powerful dappled grey began to approach, and soon the others followed. When the first grey raised his tail and broke into a trot, they all moved faster and then came galloping so fast that the ground shook.
‘By the Prophet, peace be unto him, you have indeed learned the language of horses down there in Outremer,’ Brother Guilbert whispered in Arabic.
‘Quite true,’ replied Arn in the same language, opening his white coat wide to stop the onrushing stallions, ‘and you seem still to recall the language that I once thought was the language of horses and not that of the unbelievers.’
They each mounted a stallion, although Brother Guilbert had to lead his to the fence to get enough support to climb onto the steed’s back. Then they rode around in the corral bareback with only their left hands lightly gripping the horses’ manes.
Arn asked whether things were still so wretched that the West Goths continued to be the last men in the world who failed to understand the value of these horses. Brother Guilbert confirmed this with a sigh. In most other places in the Cistercian world, horses were their best business. But not up here in the North. The art of mounted warfare had not yet reached these parts. So these particular horses were worth not more but less than native West Gothic horses.
Arn was astonished, and he asked whether his kinsmen still believed that one could not use cavalry in war. With a sigh Brother Guilbert said that this was true. Nordic men rode to their battles, dismounted from their horses and secured their reins. Then they rushed at one another, hacking and slashing, on the closest field.
But now Brother Guilbert could no longer hold back all the questions he had been wanting to ask since the first moment he saw this man, whom he believed to be a prodigal son standing in the receptorium, dripping with rain and muddy from his long journey. Arn began recounting his lengthy story.
The young, innocent Arn Magnusson, who once set out from Varnhem to serve in the Holy War until death or until twenty years had passed, which was usually the same thing, no longer existed. It was no untainted knight Perceval who had come back from the war.
Brother Guilbert understood this almost at once when the conversation with Father Guillaume commenced out in the cloister. It had turned into a radiantly beautiful morning with not a cloud in the sky and no wind, so Father Guillaume had taken his unusual guest and Brother Guilbert out to the conversation area by the stone benches in the cloister garden instead of summoning them to the parlatorium. There they now sat with their feet practically on top of Father Henri’s grave, because he and his broken seal had been laid to rest right here, just as he had instructed on his deathbed. They had begun their meeting by praying for Father Henri’s eternal bliss.
Brother Guilbert watched carefully as Arn began presenting his business to Father Guillaume. The latter listened attentively and kindly, and as usual with a rather patronizing expression, as if in the presence of someone who knew less than he did. Father Guillaume was a talented theologian, that was indisputable, but he was not very good at seeing through a Templar knight, thought Brother Guilbert as he soon realized what Arn was getting at.
There were obvious indications on Arn’s face that he had not been one of those monks who served the Lord by copying manuscripts or keeping accounts. He must have spent the greater part of his time in the Holy Land in the saddle with sword and lance. Only now did Brother Guilbert notice the black border at the bottom of Arn’s mantle that showed he held the rank of a fortress master in the Knights Templar and thus was in command of both war and trade. Arn would probably be able to convince the younger and less experienced Father Guillaume to go along with whatever he wished, without the latter realizing what he was doing.
As his first response to the question of why he had returned to Varnhem, Arn had said that he had come to deliver a donation of no less than ten marks in gold. Varnhem, after all, had been the place where the brothers had raised him, with the help of God, and ten marks in gold was truly no small sum to express his gratitude. In addition, he wanted his future resting place to be