The Templar Knight. Jan Guillou

she were lulling the younger girl to sleep, although now there would be no sleep. And yet something more had to be said.

      ‘Ulvhilde, my little friend,’ Cecilia Rosa whispered hoarsely. ‘Keep in mind that it could have been you in this position and that neither of us is at all to blame. If I can console you then I will try. If you want me to be your friend and support, I will try that too. It’s not easy to live at Gudhem, and you should know that here we need friends more than anything else.’

      The death throes of Fru Helena Stensdotter took a long time. For ten days she lay dying, and during most of that time her mind was utterly clear. It made the matter that much more delicate for Mother Rikissa, who now had to send various messages far and wide.

      It would not do simply to bury Fru Helena as any of Gudhem’s pensioners, because she was of royal lineage, and she had married into both the Sverker and the Erik clans. At a time when the wounds of war had been better healed, a huge retinue should have come to see her to her final rest. But as things now stood, with the fields of blood outside Bjälbo fresh in everyone’s memory, only a small but very resolute group showed up. Almost all the guests arrived several days before her death; they had to spend the time waiting in both the hospitium and other buildings outside the cloister - Folkungs and Eriks in one group, and Sverkers in another.

      Cecilia Blanca and Cecilia Rosa were the only novices who were allowed to go outside the walls to sing at the graveside in the churchyard. This was not because of their clan lineage, but because their singing voices were among the loveliest at Gudhem.

      Bishop Bengt had come from Skara to pray over the grave. Standing slightly removed from everyone else he wore his light-blue, gold-embroidered bishop’s vestments, and he seemed able to remain upright only by clutching his staff. On one side stood men from the Sverker and Stenkil clans in red, black, and green mantles. On the other side stood the Eriks in gold and sky-blue, and Folkungs in the same blue but with silver. In two long rows outside the churchyard were all the shields fastened to lances stuck into the ground: the Folkung lion, the three Erik crowns, the black Sverker griffin, and the Stenkil wolf’s head. Some of the shields still bore clear marks of sword-edges and lance-points, while some of the guests’ mantles bore traces of both battle and blood. Peace had reigned for too short a time for the marks of war to have been washed away in the rain.