Kristina replied that if the building was not demolished within a week, she would return, not only with her retainers, but with thralls who under the whips of the retainers would do the work rapidly. Perhaps the thralls would be less careful than the brothers would be if they saw fit to carry out her orders themselves. The choice was theirs.

   Father Henri was now so angry that he could hardly control himself, and he told her that instead he intended to leave Varnhem. The journey would end with an audience with the Holy Father in Rome with the intention of excommunicating her, and her husband if he was an accomplice, if she dared to do the unthinkable and challenge God's servants on earth and His Holy Roman Church. Didn't she understand that she was about to bring eternal misfortune down upon both herself and Erik Jedvardsson?

   What Father Henri threatened was true. But Kristina seemed not to comprehend what he said, just as she did not understand the threat she was posing to her own husband's ambitious plans. A king who was excommunicated would have little to hope for in the Christian world.

   But she merely tossed her head reproachfully, and wheeled her horse around in a wide turn, forcing the monks to dive for cover so as not to be trampled. As she rode away she called over her shoulder that in a week her thralls would arrive, her heathen thralls for that matter, to carry out their official duties.

Arn had been treated leniently and was not forced to read more than four hours of Latin grammaticus per day. The first step was to make his Latin flawless; then they could move on to the next language. First a tool for the knowledge, then the knowledge itself.

   But to assuage the boy's heavy heart, Father Henri had also seen to it that he was allowed to spend almost an equal amount of time with the mighty Brother Guilbert de Beaune, who would teach him arts altogether different from Latin and singing.

   Brother Guilbert's main occupation at Varnhem was in the smithies, particularly the weapons smithy, which was the largest and best equipped of them all. The weapons smithy was run as a business and nothing else, because the swords that Brother Guilbert forged were so clearly superior to any others made in this barbaric part of the world. The fame of the monk's swords had spread rapidly and brought in goodly sums of silver to the convent.

   Precisely according to intention, Arn was cajoled by watching and even occasionally helping Brother Guilbert, who took the boy in with the same gravity and precision as if he had been assigned to teach him to be a smith, showing him everything from the simple basics to the finer arts.

   But when Arn after a time became less sulky and more openminded, he also grew bolder when it came to asking about matters other than those pertaining to the work itself. Such as whether Brother Guilbert had ever shot a bow and arrow, and if so, whether he would like to have a contest.

   To Arn's dismay, Brother Guilbert found this so amusing that he burst out laughing. He laughed so hard that he lost track of what he was working on and tossed a glowing piece of metal into a bucket of water. Then he sat down to finish laughing, his eyes wet with tears.

   Finally, after he had composed himself and cheerfully wiped his eyes, he admitted that he may indeed have handled a bow and arrow, and that the two of them might soon make time for such games. Then he added that of course he feared meeting a young warrior as bold as Arn de Gothia. And then he broke out laughing anew.

   It would be a long time before Arn was made aware of what was so funny. Right now he merely felt indignant. He snorted that perhaps Brother Guilbert was afraid. And provoked another salvo of laughter from Guilbert de Beaune.

Faced with the decision between death or having her arm cut off and perhaps being able to cope with life as a cripple, Sigrid chose death. She felt that she could not understand the Lord's will in any other way. With sorrow in her heart she allowed Father Henri to hear her confession one last time, forgive her all her sins, and give her Holy Communion and extreme unction.

   At Persmas, when the summer reached its apex and the time for hay-making had arrived, Sigrid died quietly up in the guesthouse.

   It was also time for the departure of Father Henri and the seven brothers who would accompany him on his journey to the south. Sigrid was buried inside the cloister church, beneath the floor close to the altar, and the place was marked with only tiny secret signs, for Father Henri was very distrustful of Fru Kristina and her husband. Two brothers were sent to Arnäs with the news of her death, and the invitation to visit Sigrid's grave at any time.

   During the four-hour-long funeral mass, Arn stood straight and still, the lone boy among all the monks. It was only the heavenly singing that now and then made his heart break so that he could no longer hold back the tears. But he was not ashamed of this, because he had noticed that he was not the only one weeping.

   The next day the long journey to the south began, heading first for Denmark. Arn was now certain that his life belonged to God and that no human being, good or evil, strong or weak, would be able to do a thing to alter that fact.

   He never looked back.

Chapter 4

So often things turn out much differently than people had imagined. What the poor in spirit call small coincidences, what the faithful call God's will, can sometimes alter an event to such an extent that no one could have predicted the result. That applies to powerful men who are convinced that they are the instigators of their own fortune, men like Erik Jedvardsson. But it also applies to such men who stand much closer to God than others and should be better able to understand His ways, men such as Henri of Clairvaux. For both these men the ways of the Lord had truly seemed inscrutable in recent years.

   When Father Henri and his seven companions and a boy arrived in Roskilde on their way south through Denmark, he was firmly resolved to continue all the way to the general capital of the Cistercian order in Cîteaux in order to present his case for the excommunication of Erik Jedvardsson and his wife Kristina. It was an extremely grave matter of principle. For the first time the Cistercians had been forced to close down a monastery be cause of the whim of some king or king's wife. It was a question that was of crucial significance to the whole Christian world: Who controlled the Church? The Church itself or the sovereign power of the king? The strife over this had raged for a long time, but it took a Nordic barbarian queen such as Kristina to be ignorant of the matter.