The Road To Jerusalem (31 page)

A father had to love his lawful sons, that was God’s inescapable commandment. But the question was how much disappointment and dishonor could gnaw at that love until in the end what he felt could no longer be called love.

Another question, of course, was whether they could even make a man of the boy; it seemed as though he had been with the monks so long that he had become like one of them. Magnus felt that in a way, which was not entirely to his pleasure, it was like having a priest in the house, as if at the evening meal they could no longer talk freely about what they happened to be thinking but had to watch their words so as not to sound ungodly.

Nor did Arn drink to any extent. This had been evident at their first meal to welcome him home, which was intended to be a joyful celebration. Just like the account in the Holy Scriptures, Magnus had slaughtered the fatted calf upon the prodigal son’s return, although in this instance it was a fatted suckling pig, which was much finer. And they had all dressed up for the feast, Arn wearing some of Eskil’s clothes that he had grown out of in recent years, for Eskil had almost degenerated to the state of his great-grandfather Folke the Fat.

But during the evening no one could fail to notice that this son Arn was not much of a man, since he drank only two tankards of ale the whole evening and picked at the excellent pork like a woman. Even though he did make an effort to seem amenable, he was a bit slow to follow everything that was said, he had a hard time understanding jokes, and he was not quick enough to toss words back to anyone who tried to draw him into the revelry. He seemed to have inherited none of his mother’s quick wit or sly tongue.

Since ale loosened his thoughts the same way it loosened his tongue, Magnus reeled into the abhorrent idea that Arn had become like a woman among the monks. Such stories were told by the ungodly and those of little faith about the unnamable sins of certain monks.

With his acuity now somewhat muddied Magnus tried to judge whether the fact that Arn seemed more comfortable among women meant that he had succumbed to that particular abomi nation of the monks, or whether his proclivity for getting along better with women actually indicated the opposite.

It must mean the abomination, he thought at first. Since such fallen men were just like women and so perhaps felt more comfortable with women.

It must mean the opposite, he corrected himself. For if a man had fallen into an abomination of a similar type, such as fornicating with heifers, wouldn’t he seek out heifers more or less in secret? There were plenty of young thrall boys at Arnas, but considering how everyone was keeping an eye on the irresolute prodigal son, the slightest attempt to assault one of the thrall boys would have led to a storm of gossip. And that would not have escaped the attention of the lord’s family.

No, he was definitely not a catamite. That would have been the worst shame he could have brought down upon his father’s house and his clan. In that case he would have to be killed quickly to restore the honor of the house.

Magnus shouted angrily to his terrified house thralls to bring out more ale; they obeyed wordlessly and swift as the wind.

After reflecting on his latest conclusions, when after half a tankard he remembered where he was, Magnus began to weep, overwhelmed by emotion. In truth he had thought much too ill of Arn who was his true son, and who was the apple of his dear Sigrid’s eye. What did the Lord God actually mean by all this? First Arn was to be given as a little boy to God; all the signs had spoken so clearly that there could be no doubt. And if Arn had remained a man of God for the rest of his life all would have been well, for Magnus certainly was not among those who denied all the good that the monks had accomplished in Western Gotaland. On the contrary, he admitted to all and sundry that much of what had made Arnas a better farm than others was due largely to the monks’ knowledge.

But now Arn, instead of doing God’s good work among the monks, had been released to what had once been his home, and he came as half a man and half a monk. What could be the meaning of that? Those who said that the ways of the Lord were often inscrutable had indeed good reason for saying so.

But even worse perhaps was that the boy persisted in working like a thrall. Only a few days after Arn had returned to Arnas, he began busily digging, building walls, and hammering everywhere. It hadn’t helped matters when Magnus carefully explained to his son that he didn’t need to toil that way, since he could use thralls to perform such tasks, and there were plenty of them idle this time of year. Then Arn had merely increased his activity as he ran from one job to the next. It was hard to know what would come of all this, but it would have been unwise for Magnus to stop it before he knew more.

One thing, however, had won the admiration of all the men, even the most scornful retainers. Arn had examined all the estate’s horses, and he had forged a new type of horseshoe with a nail that stuck up from the forward edge of the hoof and prevented the shoe from falling off. These horseshoes were certainly an improvement over the old ones. Magnus had asked both his retainers and the smithy thralls, and they all agreed.

It was a good thing, because anything that was made better at Arnas was considered a good thing, and that was the opinion of Magnus as well as Eskil. But what was embarrassing was that his lawful son should be working in the filth and smoke as if he were a thrall, and was not in the least ashamed of it. On the contrary, when Arn said grace at table, which he now did in normal language, he always thanked God for the day’s blessed work.

Eskil had been less of two minds about all of this than his father, saying that knowledge must never be disdained. And the manual skills, which his brother Arn had learned so well from the monks, were something that could be taught to others. If Arn taught the thralls, they would eventually be able to take over the work themselves. But first they would have to be properly trained, and the only one who could do that was Arn. It was wrong to scorn such work if it moved the estate forward. Advances were to the advantage of everyone.

Perhaps it was so, Magnus consoled himself, that Arn had brought so many new techniques from the monks that Arnas would be made stronger and richer. Although it was crucial to ensure that the thralls were taught quickly, so that Arn wouldn’t have to go about disgracing his clan by continuing to sweat like a thrall.

Something even better, thought Magnus, now that the ale had made him sentimental, was that Arn had become reconciled with his stepmother Erika Joarsdotter. Magnus didn’t know exactly what Arn and his wife Erika did out in the cookhouses, since he never set foot inside, but Erika seemed very pleased and happy about what had evidently taken place. Besides, it was good for Erika that someone in the family treated her well. Eskil had always had a hard time enduring his stepmother, and although Magnus had got her with child several times, since such was expected of him, it was not until the third pregnancy that she had given birth to a son. That son was not going to end up with any monks, by God. He would be taught by the retainers from childhood on, Magnus had decided.

Erika had a deformity that everyone noticed. She was lovely to look at, but as soon as she opened her mouth anyone could hear that she spoke with a cleft palate, and the sound of her words came more from her nose than her mouth. Less polite people might then burst out laughing, which had caused Erika never to speak when strange men were present. She was equally timid whenever there was a feast and she had to ensure that the guests’ women enjoyed the celebration. Magnus had a hard time talking to his wife, and he often thought back to Sigrid, who was the person he had felt closest to of anyone. But he could say this only to himself or to God.

However, it was not to be ignored that Erika was the niece of a king, that she had royal blood, and that the two daughters and one son to whom she had given birth also had royal blood, and from two separate lineages at that.

An angel had come to Arnas. Everything he touched instantly became better or more beautiful, and he was the only man Erika Joarsdotter had ever met who spoke to her as if she had the wit of everyone else. He never let on that he found her speech muddled; instead he excused his confusion by saying that he had not yet regained his childhood language, since he had spoken mostly with Danes when he was growing up. And unlike his older brother Eskil, he never gave any sign that Erika was like a stranger who had replaced the boys’ mother.

Quite early, right after dawn when all the other men were still asleep after the welcome feast held in his honor, Arn had come out, sober and freshly washed, to the cookhouses where Erika had just begun the day’s long work with her house thralls. He had politely and with kind and considerate words asked her to show him the domains for which she was responsible as mistress of the manor, and they had taken a tour of the storehouses and cookhouses. From all the questions he asked, Erika soon grasped that he knew more than most men about the way meat had to be hung, smoked, and stored and how fish should be cooked. And he seemed not in the least embarrassed by his knowledge.

It did not take long before he began to change everything, although he was careful to let her accompany him and help make the decisions. He took her by the arm and walked around with her, explaining what could be done at once and what would take more time.

Arnas was a village flanked by water on two sides. At the far end of the village close to Lake Vanern stood the castle and the defensive walls where the two arms of the water narrowed and formed a moat. But the drainage from the tanneries and latrines, from the slaughterhouse and brewery, went into both bodies of water, and according to Arn that uncleanliness was the reason that many of the thralls’ children had red eyes and pustular lips as well as nasty rashes on their skin. Many of the youngest also died even after surviving the most dangerous period after birth.

The great transformation would be that in the future they would dump waste only in the eastern arm of water around Arnas, while the western one would be kept free of refuse. By drawing pictures in the sand, pointing out and describing the whole process, Arn had shown her how they would be able to direct a water flow from the clean side in through the cookhouses and then discharge it into the unclean water. With a constant flow of water through the cookhouses they would save much time in their work, and the cookhouses could be kept clean so that all the food was more palatable. The cookhouses would also be improved by laying brick over the packed dirt floors, at a slight slope so that water would run off into the new drains.

The most difficult thing to change was the disposal of human waste. According to Arn it was fertilizer as good as livestock manure if it was used for that purpose, although it was a worse pollutant than livestock manure if it got into the food or water. Instead of letting each thrall follow the call of nature wherever it seemed suitable, now they would all be forced to use special latrine pits with crossbars, and anyone caught shitting anywhere else would be sharply reprimanded.

There was some grumbling among the thralls at these changes, but Erika Joarsdotter showed herself to be a stern mistress, be cause she soon came to trust Arn more than she did anyone else.

Since she had spent five years as a novice in a convent before she was suddenly fetched by her father to be married off, she was actually familiar with much of what Arn described to her. Perhaps she had thought that God had arranged things differently inside the cloister walls, that this better ordering of things belonged to the higher world, that everything in
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was supposed to be much cleaner than on the outside, as though cleanliness had a spiritual significance. That was why, before Arn arrived and opened her eyes, she had not even imagined that they might have the same orderliness in ordinary life as they did inside the cloister.

With Arn’s arrival Erika Joarsdotter’s days at Arnas had brightened, and her own responsibility as mistress of the manor had become easier to bear. She got up before dawn happier than she ever could have imagined. And when the men in the longhouse soon discovered that some of the food put on the table was different and better than before, they began to give her words of praise, which they had never done before. They especially liked the wonderful smoked ham.

Arn had brought along some sausages and smoked ham when he came from Varnhem. Even though most of it was consumed during the welcome feast and no one remembered much about the monk food, Erika had asked him how such things were made. Arn was soon busy building a smokehouse out of tarred lumber. When the building was finished he tested it on some pieces of pork; then he showed her the whole process, and soon she and her house thralls could smoke ham so that it seemed to have come straight from a monastery.

But by then Arn was already working on a brickworks. There was clay suitable for the task on the riverbank above the tannery on the eastern arm of the water, and it took Arn about a week to make his team of thralls understand how they were to shape the clay in wooden forms so that each piece was exactly the same size. He showed them how to bake the clay just as they baked bread, but for a longer time and at a higher heat using a bellows. Soon a new storehouse of brick began to rise next to the cookhouses. Arn took Erika on many tours around the building and up in the scaffolding to describe how they would be able to store ice from Lake Vanern to cool the brick chamber even during the hottest days of summer.

In her evening prayers Erika constantly thanked God that He had sent them this prodigal son. Although he was not her son, he treated her like his mother, giving her days at Arnas a light and a meaning that they had not had before. But to God she did not dare say what she thought every day, that Arn had come like an angel to Arnas.

Eskil was ambivalent about Arn. He didn’t really know what to make of this younger brother who suddenly rode into the castle courtyard one day on an ugly horse as if he had returned from the living dead, as miraculously as he had once been sent away, because of some alleged miracle.