Birth of the Kingdom. Jan Guillou

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      What was needed now, besides certain restorative herbs that first had to be prepared and brewed together, were fortifying prayers and exercise. The paralysed muscles had to be put into motion one by one, but great patience was required. As for his speech, there was only one exercise, and that was to speak, which was surely the easiest demand.

      On the other hand, he must never creep away to shame and darkness and stop speaking or moving. That would just make matters worse.

      Yussuf, the younger of the two medical men, went outside for a moment. He came back with a round stone the size of half a fist and gave it to Arn. Then he explained that within a week, Sir Al-Ghouti’s honoured father had to learn to lift the stone with his weak left hand over his lap and place it in his healthy right hand. Each time he failed he had to pick up the stone with his good hand, place it back in the sick one, and start over. He must not give up. With determination and prayer much could be accomplished. In a week the next exercise would begin. Most important were practice and a strong will; the restorative herbs were secondary.

      That was all. The two physicians bowed first to Arn and then to his father and left without another word.

      Arn put the stone in his father’s left hand and explained the exercise again. Herr Magnus tried but dropped the stone at once. Arn then put it back in his hand. And his father dropped it again and angrily hissed something. Arn heard only the words ‘foreign men.’

      ‘Don’t speak that way to me, Father. Say it again in clear words. I know that you can, just as I know that you understand everything I say,’ said Arn, looking him sternly in the eye.

      ‘It’s no use…listening to…foreign men,’ his father said then, with such an effort that his head trembled a bit.

      ‘You’re wrong about that, Father. You proved it yourself just now. They said that you would get your speech back. And you spoke, so now we know that they were right. In medicine these men are among the best I encountered in the Holy Land. They have both been in service with the Knights Templar, and that’s why they are here with me now.’

      Herr Magnus did not reply, but he nodded to show that he agreed that for the first time in three years he was wrong.

      Arn put the stone back in his father’s left hand and said almost as a command that now he must practice, as the physicians had told him to do. Herr Magnus made a halfhearted attempt but then grabbed the stone with his right hand, raised it straight out over the floor, and dropped it. Arn picked it up with a laugh and put it back in his father’s lap.

      ‘Tell me what you want to know about the Holy Land and I will tell you, Father.’ Arn knelt down before Herr Magnus so that their faces were close together.

      ‘Can’t sit…long…like that,’ said Herr Magnus with difficulty, though he tried to smile. His smile was crooked because one corner of his mouth drooped.

      ‘My knees are more tempered by prayer than you will ever know, Father. In the Holy Land a warrior of God also has to do a great deal of praying for help. But tell me now what you want to know about, and I will tell you.’

      ‘Why did we lose…Jerusalem?’ asked Herr Magnus, at the same time moving the stone halfway to his good hand before he dropped it.

      Arn carefully placed the stone back in his weak hand and said that he would tell him how Jerusalem was lost. But only on the condition that his father practiced with the stone while he listened.

      It was not difficult for Arn to begin his story. When it came to the Lord’s inscrutable ways there was nothing he had brooded over as much as the question of why the Christians had been punished with the loss of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre.

      It was because of their sins. That answer now seemed clear to him. And then he gave a detailed account of those sins. He told the story about a patriarch of the Holy City of Jerusalem who had poisoned two bishops to death, about a whoring queen mother who had installed first one and then the other of her newly arrived lovers from Paris as supreme commander of the Christian army, about greedy men who were said to fight for God’s cause but merely grabbed things for themselves; they stole, murdered, and burned, only to return home as soon as their purses were stuffed, and with what they thought was forgiveness for their sins.

      As Arn described the Christians’ sins, citing the worst examples he could think of, he would now and then pick up the stone and put it once again in his father’s left hand.

      But when the catalogue of sins seemed to repeat itself, his father waved his good hand to put a stop to the list of miseries. Then he took a deep breath and gathered his forces for a new question.

      ‘Where were you…my son…when Jerusalem was lost?’

      Arn was taken aback by the question, since he had grown agitated at the thought of evil men such as the patriarch Heraclius, men who sent others to their deaths at a whim or for the sake of their vanity, like the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Gérard de Ridefort, or scoundrels like the whoremonger commander, Guy de Lusignan.

      Then Arn replied, truth be told, that he had been in Damascus, a captive of the enemy. Jerusalem was lost not after a brave stand at the walls of the city; Jerusalem was lost in a foolish battle at Tiberias, when the entire Christian army was led to its death by fools and whoremongers who knew nothing of war. Few prisoners had survived; of the Knights Templar there were only two.

      ‘You…came home…rich?’ Herr Magnus put in.

      ‘Yes, that’s true, Father. I came home and I am rich, richer than Eskil. But it’s because I was a friend of the Saracens’ king.’ Arn had answered truthfully but soon regretted it when he saw anger flare up in his father’s eyes.

      Herr Magnus lifted the stone in a single motion from his left to his right hand and then returned it to his sick hand, so that he could raise his good hand in a gesture cursing this son who was a traitor and had thereby grown rich.

      ‘No, no, that was not how it happened at all,’ Arn lied hastily to calm his father. ‘I just wanted to see if you could move the stone from one hand to the other. Your anger gave you unexpected strength. Forgive me this little trick!’

      Herr Magnus relaxed at once. He looked down in surprise at the stone, which was already back in his sick hand. Then he smiled and nodded.

       TWO

      Eskil was evidently not in a very good mood, even though he was doing his best not to show it. Not only would he have to ride up to the stone quarry and back, which would take this whole hot summer day and a good bit of the evening, but he no longer felt like the lord of his own house, as he had grown accustomed to being for so many years.

      The scaffolding had already been erected along the wall at Arnäs, and more lumber was being brought from the woods by people who’d been set to work without asking his permission. Arn seemed to have become a stranger in many ways. He apparently didn’t understand that a younger brother could not usurp the place of his older brother, or why a Folkung in the king’s council had to travel with a sizable armed guard even though there was peace in the kingdom.

      Behind them rode ten men fully armed, wearing as Arn did unbearably hot chain mail under their surcoats. Eskil himself had dressed as if riding to hunt or to a banquet, with a short surcoat and a hat with a feather. The СКАЧАТЬ