The Castle of Kings

by Oliver Pötzsch

  The old priest had run away from the peasant hordes last year, and the new one was a young monk who had left his monastery and joined the Lutherans. His sermons were mild and full of imagery, and in many ways he almost reminded Agnes of Father Tristan.

  The hammering stopped, and soon Mathis appeared at the door of the smithy. He reached for a jug of water that sat on the window sill, drank deeply, and then plopped down on the bench beside her.

  “The horseshoes are ready,” he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead. “You can tell old Answin to come and fetch them. But I’ll need a little longer for his harrow.” He grinned. “It’ll be ready for the next early sowing season at the latest, though.”

  Agnes laughed. “Don’t say that, with all the work you’ve already taken on.”

  “You’re right. I shudder to think of all the hatchets, picks, and horseshoes that I still have to forge.”

  Groaning, Mathis stretched his limbs. Now that people had rebuilt their villages, new tools were in demand everywhere. The young smith earned a good living, and he had kept his vow never to forge firearms again. Agnes contributed a few guilders to their household budget with her knowledge of healing. By now people were coming from the neighboring villages to consult her. She had a growing reputation as a skillful healer, and although they were not rich, there was a hot meal on the table every day.

  Tired but happy, Agnes leaned against the man she had loved since childhood. Now, at last, they could be together. Mathis had grown stronger over the last year, and a wild sandy beard grew on his face, hiding the scar on his right cheek left after the storming of the Ramburg. In bed at night, Agnes sometimes teasingly called him her Barbarossa. Then they would make love, and the dark thoughts went away for a while. Things improved as the months went by, but it was taking some time. A troubled expression came over Agnes’s face, and Mathis looked at her in concern.

  “You were dreaming again last night, weren’t you?” he asked. “I heard you cry out in your sleep.”

  She shook her head. “It . . . it was nothing too bad. The usual. I sometimes still see the dead on the battlefields, raising their arms and pleading with me, and I can’t help them.” She sighed. “At least Constanza leaves me alone now, and Trifels has stopped calling to me.”

  Mathis smiled. “It’s probably given up hope that you will move back in, as a descendant of the Staufers.”

  “Yes, it looks rather like that.” Suddenly Agnes felt somber. The castle had been her home, the castle and the stories that haunted its walls. Now those stories were in the past. A new life had begun, but sometimes the old one came back, knocking and asking Agnes to let it in.

  “How’s our little emperor?” asked Mathis, to give her something else to think about. He caressed her belly, which had grown visibly rounder during the last few months.

  “Why not empress?” Agnes banished her dark thoughts and smiled. “What gives you men the right to want a male successor to the throne all the time?”

  Mathis’s eyes twinkled as he looked at her. “Well, who’s going to wield the hammer in this smithy when I’m old and feeble? Besides, I’d like a great many children. I don’t mind if we have a few daughters among them.” He put his head on one side. “Well, maybe one.”

  Laughing, Agnes hit his broad chest. They had married in the spring, when they could simply no longer conceal their good news. Fortunately the local steward was a kindly old man who gave his permission at once. In return, Mathis had made him some particularly fine carpenters’ nails and horseshoes.

  The wedding itself had been a splendid village festival, although they had only a small cask of wine, a few loaves of bread, some cheeses, and a ham given by the steward for their celebration. But after all the horror and death, people were so glad of any diversion that a simple fiddle and a tambourine were enough to have them dancing on the tables of the new inn.

  “Agnes! Agnes!”

  Excited cries came from the outskirts of the wood. Looking up, Agnes saw little Marie hurrying over the fields to them. Close behind her came Mathis’s mother, Martha Wielenbach, desperately trying to keep the child from treading down the ears of barley. But Marie was much too excited to listen to her mother. At last the two of them, out of breath, arrived at the smithy.

  “I’ve told her a dozen times not to run through the fields,” Martha Wielenbach panted. “But she’s like her big brother. She just won’t listen.”

  Mathis raised a threatening finger, but he was grinning. “Marie, I warn you, listen to your mother or you won’t be allowed to help change your little nephew’s diapers.”

  “Or your little niece’s diapers, for goodness’ sake,” Agnes shook her head, laughing. “You still don’t understand, do you, you stubborn creature?”

  After their escape from Trifels Castle, little Marie and Mathis’s mother had stayed for a while with a distant cousin near Annweiler. But several months ago, Mathis had sent a message asking them to come and join him and Agnes, and since then they had been a little family.

  A family that is soon going to be larger, thought Agnes, and a warm sensation went through her.

  “Agnes, look!”

  Marie excitedly held out her two hands, which she had cupped together. A baby bird nested in them, chirping furiously. With its soft white feathers, it looked like a ball of wool with a beak.

  “Why, he’s a falcon!” Agnes said in astonishment. “I do believe he’s a saker falcon. Where did you find him?”

  Marie gestured behind her. “In the wood, in the burned-out ruins of the monastery. He must have fallen out of his nest.” She looked pleadingly at Agnes. “May I keep him? Please? Mother says I have to ask you.”

  “Me?” Agnes frowned. It was still difficult for Martha Wielenbach not to think of Agnes as a countess, daughter of the castellan of Trifels, but simply as her son’s wife. This time, however, she was glad to give permission.

  “If you look after him well, why not?” Smiling, she stroked the soft down of the frightened chick. “Maybe you can train him when he’s bigger.”

  “The way you trained Parcival. Yes, I’d like that.” Little Marie beamed. “I’m going to give him a name.” She thought hard. “Galahad!” she finally cried. “I’ll call him Galahad. You’ve told me so many stories about Sir Galahad.”

  Agnes laughed. “A good choice. Although I don’t know how this little bird is going to carry the Holy Grail.”

  “Oh yes, tell me about the Holy Grail.”

  “Please, not the Grail again,” Agnes groaned. “I’m sure I’ve told you that story a hundred times already.”

  Martha Wielenbach cast up her eyes. “I can see it’s all decided, and I’m not needed here any longer.” She knocked the fir needles off her apron. “So I’ll go and sweep out the stable. I’ve been wanting to do that all day.”

  “And I’ll do some more work on that harrow,” said Mathis, standing up. “Or good old Answin really will have to wait until next sowing season for it.”

  He gave Agnes a last kiss and went into his forge. The monotonous sound of the hammer was soon ringing out of it. When Martha Wielenbach too had left them, Marie sat down beside Agnes. The ten-year-old carefully stroked the little falcon.

  “Will you tell me a story now?” she asked hopefully.

  Agnes looked at her with a twinkle in her eyes. “All right, as long as it doesn’t have to be the Holy Grail or the Red Knight. So what story would you like?”

  For a moment Marie thought, then she suddenly pointed to the golden signet ring that Agnes wore on her right hand. “You once said there was a wonderful story about that ring,” the child suggested. “Tell me that one.”

  Agnes hesitated, her face briefly darkening. But then she took the ring off her finger and looked at it thoughtfully. She followed the contours of the bearded face engraved on it. That ring was her last link to her old life. To Trifels Castle, to Parcival, to her dead father. She had been unable to part with it. In silence, Agnes held the ring up to the sun, making it sp
arkle.

  “Well, why not?” she said at last.

  Collecting her thoughts, she began in a low tone that sounded like an incantation, a trick that she had once learned from Father Tristan.

  “This ring is the ring of a mighty emperor, and his name was Barbarossa. He sleeps under a mountain, and his red beard grows and grows. Once every hundred years, the emperor sends a dwarf into the outside world, to see whether ravens are still flying around the mountain . . .”

  Agnes began the story quietly, and Marie listened, open-mouthed, as the sun slowly sank behind the treetops.

  It was indeed a wonderful story, and it was not yet over when night fell.

  AFTERWORD

  I HAVE LOVED CASTLES FOR as long as I can remember. It is understandable that I did so as a little boy, but by now I suppose I must say I have a bee in my bonnet about them. When we go to Italy, I give my children a candy for every castle that they spot. Our vacations are full of visits to castles, and at the time of this writing we are soon to go on vacation to a castle in Scotland. The result of all this is that my family are . . . well, let’s say not as keen as they might be on castles, which is a pity, because I suppose it means I’ll have to go on vacation by myself.

  I’ve spent a long time wondering why these old buildings, usually now in ruins, exert such a powerful attraction on me. I assume I must be a hopeless romantic. To me, a ruined castle is like one of Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings—it tells stories of a time now long forgotten. As a child, I could spend hours in such ruined buildings, imagining what went on there in the past. I explored secret passages, treasure chambers, and dark dungeons; I heard the shouting of besiegers, the crash of battering rams, the hiss of catapults. I smelled pitch and sulphur and the smoke of the smithy fires on which legendary magic swords were forged.

  A castle is a hoard of stories, true and invented, and this novel is a mixture of fact and fiction. Most of the characters in and around Trifels Castle are my own inventions, and so are their adventures. Probably this former imperial castle was already being administered from Neukastell after 1509, and the castellan would have been more like a domestic steward.

  On the other hand, the historical events framing the story are true, including the political confrontation between Emperor Charles V and King Francis I of France, the latter’s capture at the battle of Pavia, and the exchange of hostages on the river Bidasoa. My model and inspiration here was an excellent biography, Franz I. von Frankreich (Francis I of France), by Gerd Treffer.

  The legendary Norman treasure also existed. Emperor Henry VI brought it back to Trifels as loot from his Sicilian campaign. Later, the treasure presumably went to Lucera in Apulia, to be guarded by the Saracens, whom Frederick II had settled there. No one knows for sure what happened to it after that. Professor Knut Görich, an expert on the Staufer emperors, thinks it was probably used to finance later political business and military campaigns, and so was gradually whittled down to nothing. But who knows, maybe a part of it still lies hidden at Trifels Castle after all . . .

  As for the descendants of Enzio, Frederick II’s favorite son, the sources mention several possible children. One of them, a daughter, is in fact said to have borne the name Constanza. But her mother was not, to the best of my knowledge, a nun with access to the Staufer who was kept prisoner at Bologna. I have also invented Constanza’s later experiences at Trifels, as well as the character of Johann of Brunswick, their child, Sigmund, the Annweiler Brotherhood, and also Barbarossa’s signet ring and the legendary deed of descent. On the other hand, the many bloodthirsty battles of the German Peasants’ War, and the part played by the leaders Florian Geyer and Götz von Berlichingen, are all recorded history.

  For reasons of the story, I have made a few changes to the facts concerning some local events. Eusserthal monastery was not burned down until about two weeks later than in this novel, probably by the Landau Band of insurgents. As far as I know, there was no separate rising by the peasants of Dahn and Wilgartswiesen.

  My opinion is that a historical novel should always represent a dramatic expression of the real background of events. Did the international political powers of the time really send agents to find a descendant of the Staufers? Presumably not. But what matters is that, particularly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there was indeed a nostalgic longing for the emperors of the house of Hohenstaufen that had died out so long ago. In written works of the time, Barbarossa and his grandson Frederick II merge into a kind of messianic figure who will restore peace and justice to the world.

  One reason why Francis I did not win the election for Holy Roman Emperor over Charles V was his lack of German roots. So the idea that he might have hoped to acquire the necessary legitimacy by marrying a descendant of the Staufers is not as far-fetched as all that. But this is where history ends and the realm of fantasy begins . . .

  Probably no other castle in Germany offers so much material for historical novels as Trifels. Once, the former imperial castle was something like the center of the German Empire. It was from here that Emperor Henry VI set out against the Normans and came back with the legendary treasure that plays a major part in my novel. It is also where Barbarossa’s more sinister son kept King Richard the Lionheart of England prisoner, and where the sacred imperial insignia was housed for almost two centuries. And the mountain on which the castle stands, like the legendary Kyffhäuser range of hills, is thought to be a possible location, according to myth, of Barbarossa’s resting place, where he has slept for nearly a thousand years, waiting to help Germany in the hour of its greatest need.

  Whether Trifels was stormed in the Peasants’ War, however, is a matter of controversy. It was long past its heyday at the time. Then, early in the seventeenth century, the building was struck by lightning and burned down. In the nineteenth century Trifels was rebuilt, and in the twentieth century it went through more reconstruction. Today you can visit the restored Trifels, though it is thought to bear little resemblance to the original medieval castle.

  Only in the twentieth century was the idea of Trifels revived, if in an unedifying context. The National Socialists planned to convert the ruined building into a Nazi place of pilgrimage, probably on the direct instructions of Adolf Hitler. The war put an end to this deranged notion, but in particular the so-called Imperial Hall, included in the Nazi-era plans for the castle, derives from the Nazi architectural style. This large space was designed to be a hall of fame and the scene of Nazi Party rallies, and the chamber above the chapel was to be a solemn place of initiation. Anyone walking through the halls of Trifels today should therefore remember that German history does not consist solely of knights, minstrels, and damsels in castles.

  Prologue

  Somewhere near Munich, October 2010

  THE KING TOOK OUT a cell phone and stared at the text message, while Professor Paul Liebermann, lying at the royal feet, spat out blood and spruce needles.

  The message appeared to annoy The Royal Highness. The king raised an eyebrow and sighed regretfully, as if disappointed with a small child. Then the king dug the toe of one boot into the man on the ground, to make sure that he was not, at this very moment, choking to death. Paul Liebermann moaned, then coughed out a few more spruce needles. Everything around him was shrouded in fog, a mystic landscape where a few dead spruce trees rose to the overcast night sky.

  “I . . . I really don’t know what you want from me,” the professor gasped, turning over on his back with a groan. “There must be some mistake . . . a terrible mistake.”

  “Terrible. Yes, indeed,” the king murmured. “I am extremely displeased.”

  The Royal Highness was wearing a suit of the best English tweed, with a red silk cravat and a white fur coat. The hem of the coat was spattered with blood.

  My blood, Liebermann thought. And a lot of it. It makes that coat look like ermine. Could it actually be?

  He couldn’t tell for certain, because his left eye was swollen and completely closed while his right eye
was encrusted with blood. His glasses lay twisted and broken somewhere in the undergrowth; he had lost his hat and walking stick already, in the car on the way here; and remains of moldering spruce needles still stuck to his gums. The two thugs had stuffed his mouth with them until he was almost choking on the stuff. In addition, the effects of the injection hadn’t worn off yet.

  They had seized him only a few steps from the secondhand bookshop. When he heard the car, he knew he had to act. He had hidden the book and hurried out so as not to give away the man in the shop. After only a little prick, he had collapsed into the arms of the two powerful men beside him. They pushed him into the car. He had lost consciousness after a few seconds, only to come back to his senses in this wood, among mushrooms and withered bramble bushes. In the distance, he could hear the faint droning of cars; otherwise, only the cawing of a few crows broke the silence of fall.

  They had been hitting Liebermann over and over again for the last two hours, in the stomach, in the face, between the legs. Meanwhile, twilight had fallen over the wood. The king and the thugs were only dark shadows against an even darker background.

  Looking at it now, it really does seem to have something to do with Ludwig. What irony! Who could have guessed?

  The fact that Liebermann had not said anything yet was due partly to his inborn obstinacy, but also partly to his history. During his tenure as a professor at Jena University, Paul Liebermann had been an outspoken critic of the East German system. When that landed him in Bautzen prison for two years, things happened that still made him cry out in his sleep. He had learned how to take a beating. And he would sooner bite off his tongue than tell these people where the hiding place was.