by Iny Lorentz
Michel waved dismissively. “Thank God for letting me be in the right place at the right time.”
In the meantime, Marek and Feliks had also arrived and were gazing in awe at the dead bear. Behind them, Antonin crept up, guilt written all over his face, and breathed a visible sigh of relief at the sight of the unharmed young lady. Then his eyes met those of the count and Marek, and their expressions were ominous.
“I’ll take Janka home. Call for others to take the bear and the dead horse to the castle. We can’t afford to waste any meat in our situation, even if the mare can only be used as dog food.”
“Yes, my lord.” Putting two fingers to his lips, Marek gave three short, sharp whistles that echoed through the forest and were answered shortly thereafter. The count nodded, then lifted his daughter onto his horse as if she were a small child. After he’d sat down behind her, he gave Marek a slightly mocking glance.
“Well, tough old fellow, do you still want to fight this Nemec to see which of you is the better man?”
Marek gazed at the bear, cast a quick glance at Michel, and shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s necessary anymore. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I would have been brave enough to attack a beast like that with a knife.”
Michel patted Marek’s shoulder. “You wouldn’t have needed to, because you would have killed the bear with a single thrust of your spear.”
At first Marek scowled at Michel, thinking the German was making fun of him, but he saw no mockery in his eyes, so he grinned broadly. “You’re probably right, but you still risked your life to save our Jaschenka. That’s all that matters. Give me your hand, Nemec, so I can thank you.” He didn’t leave it at that, however, pulling Michel into his arms and giving him a suffocating hug.
Sokolny breathed a sigh of relief, because this courageous deed allowed him to offer the German a place at his table without having to worry about rank any longer. Even if Franz wasn’t a nobleman, he would be doing it out of gratitude for saving his daughter’s life.
The relief at the hunt’s happy ending was felt throughout the castle. Václav Sokolny spared no expense and ordered the tapping of a large keg of beer. While hunters, beaters, servants, and maids were still enjoying the drink, Sokolny, the noblemen, and Marek gathered to hold court. Two hours after sundown, they had decided on a verdict, to be carried out immediately.
Torches brightly lit the courtyard as Antonin was led out of the castle. Naked to the waist despite the icy cold, he was tied to two iron rings with his face to the wall. Michel felt sorry for the man, but he could see that the others thought of Antonin as a pathetic coward who had abandoned his mistress in her hour of greatest need.
Sokolny looked contemptuously at the prisoner, then raised his hand to get everyone’s attention. “Antonin has failed today, and he isn’t worthy any longer of his title as soldier. For his cowardice, he shall receive twenty lashes and henceforth become a bonded serf. May another take his place and be braver than he.”
Marek stepped behind the convicted man, holding a whip. He could have let someone else mete out the punishment, but Antonin had been one of his men and had risked the life of Janka, the declared favorite of everyone in the castle. Without a word, he raised the whip, bringing it down on the man’s back. The people gathered in the courtyard, most of them holding cups of beer, counted out loud. “Jedan, dva, tri . . . ,” until the twentieth blow had fallen.
Watching the whipping with strangely mixed feelings, Michel felt a pressure building in his head. Suddenly, it was as if he no longer saw Antonin in front of him, but instead a young woman, no, a girl, barely older than Janka, writhing under the force of the brutal blows that were turning her back into a bloody chessboard. She was stunningly beautiful and didn’t deserve the punishment, but when he tried to fight his way through the large crowd to help her, someone grabbed him and shook him hard.
“What’s the matter with you, Nemec?”
Michel found himself staring at a sturdy, square-built man whom he recognized as Marek Lasicek only at second glance. The pressure in his head had eased, and he saw two servants and a maid getting to their feet as they watched him doubtfully.
“What happened?” Michel asked wearily.
“You thrashed about wildly and shoved Mirko, Petr, and Jitka to the ground.” Marek stared at Michel.
“It appears our Franz witnessed a whipping in his former life he considered unjust, and it just came back to him.” Count Sokolny put his arm around Michel’s shoulders and gave him an encouraging smile. “But you can rest assured that Antonin deserved the lashes he received. They probably would have executed him elsewhere for his behavior.”
Reluctantly, Michel nodded, thinking less about the Czech servant than of the young girl he had seen in his mind. Could she be Marie, whose name he had called out in his delirium?
While several servants stayed behind to watch over Antonin, everyone else returned to the great hall. Sokolny’s ancestors had built the hall with a lower ceiling than was customary, and stretching down its long sides were fireplaces in which massive fir and beech logs burned, emitting a pleasant warmth. Along with several torches mounted on the shorter walls, the open fires radiated enough light to illuminate the entire room, which was dominated by a large horseshoe-shaped table. At the narrow end of the horseshoe sat the count with his high-ranking liege men and the ladies. Sokolny’s wife, Madlenka, a pretty, plump woman of around forty with thick chestnut hair and the same dark eyes as her daughter, stepped toward Michel and led him to the seat of honor.
“I can’t thank you enough for saving our child from that beast.” She spoke to him like an equal, and strangely, that didn’t make him uncomfortable. Or was his imagination playing tricks on him, making him believe he was better than he actually used to be in his former life? He politely thanked the lady of the castle, noting with relief that Marek was winking at him conspiratorially, and finally focused on the full jug of beer and the enormous roast boar spilling over both sides of his pewter plate. Lost deep in thought, he didn’t notice the way Janka was gazing at her savior. A keen observer would have noticed that the woman in her had awoken and that her feelings for Michel went beyond simple gratitude.
As he lay in bed some time later, his head throbbed from fruitless brooding and too many jugs of beer. After a while, he fell into a deep sleep in which he fought angry bears.
Suddenly, he heard someone call out his name in his dream. Startled, he turned around and saw a woman approaching him. She was the same woman as the one he briefly saw earlier in his awakened memory, only older and—he noted with pride—even more beautiful. Her hair encircled her head like a golden wreath, and her countenance would have been the delight of any artist. But her expression swiftly changed to one of pain.
“Michel, help me! It hurts so much!” she cried, reaching out her hands for him.
He grasped them gently. “Don’t be afraid, Marie. I’m with you.”
Her blue eyes sparkled brightly, and her lips mouthed his name with a tenderness that caressed him like a warm breeze. “Now everything will be all right!” Her whisper carried all the relief in the world.
He wanted to take her into his arms and soothe her, but he awoke with a start, staring around the room in confusion, the moon shining brightly through the bull’s-eye panes in the window. It took Michel a little time to realize he was in Sokolny Castle and that the beautiful woman named Marie still existed for him in his dreams.
“Marie!” He spoke the name endearingly, fighting against his desire to leave the castle the next morning to search for her. Where would he even start? He knew neither where he came from nor where he might find someone who might recognize him and tell him who he was. But what depressed him most of all was that he had heard his real name in the dream but then had forgotten it again once he woke up.
12.
The pain was so terrible that Marie wondered how all the other women befo
re her had coped. Her eyes searched Hiltrud’s, standing over her and helping the midwife. Her friend had given birth to more than one child and never complained about such awful pain. Maybe it was only that bad for her?
“Relax, my lady!” the midwife encouraged her. The woman was visibly nervous, because she’d only ever birthed peasant women and the occasional maid that got involved with a servant or her master. She had never before worked on a woman of rank, and she was scared to touch Marie.
She and Hiltrud weren’t the only women in the room. Since Marie was the wife of a knight of the Reich, Hiltrud had called in several of her neighbors who could later testify that everything had been properly done. Even Marie’s cousin Hedwig had been carried from town on a sled, along with the pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross, there to register the birth in his church book. The pious man sat unhappily in the corner, trying not to look at the woman’s bare stomach.
A new wave of pain broke over Marie, threatening to tear her to pieces. She closed her eyes and clenched her fists to suppress her screams. But all of a sudden she heard someone whispering soothing words and saw Michel standing in front of her. She quickly stretched her arms out to him. “Help me, Michel! I can’t bear the pain any longer.”
He came toward her and grasped her hands, gazing at her longingly. Dressed in strange clothes, he seemed to have aged and become very thin, as if he had gone hungry for a long time. Indeed, Marie thought he looked like a man who had lost everything, even himself. But he smiled and gave her an encouraging nod. “Be strong, my dear! Everything will be fine,” she read on his lips.
Marie smiled through her tears. “It will, Michel, it will!”
A newborn’s piercing cry dispelled the dream image and brought Marie back to the present. Confused, she looked around and saw nothing but beaming faces. Hiltrud leaned over and wiped the sweat off her brow with a handkerchief dipped in strong-smelling extracts.
“See, you did it! Congratulations, Marie. You have a daughter.”
“I saw Michel,” Marie replied, lost in thought.
“Of course you saw him, because he looked down from heaven to protect you,” the pastor replied unctuously.
Marie shook her head. “No, if Michel were in heaven, he’d surely be wearing a robe like the angels. But he wore earthly clothes and seemed very much alive. I don’t believe he’s dead.”
“I’m afraid she’s already suffering childbed fever and is seeing ghosts,” one of the women whispered to the midwife, who laid her hand on Marie’s forehead.
“She’s cool and her eyes are clear,” she said, sounding surprised but also a bit concerned.
“Michel is alive!” Marie repeated excitedly.
Hiltrud stroked her cheek. “I’m sure he is. But right now, you should think less of him and more of your daughter. She needs you.” Gesturing for the midwife to place the newborn in Marie’s arms, she gently turned her friend’s face toward the girl. Marie’s first inclination was to protest, sensing that not even Hiltrud took her seriously, but then she looked into the red, wrinkled face of her baby and thought she recognized Michel. The little one stopped crying, staring intently at her mother with wide, dark blue eyes.
Marie beamed at Hiltrud. “She looks like Michel, don’t you think?”
“You think?” asked Hedwig, who had sat down on the edge of the bed and was gently stroking the newborn’s white hair. “I think she looks like you.”
“I agree,” Hiltrud said, “and I’m convinced our darling will be as beautiful as her mother someday.”
The other women also lavished praise on the baby, and even the pastor uttered a few appreciative words while noting the birth on a thinly scraped piece of parchment before placing the parish’s seal at the bottom.
No sooner had the sealing wax dried than a loud clattering was heard outside, accompanied by a strident voice. The door swung open and Lady Kunigunde entered, followed by a gust of ice-cold air.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding, you ungrateful thing!” she shouted at Marie. “We did everything we could to make your life easy, yet you sneak off to this pack of filthy peasants!”
Hiltrud indignantly put her hands on her hips and turned up her nose because the dress the new mistress of the castle was wearing reeked of sweat and animal droppings, while Hiltrud took pride in her immaculate appearance. “My house is clean and warm—something you can’t say of Sobernburg Castle.”
Lady Kunigunde turned her back in contempt and stared at the pastor. “And what brings you here, Venerable Father?”
“I have registered the birth of Lady Marie’s daughter.”
“So she’s finally whelped? That’s good! Then she’ll finally be useful again.” She stared with disgust at the newborn, whom Marie’s cousin was wrapping in soft cloths. “Come on, get dressed!” she shouted at Marie. “You’ll return to the castle with me immediately! Take your brat with you if you want. Hurry up. I don’t want to make the sled horses stand around in this cold for too long.”
Marie was too exhausted to defend herself, but Hiltrud stood up to her full height and looked challengingly at Lady Kunigunde. “If you force Lady Marie to come with you in her weakened state, neither she nor her child will survive the trip. I wonder how you will explain their deaths to the count palatine. In any case, I’ll be telling the noble lord the truth, because I know him well.”
The last statement wasn’t quite true, because other than their brief meeting in Constance, she’d only seen Lord Ludwig from afar when he visited Rheinsobern. But her threat worked. Lady Kunigunde knew she wouldn’t gain anything through Marie’s death. Her cousin Hedwig would claim and receive the inheritance, because her husband had influence as the deputy guild master of the Rheinsobern coopers. Sir Manfred had tasted the pride of the Rheinsobern burghers more than once, angrily telling his wife how badly the arrogant rabble in town had treated him.
Lady Kunigunde hated admitting defeat, but she knew there was nothing she could do for now, so she just threw back her head and snarled at Hiltrud. “You’re responsible for her! As soon as that woman can leave her bed, I’ll have my husband pick her up. Should you try to resist, our soldiers will teach you a lesson.” With that, she went out the door, leaving behind a cloud of foul odors.
Marie lay motionless with closed eyes and clenched fists. She knew what Lady Kunigunde was capable of. If she didn’t want to be dragged back to Rheinsobern like a prisoner, she would have to take her child and travel the cold winter roads until she could find safe shelter, far away from Sobernburg Castle, as she told Hiltrud and Hedwig once everyone else had left the goat farm.
Hedwig, who was cradling the child, fervently objected. “You can’t leave here, or do you want your child to die along the way?”
Hiltrud raised a hand, trying to calm her down. “It’s all right, Hedwig. You needn’t worry. I wouldn’t let Marie run away like that. I’d prepare a sled for her and make sure she’s taken to the count palatine.”
“Fine, Hiltrud. As soon as I’m sufficiently recovered, I’ll take you up on your offer and let one of your servants accompany me to Heidelberg.”
“My Thomas will do that. I only wish he were back already, because I’m sure he’d think of a way to prevent Sir Manfred from taking you away.”
Marie couldn’t quite suppress a small smile, because in her opinion Hiltrud’s husband wasn’t exactly the man to stand up to the castellan and his wife. Thomas was a bastard son of the old Count of Arnstein and therefore Sir Dietmar’s half brother, but as a serf, he had become used to obeying people of higher rank without hesitation. Though Hiltrud was far more assertive than her husband, the only person Marie could truly rely on was herself, and she knew she’d have to recover from giving birth as quickly as possible.
As she considered her next steps, Michel entered her thoughts. She missed her husband more than ever, but she wasn’t grieving any longer, firmly convinced
that he was still alive. She didn’t understand what prevented him from returning to her and his tiny daughter, but of one thing she was certain—he would once again hold her in his arms.
PART THREE
JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
1.
Ludwig of the Palatinate had never made Marie wait in his antechamber for an audience for so long before. She had been sitting in this drafty room for four hours, watching more than a dozen men and women come and go, most of whom were of lower rank than she. This treatment could only mean that Lord Ludwig was even more annoyed than she had feared.
Marie began counting the red damask-covered chairs, then moved on to counting the legs. She could tell that the antechamber had been furnished by true artisans; since marrying off Ischi to the lather and cabinetmaker Ludolf last spring, Marie had spent a lot of time in Ludolf’s workshop, watching him and his men. Ischi’s husband had been grateful to her for supporting their marriage and for giving his wife a generous dowry, and therefore hadn’t kept his expert knowledge to himself, as was customary, but had let her in on the secrets of his trade.
In May, an order from the count palatine had put an end to the peaceful time she had spent on the goat farm with Hiltrud and in town with Ischi and Hedwig. Back then, she still felt grateful to Lord Ludwig and gladly followed his order to join him in Heidelberg immediately, because it was thanks to him that Kunigunde von Banzenburg and her husband left her alone.
She still had vivid memories of the dreadful days following her daughter’s birth, when exhaustion had let Marie’s imagination run wild. She had pictured Lady Kunigunde returning at any time with soldiers to tear her and her little Hiltrud, whom everyone called Trudi, from the safety of the goat farm, and then locking them in the icy room in the tower. Hiltrud had sworn to defend her and her godchild with pitchfork and scythe, but that had only increased her worries, thinking of Hiltrud getting killed in the scuffle.