Then there was silence and the mood was tense. Mother Rikissa began in a quiet voice, not at all like her normal one, to read aloud the names of brothers and sisters who were now wandering the fields of Paradise. Cecilia Rosa briefly listened for any name of Templar knights to be added to the list, but there was none.
Then there was silence again. Mother Rikissa wrung her hands and looked almost on the verge of tears, something that neither of the Cecilias would have believed possible from the evil witch. After sitting a while in silence and trying to collect herself, Mother Rikissa plucked up her courage and unrolled a parchment. Her hands trembled a bit as she recited in a monotone, ‘In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Virgin, we must pray for all those, friends or not, who have fallen on the fields of blood, as these sites are always called, outside of Bjälbo.’
Here she paused to collect herself once more, and when the two Cecilias heard the word Bjälbo, their hearts contracted in fear. Bjälbo was the mightiest fortress of the Folkungs; it was Birger Brosa’s estate and home. So the war had reached that far.
‘Among those who fell, and they were many…’ Mother Rikissa went on, but she had to force herself to continue. ‘Among the many who fell were the jarls of God’s grace Boleslav and Kol, and so many of their kinsmen that I cannot count them all. We will now pray for the souls of the dead. We will be in mourning for a week and take nothing but bread and water; we will now…suffer a great sadness.’
There Mother Rikissa fell silent and sat with the text held loosely in her hand, as if she no longer felt like reading. Sniffling was already heard in the hall.
Then Cecilia Blanca stood up and took her friend boldly by the hand; they were sitting together at the back of the hall closest to the door. And without hesitation in her voice, but also without showing contempt or malice, she now broke her vow of silence.
‘Mother Rikissa, I beg your forgiveness,’ she said. ‘But Cecilia Algotsdotter and I will be leaving you now to the sorrow in which the two of us cannot participate. We’re going out to the arcade to reflect in our own way on what has happened.’
It was an unheard-of way of speaking, but Mother Rikissa merely waved her hand weakly in acknowledgment. Cecilia Blanca then took a step closer to her friend and bowed with courtly dignity, as if she were the queen herself, before she left the hall, still holding her friend’s hand.
When they reached the arcade they quickly ran as far away as they could so as not to be heard by the mourners. Then they stopped, embraced, kissed each other in the most immodest way, and spun round and round with their arms around each other’s waists, moving along the arcade as if they were dancing. Nothing needed to be said; now they knew all that they needed to know.
If Boleslav and Kol were dead, then the battle was over. If the Sverkers had attacked Bjälbo itself, then the Folkungs, even though they had hesitated before, must have emerged with all their forces, either to conquer or die. There would have been no other choice if the battle was at Bjälbo.
And if both the pretenders to the throne on the other side had fallen, it meant that not many of their men had escaped the battle alive, since the noble lords were the last to fall in war. Birger Brosa and Knut Eriksson must have won a great and decisive victory. So that’s why the fleeing Sverkers had come to Gudhem in the belief that they would be able to purchase safe conduct for themselves by kidnapping Knut Eriksson’s betrothed.
The war was over, and their side had won. In the first moment of joy when they danced down the arcade with their arms around each other, this was the thought that filled their minds.
Only later did they realize that what had happened on the bloody fields outside Bjälbo also meant that now they would be separated from each other. Cecilia Blanca’s hour of release would soon arrive.
Armand de Gascogne, sergeant of the Order of the Knights Templar, was a man who knew neither fear nor dread. Not only was it against the Rule - a Templar knight was forbidden to feel fear - it was also against his image of himself and against his most fervent wish in life, to be taken into the Order as a full-fledged brother in arms.
But when he spied the walls of Jerusalem in the setting sun, the centre of the world, looming up before them, it seemed that he did feel dread, and as if a chill went through him and the hairs on his forearms stood on end. But instantly the heat was back in his face.
Their ride had been very hard; his master Arn had allowed them only a brief rest at midday, and they had ridden in silence without any stops except to dismount now and then for a moment and rearrange the cumbersome loads on the horses. The six corpses had grown rigid in awkward positions, and as the sun climbed in the sky and the heat increased, they had gathered greater and greater clouds of flies around them. But the corpses were not the most difficult things to handle; they could be bent to fit better among the packs. On the other hand, the robbers’ loot in the little grotto had been sizable and hard to load. There was everything from Turkish weapons to Christian communion goblets of silver, silks and brocades, jewellery and Frankish arms ornaments, spurs of silver and gold, blue stones of the Egyptian sort, and gemstones that Armand had never seen before coloured violet and blue-green, small golden crucifixes affixed to leather cords or chains of hammered gold. These items alone told them that more than a score of the faithful souls, peace be upon them, must now be in Paradise after meeting a martyr’s death on their way to or from the place where John the Baptist had immersed the Lord Jesus Christ in the waters of the Jordan.
Armand’s tongue had swollen up so that it felt like a piece of thick leather in his mouth, and it was as dry as desert sand. This wasn’t because their water had run out, for with each step the horse took, Armand could hear water sloshing in the leather sack by his right thigh. But it was the Rule. A Templar knight controlled himself. A Templar knight must be able to withstand situations that other people could not endure. And above all, a sergeant could not drink without the permission of his lord, just as he could not speak without being spoken to or halt without orders.
Armand sensed that his lord Arn was tormenting him, but not without purpose, since he was also tormenting himself. It had something to do with that morning. That morning he had responded truthfully, as the Rule demanded. The question he was asked was whether he wished to be admitted as a knight and bear the white mantle. His lord Arn had merely nodded pensively at his reply without showing any emotion, and since then they had not spoken a word. They had ridden for eleven hours with only one brief stop to rest; they had halted occasionally whenever they found water to give the horses, but not themselves, and all this during one of the hottest days of the year. For the past hour Armand had seen how the horses’ quarter muscles had quivered with each step as they moved forward; for the horses too it had been a very hard day. But the Rule also seemed to apply to the horses of the Knights Templar. One never gave up. One obeyed orders. One endured what others could not.
When they finally neared the port in the city wall that was called the Lion’s Gate, a fog clouded Armand’s eyes briefly and he had to grab the pommel of the saddle so as not to fall off his horse. But then he rallied, if for no other reason than out of curiosity to see the tumult that arose at the city gate as he and his lord and their unusual cargo approached. Or perhaps it was because he thought that he would soon get something to drink, in which case he was mistaken.
By the city gate stood guards who were the king’s soldiers, but also a Templar knight and his sergeant. One of the royal soldiers came over to Arn de Gothia’s horse to take it by the bridle as he questioned the rider about his intentions and right to enter the city. The white-clad Templar knight behind him instantly drew his sword and held it in his path, ordering his sergeant to keep the curious away. And then Armand and his lord rode into the centre of the city without needing to utter a word, because they belonged to God’s holy army, and they obeyed no person on earth except the Holy Father in Rome.
The sergeant from the city gate escorted them down narrow cobblestone streets towards the temple square,