Nonetheless, as nimbly as if she were still seventeen, she leaped to the ground in a manner that was anything but courtly and rushed across the clearing, taking steps that were too long for her green dress, so that she stumbled a little.
When Magnus Månesköld saw this he also began to run, and they met in the middle of the clearing and embraced each other without a word.
Then they took each other by the shoulders so that they could look into each other’s eyes. They looked like mirror images.
Magnus Månesköld had brown eyes and red hair; he was the only one in his adopted family who had such coloring.
They gazed at each other for a long time, but neither could say a word. Then Magnus dropped to his knees before her, took her right hand, and kissed it tenderly. This was the sign that he legally acknowledged his mother.
When he stood up he took her hand and slowly led her back to her horse. There he again knelt down as he handed her the horse’s reins, held the stirrup, and bade her step on his back to get into the saddle, as custom demanded.
Not until she was well seated on her horse did he speak.
“I have had many thoughts and dreams about you, my mother,” he said, somewhat embarrassed. “Perhaps I thought that I might recognize you, but not with as much certainty as you and I did just now. And I never would have imagined, despite what my dear kinsman Birger Brosa told me, that it would be like seeing a sister rather than a mother. Would you therefore allow me the honor of escorting you to this evening’s banquet, dear Mother?”
“That you may,” said Cecilia Rosa, smiling a bit at her son’s formal way of speaking.
Magnus Månesköld was a young man with down on his cheeks who had not yet come close to the time when his kinsmen would begin to think of choosing a bride for him. But he was also a man who had grown up in the fortresses of power, so he knew to behave as custom demanded. He wore the Folkung mantle with the confidence that showed he understood its value, and its significance. When they approached Näs in the last rays of the setting sun he rode up beside his mother and said something about the evening chill as he hung his blue mantle over her shoulders. This was how he wanted to ride in with her to the king’s castle at Näs. He said nothing of this to his mother, but she understood.
At the banquet he drank ale like a man, but not wine as the two Cecilias did. At the beginning of the evening he spoke with them mostly about what their imprisonment at Gudhem had been like, because he had never been able to imagine such a thing. Only now did he learn for sure that Gudhem was the place where he was born, and something about the circumstances.
But as both the Cecilias had expected would happen, and as they had discussed using the sign language that only they understood outside the cloister, Magnus Månesköld soon began to ask cautious questions about his father. He wanted to know the truth about Arn Magnusson’s skill with the sword and bow. Cecilia Rosa answered his questions without reservation, for the fear she had felt only hours ago had now been replaced by a warm happiness. She explained that all the tales about him wielding the sword were something she had only heard others tell, although there were many stories. But once she had seen Arn Magnusson shoot with the bow at a banquet at Husaby royal estate, and he did so quite passably.
Just as Cecilia Blanca was signing behind the prodigal son’s back what she thought he would ask next, he did wonder how good his father’s skill had been.
“He hit a silver coin with two arrows from a distance of twenty-five paces,” Cecilia Rosa replied without blinking. “At least I think it was twenty-five paces, but maybe it was twenty. The target was definitely a silver coin.”
At first young Magnus was absolutely dumbstruck. Then the tears welled up in his eyes, and he leaned over toward his mother and embraced her for a long time.
Behind his back Cecilia Blanca then asked in signs whether it was really a silver coin.
No doubt an unusually large silver coin, Cecilia Rosa signed back and then sank into the delightful warmth of her son’s embrace. The way he smelled brought back a memory, something that reminded her of youth and love.
Just before Katarinamas, when the temperature already was so cold that it presaged a hard winter, Birger Brosa arrived on a hurried visit to Riseberga. He met with the prioress Beata only long enough so as not to appear impolite at the convent, which naturally belonged to the Virgin Mary, though he probably viewed it as his own property.
Above all he wanted to meet with the yconoma. Since the early cold made it difficult to sit comfortably outside, they had to sit together in her bookkeeping chamber, which she’d had built in the same manner as the one at Gudhem.
He spoke first about business, but with his thoughts clearly on another matter, since he continually kept mentioning his upcoming crusade to the east in the spring.
Then he commenced talking about what was really on his mind. There was still no abbess at Riseberga. If Cecilia Rosa now took her vows, she would at once be promoted to the position, based on her long experience of the cloister world. He had spoken with the new archbishop about the matter and there should be no obstacles to her becoming abbess. Impatiently he seemed to be demanding an immediate answer.
Cecilia Rosa felt faint and stunned by the news. She couldn’t imagine that the jarl, who knew Queen Cecilia Blanca so well, could have the slightest belief that she would want to take the vows.
After she had collected herself and thought it over, she looked him straight in the eye and asked what was the real intention behind this question. She wasn’t stupid, and no one in the entire realm was smarter than the jarl, so there must be some reason that weighed very heavily for him to make such an unexpected demand.
Then Birger Brosa gave her his familiar broad smile. He sat down comfortably with one leg drawn up under himself, clasped his hands around his knee, and looked at Cecilia Rosa for a moment before he told her the reason, although not straight out.
“In truth you would be a jewel as one of the wives in the Folkung clan, Cecilia,” he began. “In a way you are already, and that’s why I’ve come to you with this solemn request.”
“Request?” Cecilia Rosa interrupted, terrified.
“Well, let’s call it a question. Your knowledge in the handling of accounts and silver is probably matched only by Eskil’s. Yes, Eskil is Arn’s brother, and it is he who manages the affairs of the realm. You cannot be fooled with duplicitous words, so I will speak to you bluntly. We need an abbess who can counterbalance the false witness of another abbess. That is how things stand.”
“You could have told me as much when you first arrived, my dear jarl,” Cecilia Rosa protested. “So the false witness of this liar was carried all the way to Rome?”
“Yes, it was carried all the way to Rome by hands that were all too willing,” replied Birger Brosa gloomily. “Right now we may have refractory forces in the east that have to be crushed once and for all, but farther in the future we may have a great war facing us if things go wrong.”
“A great war with the Sverkers and Danes?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Because King Knut’s son Erik might be judged a bastard?”
“Yes, you understand it all.”
“And in Rome the words of the queen and myself count for naught against a letter from a lying abbess?”
“I assume that is so.”
“If I take the vows then it’s the word of one abbess against another?”
“Yes, and you may save the country from war.”
At that Cecilia Rosa fell silent. She caught herself musing that she probably shouldn’t have such a hasty conversation with a man like Birger Brosa, because he was said to have the best mind in the country. She needed to gain time to think this over.