‘I can take care of the morning gift myself. I had not intended anything immoderate, only the Forsvik estate, as was once agreed at the betrothal feast for Cecilia and myself. One must honour one’s agreements,’ said Arn quickly and in a low voice, but without revealing what he felt, although his brother would surely understand.

‘If you ask me for Forsvik, I can hardly say no. On a first evening like this, I cannot say no to anything you may want from me,’ Eskil continued in the same tone of voice, as if they were two businessmen talking. ‘But I still want to ask you to wait with such a request until after our first day and evening together after so many years.’

Arn did not answer, but seemed to be pondering the matter. Then he got up and took out three keys which he carried on a leather thong around his neck. He went over to the three very heavy chests that were the first to be carried into the tower from his caravan. When he unlocked them one by one, a bright golden glow spread through the room, although the rays of the sun were visible only at the bottom of the western arrow loop.

Eskil stood up slowly and went around the table with his ale tankard in his hand. To Arn’s pleasure and surprise he did not look covetous when he gazed at the gold.

‘Do you know how much there is?’ asked Eskil, as if he were still talking about dried fish.

‘No, not in our mode of reckoning,’ said Arn. ‘It’s about thirty thousand besants, or gold dinars, calculated in the Frankish manner. It might be three thousand marks in our currency.’

‘And it was not ill-gotten?’

‘No, it was not.’

‘You could buy all of Denmark.’

‘That’s not my intention. I have better things to buy.’

Arn slowly closed the three chests, locked them, and tossed the three keys across the table so that they slid to a stop just in front of Eskil’s place. Then he went slowly back to his stool and gestured for his brother to sit down again. Eskil did so in meditative silence.

‘I have three chests and three thoughts,’ said Arn when they had raised their tankards high. ‘My three thoughts are simple. As with everything else, I will tell you more about it when we have more time. But first I want to build a church of stone in Forshem, and with the most beautiful images that can be worked in stone in all of Western Götaland. Then, or rather at the same time, since all the stone must come from the same place, I want to build Arnäs so strong that no one here in the North can vanquish it. To fortify it in such a manner is something that I and the men who came here with me know how to do. We know much about building methods not yet known this far north. And the remaining third chest I will gladly share with my brother…after having purchased Forsvik, of course.’

‘For such a rich man Cecilia Algotsdotter’s kinsmen will have a hard time offering a proper dowry. Her father is dead, by the way, he ate himself lame and blind at last year’s Christmas ale.’

‘Peace be unto his soul. But all Cecilia needs is a dowry that is equal in value to Forsvik.’

‘She cannot afford even that,’ replied Eskil, but now with a little smile, which showed that he had not yet weighed every coin in this bargain.

‘I’m quite certain that she can. For Forsvik she need not pay more than four or five marks in gold, and I know as well as you do where she can get such a small sum,’ Arn shot back.

Now Eskil could restrain himself no longer; he bellowed with laughter so the ale splashed out of his tankard.

‘My brother! My brother, in truth you are my brother!’ he snorted, and downed more of his ale before he went on. ‘I thought that a warrior had come to Arnäs, but you are a man of affairs who is my equal. We must drink to that!’

‘I am your equal, since I am your brother,’ said Arn when he lowered his tankard after only pretending to drink. ‘But I am also a Templar knight. We Knights Templar conduct many trades in which the most peculiar goods change hands, and we can strike these bargains with the Devil himself and even with Norwegians!’

Laughing, Eskil agreed to everything. It seemed that he needed more ale, but he changed his mind when he looked out through the arrow loop to the west and saw the fading light.

‘It probably wouldn’t be much of a banquet without us,’ he muttered.

Arn nodded and said that he would like some time in the bath-house first, and that he ought to fetch one of his men who was best at handling a razor. A man who wore a Folkung mantle was not allowed to stink as he might in the garb of a Templar knight. Because now a new life had begun, and it had certainly not begun badly.

For the brothers Marcus and Jacob Wachtian the arrival at Arnäs was distressing. A more wretched fortress they had never seen. Marcus, who was the more jovial of the two, said that a man like Count Raymond of Tripoli would have taken a fortress like that in less time than it took to rest soldiers and horses during a hard march. Without a smile Jacob said that a man like Saladin would probably have ridden straight past it, since he wouldn’t even have noticed that it was a fortress. If the big, important task Sir Arn had talked about was to make a decent fortress out of this nest for crows, it would surely be harder work for the body than for the mind.

It was true, of course, that they hadn’t had many choices when Sir Arn rescued them from trouble after the fall of Jerusalem. A wave of euphoria following the victory had swept over Damascus, but it had soon made the city intolerable for Christians, no matter how skilled they were as craftsmen or businessmen. And during the flight towards Saint Jean d’Acre the brothers had too often encountered Christians who knew that they had been in the service of the unbelievers. Marcus and Jacob had also been robbed of all the belongings they carried with them. Even if they had managed to reach the last Christian city in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, it would not have been long before someone recognized them again. In the worst case they might have ended up on the gallows or burned at the stake. And in those days their homeland of Armenia had been laid waste by savage Turks, so that the journey there would have been even riskier than the one to Saint Jean d’Acre.

When they had stopped in despair by the wayside to say their last prayers to the Mother of God and Saint Sebastian, begging for a miraculous salvation, they had sincerely believed that none would come.

In their hour of despair Sir Arn had found them. He came riding with a small band from Damascus, strangely unafraid despite the fact that the region was teeming with Saracen brigands, as if the white mantle of the Knights Templar would guard against any sort of evil. Sir Arn had instantly recognized them from their businesses and workshops in Damascus. At the time it seemed beyond belief, since no Templar knight should have escaped Damascus alive. But he had at once offered the brothers his protection if they would enter his service for a period of no less than five years and would also accompany him to his homeland in the North.

The brothers hadn’t had much choice. And Sir Arn had promised nothing more than a hard and dangerous journey, and hard work upon their arrival – in the beginning, even filthy work. And yet what they had now managed to see of the misery in this godforsaken land in the North was worse than they could have imagined even in their darkest and most seasick hour.

At the moment, however, they had no possibility of breaking their agreement. A hard, dark, and filthy four years awaited them, if the year the journey had already taken was to be subtracted. In that respect their contract was unclear.

They had put things somewhat in order in their tent encampment outside the low, crumbling wall. To make things simpler, the camp had been divided into two parts so that the Muslims had one section to themselves and the Christians the other. Naturally they had all managed to get along on a cramped ship for more than a year, but since their hours of prayer were different there had been much stumbling about at night when the Muslims had to get up to pray and the Christians were sleeping, and vice versa.