“It’s strange how God arranges things in this world and guides the path people take,” she began, the confidence of her words belying the confusion that she felt inside.
“Yes, it is truly strange,” Birger Brosa agreed when he could think of nothing else to say.
“Rikissa sold her soul to the Devil in order to plunge the country into war. Isn’t that strange?”
“Yes, it is very strange,” Birger Brosa agreed, a bit impatiently.
“And now you want me to deliver up my soul to the Virgin Mary at the prime of my earthly life so that we can counter this sin?” Cecilia Rosa went on with an innocent expression.
“Though your words are harsh, you have grasped the situation most succinctly,” replied Birger Brosa.
“People will say that the new abbess was once long ago a maiden who hated Rikissa, who refused to forgive her even on her deathbed, and therefore her words are not worth water!” Cecilia Rosa burst out in a tone that astonished herself more than the jarl.
“You’re thinking sharply but you are very stubborn, Cecilia Rosa,” he said after pondering for a moment. “But you have an opportunity to save the country from war with a sacrifice which requires that you become an abbess. Riseberga will be your realm, and here you can rule as queen; it’s not at all like being whipped by some Rikissa. What could you do with your life that would be better than to serve your kinsmen, your queen, and your king?”
“Now you’re the one who is being stubborn, Birger Brosa. Would you like to know what I’ve been praying and hoping for every night for twenty years? Do you understand in your warrior’s soul how long twenty years in a cage is? I’m speaking to you so boldly and frankly not merely because I feel despair at what you’re asking me to do, but because I know that you’re fond of me and don’t mind such blunt talk.”
“That’s true, my dear Cecilia Rosa, that’s true,” sighed the jarl, now in retreat.
Without a word Cecilia Rosa left him then and was gone for a while. When she returned she held a magnificent Folkung mantle in her hands. She turned it back and forth a few times so that the gold threads in the lion on the back flashed in the candlelight; she let him stroke the soft fur on the inside. He nodded his admiration but without saying a word.
“For two years I worked on this,” Cecilia Rosa explained. “It has been like my dream. Now we have it here at Riseberga to examine and copy, because we are still far behind Gudhem in this art.”
“It is truly very beautiful,” said Birger Brosa pensively. “I’ve never seen such a lovely blue color and such a powerful lion.” He already sensed what Cecilia Rosa was going to say next.
“Do you understand, my dear kinsman, for whom I sewed this mantle?”
“Yes, and may God grant that you may drape it over Arn Magnusson’s shoulders. I understand your dream, Cecilia Rosa. I probably understand better than you might believe what you were thinking during the years it took you to sew this mantle. But you must still listen to me and also understand. If Arn does not come soon, then I will buy this mantle from you for the day when Magnus Månesköld will drink his bridal ale, or the day when Erik Knutsson will be crowned, or whatever else may suit me. You cannot hope too long, Cecilia Rosa; you owe that much to your kinsmen.”
“Then let us now pray for Arn’s speedy return,” said Cecilia Rosa, lowering her eyes.
Faced with such an exhortation there was no choice for either man or jarl, especially not in a convent, and in a convent he happened to own. Birger Brosa nodded that they should pray.
They knelt down together among the account books and abacuses and prayed for Arn Magnusson’s salvation and swift return.
Cecilia Rosa prayed for the sake of her burning love, which had not faded in twenty years, and which she would rather die than relinquish.
The jarl prayed for a more complicated reason, but with equal sincerity. Yet he thought that if they couldn’t arrange the matter of the succession to the throne as simply as pitting one abbess’s oath against another’s, then they would probably need all the good warriors they could muster on the Folkung side.
And as he had heard recently from blessed Father Henri at Varnhem, Arn Magnusson was a warrior by God’s Grace in more than one respect. In the worst case, he would soon be needed at home.
Chapter 11
Arn was kept for two weeks at the Hamediyeh Hospital in Damascus before the doctors managed to stop the fever from his wounds. They believed it was God’s providence that he recovered, because no one could live much longer with such a fever. From earlier battles he had more scars on his body than he could count, but he assumed they might be more than a hundred. Yet he had never been wounded so badly as at the Horns of Hattin.
He didn’t remember much from the early stages of the battle. They had carried him away, cut off all his chain mail, and sewn up the worst of the wounds before they took him along with the wounded Syrians and Egyptians up into the hills where it was cooler. Arn and the other wounded soldiers had suffered greatly during the move, and most of them began bleeding again. But the doctors thought it would be even worse for them to remain in the heat among the flies and stench of corpses down below near Tiberias.
How Arn later came to Damascus he did not remember; by the time they moved him out of the field infirmary in the hills, a terrible fever had set in.
In Damascus the doctors had cut open some of his wounds, tried to clean them, and then sewn them back up, although this time with greater precision than what had been done at the field hospital near Tiberias.
The worst wounds were a deep gash from a sword that had sliced through his chain mail and deep into his calf, and an axe-blow that had cracked his helmet diagonally above his left eye, ripping his eyebrow and the left side of his forehead. At first he hadn’t been able to keep any food down, but vomited up everything they tried to force into him. And he suffered from a murderous headache so that the fogs of fever that began to seep into his mind actually came as a relief.
He didn’t remember any pain to speak of, not even when they cauterized his leg wound with a red-hot iron.
When the fever finally broke, the first thing he discovered was that he could again see out of both eyes, for he remembered that he had been blind in the left eye.
His bed was on the second floor of the hospital in a lovely room with blue mosaics, looking straight out into the shadow of tall palms. Now and then the wind gently rustled the palm fronds, and down in the courtyard he could hear the sound of fountains.
The doctors treated him with cool courtesy in the beginning, doing their work as well as their professional skill permitted. Above Arn’s bed hung a little picture in black and gold with Saladin’s Arabic calligram, which clearly showed that Arn was worth more to the sultan living than dead, despite the whispers that he was one of the white demons with the red cross.
When the fever subsided and Arn could begin to speak coherently, the doctors’ joy at his recovery was ever greater when they heard to their astonishment a Templar knight speaking God’s language. As doctors in Damascus they did not know what at least half the emirs in the army knew about the man who was called Al Ghouti.
The most distinguished of all the doctors was named Moses ben Maimon; he had traveled up from Cairo where he had been Saladin’s personal physician for many years. To Arn’s ears his Arabic had a foreign sound, because he had been born in far-off Andalusia. Life in that region had been hard for the Jews, he told Arn at their first meeting. Arn was not surprised that Saladin’s personal physician was a Jew, because he knew that the Caliph of Baghdad, the supreme leader of the Muslims, had many Jews in his service. And since his experience with Saracen doctors had shown him that they were all knowledgeable in the rules of both the faith and philosophy, he took care to ask about the significance of Jerusalem for the Jews. At that Moses ben Maimon raised his eyebrows in surprise and asked Arn what could make a Christian warrior take interest in such a thing. Arn told him about his meeting with the high rabbi from Baghdad and what it had led to, at least for as long as Arn held power in Jerusalem. If the Christians viewed God’s Grave as a holy place in Jerusalem, he went on, and the Muslims had Abraham’s rock where the Prophet, peace be unto him, had ascended to Heaven, then he could understand the power that these pilgrim sites had for the believers. But King David’s temple? That was merely a building constructed by human beings and torn down by human beings; why would it be considered so holy?