The Road to Jerusalem. Jan Guillou

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СКАЧАТЬ patted her gently on the hand and thanked her with a wry smile because he, as an old man, was in need of a woman with child who would be the first to sit down. If a blessed woman could do so, then so too could the king, he said. It would not have looked proper for him to go first.

      Sigrid firmly suppressed the idea of telling him that the Holy Spirit had just spoken to her. It seemed to her that such an admission would merely seem as if she were boasting, and kings saw more than enough of that, at least until someone chopped off their heads. Instead she quickly whispered an idea that had come to her.

      As the king no doubt already knew, there was a dispute over her inheritance of Varnhem. Her kinswoman Kristina, who had recently married that upstart Erik Jedvardsson, was laying claim to half the property. But the monks on the island of Lurö needed to live in a region with less severe winters. Much of their farming had been in vain out there, and everyone knew it; not to disparage King Sverker’s great generosity in donating Lurö to them. But if she, Sigrid, now donated Varnhem to the Cistercian monks, the king could bless the gift and declare it legal, and the whole problem would be resolved. Everyone would gain.

      She had been speaking quickly, in a low voice, and a little breathlessly, her heart still pounding after what she had witnessed in the heavenly music after the darkness turned to light.

      The king seemed a bit taken aback at first; he was hardly used to people near him speaking so directly, without courtly circumlocutions. Especially women.

      ‘You are a blessed woman in more than one respect, my dear Sigrid,’ he said at last, taking her hand again. ‘Tomorrow when we have slept our fill in the royal palace after today’s feast, I shall summon Father Henri, and we will take care of this entire matter. Tomorrow, not now. It’s not proper for us to sit here together for very long, whispering.’

      With the wave of a hand she had now given away her inheritance, Varnhem. No man could break his word to the king, nor any woman either, just as the king may never break his word. What she had done could not be undone.

      But it was also practical, she realized when she had recovered a bit. The Holy Spirit could indeed be practical, and the ways of the Lord were not always inscrutable.

      Varnhem and Arnäs lay a good two days’ ride from each other. Varnhem was outside Skara, not far from the bishop’s estate near Billingen Mountain. Arnäs was up in the north of the region, on the eastern shore of Lake Vänern, where the forest Sunnanskog ended and the woods of Tiveden began, near Kinnekulle Mountain. The Varnhem estate was newer and in much better condition, which is why she wanted to spend the coldest part of the year there, especially as the dreaded childbed approached. Magnus, her husband, wanted them to take his ancestral estate Arnäs as their abode, while she preferred Varnhem, and they had not been able to agree. At times they could not even discuss the subject in a friendly, patient manner as befitted a husband and wife.

      Arnäs needed to be repaired and rebuilt. But it lay in the unclaimed borderlands along the edge of the forest; there was a great deal of common land and royal land that could be acquired by trade or purchase. Much could be improved, especially if she moved all her thralls and livestock from Varnhem.

      This was not precisely the way the Holy Spirit had expressed the matter when He revealed Himself to her. She had seen a vision that was not altogether clear: a herd of beautiful horses shimmering in many colours like mother-of pearl. The horses had come running toward her in a meadow covered with flowers. Their manes were white and pure, their tails were raised haughtily, and they moved as playfully and lithely as cats. They were graceful in all their movements, not wild but not free either, since these horses belonged to her. And somewhere behind the gambolling, frisky, unsaddled horses came a young man riding on a silver stallion. It too had a white mane and raised tail. She knew the young man and yet did not. He carried a shield but wore no helmet. She didn’t recognize the coat of arms from any of her own kinsmen or her husband’s; the shield was completely white with a large blood-red cross, nothing more.

      The young man reined in his horse right next to her and spoke to her. She heard all the words and understood them, and yet did not grasp their import. But she knew what they meant – she should give God the gift that was now needed most of all in the country where King Sverker ruled: a good place for the monks of Lurö to live. And Varnhem was a very good place.

      When she came out onto the steps of the cathedral her head cleared with the cold, fresh air. She understood with sudden insight, almost as if the Holy Spirit was still upon her, how she would tell all this to her husband, who was coming toward her in the crowd carrying their cloaks over his arm. She regarded him with a cautious smile, utterly confident. She was fond of him because he was a gentle husband and a considerate father, although not a man to be respected or admired. It was hard to believe he was actually the grandson of a man who was his direct opposite, the powerful jarl Folke the Stout. Magnus was a slender man, and if he hadn’t been wearing foreign clothes he might be taken for anyone in the crowd.

      When he came up to Sigrid he bowed and asked her to hold her own cloak while he first swung his large, sky-blue cloak lined with marten fur around him and fastened it under his chin with the silver clasp from Norway. Then he helped her with her cloak and tentatively caressed her brow with his soft hands, which were not the hands of a warrior. He asked her how she had managed to stand for such a long praise-song to the Lord in her blessed state. She replied that it hadn’t been any trouble, because she had brought Sot along to serve as support, and because the Holy Spirit had granted her a revelation. She spoke in the way she did when she wasn’t being serious. He smiled, thinking it was one of her usual jokes, and then looked around for his man who was bringing his sword from the church entryway.

      When Magnus swept his sword in under his cloak and began fastening its scabbard, both his elbows jutted out, making him look broad and mighty in a way that she knew he was not. Then he offered Sigrid his arm and they made their way carefully through the crowd, where the most distinguished churchgoers now mixed with the common folk and thralls. In the middle of the marketplace Frankish acrobats were performing, along with a man who spit fire; pipes and fiddles were being played, and muffled drums could be heard over by one of the large ale tents. After a while Sigrid took a deep breath and bluntly told him everything at once.

      ‘Magnus, my dear husband, I hope you’ll take it with manly calm and dignity when you hear what I’ve just done,’ she began, taking another deep breath and continuing quickly before he could reply. ‘I have given my word to King Sverker that I will donate Varnhem to the Cistercian monks of Lurö. I can’t take back my word to a king, it’s irreversible. We’re going to meet him tomorrow at the royal estate to have the promise written out and sealed.’

      As she expected, he stopped short to give her a searching glance, looking for the smile she always wore when she was teasing him in her own special way. But he soon realized that she was completely serious, and then anger overcame him with such force that he probably would have struck her for the first time if they hadn’t been standing in the midst of kinsmen and enemies and all the common folk.

      ‘Have you lost your wits, woman? If you hadn’t inherited Varnhem you’d still be withering away in the convent. It was only because of Varnhem that we were married at all.’

      He managed to control himself and speak in a low voice, but with his teeth firmly clenched.

      ‘Yes, all that is true, my dear husband,’ she replied with her eyes lowered chastely. ‘If I hadn’t inherited Varnhem, your parents would have chosen another wife for you. I would have been a nun by now in that case. But Eskil and the new life I’m carrying under my heart would not have existed without Varnhem.’

      Magnus did not reply. Just then Sot approached them with Eskil, who ran to his mother at once and took her hand, chattering excitedly about everything СКАЧАТЬ