Jan Guillou - The Road to Jerusalem

Magnus had sent for his younger brother Birger, who although he was not the eldest or most prominent, still acted as spokesman for the Bjälbo family in many difficult matters. Birger was regarded as both shrewd and forthright in negotiations. Many had predicted that, despite the down on his cheeks, he would one day hold a high position in the realm, no matter who controlled the kingdom, for the Bjälbo lineage was very strong, as reckoned in lands and retainers.

Birger came riding up like a whirlwind in the snow one evening before the other guests had arrived. With loud shouts he drove his sleigh into the courtyard in front of the longhouse and with an abrupt skid made snow spray from the runners. He leapt down briskly from the sleigh and left it in the care of stable thralls who came rushing over. He also tossed a dead wolf onto the ground so that it could be carried away at once to the tannery to be flayed. Many of the thralls thought that it was unlucky to let a dead wolf come too close to where people lived.

Then he heaved the knapsack with his good clothes onto his back and was already on his way into the longhouse as Magnus came stumbling out to welcome him. When Birger entered the longhouse and met Sigrid, whom he greeted with caution and chivalry, he was at once full of praise for their construction. Led by Sigrid, with Magnus traipsing along behind, he walked through the hall and felt the heat radiating from the stone gable wall with the log fires, rubbing his hands in delight. He quickly selected a place to sleep, dropped off his change of clothes, and pulled the woollen blanket over his sleeping place. Then he promptly went over to the bench near the fire, and began to tell them about his journey across the ice of Lake Vättern. He recounted how he had discovered a pack of wolves and how the horse managed to catch up with them on the ice covered with a thin layer of snow and how he shot a wolf, but the fallen wolf unfortunately got caught up in the sleigh’s runners and the other wolves were able to flee.

Then he stretched out his hand in a practiced gesture and was handed a tankard of ale without so much as casting a glance at the house thrall who brought it. He drank a toast to his hosts and heaved a great sigh of satisfaction.

Magnus felt almost dumbfounded by his lively young brother, for whom nothing ever seemed difficult or impossible. Who would even think of venturing out alone on a sleigh ride across unstable ice in bad weather, travelling all the way from Bjälbo to Arnäs in a single day without the least trepidation? It made Magnus wonder how much having the same father actually meant since he and his half-brother had different mothers.

It took a long time before they had sufficiently discussed all their kinsmen at the two estates, and Magnus almost timidly was able to turn the conversation to the difficult questions awaiting them the next day.

But none of this seemed difficult for Birger, either. He disposed of the whole problem in a few sentences.

‘It is true and certain,’ he said as he reached out his arm to take another tankard of ale, ‘that this Erik Jedvardsson is a man who will either end up as king or be a head shorter, or both. We all know this. But as things now stand, he can’t get us involved in any strife. He can’t turn Eastern Götaland against Western Götaland or vice versa. He could possibly win over the Swedes to his cause, with or without a heathen sacrifice. If he does that, we’ll have to consider then what position to take. Then the game will have changed. But enough of these minor matters, when do we eat?’

The arrival of Erik Jedvardsson at Arnäs on the following day was an event not missed by anyone. He came in four sleighs and had twelve retainers with him, as though he were already king, or at least the jarl, the second in line to power. Moreover, he arrived four hours before he was expected, due to the fact that he had left his home estate of Ladås the day before, stopping halfway and staying overnight with King Sverker’s man at the king’s Husaby estate, although he was reticent about what had transpired during such a brief visit.

The meat being tended by the roast-turners was still half- raw; the turnips were still being carried into the cookhouses, and Sigrid had scarcely managed to sweep the hall and hang the tapestries; so after a brief welcome for form’s sake, when they tested the ale and shared some of the white bread that was the pride of Arnäs, they divided up the company in the most opportune way so as to make the time pass without boredom. Magnus asked his eldest retainer to take care of his warrior brothers from Ladås, get them settled in, and assuage their thirst. Sigrid took Kristina on a tour of the house and around all the new buildings on the estate, and Magnus took Erik Jedvardsson to see the work on the fortifications.

Erik Jedvardsson was not impressed. He thought that the walls were too low and too fragile, that the double moat might be an ingenious idea, but that it didn’t do much good to have deep moats if they had to defend themselves in the winter when the water turned to ice. And he went on like that, boasting the whole time about his own structures and comparing them, especially the church building in Eriksberg, which was now nearly completed. Naturally he used English stonemasons, whom he had requisitioned from his father’s clan; these Englishmen, he proposed, might be hired out to Magnus when the spring came instead of returning home.

Magnus let him talk. If the walls at Arnäs were too low and fragile, then he meant they were too low and fragile for a king. If there were a king to capture in the fortress, then the besiegers would be both more numerous and more stubborn than if there were only a tradesman inside. It wasn’t difficult to see that Erik Jedvardsson was already dreaming of being king.

But Magnus did not feel comfortable in his company. The other man was taller and heavier, which made him speak and behave as though he were the host and not the guest.

This made the surprise so much the better for Magnus when they left the fortifications and began to inspect the stables and the longhouse. This was indeed a whole new method of building – the long pine logs stacked on top of each other – and the stonework gable of the longhouse, with its three big chimneys on the roof ridge, was also entirely new to Erik Jedvardsson. At his home they were still building with vertical logs that were sealed with straw and clay.

Magnus was immediately in a better mood as he began to describe his construction ideas. And when Erik Jedvardsson was invited into the hall and the heat from the stone gable near the high seat radiated toward him, he became voluble in his praise. He ran his hand over the logs and their sealed seams to confirm that there wasn’t the slightest cold draft. As ale was brought out for the guest, Magnus modestly told him that up here where the Sunnan Forest met the Nördan Forest there was so much good timber – tall, straight pines – that it provided completely different building possibilities than, for example, down by the Lidan River, with its mostly deciduous forest.

The ale warmed them and Magnus’s mood continued to improve.

Sigrid had not been looking forward to showing her kinswoman Kristina around the grounds. The mood between them could not be other than coldly polite, given the claim Kristina had made to the priests and the king that Varnhem was at least partially hers, and that she had no intention of giving away any of her inheritance to some monks.

But that was not a suitable topic to take up now, without the presence of their husbands. If anything was to be said on this matter, it would be best to do so when all those who had a right to discuss the problem were gathered in the same room.

Kristina couldn’t help being impressed by all the various workshops that had sprung up around the estate, however. They didn’t go all the way down to the tannery because of the smell, but they visited the cookhouses, the stonecutters’ workshops, the smithies, the cooperages, and the linen-makers before they took a turn through the storehouses and one of the thrall’s huts, where they surprised a couple fornicating, which didn’t bother the two women in the least. It did prompt Kristina to joke that at home she had at least every other male thrall gelded, because those brutes otherwise had the ability to create too many new mouths to feed.