The Castle of Kings by Oliver Pötzsch
The boy nodded and hurried away. Silence fell in the great hall again, a silence that made Agnes shiver even more than the unseasonably cold weather outside. Although it was April, winter had returned, as if refusing to accept its dismissal this year. Agnes had been sitting at the window for almost an hour, looking out at the dense and driving snow, and leafing now and then through the printed pages of Parcival, the epic poem by Wolfram von Eschenbach. She had paid good money to have it sent from Worms. All this time the old imperial count had hardly exchanged a word with her or his son. Instead, he had set to work on steaming game pies, capons, quails’ eggs, and cakes fragrant with honey—a feast interrupted only by the brief orders he barked out as he waited for the next course to be brought in.
Friedrich’s relationship with his father had been at rock bottom for months. The old man had not forgiven his son for marrying a mere castellan’s daughter and moving into this drafty ruin of a castle. It was true that Scharfenberg Castle had changed considerably over those months—walls had been repaired, damp patches plastered, and rotting wood replaced by new oak rafters—but in spite of everything, the old imperial castle must still seem not much more than a hovel to Ludwig I von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck, who, after all was a son, if an illegitimate one, of the former elector of the Palatinate. He had let Friedrich, the youngest of his five living children, have his way for a long time, hoping that one of these days he would finish sowing his wild oats. But now the old man’s patience seemed to be running out at last.
Agnes looked around the renovated Knights’ House and tried to take her mind back to the days when her father still lived in nearby Trifels Castle. It seemed an eternity ago now, yet it was less than a year since Erfenstein’s mysterious death. Even though in that time Friedrich had excavated half the surrounding area, he still had not found the legendary Norman treasure. The constant hoping and waiting had taken their toll on his temper, which was not improved by a sudden visit from his father.
“At home in Löwenstein we drink Tokay and Burgundy,” announced Ludwig von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck, picking scraps of meat out of his teeth with his fingers. “Bright red Burgundy at thirty guilders the cask. The ducal court honors us with a visit almost every week. And what does my son do? Buries himself here in the dark forest, looking for treasure, like a little boy. This has been going on for years. How much longer am I expected to put up with your daydreams?” He spat on the rushes. “Bah! Tongues are wagging about you at court in Heidelberg.”
“Is that why you came?” retorted Friedrich. “To give me that information? A messenger would have sufficed.”
“I’m here to get you to see reason. Your mother is crying her eyes out because her youngest child has obviously lost his mind.” Ludwig sighed and looked piercingly at his son with watery eyes. “I’ve spoken to the duke, Friedrich. We can get this tiresome marriage annulled at any time. Keep the woman as a concubine if you like.”
“Excuse me, Your Grace, but since you are speaking of me, the concubine . . .” Agnes said. She had listened for some time, but now her patience was at an end. Angrily, she closed her book and sat up very straight. “Your son married not just me, but Trifels Castle. And I don’t think he can take the castle to your court with him, can he, honored father-in-law?”
The old count spared her only a sidelong glance and then turned back to his son. “Friedrich, tell your woman to keep her mouth shut until she’s asked to open it. In your place I’d have forbidden her to read books long ago. Books only make women pert and disobedient.”
“And above all, books make them clever,” Agnes replied. “So I also know that your son will never give up Trifels. Not until he has found out all its secrets.”
“Hold your tongue,” Friedrich snapped. “Or I’ll have you locked in your bedchamber again.”
“Better that than lying in the bed of a tyrant.” Agnes defiantly crossed her arms.
The young count had indeed tried to approach her at night a couple of times, but she had reminded him forcefully of their original agreement. Agnes knew that she would never in her life share a bed with the man who had murdered her father. Soon after that, Scharfeneck had given up and had contented himself with choosing a playmate now and then from among the maids.
“You let her speak to you like that?” said Ludwig scornfully. “I’d have tanned her hide long ago.”
The young count was about to reply, but a clinking sound and then a crash came from the doorway leading from the staircase. The young servant had slipped on the smooth top step and fallen, tray and all. The goblet, set with semi-precious gemstones, rolled before Friedrich’s feet, and a pool of pale wine spread on the floor. The count’s lips narrowed, and he spoke in the quiet, cutting tone that showed he was particularly angry.
“You clumsy oaf,” he hissed. “I’ll set the dogs on you for this, I’ll have you flayed. You’ll wish you’d never been—”
“I will go and get more wine for our guest,” Agnes interrupted him. “That will be the quickest way.” She rose from her place in the window niche, picked up the goblet from the floor, and swiftly pushed the trembling servant out of the room. “I am sure the gentlemen can do without my company.”
Before her husband could say anything, she had disappeared into the stairway tower, along with the servant.
“Thank you. Thank you, my lady,” the young servant whispered. He couldn’t be more than thirteen years old. “How can I . . .”
“Go out into the courtyard and feed my falcon,” Agnes replied, smiling. “But mind you don’t drop the food dish, or Parcival will peck your fingers off. He can be just as short-tempered as my husband.”
She watched the relieved boy hurry to the door, and then she set off down to the kitchen herself.
As Agnes walked along the low-ceilinged passages, their walls hung with thick tapestries, she thought how her life had changed in the last few months. The wedding had been held in July, in the chapel of Trifels Castle, and had been a very modest occasion. Only about fifty guests had been invited, among them many of the lower nobility who owed allegiance to the count. They had looked at the damp, moldering rooms with scorn, and since then Agnes had seldom visited Trifels herself.
Friedrich had built her a golden cage at Scharfenberg Castle. He had bought her many books and had her bower furnished with silk and damask. Agnes wore the finest clothes and precious jewelry; meals were served on silver platters by an army of servants. She was no longer a simple castellan’s daughter but a real countess. Margarethe would have been green with envy. Yet Agnes sometimes felt like a fly caught in a piece of amber, and the days passed as if in a mist. Her heart still mourned for her father.
Her dreams, too, had ceased. All she had left was the mysterious signet ring, which she kept hidden in a little box under her bed, taking it out only occasionally.
Feeling despondent, Agnes entered the large kitchen on the first floor of the castle complex. Old Hedwig stood beside the smoking fireplace, above which a huge, sooty flue protruded into the room. She was just putting a steaming copper pan on a tripod. The cook’s was the only familiar face from the past that Agnes saw here. The men-at-arms Gunther and Eberhart still served at Trifels Castle, the old master gunner Reichhart had gone away to join the rebels, and Abbot Weigand had summoned Father Tristan back to Eusserthal weeks ago to help him with the laborious work of keeping the abbey’s records straight.
Agnes felt a pang go to her heart as she thought of the one who had been closest of all to her and yet was the farthest away.
Mathis . . .
Agnes had not seen her childhood friend since before his escape from prison in Annweiler. It was said that, like Reichhart, he had joined the rebels, and she had heard rumors that the peasants now regarded the young weaponsmith as one of their leaders. Her silly, stubborn little Mathis. How long ago was it that they had played in the forest together? How long . . .
“What’s the matter, my child?”
Hedwig’s voice brought her back from her
“You look paler every day. You must eat more, and then everything will be all right, just wait and see. The good Lord means well by us, to be sure.” Nodding, Hedwig stirred the stew over the fire as she went on muttering, half to herself. “Out there, peasants are freezing and hungry, there’s murder and violence everywhere, terrible times these are, terrible times. We can be thankful to sit by a warm fire here and have enough to eat, indeed we can.”
“It might be better to freeze and die fighting than to lie in a warm bed with those who exploit the peasants,” said Agnes sadly.
“Now, now, don’t let His Grace the count hear that.” Hedwig shook her head. “You’re a countess now, Agnes, and don’t you forget it. You have nothing more to do with us common folk.”
“Oh, Hedwig,” sighed Agnes, “I still remember so well how you used to break into a freshly baked loaf, all warm and steaming, and spread honey on it for me.” She smiled. “And how you scolded me when I brought dirt into the kitchen on my shoes. Am I suddenly supposed to act like a countess? I’m afraid I’ll never in my life learn how to do that.”
“There are many other things that you must still learn, my lady.”
Agnes glanced at the low doorway from which the new voice had come. The minstrel Melchior von Tanningen stood there with her falcon, Parcival, perched on his leather gauntlet. The bird had his hood on and was as calm as if Agnes herself were carrying him.
“Outside I met a kitchen boy who said the countess was going to carry wine up to the hall herself,” said Melchior, smiling. “You’ll be asking the son of the Annweiler goatherd whether you can polish his shoes next.”
“The servant spilled the wine by accident,” replied Agnes. “You know my husband. I thought it best to keep the boy out of his way.” She looked at the minstrel suspiciously. “And what are you doing with my falcon?”
“He was calling. Probably because he missed you. And he’ll soon be molting again. See for yourself.” Melchior pointed to several ragged feathers. “While he’s still fit to be seen, we ought to fly him a few times out in these wintry clouds. What do you think?” The minstrel sketched a bow. “I would consider myself fortunate if I might accompany her ladyship the countess hawking tomorrow. It would surely cheer her.”
Agnes could not help smiling. In fact her rides with Melchior were among the few pleasant experiences of her present life. On their expeditions, when she rode her father’s horse, Taramis, Melchior would tell her tales from the time of the Nibelungs, or sing her the sad ballads that he was practicing for the singers’ contest at the Wartburg next fall. Although she had known Melchior for only a few months, he had become a faithful friend. His old-fashioned appearance and manner of speech could always bring a smile to her lips. Even now she actually laughed.
“Well, her ladyship the countess would think herself equally fortunate to ride out hawking with you,” she replied, imitating his formal invitation. Suddenly she put her hand to her mouth. “My God, the wine! I quite forgot. I imagine my father-in-law will be cursing and spitting fire by now.”
“Let me do it for you.” Melchior carefully put the falcon down to sit on the rim of a pan. Then he took a recently washed goblet and filled it with some Rhine wine from a small cask. “It’s a minstrel’s fate to be cursed and spat at. After a while one no longer minds.” His eyes twinkled. He turned to the stairs leading up to the great hall.
“A good man,” murmured Hedwig, when he was out of sight. “So courteous and clever with words. Just a little short of stature, if you ask me, my lady.”
Agnes laughed. “Short, to be sure, but he has a great heart.”
The savory aroma of the stew over the fire rose to her nostrils. Only now did she realize that she was indeed hungry. She sat down at the well-scoured kitchen table with a steaming bowl taken from the pan and began spooning it up.
It tasted a thousand times better than anything the imperial count had been stuffing into himself upstairs.
Snowflakes fell lazily on the forest clearing, turning the many tents and lopsided huts into regular white hillocks. Mathis stood at a rusty anvil, hammering away at a rusty arquebus. The steady sound of his hammer blows rang out over the clearing like a church bell tolling for a funeral. Although he was close to the fire, his fingers would not warm up, nor was the firearm hot enough for him to bend it into shape. Finally he gave up and threw the piece of iron to the ground, where it disappeared, hissing and steaming, in the knee-deep snow.
“This is all a waste of time,” he said angrily. “Without a proper furnace, I’ll never get enough heat going. We might as well use the arquebuses as clubs to beat the duke’s landsknechts with. That would be more useful.”
“You must be patient, Mathis,” Ulrich Reichhart told him. He was standing beside the younger man, blowing up the fire with a bellows. “The heat was nearly high enough. We can’t offer you a real smithy out here in the forest, as you know yourself. Now we’ll have to begin again.” Cursing, he pulled the firearm out of the snow and put it back over the fire. “What’s the matter with you, Mathis? For days you’ve been looking like a sinister forest spirit. The men are beginning to duck their heads when they pass you.”
“Let them,” growled Mathis, stirring up the embers with the poker. “I don’t feel like conversation anyway. And nor do most of the rest of us here.”
Morosely, he let his eyes scan the clearing, where just under a hundred rebels had assembled. They had pitched camp in an isolated valley near the little village of Dimbach, just a few miles from Annweiler. The men sat hunched around small, smoking campfires, wrapped in furs and ragged blankets. They sharpened their scythes and boar spears, they drank watery acorn soup and talked in muted voices. Someone was playing a fiddle somewhere, but no one felt like singing or dancing to it. The mood of elation that had reigned only a few weeks ago had given way to leaden apathy. Cold settled in the men’s limbs, making them feel more and more doubtful.
In the fall, it had looked as if it were only a matter of time before the peasants throughout the empire rose up and confronted their oppressors. In the Hegau and the Allgäu districts, in the Black Forest, in Franconia, Alsace, and Thuringia, they had come together to defend themselves against the burden of taxation, the ban on hunting, the death tax, and other kinds of harassment by the great lords. The whole countryside around Lake Constance was in an uproar. It was said that thousands of peasants had joined together to fight under the banner of liberty. But there had been no new reports for some months, and the wave of rebellion had clearly not rolled on as far as the Palatinate. So they waited here day in, day out, while their ears, noses, and fingers slowly froze. It seemed that winter would never end, and some men had already returned to their villages. Those who stayed fed on acorns, beechnuts, and now and then a skinny hare or squirrel.
“We can’t hold out here much longer,” Mathis quietly said, almost to himself. “We promised the peasants a life of freedom, but it’s far worse here than the life they knew before.”
“Jockel says that men minded like us have already burned a few castles and monasteries,” replied Reichhart. “He says it can’t be long now.”
“Jockel says a great many things. Many fine, roundabout words, but whether they’re true is another matter.”
Mathis spat into the fire and then resumed hammering the iron arquebus. The steady rhythm at least helped to calm him down a little. The fact was that their joint struggle against the nobility and the church seemed to him increasingly futile. In addition, he kept thinking of Agnes these days. It was almost a year since they had last seen each other. Only now and then did he hear, from peddlers or runaway servants, what was going on at Trifels and Scharfenberg Castle. Agnes was married, a countess living in luxury, and she seemed to like it. Did she ever think at all of him, the former smith at Trifels Castle, now an outlaw? Mathis seethed with anger, anger mixed with another emotion that he could nam
Love.
The two feelings were very, very similar.
Suddenly loud voices were heard shouting. Grateful for anything to distract his mind, Mathis looked up and saw a group crossing the clearing toward him. When they came closer, he saw that one of them was Shepherd Jockel, accompanied by some men whom he had never seen before. The new arrivals kept a little distance between themselves and the hunchbacked shepherd, whether out of dislike or respect it was hard to say.
Biding his time, Mathis watched the leader of their small, freezing band. Jockel had exchanged his old ragged clothing for a blood-red doublet and slashed hose such as the landsknechts wore. On his head he wore a shabby velvet cap with roosters’ feathers in it as if it were a crown. Jannsen and Paulus, two former vagabonds from Baden who liked to call themselves his bodyguards, were with him.
“Make way for the leader!” they shouted, pushing aside a few peasants who were wearily sitting together in a hollow in the snow. “Make way, will you?” With spears and rusty helmets that they had stolen somewhere, the two bodyguards looked like a travesty of brave paladins.
“Ah, here’s my loyal weaponsmith,” said Jockel at last, turning with a smile to the strangers and, with a lordly gesture, indicating Mathis. “Take my word for it, Mathis is the best master gunner from here to Lake Constance. With him at our side, we’ll chase the knights and clerics out of their castles and abbeys like vermin.”
“A master gunner without any guns, I see,” remarked one of the newcomers ironically. He was a broad-built man getting on in years, with a watchful look, and dressed like a respectable craftsman. Mathis thought he was probably mayor of his village. The man pointed to the bent gun barrel lying on the embers in front of him. “You’ll never make a decent arquebus of that again. I’m a smith myself; I know what I’m talking about.”