueduct that was supposed to carry the water to the large and small drive wheels was in disrepair, so that the flow was diminished to a mere tenth of its potential power. The mill wheel and gear system also needed numerous repairs. The water stream was both the cloister's motor and its cleansing soul, just as important in the lavatorium and cookhouse as it was as a power source for the bellows, mills, and hammer-anvil. Because of the great importance of this repair work, the small group in charge of the water was relieved of attending all the day's masses and study hours. Arn fell into bed after vespers and slept dreamlessly until morning mass. One workday followed another until he began to have the feeling that time had stopped and the hours flowed together into one long work shift.

  But on the day that the archbishop and his retinue came riding in through the cloister gates of Varnhem, new fresh water was purling through the lavatorium and cookhouse, and the guest rooms stood newly whitewashed and clean. In one of the smithies the clang of hammer on anvil was already heard.

  After the installation mass the archbishop preached to the brothers about the victory of good over evil, and how the Cistercian order now held such a strong position that no outside threat was to b
e found in this corner of the world. What remained, however, was the constant threat that always existed inside each human being, that his own sins, pride or sloth or indifference, might bring down on him God's righteous wrath. And for this reason no one could take his rest or lean back in gorged contentment; each man had to continue his work in God's garden with the same assiduous perseverance as always.

  After the thanksgiving meal, Archbishop Stephan and Father Henri retired to the place out in the arcade where they always used to sit together in the past, near the garden plot that was now clearly overgrown. They had a long talk about something they didn't want the other brothers to hear, speaking so low that the brothers working in the garden could hear only an occasional word when one of the reverends flared up, briefly and intensely like a dry piece of tinder, and then quickly returned to more subdued tones.

  After about an hour the two men seemed to have reached a

  reconciliation, and then they summoned Arn, who was already hard at work in one of the smithies where the mechanisms that were supposed to drive the bellows had completely broken down.

  Arn went to the lavatorium and washed his whole body clean, wondering whether he ought to shave his tonsure, which he had not done in recent weeks after he was relieved of all his duties except work on the water lines. When he ran his hand over his scalp he felt half an inch of stubble—no state in which to meet an archbishop. On the other hand, he could not be late now that they had summoned him.

  Feeling a bit abashed, Arn went out to the arcade, knelt before the archbishop and kissed his hand, asking forgiveness for his unkempt appearance. Father Henri hastened to explain that Arn was one of those who had been assigned special work duties in recent weeks, but the archbishop simply waved off such a minor concern and asked Arn to sit down, which was an astonishing concession.

  Arn sat on a stone bench facing the two venerable men but felt no peace with the situation. He could not understand why they wanted to speak with him in particular, since he was but a young lay brother. He would never have guessed what was now to become of him, since he no doubt believed that his life had already been given a fixed path, just as predictable as the stars' movement across the firmament.

  "Do you happen to remember me, young man?" asked the archbishop kindly, surprisingly speaking in French instead of Latin.

  "No, monseigneur, I cannot honestly say that I do," replied Arn with embarrassment, looking at the ground.

  "The first time we met you tried to slap me, called me an old codger or something on that order, and said you didn't want to sit and read boring books. But I suppose you've forgotten that too?" the archbishop went on, with a sternness that was so clearly feigned that anyone on earth except Arn could have seen right through it.

  "Monseigneur, I truly beg your pardon, I can only defend myself by saying that I was a child and knew no better," Arn replied, blushing with shame as he imagined himself laying a hand on an archbishop. But then both the archbishop and Father Henri burst out laughing.

  "Now now, young man, I was trying to jest. I'm not actually here to demand vengeance for that tiny offense. I should be grateful, from what I've heard, that it's not today you choose to strike me. No, don't apologize again! Instead, you must listen to me. My dear old friend Henri and I have discussed your situation back and forth, as we also did when you came here as a child. You do know that it was a miracle that brought you to us, don't you, my son?"

  "I've read the account," Arn said quietly. "But I don't remember any of it myself; I only recall what I read."

  "But if Saint Bernard and the Lord did raise you up from the realm of the dead to bring you to us, what sort of conclusion would you draw from that? Have you contemplated that dilemma? " the archbishop asked in a new and more serious tone, as if he were now beginning the conversation in earnest.

  "When I was a little boy and fell from a high wall, the Lord showed mercy toward me and perhaps toward my mother and father as well for their fervent prayers. That's what is true, that much we can consider certain," replied Arn, still not daring to raise his eyes.

  "Certain, well, that's not saying too much, is it? " said Archbishop Stephan with a scarcely perceptible hint of impatience in his voice. "But then don't we come immediately to the question

  of why?"

  "Yes," said Arn. "We do come to the question of why, but I've never been able to find an answer. When it comes to the grace of the Lord, it is many times beyond what humans can conceive. I'm not exactly the only one who cannot understand everything about the grace of God."

  "Aha! Now I'm starting to recognize the little rascal who tried to strike me and called me an old codger. That's good, young man! Just keep talking back, and I'm not being sarcastic; I like it when you talk back. So we haven't transformed you into some sort of passive vegetable in the garden; you have your free will and your mind intact, and we both think that is splendid. Henri has made a point of describing this characteristic of yours. By the way, I haven't spoken French in a long time, do you mind if we switch to Latin?"

  "No, Your Grace."

  "Good. Actually I had just intended to retaliate, because when we met the first time you chided me for not speaking very good Norse. Well, that jest fell flat, since your French is excellent. How can that be, since most of your studies are in Latin? "

  "We've had an arrangement whereby I speak Latin about spiritual and academic matters, French when doing the other half of the work, and Norse with the lay brothers who don't speak much French," replied Arn, raising his head for the first time and looking the archbishop in the eye. By now he had conquered the worst of his embarrassment.

  "An excellent arrangement. It's good that you retain your Norse language, even better if things turn out the way I think," muttered the archbishop pensively. "But let me now ask you something specific, and I really want an honest answer. Has the Lord God spoken to you? Has He revealed His intentions for you?"

  "No, Your Grace. God has never spoken directly to me, and I know nothing of His intentions for me," Arn replied, once again feeling embarrassed and at a disadvantage. It was as if through sin he had made himself unworthy of God's original plan, whatever it may have been.

  The two older men pondered Arn's reply thoughtfully and in silence. They said nothing at all for a long time, but at last they exchanged a knowing look and nodded to each other. Father Henri made a great show of clearing his throat, the way he always did before launching into a long explanation.

  "My beloved son, you must now listen to me and not be frightened," Father Henri began with visible emotion. "My good friend Stephan and I have reached a decision which we believe is the only right one. We know as little as you do about what God has in mind for you; all we know is that it must be something special. But since none of us knows, it might be that His call has simply not been made as yet. Our task, and yours, could be to prepare you as well as possible for the call when it does come, don't you think?"

  "Yes, of course, Father," Arn replied in a low voice. His throat was suddenly dry.

  "Your education is remarkable and the work of your hands is of great joy to us here within these walls," Father Henri went on. "But you know nothing of the world outside. That is why you must now go out into that world; you must return to your father's estate at Arnas, which lies a day's ride from here. Well, a Nordic day's ride, that is . . . you know what I mean, with horses from Outremer it would probably take half a day, I would guess. This is the command we now give you. You must return to the place that was once your home."

  "I . . . I will naturally obey your command," said Arn, although the words stuck in his throat. He felt as though he'd been felled by an unexpected blow, as if he'd been excommunicated, cast out from the holy community.

  "I see that you are not happy with our command," said the archbishop.

  "No, Your Grace. I've tried to acquit myself well here at the cloister, and I don't mean to boast in any way when I say that, but I can honestly argue that I've done my best," said Arn, crushed
.

  "You are a Cistercian, my young friend," said Archbishop Stephan. "Think on that. You will always be one of us, for what is done cannot be undone. Perhaps it is also intended that you shall remain one of us intra muros forever, that is what we do not know. Perhaps you will come back after finding that the world out there does not suit you, fully prepared to make your vows to the cloister. But first you must learn of the things about which you have no knowledge, and you can't learn about the outside world in here, no matter how hard you study. We want what is best for you. You should know that both Henri and I truly love you, and we will both pray for you while you are out there. But you must learn something about the other world, that is what is needed."

  "When may I come back? How long do I have to stay out there?" asked Arn with a new spark of hope.

  "When God wills it, you will come back to us. If God does not will it, He will give you another purpose out there. You must ask Him in your prayers. It's not something we can decide, since it's a matter between you and God," said the archbishop, starting to stand up as if the conversation were over. But then he thought of something to add and brightened up a little.

  "Oh yes, one more thing, young man. When you are out there you must know that not only will your brothers within these walls be praying for you, but you also have the archbishop as your friend. You can always come to me with your troubles, remember that!"

  With that Archbishop Stephan stood up and held out his hand to Arn, who fell to his knees and with his head bowed as a sign of obedience, kissed the archbishop's hand.

  When Arn rode out from Varnhem it was at first with a very heavy heart. In spite of all Father Henri's explanations and exhortations he hadn't been able to shake the feeling that he was being punished, as if he had shown himself to be unworthy of the brothers' fellowship.

  But in search of consolation he began to sing, and this soon eased his heart. When he discovered that it helped, his mood changed so that he sang even more and soon out of joy rather than seeking consolation. By now he sang like all the other brothers, a little better than some and a little worse than others, neither more nor less. But his singing was suddenly of more joy to him than in many years, almost like in the days when he sang soprano in the brothers' choir.