Thought precedes action just as the dawn precedes the day, and Mother Rikissa now set the new plan in motion. When she returned from the grave-ale in the hospitium, which was as brief as it could be among the victors and the vanquished, she took with her two threadbare and sloppily mended mantles, one red and one blue. She had been careful to acquire a mantle from each side.

All the new work that would now have to be done brought a change for the better to Gudhem, just as Mother Rikissa had hoped. Apart from her worries about obtaining silver, she was in a race against time with another concern that she had not confided in anyone. She had to make the girls cease their hostility toward one another.

The maidens would be given the greatest responsibility for the new work, and this suited Mother Rikissa’s new hidden agenda all the better. Now, in early autumn, the lay sisters needed to devote all their attention to the harvesting work. Besides, the lay sisters all came from families that never dressed in clan colors to go to church or to market or to bridal ales. Lay sisters—lay-sisters, whom Mother Rikissa regarded with a contempt she could scarcely conceal—were women from poor families who could not afford to marry off their daughters. So the young women were sent to the convent to work for their own food instead of staying at home with poor peasant fathers and costing more than they could contribute. Lay-sisters had never in their lives been in a noble household so had never seen a Folkung mantle or a Sverker one either. So this new work had to be done entirely by the consecrated sisters and the more or less temporary guests among the novices: the two Cecilias and the Sverker daughters.

It soon turned out, however, that Gudhem had taken on no easy task. Everything had to be tested, and many trials were failures before something good finally emerged. And yet all these early difficulties merely intensified the maidens determination to succeed; they hurried to take up each job in a way that seemed almost indecorous. And when Mother Rikissa went past the weaving workshop, she heard eager words spoken in a tone that hardly seemed proper in a house dedicated to the Mother of God. But Mother Rikissa decided to bide her time, and for now the giggling was permitted. There would be time enough to restore decorum. Until the great event took place it would be unwise of her to treat the girls in a heavy-handed fashion.

Ulvhilde Emundsdotter had persuaded the others to try and weave the fabric she had spoken about, in which wool and linen were mixed. A mantle of pure linen would be too soft, and a mantle of only wool would be too thick and unwieldy and would not drape well over the shoulders and back. So the first task was to produce the cloth. But it wasn’t easy, because if the woolen threads were woven too loosely, too many strands would pull out from the cloth; if the linen thread was woven too tightly, it would bunch up the cloth too much. Through trial and error they would have to find the proper techniques.

Then there were difficulties with Sister Leonore’s various dye samples. Red proved to be the simplest to produce, though the maidens had to be careful to ensure that it was exactly the right shade of red. The red of beet juice was too vividly purple and too bright; the red that came from St. John’s wort was too light and too brown, although it could be mixed with alder to darken it. The correct red color was soon developed using dyes from Sister Leonore’s many clay pots. It proved harder to produce the right blue.

And a dyed piece of cloth had to be marked and dried, since the colors when wet did not look at all the same when dry. Many pieces of cloth, which were useless for any other purpose afterward, were given over to all this testing.

It took a lot of work to produce a single finished mantle. And as if that weren’t enough, there was the matter of how to line the mantles and where the pelts would come from. Winter squirrels, marten, and foxes didn’t grow on trees, after all. So instead of bringing in silver, the new work ended up adding to the cloister’s expenses. The yconomuswas finally ordered by a reluctant Mother Rikissa to go to Skara and buy skins, traveling all the way to Linköping if need be. He whined and complained about the expense. He thought it was risky to lay out silver for something one wasn’t certain could be sold, and in any case it would be a long time before the costs could be recouped as income. Mother Rikissa replied that silver did not multiply on its own at the bottom of a chest; something had to be done with it. But the yconomusargued that doing so could bring losses as soon as gains. At a calmer period for Gudhem Mother Rikissa might have paid more attention to the yconomusand his grumbling. But in view of its current situation, it was important that the girls had no reason to complain, or that the cloister still had silver in its coffers.

The harbinger of the great event at Gudhem was a convoy of oxcarts from Skara. It arrived on a calm, clear autumn day and was taken in hand as something that had been expected, although the cargo consisted of tents and wood, casks of ale and mead, and even some barrels of wine that had been brought up from Varnhem. There were also animal carcasses that had to be hung in cold storage, and a great number of roast-turners and laborers. They began to raise a tent city outside the walls of Gudhem, and their hammer-blows, laughter, and coarse words rang throughout the cloister.

Inside the walls rumors were buzzing like a beehive. Some simply believed that war was coming again, that an army would arrive and claim Gudhem as the enemy’s fortress. Others thought that it was merely the bishops who were holding a meeting and had selected a neutral spot where no one had to bear the entire expense. Mother Rikissa and the nuns, who knew or at least ought to know what it was all about, gave not the slightest hint of anything.

In the vestiarium, which was the new, more formal term for the weaving chamber where the Cecilias and the Sverker daughters now spent most of their time, the idea soon arose that one of them was to be fetched and married off—a thought that inspired both hope and trepidation. It even seemed most probable, since preparations were being made for a feast. They let their imaginations run wild, as if they were no longer enemies at all, picturing which of them would end up with a drooling old man from Skara. That was how the Cecilias taunted the Sverker daughters, who then retaliated with the prospect of a drooling old man from Linköping who had done the king a favor or promised loyalty in return for once again being allowed to creep into the bed-straw with an innocent maiden. The more they spoke of this possibility, the more excited they became, because it would be splendid to have a different life outside the walls, yet terrible was the thought of a drooling old man, whether from Linköping or Skara. What was perceived as both liberation and punishment could just as well befall someone on the red Sverker side as on the blue side. Half in jest each tied a piece of yarn around their right arm, a red one for the Sverker daughters and a blue one for the two Cecilias.

When talk turned to this matter it felt as though a hard hand were squeezing Cecilia Rosa’s heart. She found it hard to breathe and broke out in a cold sweat. She had to leave the room for a few moments, breathing in the chill air in the arcade and panting as if with a cramp. If they decided to marry her off, what could she do about it? She had sworn to remain faithful to her beloved Arn, as he had sworn to her. But what did such promises mean to men who were settling scores after war? Of what significance was her will or her love?

She consoled herself with the fact that she had been sentenced to many years of penance, and that it was the judgment of the Holy Roman Church. No Folkungs or Eriks or other men who had either won or lost in war could change that fact. She calmed down at once, but also found it odd that her lengthy punishment might become a consolation. At least she wouldn’t be married off.