The Castle of Kings

by Oliver Pötzsch

  Hans von Wertingen.

  He stood there, his face sooty and covered with dried blood, one eye swollen, his breastplate dented, glaring angrily at the mercenaries who surrounded him, laughing and grinning. Black Hans had fought like a lion in yesterday’s battle for the castle, splitting the skulls of two of his adversaries before five men finally overpowered him and put him in chains. Now one of the soldiers picked up a hard clod of soil from the ground and threw it at the knight. Wertingen ducked, but the clod caught the side of his forehead and fresh blood ran down his cheek.

  “You cowardly swine!” he bellowed, shaking himself so that the chains rattled. “Oh yes, like a crowd of washerwomen, you can throw dirt at a man in fetters.”

  “Who’s the swine here, us or you?” crowed one of the bystanders. “Just look at the sow. Someone stick him with a boar spear in his fat belly to make him hold his tongue.”

  The others laughed, and the first stones began flying through the air, although most of them bounced off the prisoner’s chains. One, however, hit Wertingen hard on the shoulder, and he staggered. For a moment it seemed that he might fall into the fire, but then he straightened up again. Mathis remembered how terrifying the robber knight had been when he and Agnes met him in the forest. Now he almost felt sorry for the man.

  “Stop that! Stop that at once, I say!”

  The order had come from the large tent. Erfenstein and young Count Scharfeneck were just emerging from it. The castellan of Trifels was looking to all sides, with his one good eye flashing angrily. “No one touches my prisoner, no one!” he cried. “Or I’ll string up the guilty man with my own hands from the battlements of the castle ruins.”

  Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck smiled, amused, as he watched Wertingen struggling for breath. “Well, I suppose my men may be allowed a little fun with this brute,” he said, making a casual gesture to keep his landsknechts within bounds. “But you’re right, Erfenstein, it would be a pity to extinguish the spark of life in Black Hans here before he makes his big entrance in Speyer, to deter other robber knights. There are still too many gallows birds like him in the Palatinate, calling themselves noblemen but worth no more than mangy dogs.”

  “I am of a great house,” Wertingen managed to say, with his chains clinking as he braced himself. “My forebears were imperial ministers. You have no right to treat me like a common thief.”

  “Yet that’s what you are,” Erfenstein growled. “There may have been times when you were still rightly called a knight and a baron. Now you are nothing but a marauder and highwayman, and death awaits you.”

  Wertingen thrust out his blood-stained chin, threw back his long, matted hair, and stared at his archenemy. “And you’ve become this fellow’s henchman, Philipp. Tell us how long you’ll be able to hold Trifels Castle before His Excellency the count here drives you out of it like a dog.”

  “We have an agreement,” said the castellan tonelessly. “The house of Erfenstein will not perish like yours, Wertingen. It . . . it will live on . . .” His voice died away, and from where Mathis was sitting, he could hardly make out the words.

  Finally the count, still standing beside the castellan, spoke up.

  “You can come to terms with power, or you can fight it and lose forever,” said Scharfeneck quietly, looking at the sorry state the robber knight was in. “Believe me, Wertingen, I’ll make sure that your name is erased from your family’s records forever, as if it had never been.”

  “It will be your name that—”

  “Quiet, Hans!” Philipp von Erfenstein straightened up to his full height of six feet and looked sternly at his old adversary of past tournaments. “I’ve had you brought here before us to tell you your fate. As you know, the count wanted to have you executed in Speyer, in atonement for your crimes and as a lesson to others. But I thought differently.” He paused. When he went on, his voice was firm and menacing. “Listen, Wertingen. You have plundered my peasants, killed my men, and threatened my daughter. But you were once a knight, so you should die like a knight, even if you don’t deserve it. At sunrise tomorrow morning you and I will fight in single combat, with swords and our fists, until one of us lies dead. That is my verdict.”

  A murmur passed through the crowd. Some of the landsknechts shook their heads incredulously. Even Father Tristan frowned. “I’d never have expected young Scharfeneck to allow this,” he muttered. “The count could have made a name for himself in these parts by executing Wertingen in Speyer. In fact I thought that was what he wanted all along, not what little loot he could take here.”

  “And why is Erfenstein letting himself in for such a fight?” asked Mathis, surprised. “Why risk his life when the outcome of the feud is decided?”

  Father Tristan sighed. “I’m afraid you don’t understand, Mathis. Philipp von Erfenstein comes from another age. He must see this fight as a tribute to the battle of Guinegate. He wants to be a proud knight, not an impoverished castellan submitting himself to the moneyed aristocracy. If he wins he’ll feel that his honor is restored.”

  “And suppose he loses?”

  Father Tristan shrugged. “He won’t lose, believe me. Wertingen is injured, and despite his height, he’s not as strong as Erfenstein, who to the best of my knowledge always used to defeat him in tournaments.”

  Hans von Wertingen had listened to the verdict with his head held high. Now he lowered it, almost humbly.

  “Thank you, Philipp,” he said, and his voice broke slightly. “I will not disappoint you. It will be a good fight.” A smile crossed his face. “What if I win?”

  “Then the duke will declare you an outlaw,” replied the castellan coolly. “I’ll make sure you get half a day’s start before the hunt for you begins.” He turned to the landsknechts standing around them. “Now get him out of my sight before I think better of my offer.”

  As the guards took the prisoner away, Mathis again felt queasy. He sank back on his bed of twigs and closed his eyes. He was asleep within a few minutes. But the loud laughter and the singing of the landsknechts accompanied him into his dreams.

  Agnes jumped as the first lightning bolt flashed across the heavens, soon followed by a crash of thunder.

  Alarmed, she looked up at the evening sky, but the storm was still a little way off and would probably move eastward before it reached Trifels Castle. With a little hesitation, she continued going along the track into the forest. She thought that the clouds might be shedding rain over the Ramburg at this moment. How were Mathis and her father? She had been told that Mathis was alive, but wounded. Agnes had wanted badly to go to the scene of the battle with Father Tristan, but the old monk had made it clear that her father did not on any account want to see her there. So she had stayed at home, still brooding on what Father Tristan had been keeping from her in the library a few days ago. By this time she was firmly convinced that he had met with someone outside the castle early that morning.

  Only who? And why? And what brought him up to the library?

  To take her mind off the riddle, Agnes had spent the last few days making medicines. The old monk had the use not only of the castle kitchen but also of a tiny room where he kept ointments, tinctures, and medical instruments. Over the last few months Agnes had learned a great deal about the art of healing from him. She had studied the Macer Floridus of the Benedictine monk Odo Magdunensis, admiring its beautiful drawings of healing herbs. She could now recognize the symptoms of several dozen diseases and knew when to pick which plants.

  Today, the day of St. Alexius, the country calendar advised you to pick cuckoo flower and, in particular, ground ivy. The moon was waxing, and that intensified the healing power of its blue flowers. So Agnes had put her leather satchel over her shoulder and gone out into the Trifels woods. She knew where to find ground ivy, that inconspicuous little plant that grew best in marshy clearings surrounded by birch trees farther down in the water meadows of the Queich.

  As she climbed down the steep, narrow path from the castle to the valle
y and listened to the thunder in the distance, she thought again of Margarethe and what the lady’s maid had done. Agnes still was not sure whether her treachery had been unintentional or deliberate. Not that it really made much difference now. Since the incident of the silver clasp, Margarethe had not been seen at the castle. Agnes suspected that her maid had fled from the castellan’s wrath and was now trying to make a new beginning somewhere else in the Palatinate. Maybe she was even on her way to the distant, rich city of Cologne, where her cousin lived. She had spoken of it so enthusiastically a few months ago.

  Agnes had been sad about Margarethe’s disappearance for a little while for, after all, she had known her maid since childhood. But at heart she had never been especially fond of the simple-minded and talkative young woman, while Margarethe had always been envious of her mistress. Still, Agnes hoped that she would find the rich husband of her dreams at last.

  By now she had reached the marshy water meadows of the Queich. The storm had moved away. Agnes saw the blue flowers of ground ivy among the trunks of birch trees. She bent down and began cutting the plants singly from their rootstock with a knife, putting them into her satchel.

  A strange noise made her spin around. She realized it was the sound of a lute being plucked, and it was followed by another note, and then another, building up at last into a little melody that seemed to come from the river. Curiously, Agnes shouldered her leather satchel and set off to discover the source of the music. After only a few minutes, she reached a mossy curve on the riverbank where a single weeping willow dipped its branches low into the water.

  Under the willow tree sat Melchior von Tanningen, playing his lute.

  The minstrel was performing a tune that sounded old and made Agnes feel both sad and happy.

  Agnes’s face brightened. She fervently hoped that the minstrel could tell her more about Mathis and his injuries. In addition, a chance meeting with him was always a welcome diversion.

  For a while she listened in silence, and she came out from the trees only when the song had died away. When Tanningen heard footsteps, he got to his feet, put the lute aside in a single fluent movement, and drew his sword, but on seeing Agnes, his face relaxed.

  “Noble lady,” he said, smiling, and put the weapon back in its sheath. “What a delightful surprise. But shouldn’t you be in bed at this time of night?”

  “And shouldn’t you be with Count Scharfeneck over at the Ramburg?” Agnes replied.

  “My presence was no longer necessary. I was sent to give Scharfeneck’s father and the neighboring feudal lords news of the outcome of the battle.” The minstrel picked up his lute again and plucked several strings. They mingled with the sound of the little river flowing by, making an almost ghostly melody. “I fear that feud was too small and dirty for a heroic epic, anyway. Although your friend Mathis acquitted himself well in it.”

  “How is he?” asked Agnes anxiously.

  Melchior von Tanningen’s eyes twinkled as he looked at her. “Well, he has a couple of wounds, but he’ll survive them. There’s no doubt that Mathis has the makings of a leader of men. But you’d better keep your fingers off him, all the same.”

  “How dare you . . .” Agnes began, but the minstrel played a soft chord, and she reined in her temper. “What . . . what makes you think there could be anything between me and Mathis, anyway?”

  “God gave me eyes to see with, and a heart to feel with as well. Anyway, didn’t you give him something before the battle?” Melchior smiled. “Furthermore, don’t forget that I’m a minstrel. Yours wouldn’t be the first sad love story I’ve had to sing.”

  “Then sing about doomed princes and princesses or something, and leave me and Mathis out of it.”

  For a moment Melchior von Tanningen looked as if he was about to reply, but then he just looked sympathetically at Agnes. “I’d like to spare you disappointment, that’s all.” He put his head to one side. “And what do you think of my present feudal lord?”

  “Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck? Are you by any chance recommending the count as a husband?” She uttered a little laugh that dismissed the subject. “Too kind of you. But the daughter of an impoverished castellan is certainly no fit match for such a man. In addition, between ourselves, that fine count thinks far too well of himself for my liking.”

  “Yet you share the same passion.”

  Agnes wrinkled her brow. “Indeed? And that would be . . . ?”

  “The count loves old stories. Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck reads, indeed devours, everything to do with Trifels Castle. Did you know that? In particular, he’s obsessed with the Norman treasure said to have been kept at Trifels once.” Melchior sighed. “I have orders to write His Excellency a powerful ode about it. I’d rather write about the legend of Barbarossa.” He cleared his throat and began to sing.

  There was an emperor wore a beard as red as any fire

  He slept for centuries, I’ve heard, a loss to our empire.

  If he should ever rise again, our countries to unite,

  All other princes’ power will wane before his royal might . . .

  When he had finished, Agnes, pleasantly surprised, looked at him. “That was lovely,” she said. “Did you write it yourself?”

  Melchior nodded and stroked his little beard as if embarrassed. “But it’s only the opening. There’s to be a minstrels’ contest at the famous Wartburg next year, and I’d like to take part in it. I’m still looking for the right ode, but Barbarossa’s slumber under Trifels Castle strikes me as a good subject.”

  “The Wartburg?” Agnes wrinkled her brow. “Isn’t that the castle where Luther translated the New Testament into German a few years ago? Father Tristan once showed me a copy of it.”

  “To be sure, it is a castle with a long history. Almost as long and important as the history of Trifels.” Melchior cast up his eyes. “But the count wants his ballad about the Norman treasure, so old Emperor Barbarossa will have to wait. If Scharfeneck goes on like this, I’ll be writing an ode to his receding hair soon enough.”

  Agnes chuckled. The entertaining minstrel could always make her laugh.

  “I’m sorry I spoke roughly to you just now,” she said at last. “But these days I sometimes can’t stand even my own company. There are things in my life that are simply too . . . too strange.”

  “Strange?”

  For a moment Agnes considered telling Melchior about her dreams and the ring, but then she remembered her promise to Father Tristan some days ago.

  Promise me not to show it to anyone. And keep your dreams to yourself, too.

  “I suppose everything is rather too much at the moment,” she hesitantly replied. “My father’s debts; the feud with Black Hans; your master, Count Scharfeneck, as our new neighbor; and then of course the situation with Mathis. You are right, he . . .” Her voice faltered, and Melchior von Tanningen leaned down to take her hand.

  “There are matters that one doesn’t understand until one is older,” he said quietly after a while. “They may appear cruel, but they serve a higher purpose.”

  Agnes was about to ask what he meant by this puzzling remark, but suddenly the minstrel bowed courteously to her.

  “I’m sure we’ll have time some other day to talk about Barbarossa.” He smiled. “Barbarossa and, for all I care, the Norman treasure as well. It seems that such old tales warm your heart, and who can describe the past better than a minstrel?” He gestured invitingly toward the castle. “Have you ever heard the ballad of Sir Gawain and his fight with the Green Knight?”

  They walked up the path to the castle together, and the exciting story made Agnes forget her sad thoughts, at least for a while.

  Next morning, the wind drove rain over Ramburg Castle. The last of the fires in the stables and sheds were extinguished, the castle itself was a burned-out ruin, the holes where its windows had been now stared into the distance like blind eyes.

  Although it was nearly summer, it was unseasonably cool. The storm shook the t
ents of the field camp as if to awaken their occupants. Father Tristan had had another tent put up for the wounded men, made of several lengths of cloth from the loot that had been taken, and at least Mathis was dry. He had slept badly that night, with his right leg throbbing and painful where the crossbow bolt had hit it. Some pieces of shrapnel had also penetrated his face and his shoulder area; yesterday Father Tristan had removed them with a pair of pincers. Mathis would be left with an ugly scar on his right cheek, but it was a miracle that he was alive at all. When a large cannon exploded, all that was usually left of the gunner manning it was bloody scraps of flesh.

  Day was slowly dawning outside the tent, and the voices of the landsknechts and the whinnying of horses came more and more insistently to Mathis’s ears. He stood up with some difficulty, limped past the other injured men, made his way to the tent flaps, and folded them back.

  Outside, a storm raged. The many landsknechts who had not found a place in the tents sat in what shelter the carts and gun carriages could offer, cursing and with hats drawn well down over their faces. They were all staring intently at a circle of spears thrust into the ground not far from the largest of the campfires. The circle was about twenty feet in diameter, the ground was soft and muddy. Someone had placed the head of a dead man-at-arms on one of the spears, and it now seemed to be gazing at Mathis with a frozen, blood-stained rictus of a grin.

  When the young weaponsmith turned his eyes away, he saw that Philipp von Erfenstein was standing outside the large tent to his right. The castellan was wearing full armor, the visor of his helmet was up, his hands rested on a mighty two-handed sword with its point stuck in the mud in front of him. Lost in thought, Erfenstein was looking up at the clouded sky, where the sun was showing for the first time today as a wan disk behind the clouds. Soon the rain settled into a steady drizzle.

  “Like Guinegate,” Philipp von Erfenstein said. “It was so wet there that our horses and the baggage train got stuck in the mud. And it was a devilishly bloody battle.”