Singing had been his most important task at Vitae Schola, to such an extent that it was through his singing during mass that he felt he was doing the most good, and that his efforts had some meaning. Naturally he had been useful when the church tower was being built, but it was through singing that he accomplished something that others could not. In everything else he was only a little boy who had to learn from all the others. His other work was such that it provided sheer joy for either body or soul, like the horse or the books or Brother Guilbert's exercises, but he felt it was of more use to himself than to the brothers. And since he loved the brothers as the rules prescribed, he longed to be able to reciprocate by making himself deserving of the brothers' love. Singing had been the most effective way of accomplishing that, or so he thought.

   Now he could no longer sing, even though the song was still inside his head and he could imagine each note correctly voiced before his lips released it so falsely. It was like suddenly losing his sense of balance and being unable to walk or run or ride. Brother Ludwig had explained that he was no longer needed at mass, and Arn deemed this harsh punishment for his failure.

   Father Henri felt a certain impatience that something so natural should be so difficult to explain to the boy. It obviously wasn't enough, as he first believed, simply to explain that his voice breaking was something that happened to all men. It surprised him that not even the simple and, as he thought, easily observable fact that men sounded different from boys seemed to have any effect on Arn's reason. What troubled Father Henri was that Arn's apparently unwarranted worries might actually be expressing something else, a great loneliness. If he had been able to grow up with other boys, either inside or outside the cloister walls, he might have had an easier time seeing himself as what he was: a boy and perhaps a future brother, but not yet a brother.

   The fact that Arn could not accept the fact that a breaking voice existed somewhere between birth and death, and with the same inevitability, was a warning sign of his immaturity. On the one hand, the boy was more educated than any grown man, at least up here in the barbaric North. Presumably he could also handle weapons better than anyone outside the walls.

   On the other hand, he was completely innocent when it came to the base world. He wouldn't be able to sit at table with his countrymen without feeling disgust. He couldn't stay out there even for a day without seeing that people lied, and that most of the seven deadly sins, which Arn apparently understood as some sort of theoretical moral example in a cautionary tale, were committed daily by each and every person in the outside world.

   In all probability Arn did not understand what pride was, unless he took examples from the Holy Scriptures. What gluttony was he could presumably not even imagine; what greed was he no doubt didn't understand at all; wrath he knew only as God's wrath, which would stir up the concept of sin quite literally for him. Envy, as far as Father Henri could see, was something altogether foreign to Arn, who felt only admiration for the brothers who could do more than he could, and boundless gratitude that he was allowed to learn. And sloth; how foreign would that concept seem to a boy who always jumped with eagerness to be allowed to dash on to the next of the day's tasks or lessons?

   Only lust possibly remained, although Arn seemed to possess both a somewhat exaggerated concept of young boys' sinfulness when it came to self-defilement, as well as immunity to admonitions in that regard. Father Henri suddenly recalled with a certain irony how Arn in one of his remorseful moments had associated his breaking voice, or "God's punishment," as he viewed it, with terrible sins, which in his case were quite mundane. The boy had prayed to be allowed to keep his voice if he did much penance; at the same time he prayed to be free of the itch that made it so hard to refrain from sin.

   Father Henri, as usual rather amused behind his stern mask, had then let his words get ahead of his thoughts. Suddenly, to his own astonishment, he found himself bantering about the problem by assuring the boy that there was indeed a simple method that would both secure his high voice and do away with that itch, though this means of penance was not to be recommended.

   Arn had not understood what he was getting at, and then Father Henri sat there embarrassed at his own thoughtlessness, and tried to explain that for a number of reasons they did not castrate boys in monasteries, even though their voices were enchanting. And consequently and finally, Arn's breaking voice was not a sin but part of God's natural order.

   Yet Father Henri was convinced that God really did have a definite plan for young Arn. And until God made His intention clear, it was Father Henri's duty to prepare Arn for the calling that would be his one day. He had tried to do his best, he could honestly say that without boasting, but now it seemed that all his efforts were still not enough. Sooner or later Arn had to learn what God's less beautiful world, the one outside the cloister walls, actually looked like. Otherwise he would remain as innocent as a child, even when he became a man, and such a man would more often than not become a foolish man. And that could not be God's will.

When the autumn storms began to pound the west coast of Jutland it was time to go salvaging. People in the fishing villages on the long sandy coast had always reckoned that salvaging from shipwrecks was their ancient right, but King Valdemar had now forbidden anyone from seizing salvaged goods except the monks from Vitskøl. The monks were in a much better position than anyone else to know what to salvage and then see to it that what they found was put to good use. This would appear to be a wise new order from the king.

   But not everyone along the coast found it fair or right to give up customs they had followed since ancient times. There were those who said that the monks behaved like a swarm of Egyptian locusts over every wreck they found, leaving not even the tiniest scrap visible at the site. There was truth in such claims, but also envy. For the monks at Vitskøl usually did not hurry with their work, except when haste was dictated by the forces of weather. The monks carried home everything they found to their Vitae Schola, chopping up the timbers for wood, and using whole deck planking and masts as building material for their own boatbuilding. They found wool for their own spinning mills, seed for their fields, or rye and wheat to sell. They salvaged skins and leather for their tanneries, iron rods for the smithies, tackle and lines for scaffolding, and jewels and valuables to be sent to Rome—they could find a use for everything. But they also did something that the old scavengers on the coast never would have bothered to do. All the dead they found were given a Christian burial.

   A salvage expedition like this from Vitskøl might take up to ten days. Most things were transported on heavy oxcarts, and the great loads usually made the trip back take twice as long as the journey out. Brother Guilbert always went along on these forays, not only because his great strength often came in handy, but also because on horseback, together with Arn, he could cover great stretches of the beaches in a short time. When the entourage from Vitae Schola arrived at the sandy beaches on the coast, they set up camp and then Arn and Brother Guilbert rode in opposite directions to scout which way they should go the next day. Brother Guy le Breton also came along, of course, because nobody at Vitae Schola knew as much about the sea, its dangers, its fruits, and its weather as he did. Otherwise the brothers had to take turns according to a schedule drawn up by Father Henri. Almost all the brothers were eager to take part in these expeditions to the sea, because it was a completely different sort of work and because the water was so beautiful. It was exciting to see what God with one hand took from the seafarers to give with the other hand to those who toiled most assiduously in the garden.