She was all the more puzzled on that first night after the new foreigners arrived to hear an ever greater commotion coming from the foreigners’ house. Arn replied curtly to her questions, saying that it was a celebration called Laylat al-Qadr, which meant ‘the power of the night.’ She had then innocently asked what sort of power this meant, and she went cold inside upon hearing that it was a celebration of Muhammed’s first vision.

Arn didn’t even notice her stony reaction. Grumbling sleepily, he had shown a greater interest in the joys of fleshly love than in anything else. And since he had already displayed such an inclination, she couldn’t very well jump out of bed to stamp her foot and say that right now she’d rather have a discussion about Muhammed. Instead, she soon found herself floating into his warm stream, and she forgot all else.

But two or three days later he asked her to put on her finest attire for the evening, since they had been invited to a banquet. She asked where they would be going, but he replied that it was not far and they could easily walk there in their banquet garb. When she cautiously tried to find out whether he was jesting, he showed her his own clothing, which he had laid out on the bed, with the blue wedding mantle underneath.

Just before sundown, the brothers Marcus and Jacob Wachtian appeared, dressed for the banquet, along with Brother Guilbert, wearing his white Cistercian robes. They had come to fetch Arn and his wife for the celebration. Out in the courtyard the smoke from roasting meat was already blending with the aroma of exotic spices.

Cecilia had not been inside the guests’ longhouse since the time when Arn had shown it to her. But that was where they were all now headed, and when she stepped through the door, she could hardly recognize the place. Even more colourful rugs had been spread on the floor, and on the walls hung tapestries with the most fanciful star patterns. Benches had been arranged in a rectangle in the room, with heaps of cushions and pillows behind them. From the ceiling hung burning lamps made of copper and iron and coloured glass, and before the long hearth stood gridirons in which trout from Lake Vättern were being grilled.

The physician Ibrahim, who was dressed in a long coat made of shimmering material and a headdress made of a length of fabric wrapped many times around his head, received the guests at the door. He then led them to the place of honour in the row of benches and cushions closest to the west.

Artfully made copper pitchers were brought forth, along with glasses made at their own glassworks; all of them were lined up along the benches. Cecilia was about to sit down on the bench, but Arn showed her with a laugh that she should kneel down among the cushions behind the long wooden bench. He also whispered to her not to touch either food or drink until someone else did so first.

They were waiting for the sun to set, and gradually the foreigners all took their places, except for a few who tended to the grilled fish, and old Ibrahim, who went out to the courtyard.

Much to her annoyance, Cecilia discovered that Brother Guilbert, the Wachtian brothers, and Arn all seemed able to cope with these unfamiliar customs and smells and showed no sign of discomfort. They talked and laughed quietly, speaking the language that Cecilia could now recognize as Frankish.

Arn soon noticed Cecilia’s confusion, and with an apology to the other men, he turned to her and began to explain.

It was a clear and star-strewn night, one of the first nights with frost during this mild autumn, and outside in the courtyard, Ibrahim was now carefully scanning the sky to the northwest. When darkness fell, he would soon catch sight of the slender crescent moon that foretold a new month, and then the celebration called Eid al-Fitr would begin, heralding the end of the month of fasting.

Cecilia was about to object that the fasting month was in the spring, not in October, but she stopped herself when she realized this was not in truth the time for a conversation about church customs.

Ibrahim came in from the courtyard and made an announcement in his incomprehensible foreign tongue. Everyone in the room immediately said a short prayer. Arn then grabbed the tin-plated copper pitcher sitting on the table in front of him and poured a glass, which he handed to Cecilia. Then he poured some for Brother Guilbert and the Wachtian brothers. Everyone else at the table did the same, raising their glasses and drinking greedily before pouring another. Cecilia, who had been slower and more hesitant about raising the glass to her lips began coughing when she found that there was only water in the glass and not wine, as she had thought.

The meal consisted of roast mutton, goose, and trout, along with other small dishes that Cecilia didn’t recognize; all of the food was served on large, round wooden platters. Strange-looking instruments were played, and someone began singing a song; others quickly joined in.

Arn broke off a piece of the soft flat bread and showed Cecilia how to dip it into the meat sauce surrounding the mutton. When she did so, her mouth filled with a spicy taste that at first made her hesitate. After a moment she found it palatable, and after a few more minutes, she found it to be utterly delicious. The mutton was the most tender she had ever eaten, and the trout tasted entirely different, spiced with something that reminded her of cumin.

Arn amused himself by taking tidbits from various platters and putting them in Cecilia’s mouth, as if she were a child. When she tried to resist, he laughed and said it was merely a chivalrous way for a man to show affection for his wife or close friend.

At first all the foreigners ate quickly and voraciously. But after they seemed to have sated the worst of their hunger, most of the men leaned back on the cushions and ate more slowly. With their eyes half-closed, they seemed to be enjoying the melancholy music played by two men on stringed instruments that resembled those played by the Frankish minstrels at the wedding at Arnäs.

It didn’t take long before Cecilia also leaned back against the comfortable cushions which several men, bowing politely, had brought to support her back. She no longer felt so nervous, and she slowly partook of all the delicacies, merely raising an eyebrow when she noticed how much of the estate’s honey had been used for the sweet that was served after the meat and fish. The dessert was small pieces of bread with shredded carrots and filled with hazelnuts, drenched in honey. All the foreign aromas and smells were somehow soothing and made her feel sleepy; she even began to take pleasure in the music, although it had sounded off-key at first. She started imagining herself in foreign lands. What made this banquet so different from those she was used to was the fact that everyone became more and more quiet as the evening wore on, just as the songs played on the stringed instruments became more yearning and sorrowful. No one started brawling, and no one vomited. She brooded a bit over these foreign ways, until she recalled that it was water they were drinking and not ale or wine. She dozed and dreamed more and more about this foreign world until Arn took her arm and whispered that it would be good manners for the two guests of honour to leave the banquet first instead of last.

He led her over to the door leading to the house lavatorium.There he took her hand, bowed, and said something in the foreign tongue that made all the men in the room stand up and bow deeply in reply.

The night air was cold and frosty, and it revived her at once, as if breaking a spell. She thought that this was going to be the first of the winter nights when Arn explained all the foreign customs to her.

When he blew some life into the fire and they crawled into their big bed, she fluffed up their pillows so that they could sit side by side and look into the flames. Then she asked him to begin his account; the first thing she wanted to know was how it was possible that they had come to welcome the worst enemies of Christendom as guests in a Christian home.