The gesture was well planned by Ibrahim. For according to custom Arn could not refuse a gift from Aisha, the one he had made happy through his powers, and the one who bore the name of the most beloved wife of the Prophet, peace be unto him.
Chapter 8
Over the course of a few years Cecilia Rosa’s life at Gudhem had fundamentally changed. The affairs of the convent had undergone such a transformation that it was difficult for anyone to grasp. Despite the fact that few new properties had been donated to the cloister in recent years, Gudhem’s income had doubled. Cecilia Rosa explained time after time that it all had to do with order and discipline. Well, that was not the only explanation, she admitted if Mother Rikissa or someone else prodded her with more persistent questions. They had also raised a number of their prices. A Folkung mantle from Gudhem now cost three times as much as when they first began making them. But just as Brother Lucien once predicted, the mantles were now selling at a steady pace; the garments didn’t disappear in a single week like they did before. This meant that it was also easier to plan the work; some of the novices could always sit and work in the vestiariumwithout rushing or doing the sewing in a careless fashion. The pelts that were required for the most expensive mantles could only be purchased in the spring and at only a few marketplaces. If they planned wrong, as they’d sometimes done before, then they might be left without enough pelts and far too many orders. As it was now, the fur supply never ran out, and the work flowed evenly and yet brought in so much silver that Gudhem’s coffers would have been overflowing if Mother Rikissa hadn’t ordered so much stonework from the Frankish and English stonemasons. In that way Gudhem’s increasing wealth was also made visible to the eye. The tower of the church had been finished and now held an English bell with a lovely sound; the walls around the cloister’s inner sanctum were finished, as well as the pillared vault all the way around the arcade.
Next to the sacristy two big new rooms had been built of stone to form a separate building. This was Cecilia Rosa’s realm, where she reigned among the account books and silver coffers. In the outermost room wooden shelves had been built for her with hundreds of cubbyholes where all of Gudhem’s donation documents were stored in a strict order which only Cecilia Rosa had mastered. If Mother Rikissa came to ask about some property or other and its value or rent payments, Cecilia Rosa could without hesitation go and fetch the letter of donation and read it aloud. Then she would search in the books until she found the date of the last rent payment, how much was paid per bushel and when, and the date the next payment was due. When payments were late she wrote letters that Mother Rikissa had to sign and stamp with the seal of the abbess. The letter was sent to the bishop located nearest to the delinquent tenant, and soon thereafter minions were sent out to collect the rent, either with friendly reminders or stern fists. Not the tiniest fish ever slipped through Cecilia Rosa’s net.
She was not unaware of the power that the position of yconomahad given her. Mother Rikissa could ask about matters large and small and obtain the answers she had the right to demand, but she could never make any important decisions without first going to the yconoma, not if it pertained to Gudhem’s business affairs. And without its business transactions Gudhem could not survive.
So for this reason it did not surprise Cecilia Rosa that Mother Rikissa did not now treat her with the same condescension or cruelty that she had done in the beginning. They had both found a way to relate to each other that would not disrupt either the business dealings or the divine order at Gudhem.
The more at ease Cecilia Rosa felt in handling the bookkeeping and abacus, the more time she began to have free for other things. She spent this extra time with Ulvhilde in the gardens, when it was the season, or in the vestiariumsewing and talking, sometimes far into the night.
A long time had passed without any solution being found for the matter of Ulvhilde’s inheritance. During her visits Cecilia Blanca had seemed a bit evasive, saying merely that everything would undoubtedly work out, although nothing could be done about it in a trice. The hope that had been ignited in Ulvhilde’s heart seemed to have been extinguished, and she seemed reconciled to the situation.
Mother Rikissa and Cecilia Rosa had found a modus vivendi in which they had as little as possible to do with each other. And so Cecilia Rosa was utterly unprepared when Mother Rikissa asked her to come to the abbess’s private rooms for a talk about what they never talked about, as she mysteriously described the reason for her summons.
For some time now Mother Rikissa had been using the scourge on herself, and she always slept in a horsehair shift. It was something that Cecilia Rosa had noticed in passing although she didn’t give it much thought. Women in the convent sometimes got such notions, and it was nothing new or odd.
When they now met, Mother Rikissa seemed shrunken, smaller somehow. Her eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep, and she kept on rubbing her hands together as if she almost wanted to humble herself and literally bowed to Cecilia Rosa.
In a weak voice she explained that she was seeking forgiveness, both from the Virgin Mary and from the person whom she had treated most harshly in life. She was earnestly searching her heart, she said, for the evil that had taken up residence inside her without her knowledge. Now she entertained a slight hope that this was possible, since she believed she could feel that the Mother of God was about to have mercy on her.
But the question was whether Cecilia Rosa could do the same. All that time Cecilia Rosa had spent in the carcerand all the lashes with the scourge she had received, Mother Rikissa would gladly take upon herself now, even in double and triple measure, if she could only achieve atonement.
She told Cecilia Rosa that even as a girl she had suffered from her ugliness; she was well aware that God had not created her as some tender virgin praised in the songs of knights. Her clan was of royal lineage, but her father was not wealthy, and this had meant that Rikissa would probably never marry, because her dowry would not be sufficient.
Her mother had consoled her by saying that God had a plan for everything, and that a girl who was not created for the bridal bed had no doubt been created for a higher calling. God’s kingdom was where Rikissa should turn. Since her father knew old King Sverker well, they had worked out that Rikissa was particularly suited to take charge of a new convent that the Sverker clan planned to establish in Gudhem. Once both the king and her father had decided her fate she naturally had nothing to say about it. The very year after she finished her time as a novice she became abbess. God knew then how inexperienced she was and terrified of the great responsibility. Some of the severity she had shown toward Cecilia Rosa in the beginning could probably be explained by the fact that there was a war going on outside in those days. The Folkungs and the Eriks were fighting a hard battle against the Sverker side. It was unjust, of course, that Cecilia Rosa, who had been so young and delicate, had been forced to carry the yoke of war on her shoulders even inside the cloister, where war had no place. It was unfair and it was wrong. Mother Rikissa acknowledged that the sin was her own as she bowed her head as if to weep.
During Rikissa’s long confession Cecilia Rosa had felt a flood of emotion that she never could have imagined. She felt sorry for the abbess, sympathizing with the plight of the ugly girl and picturing how both noblemen and ordinary men must have laughed behind her back. They surely must have pointed out even then how oddly like a witch Rikissa was, just as Cecilia Rosa and Ulvhilde and Cecilia Blanca had later done. It must have been very difficult for the young Rikissa, filled with the same hopes and dreams as other maidens her age, slowly but inexorably to realize that she was doomed to a different life, a life she had not wished for at all.