‘Will there be war in our land again, and if so, why and when?’

The two monks frowned for a moment in contemplation. Brother Guilbert answered first, with Father Guillaume’s assent, by saying that as long as King Knut Eriksson and his jarl Birger Brosa held power, there was no danger of war. The question was, what would happen after King Knut’s demise.

‘Then the risk of a new war would be great,’ sighed Father Guillaume.

He recounted how at the previous year’s church convocation in Linköping the new Archbishop Petrus had clearly demonstrated to the men of the church where he stood. He was a supporter of the Sverker dynasty, and he had received his pallium from the Danish Archbishop Absalon in Lund. This same Absalon had plotted against the Erik dynasty and wanted to restore the royal crown of the Goths and Swedes to the Sverkers. There was also a means for achieving that goal, though King Knut Eriksson undoubtedly knew as little about it as he knew that his new archbishop was a man of the Danes and Sverkers. Bishop Absalon in Lund possessed a letter from the blessed Abbess Rikissa which she had dictated on her deathbed. In this letter she recounted how King Knut’s queen Cecilia Blanca, during the time she had spent among the novices at Gudhem convent, had taken vows of chastity and pledged to remain forever a handmaiden of the Lord. Since King Knut later brought Cecilia Blanca from Gudhem and made her his queen, and she later bore him four sons and two daughters…

It could therefore be claimed that the king’s children were illegitimate and had no right to the crown, Arn quickly summed up. Had the Holy Father in Rome given his opinion on this matter?

No, since a new Pope had just been elected, taking the name Celestinus III, they still knew nothing about what opinion the Holy See might have regarding legitimate or illegitimate royal progeny in Götaland. Surely there were greater problems demanding the immediate attention of the one who had been elevated to the Holy See.

‘But if none of King Knut’s sons could succeed him,’ Arn said, and it sounded more like a statement than a question, ‘then might not Archbishop Petrus and possibly other bishops propose a Sverker kinsman as the new king? It would not be entirely unexpected.’

The two monks nodded in gloomy affirmation. Arn sat in thought for a moment before he stood up with an expression that showed he had already dismissed these minor concerns. He thanked the monks for the valuable information, and suggested that they proceed immediately to the scriptorium to weigh the gold accurately and to have the donation documents drawn up and stamped with the proper seal.

Father Guillaume, who for a moment had thought that the conversation had taken a quite base and uninteresting turn, accepted this suggestion at once.

The odd caravan of heavily laden ox-carts escorted by light and fast Saracen horses left Varnhem cloister the next morning on the way to Skara, the market town and bishop’s see in the middle of Western Götaland, eight miles due west of Varnhem. Brother Guilbert was part of all the newly purchased goods – that was his ironic view of the sudden change in his life. Arn had bought him as easily as he had bought his gravesite, the horses, and almost all the saddle tack and bridles that were made at Varnhem. Brother Guilbert could not have had it any other way even if he had protested, since Father Guillaume seemed dazzled by the payments in gold from Arn. Instead of quietly awaiting the end of his life in Varnhem, Brother Guilbert was now riding with strangers toward an unknown destination, and he found that to be an exceedingly good situation. He had no idea what sort of plans Arn might have, but he didn’t believe that all these horses had been bought merely to please the eye.

The Saracen knights who were in the lead – and it was no secret to Brother Guilbert that they were Saracens – seemed childishly enchanted at being able to continue their long journey on horseback. This was easy to understand, especially since they were allowed to ride such magnificent steeds. It occurred to Brother Guilbert that now Saint Bernard in his Heaven must be teasing his monk who once had despaired that anyone would ever want to buy Varnhem’s horses, and in his powerlessness had shrieked that he would settle for Saracen buyers at the very least. Now these unexpected Saracens rode along, joking loudly and talking all around him. At the oxen-reins sat men who spoke other languages. Brother Guilbert had still not figured them out – who they were or where they had come from.

But there was one big problem. What Arn had done was a type of deception which the young and naïve Father Guillaume hadn’t had the wit to see through, blinded as he was by all that gold. Yet a Templar knight was allowed to own no more than a monk in Varnhem cloister. Any Templar knight who was discovered with a single gold coin would immediately have to relinquish his white mantle and leave the Templar order in disgrace.

Brother Guilbert decided that the unpleasant matter should be broached sooner rather than later, which was how every Templar knight had learned to think. He urged on his dapple grey, rode up alongside Arn at the head of the column, and asked him the question straight out.

But Arn did not seem to take offence at the troublesome query. He merely smiled and turned his exquisite stallion – which was from Outremer but of a type that Brother Guilbert did not know – and galloped back to one of the last carts in the column. He leaped onto it and began searching for something among the loaded goods.

He remounted his horse and was back at once with a water-tight leather roll which he handed without a word to Brother Guilbert, who opened it with as much trepidation as curiosity.

It was a document in three languages, signed by the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Gérard de Ridefort. It said that Arn de Gothia, after twenty years of service as a provisional brother, had now left his position in the Order of the Knights Templar, released from his obligations by the Grand Master himself. But because of all the services he had rendered to the Order, whenever he desired and at his own discretion he had the right to wear the white mantle with the same status he’d enjoyed before he left the Order.

‘So you see, my dear Brother Guilbert,’ Arn said, taking the document, rolling it up and inserting it carefully back into the leather sheath, ‘I am a Templar knight and yet not. And to be honest, I can’t see there is any great harm done if someone who has so long served the crimson cross should occasionally seek protection behind it.’

At first it was not quite clear to Brother Guilbert what Arn meant by that. But after they had ridden for a while, Arn began to talk about his homeward journey, and then his words about taking protection behind the blood-red cross made more sense.

Arn had bought, taken captive, or employed in his service the men who now rode with him in the column on the roads all over Outremer, where everyone had become everyone else’s foe and where a Saracen who served the Christians was just as much at risk as a Christian who served the Saracens. But putting together a ship’s crew and a group of men who would be of good use when travelling the long way back to Western Götaland had not been the hard part.

Brother Guilbert studied his friend’s face now and then when he thought Arn wasn’t looking. He found nothing in Arn’s outward appearance that surprised him. Had someone asked him to guess how Arn might look if, against all logic, he survived twenty years as a Templar knight in Outremer, Brother Guilbert would have guessed at something like this: A blond beard that had not yet begun to grey but had nevertheless lost its lustre. All Templar knights wore beards, of course. Short hair as well. White scars on his hands and all over his face, the marks of arrows and swords and perhaps an axe-blow over one eyebrow which made that eye seem a bit stiff. This was more or less the appearance that he would have guessed. The war in Outremer had been no banquet.