The escorting of the bridal couple had now been accomplished in the presence of twelve witnesses. Cecilia Rosa and Arn Magnusson were now husband and wife. According to church rules, until death did them part. According to the laws of Western Götaland and their ancestors, until such time as there was reason for them to part.

Their friends congratulated them and then, one by one, they bowed and left the bridal couple alone on their first night together.

The room was illuminated both by tarred torches set in the iron wall brackets and wax tapers. For a long time the two lay motionless in the bed, staring up at the ceiling and without speaking.

It had been a long journey to this bed, but now they were finally here, since it was God’s will and the Holy Virgin had made them a promise. And both of them had prayed for this moment for more than twenty years. But it was also because the peace and concord of the realm demanded it, and because both of their clans had decided that it would be so. The king and queen had placed the wedding coverlet over them. No couple could be declared husband and wife in a more decisive manner.

Cecilia was thinking that the torment that had seemed so interminable, from the moment she first saw him riding to Näs and then all the hindrances that had piled up, had now vanished as quickly as the flight of a swallow. So much had happened to her because of others’ wishes and the demands of custom that she had been helplessly swept away on a fast-moving current, like that leaf in the rushing spring stream that she had pictured during the ride between Näs and Riseberga. That moment when she happened to think of the leaf now seemed so long ago, and at the same time so recent. Time raced past at a dizzying speed; she tried to catch it and hold onto it by closing her eyes and conjuring up the memory of Arn riding toward her on his black horse with the silver mane. But when she shut her eyes the whole bed began to spin like a mill-wheel, and she had to open them at once.

Arn was thinking that the love he had felt so strongly for so many years, and that he had sworn never to betray, had lately been buried under all manner of things that had nothing to do with love. A short while ago, on this very evening, he and Knut had talked about a wedding as Birger Brosa’s strongest means of preventing war, as if weddings had nothing to do with love. And Magnus, who was Cecilia’s son and his own, had spoken of love in the same way when Arn asked him about marrying Ingrid Ylva. It was as if the constant struggle for power had dragged his love down in the dirt and sullied it.

As for the fleshly side of love, he had taught himself to push it aside through prayers, cold water, horseback rides in the night, and all sorts of other tricks. He had learned to regard it as sin and temptation, and yet it had now been blessed by God’s Holy Mother herself. An entire banquet hall of guests was expecting him to unite his flesh with Cecilia’s, for during the mass on the following day, the bride would go Forshem Church to be purified.

He tried to recall how it was between them when they were together and with such great desire devoted themselves to such pleasures, but it was as if the doors had been closed on that memory, bolted shut by too many prayers and nights spent in anguish in a little stone cell or a dormitory filled with brother knights.

He noticed that he was beginning to sweat, and he cautiously moved away the heavy bridal coverlet that the king and queen had pulled over them up to the tips of their noses.

‘Thank you, my beloved,’ she said.

That was all she said, as if the shyness they both shared prevented her from saying more. But there was a sweet freshness to her words, especially as she uttered the endearment that they were now entitled to use.

‘Imagine that we can now say those words: my beloved,’ he replied, his voice gruff. He decided at once not to let silence settle over them again. ‘Now that we have finally reached this day, shouldn’t we first of all thank Our Lady for holding her hands over us during the long road we have travelled?’

Cecilia made a move as if to throw off the covers and sink to her knees beside the bed, but he reached out his hand to stop her.

‘Take my hand, my beloved,’ he said, and for the first time he looked into her eyes as she turned toward him. ‘On this one occasion, I think that Our Lady would want to see us like this as we offer Her our thanks.’

He held Cecilia’s hand in his and recited a long prayer of thanksgiving in the language of the church, which she obediently and in a low voice repeated after him.

But after the prayer was done, it was as if their shyness returned. For a long time Arn studied Cecilia’s hand he was holding, unable to say a word. This was the same hand as before, although the veins were more visible now, the fingers thicker, and the nails rough and cracked from all the work she had done to please God in His cloister.

She saw him staring at her hand and probably understood what he was thinking. She in turn studied his hand, thinking that it was the same as before, made strong by working with hammers in the smithy and by wielding swords in war, but with many disfigured knuckles and white scars, signs of all the privations and pain that his long penance had entailed.

‘You are my Arn and I am your Cecilia,’ she said at last, since he didn’t seem able to muster the courage to speak. ‘But are you the same Arn and am I the same Cecilia who parted with such great sorrow back then outside the gates of Gudhem?’

‘Yes, we are the same,’ he replied. ‘Our souls are the same, though our bodies have aged; but the body is merely the shell of the soul. You are the Cecilia I remember, you are the Cecilia I tried to picture in so many dreams and prayers when I wanted to recall how you looked. Haven’t you thought the same of me?’

‘I have tried,’ she said. ‘I have always remembered you from that summer when you let your hair grow long, and in the wind it flew out behind you when you went riding; that is how I have always remembered your face. But I could never picture you differently, the way you would look when you returned home, the same Arn but older.’

‘For a long time I remembered your face as it was,’ he said. ‘Your hair and your eyes and every little sun freckle on your nose. But as the years passed I tried to imagine you older, the same Cecilia but older. It wasn’t easy, and the image I had of you grew hazy. But when I saw you again for the first time outside Näs, I realized that you were much more beautiful than I had dared dream. Those tiny wrinkles at the corner of your eyes make you look both lovelier and wiser. Oh, if only I could say these things in Frankish! Forgive me if my words sound like rough wooden clogs when I speak our language that is now so unfamiliar.’

‘The words you speak are beautiful, and I understood them well, although I have never heard anyone describe words as wooden clogs before,’ she replied with a stifled laugh.

Her laugh came as a relief, and as if simultaneously, they both drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. And with that they both ended up laughing, and Cecilia cautiously crept closer to Arn in the enormous bed.

‘So what about my face?’ said Arn with a smile. ‘Sometimes I feared that these wounds and scars would make me unrecognizable to my beloved when I finally returned home. But you didn’t mistake me for someone else, did you?’

‘I recognized you from the distance of an arrow shot, even before I could see your face close up,’ she replied eagerly. ‘Whoever has seen you on horseback will know that it is you and no one else approaching. It felt as if lightning had struck me though the sky was completely clear. I recognized you the moment I saw you, my beloved. I will never be able to explain properly how sweet it is to say those words.’