‘But when you saw my face at close hand, didn’t I frighten you then?’ Arn persisted. He was smiling broadly, but Cecilia glimpsed the concern in his eyes.

She drew her other hand from behind her back, wiped off the sweat on the coverlet, and reached out to touch his cheek, caressing the white scars without saying a word.

Finally she spoke. ‘You said that our souls are the same. But it is also said that the eyes are the mirrors of the soul, and your gentle blue eyes are the same as I remember. The Saracens have wounded you, sliced at you with their swords and lances for many years; that much I can see, as you well know. What are the wrinkles at my eyes compared to this! What serene strength your face shows, my beloved. Your wounds speak of the eternal battle against evil and the sacrifices that only those possessing great goodness and strong faith can endure. At your side I will always carry my head high, because a more handsome man cannot be found in all this kingdom of ours.’

Arn was so overcome with embarrassment at these words that she saw he could find nothing to say. Afraid that silence would once again descend upon them, she leaned over and timidly kissed him, her dry lips touching first his forehead, then his cheek, and finally she closed her eyes and kissed his mouth.

He kissed her back, as if dreaming that they were once again seventeen and everything happened so easily. But it was not as easy as back then, and he felt a strange sense of despair growing inside him as he pressed his lips to hers and cautiously placed his calloused hand on her breast.

Cecilia tried not to tense and seem afraid, but she had kept her eyes closed so long that her head had started spinning unbearably from all the wine. Abruptly she had to pull away and dash outside to the stairs; there she vomited loudly without being able to stop herself.

At first Arn lay in bed, paralysed with shame. But he soon realized that he couldn’t just lie there idly while his beloved was feeling sick. He tumbled out of bed and went out to the stairway, putting his arm around Cecilia’s shoulders to console her. Then he opened the door to the outer stairway and called for cold water. As he hoped, house thralls were posted outside, and they leaped up to obey at once.

A while later they were again lying in bed, both cooled by the cold water, each of them holding a big tankard.

Cecilia was deeply ashamed and didn’t dare meet her husband’s gaze. He comforted her with caresses at first, but soon with laughter. And it wasn’t long before she too was laughing.

‘We have the rest of our lives together to learn to make love as we once did,’ he said, stroking her damp forehead. ‘Such things are quickly forgotten in a cloister. The same is true for Templar knights, since we live as monks. But there is no haste to re-learn what we once did all too easily.’

‘Although not after drinking a cask of wine and eating an entire ox,’ said Cecilia.

‘We’ll try it with cold water instead,’ said Arn, but laughed at the same time as a fleeting thought passed through his wine-drenched mind.

Cecilia had no idea why Arn found the thought of cold water instead of wine so funny, but she laughed too, until they were both laughing hard and holding onto each other.

Late the next morning the twelve witnesses, bleary-eyed and unsteady on their feet, appeared as custom demanded. Arn had to get out of bed and accept a spear, which he was to hurl through the open window. Someone joked that the distance was so short from the bed to the window that not even Arn Magnusson could miss, even though he was known to be so poor at the sport.

Nor did he miss. The morning gift was thereby secured. Forsvik now belonged for all eternity to Cecilia Algotsdotter and her descendants.

SEVEN

At Olsmas came the transition between the old and new harvests in Western Götaland. The barns normally stood empty, but the hay-making was going full speed and would be done by the feast of Saint Laurentius in twelve days’ time. But during this unusually hot summer the crops had ripened much more quickly than normal, and by now all the hay had already been taken in. A month had passed since Arn and Cecilia’s bridal ale, and it was time for the bride’s third purification. The first took place the day after the wedding night, and the second one a week later.

This bride could not be more cleansed than she was already by having some priest say a prayer over her and sprinkle her with holy water, Cecilia thought. She felt a secret shame over her involuntary chastity which she had a hard time admitting to herself even in the brief moments of solitude and contemplation that she’d had during the first month at Forsvik. It felt like a reverse sin now that she and Arn were united in the flesh, and even though Cecilia placed more of the blame on herself than on Arn, she had no idea how to improve the situation.

Arn seemed to be working like a maniac. He immersed himself in hard labour right after matins, and she saw him only briefly at breakfast and dinner; after vespers he would go down to the shore of Bottensjön and swim to remove the sweat and grime. By the time he came to her in their bedchamber it was already dark, and he didn’t say much before he fell into a heavy slumber.

True, it was a special time, as he said, a time for harder work, since there was so much to do to get ready for winter. Many new souls had to have roofs over their heads as well as heat, especially heat, because the foreigners had never experienced a Nordic winter. Smithies and glassworks had to be ready by winter so that they could begin their real efforts then, able to work through the winter instead of merely eating, sleeping, and freezing the whole time.

Life at Forsvik was not easy, and the words between them were few, dealing mostly with necessities having to do with the day’s or the next day’s work. Cecilia sought solace in the knowledge that the need for such toil would soon pass, and the days would become calmer with the winter darkness. She was also happy about everything she saw being done, and each night when she entered their bedchamber she enjoyed breathing in the smell of fresh timber and tar.

Arn had decided that he and Cecilia would live by themselves in a smaller house that stood on stony ground a short distance away from the new longhouse, at the top of the slope leading to the shore of Bottensjön. The first day at Forsvik, before he felt compelled to spend months working every single hour between matins and vespers, he had taken her around to show her what was being built. And there was much to show, since a completely new Forsvik was rising up on either side of the old.

The greatest surprise was that he had built a separate house just for the two of them. Like her, he dreaded having to follow the old custom dictating that the master and mistress of the estate would sleep among thralls and servants in the warmest spot of the longhouse. Naturally he was used to sleeping in communal dormitories with his knight-brothers, he told her. But he had also had his own cell for many years. He didn’t think either of them would be happy sleeping among all the others as if at a huge feast.

Their house was much smaller than a longhouse and divided into two big rooms; there was nothing like it in all of Western Götaland. It didn’t take Cecilia long to be convinced of that.

When he took her in through the smaller door to the clothing chamber of the house, she was amazed at first to hear water running as if in a stream. He had conducted water through the house, flowing in a channel made of brick. It came in through a hole in one wall and ran out through the other wall by the door. In two places there were holes in the brick wall so that they could reach their hand down into the flowing stream. Above one of these holes there was an opening with wooden shutters. Next to it on the wall hung white linen for drying their hands and faces, and on a wooden tray under the linen was something waxlike that he called savon, which they could use for washing themselves. At the other opening the rough brick was covered with smoothsanded wood so that one could sit down. At first Cecilia wasn’t sure that she understood correctly, but when she pointed and hesitantly asked, he laughed and nodded that it was precisely what she thought it was, a retrit.Waste from the body was taken away at once by the stream of water and vanished through the brick wall to end a good way from the house in a stream that ran down to Bottensjön.