The Castle of Kings

by Oliver Pötzsch

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Dramatis Personae

  DARK CLOUDS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  THE STORM

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Sample Chapter from THE LUDWIG CONSPIRACY

  Buy the Book

  About the Author and Translator

  Text copyright © 2013 by Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, Berlin

  Maps copyright © 2013 by Angelika Solibieda, cartomedia, Karlsruhe

  English translation copyright © 2016 by Anthea Bell

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  The Castle of Kings was first published in 2013 by Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH as Die Burg der Köníg.

  Translated from German by Anthea Bell.

  First published in English by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-544-31951-6

  Map on page viii licensed from Angelika Solibieda, cartomedia, Karlsruhe.

  Cover design by Christopher Moisan

  Cover photographs: Castle © Shutterstock; Hawk © iStock

  eISBN 978-0-544-31788-8

  v1.0616

  Once again, for Katrin, Niklas, and Lily.

  My castle.

  What would I be without you?

  Emperor Barbarossa,

  As ancient legends tell,

  Waits hidden in his castle

  Under a magic spell.

  Great Barbarossa never died,

  But lies there to this day.

  He is content his time to bide

  Till fortune comes his way.

  And with him sleeps the glory

  Of German lands, it’s writ,

  To come back, says the story,

  When those above see fit.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  TRIFELS CASTLE

  Philipp Schlüchterer von Erfenstein, knight and castellan

  Agnes von Erfenstein, his daughter

  Martin von Heidelsheim, the castellan’s steward

  Margarethe, a lady’s maid

  Mathis, son of the castle smith

  Hans Wielenbach, castle smith

  Martha Wielenbach, wife of the castle smith

  Marie Wielenbach, their little daughter

  Hedwig, a cook

  Ulrich Reichhart, master gunner

  Gunther, Eberhart, and Sebastian, the castle’s men-at-arms

  Radolph, head groom

  Father Tristan, castle chaplain

  ANNWEILER

  Bernwart Gessler, mayor of Annweiler

  Elsbeth Rechsteiner, midwife

  Diethelm Seebach, landlord of the Green Tree Inn

  Nepomuk Kistler, tanner

  Martin Lebrecht, ropemaker

  Peter Markschild, woolens weaver

  Konrad Sperlin, apothecary

  Johannes Lebner, priest

  Shepherd Jockel, leader of the peasant band of Annweiler

  SCHARFENBERG CASTLE

  Count Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck, lord of Scharfenberg Castle

  Ludwig von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck, his father

  Melchior von Tanningen, minstrel

  OTHERS

  Rupprecht von Lohingen, ducal administrator of Neukastell Castle

  Hans von Wertingen, robber knight in the Ramburg

  Weigand Handt, abbot of Eusserthal monastery

  Barnabas, a procurer

  Samuel, Marek, and Snuffler, mountebanks and cutthroats

  Mother Barbara, vivandière and healer

  Agathe, innkeeper’s daughter, prisoner of the procurer Barnabas

  Caspar, agent on an unknown mission

  HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

  Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation

  Francis I, king of France

  Queen Claude, wife of Francis I

  Seneschal Georg von Waldburg-Zeil, military commander of the Swabian League

  Götz von Berlichingen, robber knight and leader of the Black Band

  Florian Geyer, knight and leader of the Black Band

  Book One

  DARK CLOUDS

  MARCH TO JUNE 1524

  ✦ 1 ✦

  Queichhambach, near Annweiler in the Wasgau, 21 March, Anno Domini 1524

  DID THE BOY WHOSE NECK the hangman was fitting the noose around look any older than Mathis? Probably not. He was trembling all over, and fat tears ran down his cheeks, smeared already with snot and grime. From time to time the lad let out a sob; apart from that he seemed reconciled to his fate. Mathis guessed that he was about sixteen summers old, with the first downy hair growing above his lip. The boy had probably been proud of it, and had used it to impress the girls, but now he would never go chasing girls again. His short life was over before it had really begun.

  The two men beside the boy were considerably older. Their shirts and hose were dirty and torn, their hair stood out untidily from their heads, and they were murmuring soundless prayers. All three stood on ladders propped against a wooden plank that had suffered from wind and weather. The Queichhambach gallows were massive and solidly built, and all local executions had taken place here for many decades, though recently there had been more and more of them. The last few years had brought winters that were too cold and summers that were too dry. Plague and other epidemics had afflicted the countryside. Hunger and oppressive feudal dues had driven many of the peasants of the Palatinate into the forests, where they joined bands of robbers and poachers. The three at the gallows had been caught red-handed poaching, and now they were about to pay the price.

  Mathis stood a little way from the gaping crowd that had assembled to watch the execution this rainy morning. The hill where the gallows stood was a good quarter of a mile from the village, but close enough to the road leading to Annweiler for travelers to get a good view. Mathis had been delivering some horseshoes ordered by the village steward of Queichhambach from Mathis’s father, the castle blacksmith at Trifels, but he happened to pass the gallows hill on the way back. He had meant to go on along the road—after all, this was his day off work, and he had plans of his own—but when he saw all the people standing in the icy rain, their faces careworn and intent, waiting for the execution to take place, his curiosity won the day. So he stopped to watch the hangman’s cart taking the three prisoners to the place of execution.

  By this time the hangman had put up the ladders beneath the gallows, dragged the three poor sinners over to the plank, and placed the nooses around their necks, one by one. A deep silence fell on the crowd, interrupted only by the boy’s sobs.

  At the age of seventeen, Mathis had already seen several executions. Most of the victims had been robbers or thieves condemned to be hanged or broken on the wheel, and the spectators had applauded and thrown rotten fruit and vegetables at the terrified creatures on the scaffold. This time, however, it was different. There was an almo
st vibrant tension in the air.

  Although it was already mid-March, many of the fields lying around the hill were still covered with snow. Shivering, Mathis watched the crowd reluctantly parting to make way for the mayor of Annweiler, Bernwart Gessler, as he climbed the rising ground along with the stout priest Father Johannes. It was obvious that the pair of them could think of better things to do on a cold, wet, rainy day than watch three gallows birds dangling from their ropes. Mathis suspected that they had been sitting over a few glasses of Palatinate wine in a warm tavern in Annweiler, but as the duke’s representative, the mayor was responsible for jurisdiction in the region, and now it was his task to pronounce sentence. Gessler braced himself against the rain blown into his face by gusts of wind, held his black velvet cap firmly on his head, and then climbed up onto the now empty hangman’s cart.

  “Good people of Annweiler,” he said, turning to address the bystanders in a loud, arrogant voice. “These three fellows are guilty of poaching. They are nothing but robbers and vagabonds and have lost the right to life. Let their death be a warning to us all that the anger of God is terrible, but also righteous.”

  “Robbers and vagabonds, are they?” growled a thin man standing near Mathis. “I know that poor devil on the right, it’s Josef Sammer from Gossersweiler. A decent hard-working laborer, he was, until his master couldn’t pay him no more, so he went off to the woods.” He spat on the ground. “What’s the likes of us supposed to eat, after two harvests wrecked by hail? There’s not even beechnuts left in the forest. It’s as empty as my wife’s dowry chest.”

  “They’ve raised our rent again,” another peasant grumbled. “And the priests live high on the hog at our expense—come what may, they make sure to get their tithes. See how fat our priest is these days.”

  Stout Father Johannes crossed to the ladders beneath the gallows, carrying a simple wooden cross. He stopped at the feet of each man and recited a short Latin prayer in a high, droning voice. But the condemned men above him might have been in another world already, and they simply stared into the void. Only the boy was still weeping pitifully. It sounded like he was calling for his mother, but no one in the crowd answered him.

  “By virtue of the office conferred upon me by the duke of Zweibrücken, I command the executioner to inflict their rightful punishment on these three miscreants,” the mayor proclaimed. “Your lives are hereby forfeit.”

  He broke a small wooden staff, and the Queichhambach executioner, a sturdy man in baggy breeches, a linen shirt, and a bandage over one eye, took the ladder away from under the feet of the first delinquent. The man struggled for a while, his whole body swinging back and forth like an out-of-control clock pendulum, and a wet patch spread over his lower body. As his movements became weaker, the hangman tugged at the second ladder. Another wild dance in the air began as the second man dangled from his rope. When the executioner finally turned to the boy, a murmur ran through the crowd. Mathis was not the only one to have noticed how young he was.

  “Children! You’re hanging children!” someone cried. Turning, Mathis saw a careworn woman with two snotty-nosed little girls clinging to her apron strings. A tiny baby cried inside the rolled-up linen cloth that the woman had tied to her back. She did not seem to be the boy’s mother, but nonetheless her face was red with anger and indignation. “A thing like this can’t be God’s will,” she screamed, giving vent to her fury. “No just God would allow it.”

  The hangman hesitated when he saw how restless the spectators were. The mayor turned to the crowd with his hands raised. “He’s no child now,” he rasped in a voice used to command. “He knew what he was doing. And now he will get his punishment. That’s only right and just. Does anyone here dispute it?”

  Mathis knew that the mayor was in the right. In the German states, young people could be hanged at fourteen. If the judges were not sure of the age of the accused, they sometimes resorted to a trick: They let the boy or girl choose between an apple and a coin. If the child took the coin, he or she was considered to know the meaning of guilt—and was executed.

  In spite of the mayor’s clear words, the people near Mathis were not to be intimidated. They gathered more closely around the gallows, murmuring. The second hanged man was still twitching a little, while the first was already dangling as he swung back and forth in the wind. Shaking, the rope still around his neck, the boy looked down from the ladder at the executioner, who in turn stared at the mayor. It was as if, for a moment, time stood still.

  A voice rang out suddenly, “Down with those who exploit us! Down with the duke and the mayor who let us starve, who watch us go to rack and ruin like cattle! Death to all who rule us!”

  Bernwart Gessler gave a start. People shouted and bellowed. Here and there a cheer was raised for the three poachers. Gessler looked around uncertainly, trying to see who was cheering and inciting the crowd to rebellion.

  “Who was that?” the mayor demanded, shouting to be heard against the noise. “Who’s impertinent enough to challenge the authority of the duke and his servants as ordained by God?”

  But the man he was looking for had already disappeared among the crowd again, although Mathis had managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of him. It was the hunchback Shepherd Jockel, who had ducked down behind a row of women to watch what happened next from that vantage point. Mathis thought he saw a faint smile on Jockel’s lips, and then a couple of peasants blocked his view of the man.

  “Down with those damn tithes,” yelled someone else, not far from Mathis, a thin old man leaning on a stick. “The bishop and the duke are fat and healthy, and here you go hanging children who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. What kind of a world is this?”

  “Quiet. Keep calm, good people,” the mayor ordered, raising his hand in a commanding manner. “Or there’ll be a few more of you on the gallows here. Anyone who wants to dance has only to say so.” He waved to the bailiffs who had been waiting beside the hangman’s cart, and they moved threateningly toward the crowd with pikes in their hands. “But nothing will happen to anyone who goes to work as he should. All of this is God’s will.”

  Here and there loud cursing and muttering could still be heard, but it gradually ebbed away. The storm of indignation had died down; not anger, but fear and force of habit had, as so often, won the day. Finally, there was only a slight murmuring, like a gentle wind blowing over the fields. The mayor straightened up and gave the hangman the sign.

  “Let’s get this over with.”

  With a swift gesture, the hangman took the ladder away from under the boy’s feet. The boy twitched and struggled, his eyes popping out like large marbles, but his death agony did not last long. After a minute at the most, the twitching stopped, and the boy’s frail body went limp. Lifeless, he looked even smaller and more fragile than before.

  Still murmuring, the crowd dispersed. Surreptitiously, people were still talking to one another, but then they all went their own ways. Mathis, too, turned away. He had seen enough. Feeling melancholy, he slung his empty bag over his shoulder and hurried toward the forest.

  There was something waiting for him there.

  “Off you go, Parcival! Get the scoundrel!”

  Agnes looked up at her falcon as he plunged down on his prey like an arrow from a bow. The crow, an old and rather bedraggled bird, had flown a little too far from its flock and was an easy victim for the saker falcon. The crow noticed its pursuer only at the last moment, and it doubled back in the air so that the falcon shot past it. Parcival flew in a wide curve and regained altitude, coming down on the crow once more. This time his aim was better. As a ball of brown and black feathers, blood, and flesh, the two birds went into a spin as they fell toward the field below. One last flutter and then the crow lay dead among the clumps of frost-hardened mud. The falcon perched triumphantly on its body and began plucking its feathers with his beak.

  “Well done, Parcival. Here’s your reward.”

  With a chicken leg in her hand, Agnes ap
proached the pecking falcon, while her little dachshund, Puck, jumped around the bird, barking with excitement. Parcival did not deign to give the dog a glance. After a moment’s hesitation, the saker falcon flew up and landed on the thick leather gauntlet that Agnes wore on her left arm. Satisfied, he began pecking small pieces of meat off of the chicken leg. But after a little while Agnes put the leg away again so as not to overfeed her falcon. She admired Parcival’s upright bearing and proud gaze, which always reminded her of the eyes of a wise old ruler. The falcon had been her dearest companion for two years now.

  Meanwhile, Puck had put up another flock of crows in the freshly plowed field, and the falcon rose for another hunt. The rain had stopped, and the wind had driven away the low cloud, so Agnes could admire her bird flying in all his splendor.

  “Get to work, lazybones!” she called after him. “You’ll get a nice juicy bite of chicken for every crow, and that’s a promise.”

  While Agnes watched the falcon spiraling higher and higher into the sky, she wondered what the earth looked like from up there—her father’s castle on the Sonnenberg opposite, rising on a sandstone rock among beech, chestnut, and oak trees; the Wasgau, that gigantic wooded area of the Palatinate, with its countless green hills; the famous cathedral of Speyer that for miles around marked the center of the world as Agnes knew it. When she was a child, her father had once taken her to the distant city with him, but her memory of it had faded long ago. Ever since Agnes could remember, her playground had been the former imperial citadel of Trifels, the little town of Annweiler just below it, the villages of Queichhambach and Albersweiler, the landscape around them. Even though the castellan, Philipp Schlüchterer von Erfenstein, did not like his sixteen-year-old daughter to roam the forests, meadows, and marshes, Agnes used every free hour to take her dog and falcon away from the castle that often felt too cold, damp, and lonely for comfort. Just now, as winter was coming to an end, it was still dismally cold on the Trifels, while down in the valley the first young shoots of spring were showing.