"If it is only some sort of swine pox, what can you do for her, dear Brother Lucien?" asked Father Henri with interest.

   "Well now . . . do you really think, Father, that I should try to do something for it?" wondered Brother Lucien dubiously.

   "How do you mean?" asked the other two at the same time, both equally astonished.

   "I mean . . . if the Lord Himself has visited this illness upon her, who am I to revoke the Lord's will?"

   "Look here, Brother Lucien, don't make a fool of yourself now!" snorted Father Henri in irritation. "You are the Lord's instrument, and if you do the best you can and He finds your work good, then it will help. Otherwise nothing at all will help and nothing will make any difference. So what had you thought to do about the matter?"

   The monk explained that as far as he understood it was a question of cleaning and drying out the sores. Boiled and consecrated water for washing, then clean air and sunshine, should dry out the abscesses in about a week. Her hand looked more dire, and in the worst case it might turn out to be something other than harmless swine pox.

   Father Henri nodded in agreement, showing great interest. As usual when Brother Lucien described his initial medical diagnosis, he sounded quite convincing. What Father Henri especially admired was the monk's ability to stay calm when confronting problems and not rush off at once to slap on all sorts of herbs in the hope that one of them might do some good. According to Brother Lucien, such ill-considered conduct could easily cause an illness to go from bad to worse.

   When Brother Lucien had gone, Father Stéphan again took up his previous train of thought and said that it was rather obvious that the Lord God wanted something special with that boy. If he was to be just one more monk among all the other monks, then it seemed a bit extreme to resort to both a miracle and a case of leprosy, didn't it? People became monks for lesser reasons than that.

   Father Henri burst out laughing at his colleague's outrageous but humorous logic. Still, there was no real counterargument. So they should take in the boy, but treat him carefully, like one of Brother Lucien's sensitive plants, and make sure that his free will was not broken. Some time in the future, perhaps, they would have a better idea of the Lord's intentions for the boy. So the boy was allowed to become an oblate. And if they had to move out of Varnhem, he would have to come along with them. But that was a matter for a later time.

   The question of Fru Sigrid remained. Naturally the simplest approach would be to start by letting her confess and ask for her own opinion. Father Stéphan went into the scriptorium to reread, perhaps a bit more attentively than before, the account of the miracle from Arnäs. With a concerned expression Father Henri walked up toward the old guesthouse outside the cloister walls to hear Sigrid's confession.

   He found mother and son in a pitiful state. There was only one bed in the room, and there lay Sigrid, panting with fever with her eyes closed. At her side sat a little fellow, his face red from crying, clutching her healthy hand. The house hadn't been cleaned; it was filled with all sorts of rubbish and there was a cold draft. While it hadn't been used in many years, it hadn't been torn down because there were more pressing things to do, or possibly because the wooden walls were old and rotten and the lumber couldn't be reused.

   He draped the prayer stole over his shoulders and went over to Arn, cautiously stroking the boy's head. But Arn seemed not to notice, or else he was pretending he didn't.

   Father Henri then gently asked the boy to leave for a moment while his mother made confession, but the boy just shook his head without looking up and squeezed his mother's hand all the harder.

   Sigrid now awoke, and Arn left the room reluctantly, slamming the drafty door behind him. Sigrid seemed indignant at his behavior, but with a smile Father Henri put his right index finger to his lips and shushed her, indicating that she shouldn't worry. Then he asked if she was ready to confess.

   "Yes, Father," she replied, her mouth dry. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. With the help of holy Saint Bernard, my lord and husband and I, together with lay brother Erlend, managed through sincere prayers to ask the Lord to return Arn to live among us. But just before this miracle occurred I made a solemn and sacred promise to the Lord to give the boy to God's holy work among the people here on earth if He saw fit to save my son."

   "I know all this; it's exactly as it was written by lay brother Erlend. Your Latin is as fluid as water, by the way. Have you been practicing lately? Well, never mind that, now back to your confession, my child."

   "Well, I have studied with the boys . . ." she murmured wearily, but took a deep breath and thought intently before she went on. "I betrayed my sacred promise to the Lord God; I ignored it, and therefore He has afflicted me with leprosy as you can see. I want to do penance, if it is possible to do penance for such a grave sin. My idea is that I should live here in this house as the wife of no one and eat only scraps from the monks' table as long as I live."

   "I can see, my dear Sigrid, that you who have done so much for those of us who toil here in the garden of the Lord at Varnhem, to you it may seem that the Lord has been harsh toward you," said Father Henri pensively. "But one cannot ignore the fact that it is a grave sin to break a sacred promise to the Lord God, even if one makes this promise in a difficult moment. For is it not in our greatest difficulties that we give the Lord our greatest promises? We shall take good care of your son as both the Lord and you yourself, although in different ways, have asked us to do. The boy's name is Arn, is it not? I should know, since I was the one who baptized him. And we will also tend to your affliction and you may stay here to eat, ahem, well, as you say, the scraps from our table. But I can't give you absolution for your sins just now, and I beg you not to be unduly frightened because of this. I don't yet know what the Lord will tell us. Perhaps He merely wanted to give you a little reminder. You must say twenty Pater Nosters and twenty Ave Marias, then go to sleep and know that you are in safe and tender hands. I'll send Brother Lucien to you to take care of your sores with the utmost care, and if it then turns out, as I sense but do not know, that the Lord will make you whole again, then you will soon be without sin. Rest now. I'll take the boy with me down to the cloister."

   Father Henri got up slowly and studied Sigrid's deformed face. One eye was so sealed shut by pus that it couldn't be seen: the other eye was only half open. He leaned forward and sniffed cautiously at the sores, then nodded thoughtfully and left the room as he stuffed the prayer stole in his pocket.

   Outside the boy sat on a rock looking at the ground and didn't even turn around when Father Henri came out.