The Knights Templar lost forty-six men who were wounded and thirteen who were killed. Among the dead that were found and brought back to Gaza was the sergeant Armand de Gascogne. He was one of those who tried to take Saladin; he had been only a lance-length from changing the course of history.
Chapter 6
The worst time of Cecilia Rosa’s long penance at Gudhem was the year after King Knut Eriksson came to collect Cecilia Blanca to make her his consort and queen of the three crowns. He did honor his promises to Cecilia Blanca, but like everything else in his plans it had taken longer than he had hoped. When he and his queen were finally crowned by Archbishop Stéphan, it was not as big an event as he had envisioned. The ceremony took place not at the cathedral in Östra Aros, but at the castle church at Näs out on the island of Visingsö in Lake Vättern. Although of course it was annoying not to be able to make the coronation as magnificent as he’d intended, it nevertheless was valid before God and man. He was now king by the grace of God.
And Cecilia Blanca, who had taken the surname Blanca as her royal name, was also queen by the grace of God.
But it had taken a year to arrange all this, and that year was the most lamentable in Cecilia Rosa’s life.
Knut’s retinue had hardly disappeared from sight before everything at Gudhem changed all at once. Mother Rikissa again decreed a vow of silence inside the cloister, and it applied especially to Cecilia Rosa. She once again had to endure being whipped with the scourge whether she had broken the vow of silence or not. Mother Rikissa summoned a cold hatred which she directed at Cecilia Rosa, and the other Sverker maidens soon adopted the same attitude—all except one.
The one who refused to hate Cecilia Rosa, the one who would not run with the flock of geese across the courtyard, and the one who never reported her for anything was Ulvhilde Emundsdotter. But none of the others took any particular notice of little Ulvhilde. Her kinsmen had been wiped out in the battle on the fields of blood outside Bjälbo, and she had inherited nothing. For that reason she would also never be invited to drink the bridal ale with any man of importance; all she had left was her clan birthright, and now, in the aftermath of so many defeats, it was worth less than water.
When the first winter storm thundered in over Gudhem, Mother Rikissa decided it was time, as she slyly explained to the malevolent Sverker daughters, to begin sentencing Cecilia Rosa to the carcer, since that whoring woman had still not stopped imagining that she bore the Folkung colors. Clearly she thought this entitled her to be insolent in both word and deed.
Early in the winter there was plenty of grain in the storage chambers above the carcer, and thus many fat black rats. Cecilia Rosa had to learn how to endure more than just the cold by offering up ardent prayers. She found that easy to do compared with being startled awake by the rats or sitting up half-sleep with exhaustion to avoid contact with them. She also learned that if she fell asleep too soundly on the second or third day, when her fatigue was stronger than the cold, then the rats might nibble at her, as if wanting to see whether she was dead and had thus become food for them.
Her only warmth during these repeated visits to the carcercame from her prayers. But she didn’t pray so much for her own sake; she spent most of the time in entreating the Holy Virgin Mary to hold Her protective hand over her beloved Arn and her son Magnus.
There was some selfishness in her prayers for Arn. She was well aware that she lacked Cecilia Blanca’s ability to think like men did, to think as one who had power. Yet she fully understood that she would only be released from this icy hell of Gudhem, and the nemesis of Mother Rikissa, if Arn Magnusson returned uninjured to Western Götaland. So she prayed for him both because she loved him more than any other human being, and also because he was her only hope of salvation.
When spring came, her lungs were still healthy; she had not begun to cough herself to death as Mother Rikissa sometimes feared and sometimes hoped. And the summer of that following year was especially warm, so the carcerbecame a place of solitude and cool refuge rather than a curse. When the grain stores were at their low point, the black rats also retreated.
But Cecilia Rosa felt weak after such a hard year, and she was afraid that another such winter would be more than she could endure unless the Holy Virgin Mary sent a miracle to rescue her.
She sent no miracle. But She did send a queen by the grace of God, and that soon proved to have the same welcome effect.
Queen Cecilia Blanca came to Gudhem at the beginning of the turnip harvest with a mighty entourage. She moved into the hospitiumas if she owned it and was in charge of everything. She bossed everyone about and ordered great quantities of food and drink. She sent word that Rikissa, whom she now addressed as the king and the jarl did without the title of Mother, should come at once to entertain her guests. As she pointed out, at Gudhem every guest should be received as if he were Jesus Christ himself. If that applied to everyone else, then it should certainly apply to a queen.
Mother Rikissa burned inside with fury when she could no longer offer any excuses. She went down to the hospitiumto censure that impudent woman who might be a worldly queen but who in no way had control over God’s kingdom on earth. An abbess was not obligated to obey either a king or a queen, crowned or not.
That was also what she pointed out as soon as she was shown to her place at the queen’s table, and it was a lowly position indeed, far from the head of the table. Queen Cecilia Blanca’s desire to meet her dear friend Cecilia Rosa was not something to which Mother Rikissa would agree. For as Mother Rikissa had decided, that wanton woman was now atoning for her sins in a suitable manner and could therefore not entertain visitors, royal or otherwise. Within Gudhem a divine order prevailed, and not the order of a queen. And that, in Mother Rikissa’s opinion, was something that Cecilia Blanca ought to know better than most other people.
Queen Cecilia Blanca listened to Mother Rikissa’s contemptuous and self-confident interpretation of the order of God and man without showing a single hint of uncertainty and without for an instant relaxing her irritating smile.
“Are you now finished with your evil prattle about God and so on? All these fine words that we—who have come to know your harsh ways in this place—do not think that you believe even for a moment. So now I command you to keep your goose-beak shut and listen to your queen,” she said, the words coming in a long, gentle stream, as if she were speaking kindly although her words were biting.
But what she said had an instant effect on Mother Rikissa, who actually pressed her lips together and waited for the queen to continue. She was sure of her case because she knew far better what belonged to God’s kingdom and God’s servants than did a queen who had recently been a maiden in the convent. But she had grossly underestimated Cecilia Blanca, as she soon discovered.
“So, now listen here, Rikissa,” Cecilia Blanca went on in her calm, almost sleepy tone. “You are the mistress of God’s order and we are only a queen in this earthly life among men, you say. We cannot rule over Gudhem, that is what you believe. No, perhaps not. And yet perhaps we can. For now you will learn something that will cause you sorrow. Your kinsman Bengt in Skara is no longer bishop. Where the poor devil has now fled with his wife after the excommunication we do not know, nor does it particularly interest us. But excommunicated he is. So you can expect no more support in this life from him.”