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 cookhouses 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 Nîmes 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 Provençal 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.