"I promise not to fail you, not to disappoint you, my dear brother," said Arn quickly and with feeling.

   "Hmm," said Brother Guilbert, leaning forward to gaze with amusement into Arn's childishly open face and his wide eyes. "You should probably wait a bit before making promises, because you will be required to make more sooner than you think. But for now our conversation is done. Tonight you must spend the hours between midnight mass and morning mass in our church. Seek God in your heart during this stormy night; this command comes from Father Henri. Now hurry to sleep a few hours, and perhaps we'll see each other at midnight mass."

   "As you command so shall I obey," muttered Arn and stood up, bowing to his teacher, and went to his sleeping cell, where he set his mind to wake up for midnight mass and not oversleep. Then he fell asleep at once.

   Brother Guilbert remained sitting by the flickering candle flames for a while, lost in thought. Then he blew out the candles and strode off to the smithy, which two of the lay brothers had kept going during his talk with Arn. He was not quite finished; he would now use the last of the secret oils he had brought back from Outremer, and there were also details to plan for the ornamentation.

After midnight mass Arn was left alone in the church at Varnhem, and he spent the first hours on his knees at his mother's grave before the altar. For such long prayer sessions he was allowed to kneel on soft cushions that could be brought from the sacristy.

   He was in such a daze that he no longer felt that he knew himself. It was as though he were two persons. One was familiar: he was lay brother Arn who belonged more to Vitae Schola than to Varnhem. The other was Arn Magnusson of Arnäs, who was more of a cipher than a real person. On this stormy night he prayed for God's guidance to find what was good in these two, and he prayed to Saint Bernard to show him the way in life so that he would not stumble amid all the sin that seemed to fill the world out there. Finally he prayed for guidance to avoid the sin of pride above all others.

   It was not his own belief that pride should be the foremost sin he must try to avoid—he honestly felt himself free of that particular sin. Yet he knew that this was the sin that Father Henri and Brother Guilbert feared so much that they had kept secrets from him.

   In his prayers Arn made the storm outside cease and time come to a stop. Or rather, when he entered into prayer with his whole spirit, time no longer existed. So dawn came quickly, and with the dawn the storm abated.

   To his surprise the whole choir came in and took up position behind the altar; some of the choir singers gave him kindly winks. He guessed that it was going to be a farewell mass of the type that was held whenever a brother who was much more important than himself was about to depart.

   But then he heard from the creak of rope and tackle that the big baptismal font by the church door was being lowered, and when he turned around he saw them preparing the holy water for the baptismal font. Now he had absolutely no idea what was about to happen.

   Then the choir suddenly began singing the mightiest of all praise-songs to the Lord, the hymn about the eternal kingdom and eternal power. He could feel at once that the singers were approaching their task with the utmost gravity, truly doing their best. He murmured along with certain passages, keeping his eyes closed, and feeling as if he were by turns freezing cold and very hot. His breast became filled with holy light, and he was lifted by the secret power of the song up toward the Lord.

   But when Arn looked up during a slow passage he discovered that some of the singers were craning their necks to look toward the baptismal font, naturally without straying in the least from their song. When he turned around he saw a sight that was the strangest and most astonishing he had seen in all his life. There stood Father Henri, blessing a sword that Brother Guilbert was holding out to him. The sword was sprinkled with holy water as if being baptized. It was unheard of: a sword in the house of God!

   After the choir had sung all the verses of the mighty hymn "Te Deum," Father Henri and Brother Guilbert walked up to the altar. Brother Guilbert carried the sword in his outstretched hands as if it were an offering or some other blessed object. The sword was carefully placed in the middle of the altar, and Father Henri began saying the Pater Noster and everyone murmured along with the prayer. Then Father Henri turned to Arn and signaled for him to move close to his mother's grave, and when he obeyed, the choir took up a new hymn in French which Arn had never heard before. The singers had not mastered it as well as all the others. But Arn was now so filled with the ineffable that he did not hear the words of the song. His wide eyes instead devoured everything that was taking place before him.

   Now the sword was taken from the altar and placed directly over his mother's grave in front of him with the hilt toward the altar and the point of the sword toward Arn. It was a wonderfully beautiful sword with a blade that shone of a white tempered steel that Arn had never seen. The hilt of the sword was shaped so that the gilt guard formed a cross, and on it was engraved a motto that could not be misunderstood: IN HOC SIGNO VINCES, "In this sign shalt thou conquer," that is, only in this sign can one conquer, Arn realized immediately.

   The hilt of the sword was shaped perfectly to fit Arn's hands. He grasped the hilt and felt how it lay in his hand like a part of himself. The gilding shone from being newly applied. In strong sunlight he would have a more steady feel for his parrying blows from the brilliance of the gold; the gilding had nothing to do with wealth or ostentation.

   Father Henri and Brother Guilbert then knelt down facing Arn on the other side of his mother's grave, and the church fell silent, as if they all were holding their breath. Father Henri whispered to Brother Guilbert that it was probably best if he handled what came next, since he was more familiar with it. Brother Guilbert gave him a quick, pale smile at this understatement, filled as he was by the strange moment. Then he turned to Arn and looked him in the eye.

   "Arn, our beloved brother," he began in French, not in Latin, speaking in a loud voice that resounded beneath the vault of the church, "swear now the following oath which I will administer to you:

I, Arn Magnusson, swear by Jesus Christ

at the Holy Sepulchre and the Temple

that the sword I now receive

shall never be raised in anger

or for the sake of my personal gain.