The Road To Jerusalem (33 page)

Around the campfire that evening Arn asked many childish questions, which Svarte and Kol answered patiently without revealing what they thought of such questions. Yes, he always had to approach from downwind, otherwise deer and boars, and all other animals for that matter, would know that he was coming. Yes, game could hear a person at a distance of an arrow-shot if it was quiet with little wind, otherwise from half an arrowshot. No, he shouldn’t shoot the ones with horns, they tasted the worst and especially this time of year when they’d just been in rut. Yes, rut was the time when the stags mounted the does and then the stags’ meat smelled strongly of their piss. It was the same thing with boars; you shouldn’t shoot the big ones but rather those of medium size. It would be good if he could shoot a sow with many small piglets following her, because when she lay down to die all the little ones would gather around her. And if he had luck and the gods’ support he could shoot all the piglets one by one, and they tasted the best.

As the thralls sat there by the campfire, politely answering the ignorant questions of their master’s son, a loud bellow was heard from the oak forest nearby. Arn jumped up in terror and grabbed his bow and quiver. He peered quizzically at Svarte and Kol, who sat quite still by the fire, smiling. When Arn saw that the others were not afraid, he sat back down but looked quite bewildered.

Svarte explained that uninformed people called that sound everything from the battle cry of the mountain king to the roar of the troll taking revenge on human beings. Such evils did exist, of course, but this was an old stag that still had some of his rut left in his body. The sound scared many people out of their wits because it was the loudest sound in the forest, but for hunters it was good to hear. It meant that in a few hours, when the first light of dawn appeared, they could hope to find all the does and yearlings that the old stags were after. If they followed the old stags in rut, tracking their roars in the dark, especially a bit earlier in the autumn, it was the surest method of finding does and yearlings to bring home to the spit-turners and cookhouses, for salting and drying.

Early that morning, well before dawn, they ventured cautiously into the forest to listen for the old stag and his does. But it was difficult to walk quietly since the night had arrived with frost. The frozen oak leaves and beech leaves and acorns crunched and crackled with each step, even under the light tread of Svarte and Kol. When Arn walked it sounded to the others like a flock of retainers in full armor. When Svarte didn’t dare go any closer they had reached a clearing in the oak forest next to a tarn. They had the light breeze in their faces, since Svarte never would have approached in any other way, nor would Kol. But the tarn lay straight ahead of them on the other side of the clearing, in the direction of the wind. From the tarn the mist rose so thick that they could hear the mighty roars of rut from the old stag quite close, but they couldn’t see the does or yearlings except to glimpse them occasionally in the mist. After a while Arn asked, very quietly as he had now learned to do, why they didn’t shoot. They whispered back that they were too far out of range; they couldn’t hit a stag until they were at half that distance. Arn gave them a skeptical look and whispered back that he could shoot.

Svarte wanted to shake his head at such nonsense but wisely thought that it would be better for Arn to learn from his own mistakes than from his thrall. Curtly he repeated something he had said by the campfire the night before. Aim far behind the shoulder, through the lungs. Then the stag would stand still if the shot was true. Because low behind the shoulder was the heart. And the stag would take off in fright and spread his fear to the others. If the stag was hit well in the lungs and stood still, he could try to shoot another one.

Arn nocked an arrow onto his bowstring, held it fast with his left thumb, and crossed himself. Then they waited.

After a wait that surely seemed much longer to Arn than to the thralls, three stags stood still, listening into the mist. But they were clearly visible. Arn touched Svarte lightly on the shoulder so he could ask with his eyes rather than say anything. Svarte whispered quietly in Arn’s ear that they were in good position, but too far away. Arn nodded that he understood.

But then he suddenly drew his bow all the way and seemed to take aim an arm’s length above the yearling that was closest within range. He let the arrow fly without hesitating. They heard the arrow strike, but then saw the yearling stand still as if uncomprehending that it now harbored death within itself. Arn shot another arrow. And another in rapid succession. Now they could hear the stags running off.

Arn wanted to run out into the mist to see what had happened, but Kol grabbed him by the arm and then grew frightened at what he had done. Yet Arn wasn’t the least bit angry about being held back; he nodded that he’d understood. They had to wait until the sun had burned away the elf dance, which the thralls believed could bring nothing but trouble and misfortune.

After they unpacked their cloaks bundled on their backs, Svarte and Kol wrapped themselves in them and lay down next to a log and fell asleep. Arn sat down but couldn’t sleep. He had shot as well as he could and was sure that his first two shots had hit home, but he was uncertain about what had happened to the third shot, although he had a feeling that something was wrong. Maybe he had shot too quickly, maybe he had been too tense. His heart had pounded so loudly that he thought the deer might have heard it.

When the sun later burned off the mist and they could see clearly, Svarte woke up and then roused his son. They went out into the meadow to see what they would find.

The yearling that Arn had shot first lay dead where it was struck, and nothing else was to be expected, explained Svarte as he thoughtfully examined the kill. The arrow had gone through both of the deer’s lungs and out the other side. That was why the yearling lay where it had been hit. It had felt no pain and so had not tried to run.

The doe wasn’t lying where it should have been, but Svarte and Kol immediately found traces of blood. When they examined the blood they nodded to each other and then to Arn. Kol said that this doe had also been struck in the lungs and would be lying dead somewhere nearby; they would soon find it. He rammed an arrow into the ground where they found the blood, and then he and his father bent forward and slowly surveyed the place where they all thought the third deer had been standing when Arn took his shot. They found blood on a blade of grass that they rubbed between their fingertips and then sniffed, and with that they seemed once again to know everything.

Svarte explained that this deer had been mortally wounded but not killed, and that it lay in fever two or three arrow-shots away. They could now bring the horses, for it was no use coming on her too soon. The doe must be allowed to die in peace.

When they returned with the horses it turned out that everything Svarte and Kol had said was true. The doe which Arn had shot with his last arrow also lay dead, although farther away. Svarte showed how Arn’s arrow had struck a bit too far back, but when Arn apologized in shame, Svarte couldn’t help smiling, even though he tried not to show it. He explained gravely that even if a deer was standing in precisely the right spot when the arrow was loosed, it might well take a small step forward as the arrow was on its way. That was what had happened.

Toward dusk they hunted deer again but without success. Svarte said that it was because the breeze had subsided and was unreliable, so the deer easily got wind of the humans no matter how they moved.

They were still in a very good mood when darkness fell, and the three deer they had taken hung in a row from a strong oak bough. They had indeed had good hunting that day.

By the campfire Svarte and Kol offered the deer’s hearts to their gods, possibly believing that their master’s son did not understand what they were doing when they turned their backs and muttered over the fire in their own language. When they were about to eat supper, however, Svarte and his son found themselves in a quandary. Kol had gone and fetched fresh hazel branches which he placed over the fire after it had died down, and on the osiers they skewered small pieces of liver and kidneys with some onion that Svarte took from one of his leather bags. To the amazement of the two thralls, Arn immediately showed himself willing to share their meal, although they all knew that such food was only for thralls. But Arn ate with the same appetite as the others, and even wanted another helping, pushing aside his salt pork. This served to bring all of them closer together and they felt less strained.

When they lay down, sated and full, by the fire and wrapped their cloaks tighter around them for the night, Svarte ventured to ask whether it was in the cloister of the White Christ that Arn had learned to shoot with bow and arrow in that way. Arn, who had by now realized that he had shot well, explained that it was not at all normal for monks to shoot with a bow and arrow, but that he had been especially fortunate to have a very skilled teacher. Svarte and Kol laughed loudly at this, and Kol said that they would very much like to meet this teacher. But when Arn replied in a jesting tone that such might indeed be arranged as long as Kol and Svarte agreed to be baptized, their faces clouded over and they stared silently into the fire.

As if to gloss over his offensive joke, Arn said that whatever they thought about the cloister of the White Christ, it was still a world where there were no thralls, a world where each man had the same value as every other man. But he received only silence in reply. Yet he didn’t want to drop the subject, so he asked in words as clear and simple as he could muster why Svarte and Kol were still thralls as they had been ever since Arn was a little boy. Many others had been given their freedom, so why not Svarte and his family?

Svarte, who now had to reply no matter how unwilling he felt, reluctantly explained that whether a thrall could be set free or not depended on what each person had accomplished. The thralls who worked the land were more often set free than those who worked in masonry or as hunters. Those who tilled the earth were put to work breaking new ground for Arnas and were given their freedom in lieu of a leasehold. But hunting for pelts in the winter and for meat in the autumn provided game directly to the households of Arnas. A thrall engaged in such activities could not become a free man, since he did not work for the main estate itself. And the same applied to all masonry work, and smithing too for that matter. Feeling that he may have gone too far and spoken too boldly, Svarte now added that he wasn’t complaining; many of the carpenters were in the same situation.

Arn pondered a moment as the others waited quietly, and then he said that he found this system unfair since, if he understood it right, ermine and marten pelts brought in much silver, probably as much as barley, turnips, and wheat. Kol laughed almost scornfully at this, and when Arn asked him why, Kol said with mirth in his voice that it was probably hard to find a way to make thralldom fair. Svarte kicked him in the leg under the skin rug to make him shut his trap.

But Arn was not the least bit angry at Kol’s boldness. On the contrary, he nodded to himself and then offered an apology for having such ill-conceived thoughts; Kol was absolutely right. But he himself would never, could never, own another man as a thrall.

Since Svarte and Kol had not a single word to say about this matter, their conversation died out. Arn said evening prayers for all of them, wrapped himself in his cloak and skins in a way that showed he had slept outside before, and lay down to sleep. He then pretended not to listen as the other two lay whispering to each other.

But Kol and Svarte had a hard time falling asleep. They lay close together for the sake of warmth as they were used to doing, but for a long time they wondered about this master’s son and his peculiar gods.

They got up early because of the night frost, well before dawn, and made a breakfast of the soup that Kol had begun to prepare the previous evening. It had been sitting on the fire all night. Svarte and Kol had taken turns putting on more wood and adding water to the pot. Along with the soup made from onions and the yearling’s flanks, they ate coarse brown bread, and soon the warmth returned to their bodies.

It was a beautiful morning, and when they rode with their heavy loads down the slopes of Kinnekulle through the sparse oak forest, all the lands of Arnas lay spread out at their feet. They rode into the rising sun that colored Lake Vanern first in silver and then in gold, and Arn took deep happy breaths of the bracing air. In the distance he saw a reflection from the steeple of Forshem church, and then he could search in the right direction for Arnas, though he couldn’t see it yet.

The slopes of the mountain were mostly covered with dense oak forest and beech woods, but below the mountain great plowed fields spread out, now lying black and silvered with frost. Arn had never thought the world could be this beautiful; God must have created these particular oak slopes and fields in a very propitious moment. He began to sing with joy but saw out of the corner of his eye that his singing seemed to scare Svarte and Kol, so he soon stopped. He pondered whether to ask them what they didn’t like about his song, whether it was the White Christ’s magic that frightened them or something else. But he changed his mind because he decided that he had to proceed very slowly in his talk with these two who were so much thralls in their minds that freedom seemed to alarm them more than it tempted them.

During their journey the sun climbing in the sky soon melted the frost on the ground and took away the hard sound of the horses’ iron shoes. The vast inland sea of Lake Vanern had shifted to a blue color, but they had now come so far down the mountain that they soon would see no more of the sea until they reached home.

They arrived at Arnas around noon and were greeted with glad shouts that after such a brief hunting trip they could ride in with three deer. The house thralls were happy that Arn was the one who had shot the deer, and they raised their tools or whatever they had in hand and beat them together over their heads, emitting trilling sounds with their tongues. That was the sound the thralls made in welcome and jubilation. Arn couldn’t help feeling some pride at this reception, but he instantly said a prayer to Saint Bernard to keep watch over him and warn him of the terrible sin of pride.