by Iny Lorentz
Marie glanced briefly at Wilmar and shook her head with a smile. “Don’t just thank me, Uncle Mombert. If Wilmar hadn’t set Hedwig free and found Melcher, there wouldn’t have been much I could have done.”
Breaking free of Wina’s grasp, Hedwig hurried to her father. “There you have it, Father. It was because of Wilmar that I’m here now and unharmed.” Her pleading look was obvious.
Mombert pushed his daughter into Wilmar’s arms. “If that’s the case, you both have my blessing.”
Full of gratitude, Wilmar beamed at Marie, but she didn’t return his gaze since her focus was now on her father’s old housekeeper. At first, Wina had scarcely dared touch her, but when she saw Marie’s smile, she wrapped her arms around her and swore tearfully that this was the happiest day of her life. Rocking the old woman in her arms, Marie patted her fondly. It was nice to have someone who loved her.
VIII.
The kaiser departed the next day, seemingly glad to finally leave the city. The hour when Marie would leave was also fast approaching. Though she wished she could secretly slip away at daybreak, Pfefferhart had made it clear that it was her duty to attend the punishment of the men responsible for her shame and her father’s death. The hangman made short work of Hunold, Melcher, and the other accomplices, slipping a rope around their necks and pulling until they stopped moving.
When he got to Utz, however, he crushed his bones, then broke him on the wheel while the condemned man was fully conscious. Utz didn’t scream or ask for a quick end, but ridiculed the court and boasted of his crimes, seemingly proud of the misdeeds that earned him a place of honor in hell. Shouting out the names of the knights and other nobles he had murdered, mentioning Sir Dietmar’s uncle Otmar among many others, he finally claimed he was supposed to murder Konrad von Keilburg for Rupert, and regretted he had not gotten that chance.
While the carriage driver was still yelling out details of his misdeeds, Rupert was being led to the stake. He whined plaintively, begged for his life, and offered his services to the bishop of Constance, Count Eberhard von Württemberg, and any other of the noblemen who would save him from a fiery death. But all that got him was the mockery and contempt of the Constance citizens, and finally the street urchins, who threw dirt at him from the front row. The hangman’s servant had to carry him to the stake and hold him tight in order to tie him up. Unmoved by his pleading, they heaped wood and branches on him and set fire to them at the judge’s order. As the flames rose around him, his screams rang out eerily over Brüel Field.
Marie lingered only as long as was expected of her, then ran to her father’s grave in order to say her first prayers there. Though Michel had been following her since early morning, she had hardly looked at him, much less spoken to him. Now, joining her, he also knelt down to pray at the gravesite.
As she stood up to return to the city, he pulled her to him and led her, despite her objections, down to the harbor and onto a boat that seemed to have been waiting only for them. This anticlimactic departure from Constance irritated her, since she was looking forward to spending a few days with Mombert and his family even though the tearful gratitude of her relatives was a bit taxing. To her surprise, she saw Mombert and his family sitting up in the bow and watching the boatmen. Freeing herself from Michel’s arms, she started walking toward her uncle, then paused and remained at the back of the boat. She wasn’t ready to speak with anyone yet.
It wouldn’t be easy for her to become accustomed to her new life as a castellan’s wife, which would bring with it a number of unfamiliar duties. First off, however, she’d have to realize that the goal she had set for her life had actually been achieved. For five long years she had yearned for Rupert’s death with every fiber of her being, and with her revenge complete, she felt empty and burned out.
She sighed as the current caught hold of the ship and the walls of Constance quickly disappeared behind them. Though she didn’t regret her hasty departure, it felt strange not to have Hiltrud beside her. She wanted to share her thoughts with her friend, even though she knew doing so would have earned her another scolding. But Hiltrud wanted to leave for Arnstein with Lady Mechthild to pick up Thomas. Marie would see them both again in the fall. Kordula, however, had decided to stay in Constance in order to earn as much money as possible. She then intended to follow Marie after the council ended, and with her help open up a tavern in Rheinsobern.
Michel suddenly walked up behind Marie and placed his hands on her shoulders. Just as she was about to push him away, he began to talk. At first he avoided speaking about the two of them, but instead told her that her uncle was tired of Constance and had received permission to settle and set up a master cooper’s business in Rheinsobern. Accompanying the family were Wilmar, who would become Mombert’s son-in-law, and Wina.
As he began describing the place they were headed, she realized she hadn’t been treating him as he deserved and lowered her head in shame.
“I’m sorry, Michel. About the marriage, I mean.”
“I’m not sorry.” Michel pulled her to him with a sigh of contentment. “Marie is mine! I’ve always loved you but never dared hope that the two of us could be together.”
“But will you be able to forget all that has happened over the past five years?”
“No, and I don’t wish to. It was a hard time for you, and you have proven yourself brave and courageous, exactly the qualities you will need as a warrior’s wife. Those years were not easy for me, either, but we’ve both made the best of them. After all, you are marrying an officially appointed castellan of Rheinsobern.”
“Who is stuck with someone like me.” Her voice sounded bitter.
Michel chuckled. “I owe what I am to you, too, Marie. If I hadn’t been so madly in love with you, I never would have left Constance. Marriage with you brings much to me. If it hadn’t been for you, I might have become a castellan of a ruined, drafty castle in a distant mountain forest after fifteen more years, and not the castellan of such an important castle as Rheinsobern. Ordinarily, one must be of noble birth to obtain such a post. I’ll admit, I wouldn’t be so happy with my promotion if Rheinsobern had been awarded to the Württemberg count, but Count Palatine Ludwig is our lord and Count Eberhard is very far away.”
There was a touch of jealousy in his voice that even surprised him, and he fell silent. Smiling lovingly at her, he absentmindedly played with a lock of her hair shining like gold in the evening sun. As their hometown disappeared behind them in the east, he led Marie forward to the bow of the ship.
“You must not look back, dearest. Look forward to the future, and you will see the two of us there, the beautiful and wealthy wife of the castellan on Rheinsobern, and me, your husband.”
Marie laughed. “Husband? You’re already starting to sound like Lady Mechthild.”
“Why not? The next time we meet her and Sir Dietmar, we will be sitting at the same table. And who knows, perhaps one day a son of ours will marry one of their daughters.”
Those words seemed a bit far-fetched to Marie, but she did have to admit they had a very pleasant sound.
HISTORICAL NOTES
The year is AD 1410, and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the Catholic Church are both in turmoil. King Rupert is dead, and the two cousins Sigismund and Jobst von Mähren are involved in a dispute over his testament. Sigismund will eventually prevail, but even he is not able to put an end to the feuds and power struggles among the nobles that pose almost irreconcilable problems for all of Christendom.
Three princes of the church lay claim to being the legitimate followers of the apostle Peter, and are in an all-out war with one another. At the same time, the clergy is in decline. Monks and priests have become flesh-peddlers and abbots and bishops territorial lords who care less about the souls entrusted to them than their own wealth and status.
In England, the preacher John Wycliffe raises his voice against the scandalous
situation in the clergy, and in Prague, the Master Jan Hus rises to denounce the rulers. But no one who has reached the pinnacle of success ever wants to permit his demotion to a lower status, and none of the three popes—Gregory XII in Rome, Benedict XIII in Avignon, nor John XXIII in Pisa—agrees to step down and make way for the unity of the Catholic faith.
For this reason, Kaiser Sigismund convenes a council in Constance. Only one of the popes, John XXIII, appears personally, and he expects support from the kaiser against his two adversaries. Gregory and Benedict merely send representatives. But how can the kaiser break the impasse and settle the competing claims when the Spanish empire supports one pope, France the other, and the kaiser himself the third? After long negotiations, John XXIII is finally declared unfit and removed from the list of popes. The name John falls into such disrepute that for six hundred years no pope will choose that name again. Not until the twentieth century will Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli take this name, becoming the true John XXIII. Gregory XII finally renounces his claim voluntarily while Benedict XIII clings to his title for the rest of his days, though his influence shrinks to a small group of supporters after Oddo Colonna is selected as the compromise candidate, becoming Pope Martin V.
Though the Council of Constance solves the papal problem, it fails in other significant respects. It does not bring an end to the pomp and immorality of the clergy nor set up an honest dialogue with church critics. Jan Hus, who came to Constance trusting in the free conduct promised by the kaiser, is put on trial before an ecclesiastical court, condemned to death in a questionable proceeding, and burned at the stake on Brüel Field. The consequences of this betrayal were the long and ruthless Hussite Wars and the alienation of people of German and Czech descent in Bohemia.
More than one hundred years after the Council of Constance, a Benedictine monk will nail his ninety-five theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, thus continuing and extending even further the work of Wycliffe and Hus. He cannot reform the Catholic Church, but his protest will open a schism in the church, reaching far beyond the Reich. The conflict with the new confession will, however, not remain without consequence in the clergy and monasteries, and will change them more in the hundred years following than in the thousand years before.
During the Council of Constance, morality became so loose that the minstrel Oswald von Wolkenstein mocked the town as a whorehouse extending from one gate to the other. Newly arriving prostitutes therefore resorted to radical means to fight the unfair local competition. Many of the nobles simply took any girl they liked, as Count Eberhard von Württemberg did, seizing a Constance citizen’s daughter off the street and then taking her on horseback to his quarters.
The city of Constance had to struggle with the consequences of this for many years. Even a generation later, the term “council child” was the worst insult any citizen of Constance could fling against another.
Such were the realities of the times faced by Marie Schärer and others like her forced by circumstance to struggle for survival and dignity in the harsh and often cruel world of medieval Europe.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
© 2008 by Photo Studio Berger
Iny Lorentz is the pen name for the husband-and-wife writing team Iny Klocke and Elmar Wohlrath, historians whose tales of medieval action, adventure, and romance reflect their academic interests and love for each other. Together, they’ve written more than thirty-five books, almost all of which quickly became bestsellers and which are also available as audiobooks. The five-book Marie series, perhaps their most popular, has sold more than five and a half million copies in Germany alone and has been translated into fourteen languages. The first book in the series, The Wandering Whore, introduced the captivating and beloved character Marie, whose story has since been made into an award-winning German television movie called The Whore, starring actress Alexandra Neldel. Elmar and Iny live and write in Poing, near Munich.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Lee Chadeayne is a former classical musician, college professor, and owner of a language translation company in Massachusetts. A charter member of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), he’s been an active member since 1970. He presently serves as editor of the ALTA newsletter and as a copyeditor for the American Arthritis Society newsletter. He is a scholar and student of both history and languages, especially Middle High German. His translated works to date focus on music, art, language, history, and general literature; notable works include The Settlers of Catan by Rebecca Gablé, The Copper Sign by Katia Fox, and the bestselling Hangman’s Daughter series by Oliver Pötzsch.