‘Undoubtedly,’ said the queen. ‘I think that our esteemed archbishop will quickly remember God’s words about the miracle of love. He will become a strong advocate for the love between you and Arn, which must not be desecrated, because—’

‘Because we would all become implicated in a great sin by denying the obvious and clearly demonstrated will of Our Lady!’ Cecilia Rosa said with a laugh.

They were now utterly exhilarated and bursting with ideas. Cecilia Blanca even came up with new plans for how they could eat supper in such a way that there would no longer be any going back to the convent. Cecilia Rosa was astonished, blushing when she heard about these stratagems. But they finally realized that they had no time to lose; they took each other’s hand and ran like young girls down the spiral tower staircase, eager to deliver the true confessions that would turn all the men’s plans into ashes and ruins. When they came out into the courtyard they forced themselves to stop, bowed their heads, and began walking gravely and demurely over toward the archbishop’s tent outside the walls.

The heated argument in the council chamber of the east tower had subsided and turned into a long discussion as a result of Arn’s harsh words about the impossibility of mounting a crusade from the Gothic lands and Svealand. Both the king and the jarl were offended by the curt way he had dismissed the capability of Nordic men.

Arn had been forced to elucidate, and what he told the others made them both reflect and listen with dread.

Retaking the Holy Land now from the Saracens, since the fall of Jerusalem, would require an army of no less than sixty thousand men, Arn began. And an army that big would be difficult to keep supplied with food and water; it would have to be constantly in motion, plundering its way forward. So they wouldn’t be able to survive without a strong cavalry, and that alone made the use of Nordic warriors impossible. And sixty thousand men was such an enormous number that it would take every man capable of bearing arms in the two Gothic lands as well as Svealand.

But what if they did only what the Church demanded, their duty before God, and contributed as best they could, scraping together as many men as possible? What would that mean?

Ten thousand foot soldiers, said Arn. If King Knut, after much effort and persuasion and threats, managed to convince everyone that God truly wanted all Nordic men who could handle a sword or at least a pitchfork to head off for Jerusalem for the sake of their salvation – ifthe whole country could be convinced – then exactly how would they get there?

They would sail, of course. On the way up from England just off the coast of Jutland, Arn and his ship had met a Danish crusader army of about fifty ships with three or four thousand men aboard, although without horses. Arn and Harald had agreed that all these men were on their way to their own slaughter. They would cause more trouble rather than be of any help, if indeed they even managed to arrive safely.

Let’s say that King Knut, Arn went on, could indeed sail with a force of about that size. What would happen when they arrived in the Holy Land? Well, the only place where new crusaders could land was the city of Saint Jean d’Acre, the last Christian foothold in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and it was now extremely crowded. Would thousands of Norsemen without cavalry be received with gratitude? No, they would just be more mouths to feed. And what use would they be to the Christian army? Perhaps they could run next to the cavalry, protecting the knights’ horses. But the Norsemen could not be a fighting force of any importance, because there were too few of them to form their own army. And besides, they didn’t understand Frankish.

It would not merely be certain death; it would be a death that was unnecessary and dishonourable. And those who died would not die with the firm conviction that death in the Holy Land would grant them forgiveness for all their sins and lead them to Paradise.

Birger Brosa attempted to object, but his earlier wrath had now vanished as if blown away on the wind. He spoke softly and often with a smile, balancing his ale tankard on the knee of his crossed leg.

‘Knut and I are not accustomed to thinking of ourselves as lambs being led to the slaughter,’ he said. ‘At the start of the fight for the king’s crown, in the years after you left, we beat the Sverkers in all our encounters except one. The final battle was outside Bjälbo, and our victory was great, although the enemy had a force almost twice as large as ours. Since then there has been peace in the kingdom. There were more than three thousand Folkungs and Eriks with our kinsmen standing side by side, one phalanx next to another. It was a formidable force. Yet you still think that we would be like lambs? That’s hard to imagine. What if this force that stood outside Bjälbo in the battle of the fields of blood stood on the soil of the Holy Land?’

‘There we would indeed have to stand,’ said Arn. ‘The enemy would be on horseback, so we couldn’t attack, nor could we choose the time and place. The sun would reap its victims like willows in the summertime; the rain and the cloying red mud would drag us down into hopelessness and disease in the winter. The enemy would suddenly come from behind on fast horses, and a hundred men would die and another hundred be wounded and then the enemy would be gone. And there we would stand. The next day the same thing. None of us would have a chance to land a single sword blow before we were all dead.’

‘But if they come on horses,’ Birger Brosa mused, ‘then we could take them with arrows and lances. A man on horseback has twice as many things to keep track of; if he falls, he’ll be dead, and if he rides into the lances he’ll end up impaled.’

Arn took a deep breath, stood up, and went over to the heavy oak table in the middle of the room. He cleared off the writing implements, seals, and parchment, and drew with his finger in the dust.

If the army were standing still out on the flat field with good visibility in all directions, the enemy would just make small sorties, since the sun and thirst would do the heavy work.

If the army didn’t move it would die. If the army moved it would have to extend from the front to the rear, and then the attacks would come quickly from either direction. Saracen horsemen would ride up, shoot two or three arrows which almost all would strike home, and then disappear. After each such attack there would be dead and wounded to care for.

The Saracens also had some heavy cavalry with long lances, just like the Christians did. An inexperienced Nordic army would surely tempt the Saracens to use that weapon as well.

Arn described how the sky could suddenly darken with a tremendous wall of dust, how they would soon hear the ground shaking, and how they wouldn’t be able to see clearly in all that dust before the cavalry struck with full force, riding straight in among the foot soldiers, storming forward without resistance straight through the army and cutting it in half, then turning and coming back again. Three thousand warriors on foot in the Holy Land would have died in less time than they’d been arguing and discussing in this chamber, said Arn in conclusion. Then he went back to his seat.

‘I’m thinking of several things when I hear you tell all this, kinsman,’ said Birger Brosa. ‘Your honesty is great, I know that. What you tell us I believe to be true, which means that it could save us from the greatest folly.’

‘That is my hope,’ said Arn. ‘I have sworn our king auxilium, and that’s not something I take lightly.’

‘No,’ said Birger Brosa with a smile reflecting his true nature, ‘that you do not. Tomorrow at the council we will therefore delight our archbishop and his followers with the decision to build a new cloister in…well, where do you think, Knut?’