So far none of the guests had arrived, and Arnäs was deserted except for all the house thralls running back and forth as they tended to their tasks. The village of Arnäs had emptied out and every nook and cranny had been swept so as to provide lodging for guests who were too highborn to sleep in tents. Bowers of stock and rowan had been erected by the field on the other side of the moat below the western gate, and tables and benches had been hauled out there. Ale casks had been rolled across the castle courtyard, cartloads of birch and rowan branches had been brought in and unloaded to adorn the walls of the great hall. Tables were brought from near and far, while poles and canvas for tents set up and made taut.

Arn and his companions took no part in all this work, and after they handed their horses over to the stable thralls, Erik jarl decided that he needed to rest in order to gather strength for the evening’s strenuous trials. Folke Jonsson agreed. Besides, those who arrived first could claim the best sleeping areas.

Arn thought he could make better use of his time by not sleeping, but he didn’t say this out loud. Instead, he put his arms around the shoulders of his son Magnus and the young Torgils. Offering a few jests, but with great firmness, he led the two men toward the big tower. They both recoiled when he explained that they were now going to meet old Herr Magnus, because they had heard that the old man was no longer in his right mind.

Hence their great surprise when they climbed the tower stairs with Arn and found Herr Magnus out on the battlement. He was walking back and forth, muttering but resolute, with only a rough stick to lean on for support. A foreigner was attentively walking at his side. When Herr Magnus noticed the three visitors, a broad smile immediately lit up his face. He threw out his arms, even the one holding the stick, and offered up loud and incomprehensible words praising God for the grace that had now been granted him.

Magnus Månesköld stepped forward at once, took the old man’s hand, and sank down with one knee touching the stone floor. Torgils then did the same, followed by Arn.

‘You’ve regained your strength much faster and better than I dared hope, Father,’ said Arn.

‘Yes, and that’s why I’m both happy and vexed to see the three of you, even though it’s been a long time since I saw you, Magnus, and you as well, Torgils. My two grandsons!’

‘It was truly not our intention to vex you, dear grandfather,’ said Magnus Månesköld gently.

‘Oh, you misunderstand me! I merely meant that I wanted to see all of you struck dumb with surprise at the bridal ale. Everybody will be expecting to find me crippled and lying in my own piss somewhere, shoved aside where no one would see me. Instead I intend to give the bridal toast myself, because it has been a long time since I had that pleasure. So I ask all of you to promise not to say anything of this; then I will still enjoy my surprise.’

His speech flowed freely and without slurring, perhaps a bit slower than in the past, but otherwise almost the same. Both Magnus Månesköld and young Torgils, who hadn’t seen him in over a year, and then more to bid him farewell than to encounter any joy, now thought that they were beholding a true miracle. And it was not difficult for Herr Magnus to see what they were thinking.

‘It’s not at all what you two imagine,’ he went on as he took a little turn around the battlement to demonstrate again that he was able to walk almost as he had done previously. ‘It’s this Frankish man who is knowledgeable in healing who has shown me the way, along with Our Lord, of course!’

Arn had been carrying on a brief and quiet conversation in an incomprehensible language with the foreigner, and what he learned was apparently favourable.

‘You mustn’t exert yourself too much today, Father,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to get overtired, because it’s going to be a long night tomorrow. And we all promise not to say a word to anyone about your surprise.’

‘Agreed?’ he added, looking at the two young men, who immediately nodded solemnly.

‘Father should rest for two hours now, then practice for an hour and rest again for two,’ Arn went on after another brief discussion with the foreigner. ‘We won’t disturb you any longer right now.’

The three men bowed and took three steps back before turning around and continuing along the battlement, with Arn in the lead. He wanted to show them the construction work that was going on.

But Magnus and Torgils seemed a bit too timid in his presence, and they soon said they wished to follow Erik jarl’s example and rest before the evening’s contests.

Disappointed by their lack of interest and concerned that there was something about the young men that he didn’t understand, Arn went over to the side facing Lake Vänern where the tackle groaned and the stone hammers rang. He was genuinely surprised to see how fast the work had progressed and how evenly the stones were being fit together. He gave all the Saracen builders much praise before he explained that they would now have a three-day holiday for the wedding. They were all invited as guests, but they would need to dress accordingly. He said nothing about washing, since it would have been insulting to mention such a thing to the Prophet’s people.

Yet he did offer a few jests about the matter to the sweaty Brother Guilbert, who had been a Templar knight for twelve years in the Holy Land, after all. Was he perhaps still obeying the Rule’s ban on unnecessary washing? Brother Guilbert had a good laugh at this assumption, explaining that of all the regulations, he found the one prescribing that a man should stink like a pig was the least comprehensible. Unless Saint Bernard, in his inscrutable wisdom when he wrote the Rule, had thought that the Saracens would be more afraid of those warriors who stank like swine.

Brother Guilbert went off to get washed and change into his white monk’s robes, because when he was toiling so hard he dressed as a lay brother. In the meantime Arn went looking for Eskil. He found his brother engaged in a palaver involving many different languages, although no one seemed to understand a single word uttered by the group of minstrels, pipers, and drummers who had arrived from Skara with four ox-carts. What needed to be negotiated was the payment and the location; in such matters people were apt to pretend that they understood less than they actually did. But when the leader of the minstrel group turned out to be from Aix-en-Provence, Arn was soon able to help his brother by clarifying the agreement regarding every silver coin, as well as the group’s right to free ale and meat. In return, they would have to set up camp with their carts a good distance away from the fortress. In the end both parties seemed satisfied with the agreement, and the minstrels immediately returned to their ox carts to head for the specified camp area.

Eskil then took his brother to the bridal chamber, which was separated from the rest of the living quarters in the western end of the loft of the longhouse, with a stairway leading up to it from each side, one for the bridegroom and one for the bride. In the chamber hung the clothing that Arn would wear at various times during the days of the bridal ale. He would wear the garb of a warrior only when going to fetch his bride; afterwards he would change into other attire. For the evening of the bridal ale, he would wear foreign clothing in blue and silver and made from cloth that was otherwise worn only by women. But now, for the bachelors’ evening, he was to dress in a loose white surcoat with sleeves that reached only to the elbow; underneath he would wear a long blue tunic made of supple dyed deerskin, leggings of undyed leather, and soft leather boots with cross-gartering. He would wear his sword no matter what his attire.

After explaining these changes of clothing to a somewhat astonished Arn, Eskil sighed as for the thousandth time that day he remembered something that demanded his prompt attention. They were six men, but seven were needed for the evening. The group included Erik jarl, Sture Jönsson from the Pål clan, and four Folkungs: Arn, Magnus Månesköld, Folke Jonsson, and Eskil’s own son, Torgils. They needed a seventh, and he had to be unmarried and not a Folkung.