Then Cecilia ordered wine and glasses to be brought to their house, inviting all the older folks to continue the Easter feast over there, since the noise coming from the young men would not diminish as the evening wore on.
They drank and talked until the small hours, but then Arn excused himself by saying that he needed to get some sleep because he had to get up early to do some heavy work. The others gave him surprised looks, so he explained that early in the morning, just after dawn, there was going to be a strenuous exercise on horseback with all the young men. They had apparently learned how to drink ale like men. Now they also had to learn what it cost in headaches if they had to show up and perform.
It was Alde and Birger who found Brother Guilbert. He was sitting with his quill pen in his hand, calmly leaning back in his sacristy where he had the morning sun, and he looked like he was asleep. But when the children couldn’t wake him they went to Cecilia and complained. Soon there was a great commotion at Forsvik.
When Arn understood what had happened he went without a word to his clothing chamber, taking down the widest of the Templar mantles he could find; he fetched a needle and coarse thread from the workshops and sewed the dead man inside the mantle. He had Brother Guilbert’s most beloved horse saddled, a powerful sorrel stallion of the type they used in practice for the heavy cavalry. Then with no special ceremony he draped the body of his dead friend over the saddle in the great white sack that the mantle formed, with arms and legs hanging down on either side. As the stable workers saddled Abu Anaza, Arn dressed in full armour, not in Folkung colours but in those of the Knights Templar. Around the pommel he hung a water bag of the type only horsemen from Forsvik used, along with a purse of gold. Half an hour after the body had been found, Arn was ready to set off for Varnhem.
Cecilia tried to object that this could not possibly be an honourable and Christian way to take a lifelong friend to the grave. Arn replied curtly and sadly that indeed it was. This was how many a Templar knight returned with a brother’s help. It could just as well have been Brother Guilbert riding this way with him. Nor was it the first time that Arn had brought home a brother in this manner. Brother Guilbert was not any ordinary monk, but a Templar knight who was travelling to the grave as many brothers had done before him and many would do after him.
Cecilia understood that it was clearly useless to object further. Instead she tried to arrange for Arn to have some food to take along on his journey, but he refused it almost with contempt and pointed at his water bag. More was not said before, with bowed head, he rode out from Forsvik, leading the horse carrying Brother Guilbert.
Losing both his father and uncle within such a short time had been as grievous for Arn as for anyone else. And Arn himself had believed that if Death immediately thereafter had sunk his claws into a lifelong friend, the pain would be greater than anyone could stand.
But Arn had not ridden very long in Brother Guilbert’s company before he realized that this grief was both greater and easier to bear. No doubt it was because Brother Guilbert was a Templar knight, one in an endless series of dear brothers whom Arn had lost over a long span of years. In the worst case he had seen their heads stuck on lance-tips in the hands of Syrians or Egyptians howling with the intoxication of victory. The death of a Templar knight was not like that of an ordinary man, because the Knights Templar always lived in Death’s anteroom, always aware that they could be the next ones called. For those of the brothers who were granted the grace to live a long time, without fleeing or compromising their conscience, such as Brother Guilbert but also Arn himself, there was no reason to complain in the slightest. God had now considered that Brother Guilbert’s life’s work was done, so He had called one of His most humble servants home. In the midst of his good work, with his quill pen in hand and having just finished the Latin grammar he had written for children, Brother Guilbert had quietly lowered his hand, blotted the ink one last time, and then died with a peaceful smile on his face. It was a blessing in itself to die like that.
On the other hand there were much more difficult things to try and understand when it came to the path that Brother Guilbert had taken in his earthly life. For more than ten years he had been a Templar knight in the Holy Land, and few fighting brothers lived longer than that. Whatever sins the young Guilbert had behind him when he rode out to his first battle in his white mantle, he had soon atoned for them more than a hundredfold. And yet he was not granted the direct path to Paradise, which was the greatest reward for a Templar knight.
God led him instead to a backwater of the world to become the teacher of a five-year-old Folkung, to raise the lad to be a Templar knight, and then against all sense and reason to work with him again toward utterly different goals twenty years later.
As Arn understood his own path, nothing was inconceivable, since God’s Mother Herself had told him what he should do: build for peace and build a new church that would be consecrated to God’s Grave. This he had also tried to obey as best he could.
He who sees all and hears all, as the Muslims said, must have known what was going on in the heart of the deceitful and bloodthirsty Richard Lionheart when he chose to execute several thousand captives rather than accept the last payment of fifty thousand besants in gold for his hostage. God must have known that this gold would come to Western Götaland, and what would happen to it there. In hindsight one could often follow and understand God’s will.
But now as they were riding toward Varnhem and Brother Guilbert’s grave, the future was still just as hard to discern as always. Brother Guilbert’s service in his earthly life was concluded, and Arn had no doubt that such a good man, who had also served more than ten years in God’s Own army, would have a place in the heavenly kingdom as reward.
What awaited Arn himself, he could not see. Did God really want him to vanquish the Danish king, Valdemar the Victor? Well, then he would try to do so. But he would rather see the armed force he had built prove strong enough to keep war at bay. The best thing that could happen to Arnäs would be that the castle’s strength was so great that no one ever dared besiege it, and not a drop of blood was ever spilled on its walls. The best that could happen to the cavalry he was creating was if it never had to go on the attack.
If he tried to think clearly and coldly past his own wishes, things did not look particularly bright. Right after Birger Brosa’s death, King Sverker had elevated his and Ingegerd’s newborn son Johan to the jarl of the realm before the council at Näs. That honour rightfully belonged to Erik jarl and no one else. What King Sverker’s intention was with his newborn son was not hard for anyone to see. And Erik jarl and his younger brothers were being held at Näs more as captives than as royal foster sons.
Prayer was the only path to clarity and guidance, Arn realized dejectedly. If God willed it, Sverker would fall dead at any moment, and everything would be over without war. If God willed otherwise, the greatest war that had ever ravaged Western Götaland was on its way.
He began to pray, and he rode most of the way to Varnhem in prayer. He stopped for the night in the middle of a forest, made a fire, and placed Brother Guilbert next to him, continuing to pray for clarity.
On the road between Skövde and Varnhem where it was no longer wilderness, many people were astonished to see the white-clad knight with God’s emblem, with the lance behind him in the saddle and with his head bowed grimly. He rode past without either looking at anyone or greeting them. The fact that the body he was transporting behind him was dressed in the same foreign mantle as he was also caused astonishment. Thieves could be taken to the tinglike this, but never an equal among nobles.