hitewash of the
Reformation, the mason's hammer brought forth mural paintings that
grew and grew until there stood the whole story to read on the wall,
with Sir Asker himself and the Lady Inge, clad in garments of the
Twelfth Century, bringing to the Virgin the church with the twin
towers. So the folk-lore was not so far out after all, and the
church was rebuilt with two towers, as it should be.

Under its eaves, whether of straw or tile, the two boys played their
childish games, and before long there came to join in them another
of their own age, young Valdemar, whose father, the very Knud Lavard
mentioned above, had been foully murdered a while before. It was a
time, says Saxo, in which "he must be of stout heart and strong head
who dared aspire to Denmark's crown. For in less than a hundred
years more than sixteen of her kings and their kin were either slain
without cause by their own subjects, or otherwise met a sudden
death." Sir Asker and the murdered Knud had been foster brothers,
and throughout the bloody years that followed, he and his brothers,
sons of the powerful Skjalm Hvide,[3] espoused his cause in good and
evil days, while they saw to it that no harm came to the young
prince under their roof.

[Footnote 3: Pronounced Veethe.]

The three boys, as they grew up, were bred to the stern duties of
fighting men, as was the custom of their class. Absalon, indeed, was
destined for the church; but in a country so recently won from the
old war gods, it was the church militant yet, and he wielded spear
and sword with the best of them. When, at eighteen, they sent him to
France to be taught, he did not for his theological studies neglect
the instruction of his boyhood. There he became the disciple and
friend of the Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, more powerful then than
prince or Pope, and when the abbot preached the second great
crusade, promising eternal salvation to those who took up arms
against the unbelievers, whether to wrest from them the Holy
Sepulchre or to plant the cross among the wild heathen on the
Baltic, his heart burned hot within him. It was a long way to the
Holy Land, but with the Baltic robbers his people had a grievous
score to settle. Their yells had sounded in his boyish ears as they
ravished the shores of his fatherland, penetrating with murder and
pillage almost to his peaceful home. And so, while he lent a
diligent ear to the teachings of the church, earning the name of the
"most learned c