The Castle of Kings by Oliver Pötzsch
“We’d better be away before our landsknechts are called off,” he growled as Agnes came slowly down the steep hill. “I’ve a notion the folk here won’t have much good to say of us.” He laughed. “Even the old can get nasty if you knock the gruel bowl out of their hands. When the seneschal does something, he does it thoroughly, you have to give him credit for that.”
Squealing, the cart began to move, jolting away over burned and devastated terrain. From up on the driver’s seat, Agnes stared into the twilight coming on. Not a shed or a stable still stood. The year’s harvest was in ashes, and the people had fled.
Not much longer, she thought again. I’ll just wait for the right opportunity, and then I’ll leave all this behind me.
A few days ago she had been able to take a surreptitious look at a map offered to Barnabas by a wounded sergeant in lieu of payment. Their journey had already taken them over a hundred miles north, through Swabia and Franconia, but always going farther from the Rhine. If she really wanted to find out more about her dreams and the past, she must soon leave the baggage train and move west toward the river.
But not without the ring, and it was still around Barnabas’s neck.
After a good hour, they had rejoined the baggage train, now encamped near a deserted village. As soon as the cart stopped, Agnes jumped down and hurried over to the campfire, where little Agathe and Mother Barbara were sitting. The old vivandière was holding a spit over the flames, roasting a skinned rabbit on it.
“You caught the smell of this all the way away in Weinsberg, did you?” she said, smiling.
Grumbling, Barnabas sat down beside the fire and poured himself a tankard of wine. Agnes sat as well, then she cut some meat off the roast rabbit and began eating, though without much appetite. She was shivering and wrapped herself in her woolen shawl. Although the end of May was approaching, the nights were still damp and chilly.
“Will you tell me a story about King Arthur again?” asked Agathe, who was muffled up in a rabbit-skin rug beside the fire. Agnes looked at her sadly. The girl had survived the horrors of the last few weeks remarkably well. Mother Barbara had taken a fancy to her, and soon Agnes would be able to leave her on her own. All the same, her conscience pricked her.
She’ll be all right without me, Agnes thought hopefully. I’m sure she will. I can’t take her with me.
“Want to hear a story, do you?” began Barnabas affably enough, after another good gulp of wine. “Ho, I know a good story, and it’s true. They’ve caught that Thomas Müntzer in Thuringia now. You know, that crazy preacher, always carrying on about heaven on Earth.” He spat into the fire. “Seems like Müntzer will get to know hell on earth first. They’ve been torturing him for a good week already.”
Barnabas laughed uproariously, and Agnes, repelled, turned away. Suddenly she felt very tired.
“I’m afraid it’s rather late for King Arthur and his knights today,” she told Agathe, forcing herself to smile. “Maybe they’ll ride again tomorrow, how about that?”
She gave the rest of her meat to the dogs, then climbed into the cart and slipped under the stinking, ragged sheet.
But sleep was impossible. From outside came the sound of men laughing and shouting, a pig was squealing pitifully somewhere, the smoke of the campfire drifted through the cart.
And in addition, her thoughts kept dwelling on Mathis. How was he now? She could only hope he was well. Very likely he had joined the insurgents as a master gunner, and Melchior von Tanningen would now be the guest of some nobleman who gave him a warm bed in return for music and singing. How was she herself? Agnes swallowed. The one thing keeping her alive was her determination to reach St. Goar.
What would happen after that, she had no idea.
Agnes thought of her latest dreams, so different from those she remembered at Trifels. She had now dreamed three times of that attack in the forest when she was a little girl, and how she escaped. Strangely enough, the dream came only when she was sleeping in the cart. By now she felt sure that it was a true memory from her early childhood, even if she could make no sense of it. The attack had probably actually happened. But why had her father never told her about it? In order to spare her feelings? Or was there something that he wanted to keep secret?
What happened after the attack?
Outside, beech logs spluttered on the campfire. Their wood was not dry, and the smoke drifting through the cart was black and dense. The smoke made Agnes cough. Finally, she turned on her side, the smell of it making her drowsy. Her eyes closed.
A wrinkled hand clasps her own little fingers. She looks up—and sees the witch, who is not as old as Agnes had first thought. There are little laughter dimples to the left and right of her mouth, her bright eyes are wise and kindly.
“We’re going to my house,” says the witch. “You will be safe there for now.”
Together, they go through the dark forest until they reach a crooked little house. Smoke rises from its chimney, and when they go in, the smoke is hovering over the table, two stools, a chest, and the bedstead. Open-mouthed, Agnes stares at the vials and jars on the shelves, full off dried snakes, frogs, newts, and other strange things. A human skull gapes at Agnes from the dresser above the open fireplace. The witch gives her a warm mug filled with steaming liquid.
“Drink that, child. You’re cold, you need some sleep. We’ll decide what happens next in the morning.”
Agnes hesitates. Suppose the drink is poisoned? Suppose this is a wicked witch after all? But then she sees the smile on the woman’s face, and she drinks the hot, sweet fluid.
“Where are your mother and father?” the witch asks.
Agnes says nothing.
“Did you lose them in the forest?” asks the witch, and suddenly there is great anxiety in her eyes. “By God, has something happened to them? Tell me!”
Agnes still says nothing.
Whenever she wants to answer, a lump forms in her throat. She sees those blurred shapes lying beside the cart in the forest like broken dolls, covered with shadows. As soon as Agnes opens her mouth the shadows will reveal their secret, so she prefers to keep quiet.
Instinctively, her hand goes to her breast and reaches under her torn dress. She brings out a small pendant hanging from a chain. It is the jewel that Hieronymus gave her before they ran away. Agnes thinks of his hastily whispered words.
“You mustn’t lose it, do you hear? Give it only to someone you trust, and let that person keep it for you.”
The witch’s eyes fall on the jewel, and she leans down to Agnes to look more closely at the glittering thing. She starts instinctively, as though she had touched it and it was burning hot.
It is a ring. A signet ring with the portrait of a bearded man on it.
“Where did you get this?” asks the witch.
“From . . . from my mother,” replies Agnes, croaking like a baby bird that has fallen out of the nest. “Where’s my mother?”
They are the first words she has spoken since the attack.
With a slight cry, Agnes awoke.
As usual, it took her a little while to realize where she was. When she heard the clink of tankards and men’s laughter outside the cart, she dropped back, exhausted. But her breath came fast, and her eyes stung with the smoke from the burning beech logs.
She had seen the ring. The ring that Parcival had brought her so mysteriously last year, and that was now dangling around Barnabas’s neck. She had owned it once before, as a child. Long ago, in the strange old woman’s smoky cottage, it had been around her own neck.
A smoky cottage?
Agnes started. At last she could explain her wild dreams in recent nights. It wasn’t magic, but merely the smoke reviving her memory, like a dragon that had lain slumbering for ages. And with those dreams earlier, it had been the cart and the freshly tanned leather skins in it. Those odors and sensations took her back to her childhood. That also explained why the dreams had begun at Trifels, just when she had been holding the ring in her h
All at once, Agnes remembered what Father Tristan had said to her.
And as for this ring, Agnes, let me implore you. Don’t wear it on your finger, and don’t show it to any stranger. Will you promise me that?
Agnes tightened her lips. What secret did the ring conceal? And what had happened to her mother, all those years ago? Philipp von Erfenstein had always said she had died of a fever. But obviously she had lost her life in an accident. And before that, she had made sure Agnes would be given the ring. Why . . . ?
“Hey, Samuel!” boomed Barnabas in his deep voice, interrupting her train of thought. Obviously the men were still drinking heavily outside. “Wake that lazy slattern in the cart and tell her to give us some of that brandy she hoards, before she goes washing the master of the baggage train’s arse with it.”
The men roared with laughter, and Agnes got up before Samuel could come and give her a kick. As she climbed down from the cart, she looked in passing at the chain around Barnabas’s neck, sparkling magically in the light from the campfire.
It was time to take the ring back.
And Agnes had a plan.
✦ 20 ✦
Geyer’s castle in the Lower Franconian village of Ingolstadt, 4 June, Anno Domini 1525
MATHIS DUCKED WHEN, with a mighty roar, another cannonball struck the ground only a few yards away from him. There were sounds of crashing and explosions all around him. Men shouted, horses whinnied in mortal fear, chunks of stone fell from the battlements. Gasping for breath, the young master gunner flung himself down behind the corpse of a thin horse and waited for the next thunderous salvo.
Out of the once proud Franconian peasants’ army, only two hundred men of the Black Band were left. The few survivors had fled to one of Geyer’s castles on the outskirts of the village of Ingolstadt. Here they were defending themselves doggedly against the inevitable end that probably faced them now, after a good three months of fighting, hunger, and torture.
Mathis flinched at the thought of the experiences of the last few days. At Königshofen the Swabian League had cut down thousands of peasants. Even those who pretended to be dead on the battlefield had been stuck like pigs, and the reports of horrors in nearby Würzburg had at first been thought beyond belief. The hated fortress of Marienberg had still not been taken, but all the same the insurgents thought themselves safe. Not until Sunday did part of their army move, if hesitantly, against the enemy. After a little thought, Mathis and Melchior von Tanningen had joined the peasants in this venture. Mathis was still hoping that Florian Geyer had been right in his suppositions, and Agnes was somewhere to be found in the baggage train of the Swabian League.
It was here, in the small Lower Franconian village of Ingolstadt, about fifteen miles from Würzburg, that the final skirmish had come, and the peasants had fled from the storming cavalry. Only Geyer’s Black Band had been able to reach nearby Giebelstadt Castle, and a life-and-death struggle had been going on ever since. Gunners of the Swabian League bombarded the old building on two sides. Mathis estimated that they had at least a dozen falconets and several larger artillery pieces. The seneschal clearly wanted to set an example. At present, all that remained of the main castle structure was ruins, although the thick walls, a good eighteen feet high, still stood.
“Attack on the south side! Attack on the south side!” one of the black-clad landsknechts shouted through the din of explosions. “All men to the ladders!”
From his cover, Mathis watched men hurrying to the southern wall with hastily cobbled together ladders, climbing them, and throwing back the many men already on the battlements. Once again, he admired the determination of Geyer’s men as they faced the enemy. Even without their leader, who was still negotiating in Rothenburg, they were the hardened core of the peasant army. Mathis thought of his last words to Geyer: A thousand men like yours and a hundred new guns, and this war would have been over long ago . . .
But they didn’t have enough guns or enough well-trained soldiers, so in the end the enemy would win. Probably also for want of real leaders—Geyer was wasting his time on negotiations when there was nothing left to be negotiated. And Götz von Berlichingen had long since made himself scarce. The one-armed knight knew when it was time to change sides. Mathis had not seen him since their headlong flight from the fields outside Ingolstadt.
Another salvo shook the walls of the castle. Not far from Mathis, a landsknecht fell from the battlements and was caught in the splintered remains of a cart. The bearded man’s body twitched for a moment, then the life went out of his eyes. They stared at Mathis, almost reproachfully. Again the guns thundered. Mathis had once loved that sound, which seemed to promise a great future. Now he felt that the explosions came straight from hell. He cursed quietly, “The devil himself gave us the gift of this damned gunpowder.”
A cannonball made short work of two soldiers who had flung themselves to the ground only a little way behind Mathis. Blood rained down on him. Where the men had been lying, a waist-deep hole now yawned, with a mangled torso and a single hand at the bottom of it. Shouting, Mathis got to his feet behind the dead horse and ran toward the walls. He must get away from here. It made no difference whether they stabbed him, throttled him, or shot him; he wanted an end to these raging sounds of crashing and explosions at last. He took hold of one of the ladders and began to climb.
“Damn it all, what are you doing?”
A hand on his shoulder held him back. When Mathis turned, he thought for a moment that he saw the dead master gunner Ulrich Reichhart before him, but it was only an old soldier with a badly scarred face, one of the Black Band. Mathis knew him from his few meetings with Florian Geyer. The man was an experienced landsknecht who had risen to be the knight’s deputy over the last few months.
“Only death awaits you there!” the soldier shouted through the thunder of the guns, pulling Mathis off the ladder.
“And how about here?” Mathis snapped. “They’ll shoot us to pieces. I’d at least like my corpse to be recognizable when this is over.”
“If you climb up there I’ll tear your arse open up to your ears so as not even your own mother will recognize you,” retorted the landsknecht. “Now, get a sword and go to defend the south side. We’re Geyer’s Black Band, have you forgotten?”
“Curse it, I’m not one of you,” Mathis said. “I’m a smith. I don’t belong here. I—”
The man pushed him, and Mathis staggered back. He fell over another corpse and finally lay still. Breathing heavily, he closed his eyes and tried to calm down.
This is the end, he thought sadly. At least bear it like a man.
At that moment he heard a whistle not far away—a whistle that sounded familiar.
Mathis sat up with difficulty and saw a figure standing at the door of the now ruined castle chapel, waving to him. It was hard to make out more through the smoke of the powder, but eventually Mathis saw the lute strapped to the man’s back.
It was Melchior von Tanningen.
“How the devil . . .” Mathis muttered. But another cannonball striking quite close interrupted his thoughts. Struggling to his feet and bending low, he ran the short way to the chapel, which had already lost parts of its roof and the belfry.
“Time for us to get away from here, Master Wielenbach,” said Melchior, greeting him with a smile. “I fear this castle is past its prime.”
“How on earth did you get in here?” asked Mathis. “You weren’t with the men of the Black Band or I’d have seen you. And you can hardly have climbed over the walls under this heavy fire.”
Instead of replying, Melchior pointed to the interior of the chapel and went in. Curious, Mathis followed him while the guns thundered outside. The stained-glass windows were all broken, several rafters had fallen from the roof to the floor and b
“Hey, wait!”
Mathis hurried after him and found himself standing in front of a small altar. On the floor there were several scratched slabs, tombstones bearing the coat of arms of the Geyer family. One of the slabs had been pushed aside. Hesitantly, Mathis went closer and stared into the dark hole, from which Melchior’s voice suddenly echoed.
“Are you coming, or do you want to say a prayer first?”
Mathis gave a start. He blinked, and could then make out the muddy bottom of the hole, about six feet down. Plucking up his courage, he jumped into the darkness. Not a moment too soon, for immediately a sound like thunder shook the chapel above him. More rafters fell, blocking off the opening. Mathis ducked, avoiding several falling stones, and then hurried along the low, musty tunnel until he caught up with Melchior von Tanningen.
“You knew about this corridor?” he gasped.
The minstrel shrugged. “No, but it wasn’t difficult to guess. Do you remember the escape tunnel from Scharfenberg Castle, the one that Agnes showed us? Many castles have a corridor like that, particularly when there’s no well inside the walls. Without a hidden way out, those in the castle would die of thirst during a siege.”
“But you’ve never been in this castle before,” Mathis pointed out. “So how did you know . . .”
“That it has no well?” Melchior smiled. “I come from these parts, as you know. The rock of Franconia is often too hard to bore wells into, so I simply searched the surroundings of the castle to see if there was a hidden spring of water nearby. And voilà . . .”