When it was Eskil and Arn’s turn to go before the king and his Danish courtiers, Birger Brosa announced that Eskil was a merchant and previously sat on King Knut’s council and was the heir to the estate Arnäs. About Arn he said only that he had spent much of his life in the cloister, also in Denmark, and now was the master of the forest estate of Forsvik.

Arn exchanged a quick, puzzled glance with Birger Brosa about his somewhat incomplete description of what Arn had done in between his childhood years at the cloister and his present life at Forsvik. Birger Brosa merely winked back, unnoticed by anyone else.

King Sverker was happy to speak with someone who had no difficulty understanding the speech of the Danes; many of the slow Swedes seemed to find the language incomprehensible. And for Arn it was easy to fall back into the language he had spoken as a child. He still sounded more like a Dane than a Gothic man.

At first the conversation revolved around innocent topics such as how beautiful it was on the shore of Limfjord near the cloister of Vitskøl, and about the mussel cultivation they had tried at the cloister without much success, since people living on the fjord believed that it was contrary to God’s word to eat mussels. That was no longer so, King Sverker assured him. Then he invited Arn and Eskil to visit Denmark with his letter of safe passage so that they might see their half-sister Kristina. When the brothers did not look as though this journey was of great interest to them, the king promised instead to invite both Kristina and her husband Konrad Pedersson to Näs sometime next summer. He was clearly trying to demonstrate that all old animosities had been forgotten.

So it seemed both tactless and unnecessary of marshal Ebbe Sunesson to remember suddenly how he had once gotten into a little fight at Arnäs with one of their kinsmen. But of course they bore no hard feelings about that, did they?

He had spoken calmly but with an irritating smirk on his face. Birger Brosa shook his head to warn Arn, who with great difficulty controlled himself before he replied that the one who had died was their brother Knut. He said that they both prayed for their brother’s soul, but that neither of them had a mind for revenge.

There Ebbe Sunesson should have let it rest. He may have drunk too much during the festivities, or perhaps he was elated because he had been the victor in the jousting contest. Or it could be that he and his friends had already convinced themselves that they had become lords of folk that were not worthy of respect. For what he now said made both Birger Brosa and King Sverker blanch, although for different reasons.

With open scorn he explained to Arn and Eskil that they didn’t need to feel in the least embarrassed. If it was so that they had not received their just honour after their brother’s regrettable death, he would gladly meet one of them with the sword. Or why not both at once? Then it would only be a question of whether they had enough honour and enough courage.

Arn looked down at the stone floor and with great effort stifled his first impulse to propose a duel. It must have looked as if he were ashamed because he dared not take up the challenge that had been delivered with words as clear as a slap in the face.

When the silence had become unbearable, he raised his head and said calmly that upon reflection he found it unwise for the new king and his men to begin their time in the land of the Swedes and Goths with blood. In either case, whether Herr Ebbe killed yet another Folkung from Arnäs, or he himself killed the king’s marshal, this would not benefit King Sverker or the peace they all desired.

The king then placed his hand on Ebbe Sunesson’s arm and prevented him from answering, which he seemed all too eager to do. The king said that he felt honoured that among those who had sworn allegiance to him there were good men like Eskil and Arn Magnusson who understood how to place the peace of the realm before their own honour.

They did not reply, but bowed and left without another word. Arn had to step outside in the cold air at once, since he was boiling with humiliation. Eskil hurried after to assure him that nothing good would have come of it if a Folkung, in the very first week of King Sverker’s reign, had killed his marshal. And besides, these insulting words could have been avoided if Birger Brosa had been a bit more accurate in his description of what sort of cloister life Arn had lived. As things now stood, the arrogant marshal had no idea how close to death he had come.

‘I still can’t understand what God had in mind by placing our brother’s murderer within a single sword-length of me,’ Arn muttered between clenched teeth.

‘If God wants to bring the two of you together with weapons, then He will do so. That was apparently not His intention just now,’ said Eskil, at a loss.

ELEVEN

The only news from Näs during King Sverker’s first two years which pleased the Folkungs and Eriks was that by the second Christmas ale, Archbishop Petrus had eaten himself to death. Otherwise they heard very little, either good or bad. It was as if whatever had to do with the highest power in the realm was no longer of any concern to the Folkungs and Eriks.

Not even when King Sverker sent a crusade to the east did he find any reason to ask for help from the Folkungs and Eriks; instead he allied himself with the Danes and Gotlanders. Of course it was not much of a crusade. The intention was for the Sverkers to be sent by ship to Courland to save the country once again for the true faith and bring home anything of value that they might find. But a southerly storm drove the two hundred vessels with the crusaders north so that they landed in Livonia instead. There they plundered for three days, loaded their spoils of war on board ship, and then went home.

Surely it was of little importance to have missed out on three days of plundering, but the Swedes up in the dark North Woods were especially insulted that they hadn’t been trusted to send a single fylkingof troops or a single ship, and that the king and his Danes thought so little of them.

For the Folkungs at Arnäs and Forsvik it was actually an advantage that the new king disdained their services, because it meant that they could spend their time on more useful endeavours. At Arnäs, villages were built inside the walls as wells were dug and the storehouses were completed. At Forsvik Cecilia’s ledgers were finally showing a profit.

This was partially due to the glass from Forsvik that was now being sold in Linköping and Skara, Strängnäs, Örebro, Västra Aros and Östra Aros, and even in Norway. And a considerable number of young men had spent so many years as apprentices that it was now time for them to return home. When they did so, it was their responsibility to equip their own estates and teach their own retainers and archers. They then purchased all of their new weapons from Forsvik. In this way an ever-growing number of the weapons that had been produced for many years without payment in order to arm Arnäs and Bjälbo now began to provide Forsvik with an income. Unlike the story in the Holy Scriptures, they had endured seven lean years before the fat years had come. But when the tide indeed began to turn, Cecilia at first did her calculations several times, since she thought there must be some mistake. Instead of silver flowing out, it had begun to flow in, and at an increasingly rapid pace.

These last years before the turn of the thirteenth century, which according to some doomsayers and prelates would bring the end of the world, were tranquil times for the Folkungs, but they also involved a good deal of travelling and many wedding ales.

It no longer seemed of any use for them to marry members of the Sverker clan; that was the opinion of Birger Brosa as well as his brothers Magnus and Folke. And because Eskil had finally had his marriage to the treacherous Katarina annulled, and she had been banished to Gudhem convent for the rest of her life, he had to set a good example. With courtship in mind, he went to Västra Aros and the regions around the town of Sigtuna. There he soon found what he was seeking in the person of Bengta Sigmundsdotter from Sigtuna. Her husband had been killed several years earlier when the Estonians arrived on a plundering expedition. But she had been wise, almost as if she had been able to see into the future. Although she and her husband owned the largest trading house in Sigtuna, she had refused to keep all of the riches they had acquired in the city. Instead, she had ordered them transported north to her parents’ home. In this way she became one of the few residents in Sigtuna to emerge from the fire as a rich woman.