The Castle of Kings

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “Perhaps what?”

  Father Tristan shook his head. “No, nonsense. I must be getting old and strange.” He smiled. “Well, at least that links the two of us. You were always, well, an odd child. Too many dreams can turn one’s head.”

  “I did have another dream recently, Father,” Agnes said softly. “Like my old dreams, only this time it was more vivid than ever before. And I had it for the first time on the night when I found the ring. I’ve had it half a dozen times since.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  So Agnes told him about the dream that had made as strong an impression on her as if it were reality. It had been even more graphic the last few times, and it had always ended with the young man in the hauberk looking at her like he wanted to tell her something.

  “It was the Knights’ House here at Trifels Castle, looking as it once did in the past,” she said. “I’m sure it was. I could recognize it all. The niches with people sitting in them, the great hearth, even the paneling on the ceiling was the same.”

  The monk said nothing for a moment, then, laboriously, he got to his feet and turned to the shelves. “Wait a moment, my child,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  Murmuring quietly to himself, he searched among the bound volumes for a little while, and then pulled out a thick book with irregularly cut parchment pages, some of them charred here and there. Lettering in gold leaf stood out on them. Father Tristan carefully laid the book on the table in the middle of the room and began looking through it.

  “Here,” he said at last. “Is that the hall that you saw in your dream?”

  Agnes bent over the open book and froze. She was looking at a magnificently illustrated page, already yellowing, with intertwining letters at the top. The picture showed a high-ceilinged hall in which a banquet was being held. Men and women in flowing, colorful robes sat at long tables, servants were carrying in delicious-looking dishes, a juggler was throwing balls in the air. It was the very same hall that she had seen in her dream.

  “My God!” she breathed.

  “It is indeed the Knights’ House here at Trifels Castle,” the monk replied quietly. “This picture is many hundreds of years old. It dates from the time when the Trifels was still an imperial castle.”

  “It’s all just as it was in my dream,” whispered Agnes. “The guests, the musicians . . .” Her voice faltered. With a trembling finger, she pointed to a figure at the side of the hall that she had only just seen. It was a young man in a hauberk, with his head bent, kneeling before an older man, a knight. Her breathing sped up.

  “That . . . that young man,” she asked. “Who is he?”

  Father Tristan bent over the book and looked more closely at the picture. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be,” he complained, “but unless I’m much mistaken, it shows the scene of an accolade. A young man is being dubbed a knight.” He hesitated, and then shook his head vigorously, as if to dispel dark thoughts. “But for the life of me I can’t tell you who he is. It was far too long ago. The young man will have fallen to dust and ashes by now.”

  “Not in my dream,” Agnes murmured.

  Father Tristan slammed the book shut. “One shouldn’t look too far back in the past,” he said rather too quickly. “That leads to no good.” He looked at her sternly. “And as for this ring, Agnes, let me implore you. Don’t wear it on your finger, and don’t show it to any stranger. Will you promise me that?”

  “But why?” asked Agnes, taken aback. “Is it so valuable that someone would want to steal it from me?”

  “Its value is of a different kind. Just promise me. Maybe I can tell you more about it another time. All right?”

  In silence, Agnes nodded, and the monk smiled and stood up. He slowly made his way to the door of the library, and then turned around to Agnes, a twinkle in his eyes. “Come along, we both ought to eat something. And after that maybe I’ll think of a way to help your friend Mathis out of his fix. The living should always be closer to us than the dead, especially when the dead died so long ago. Come with me, then.” He reached for his pilgrim’s staff and climbed downstairs to the kitchen. “You know stout Hedwig doesn’t like her food to get cold.”

  With some hesitation, Agnes followed him. She cast one last glance at the book, now lying closed on the table, before she left the library. What other secrets might be concealed within?

  Mathis’s stomach grumbled, as if the guards had locked a bear in the dungeon with him. Although it was already afternoon, he had had nothing today but some thin soup and a crust of moldy bread. He stared at the dirty wall as though his eyes could burn a hole in it. He had made a mark on the stone with a piece of charred wood for every day that he spent down here. There were ten marks now, ten days and nights in almost complete darkness. Today he would be adding an eleventh.

  The castle dungeon was directly under the Trifels storeroom in the cellars. His prison was a shaft cut deeper into the rock, and the bottom of it could be reached only by means of a rope. Stinking straw covered the floor, with stones, rotten planks, and pieces of wood that someone or other had thrown in at some time. By night rats squealed and scurried from one hole in the walls to another. There were two slits at a height of a good twelve feet up the walls, allowing a little daylight in, but otherwise darkness reigned. The men-at-arms let water, soup, and bread down to Mathis twice a day, and took away the bucket in which he had relieved himself. Ulrich, Gunther, and the other guards obviously did not like to think of the young man they had known since his childhood being shut up down there. But the castellan was not to be moved. They were not even allowed to talk to the prisoner. So Mathis stared gloomily at nothing, day in, day out. Now and then, to keep himself reasonably fit, he paced up and down the dungeon, which was just fifteen feet square, or lifted weights in the form of several chunks of stone that had fallen out of the wall.

  Agnes had once told him that great noblemen and bishops used to be imprisoned in the imperial fortress of Trifels. Even Richard the Lionheart, the famous king of England, had languished here at one time. With the ransom money that Barbarossa’s son Henry VI got for the Lionheart, the German emperor later conquered Sicily and came back with a great treasure. Not that Mathis could imagine King Richard having to fight rats for his food down here. Presumably the ruler of England had been accommodated in one of the upper rooms, as befitted his rank, until the ransom finally arrived. Apparently His Majesty had even written several poems when he was in captivity at Trifels.

  Mathis laughed bitterly at the idea of writing love poetry with quill and parchment here among the rats. Who would he write them to? Agnes? His feelings for her had cooled off a good deal these last few days. Why had he listened to her instead of running away into the forest as he had planned? People said that more and more malcontents were gathering in the deep, green valleys of the Wasgau, indeed of the whole Upper Rhine area, to organize uprisings against the injustice of the princes, counts, and dukes. Very likely Shepherd Jockel had joined them after fleeing from Annweiler. Mathis cursed quietly. The whole empire was seething in ferment—and here he lay, rotting in the dungeon of Trifels Castle.

  Agnes had kept trying to talk to him through the slit in the wall that admitted light, but only until the guards sent her away. To tell the truth, however, Mathis didn’t want to talk to her. She was the daughter of the castellan who was responsible for this situation in the first place—a nobleman’s daughter. And what had Philipp von Erfenstein ever done to improve life for his peasants? Nothing. Agnes would say that her father hadn’t made the laws, as if laws couldn’t be changed. Maybe Jockel was right when he lumped all the powerful men together. Mathis thought of what his father had said. Since he had been locked up here, he couldn’t get it out of his head.

  Agnes is the daughter of the lord of Trifels Castle, and Mathis is only a journeyman smith. Where is that going to lead?

  A scraping sound roused Mathis from his thoughts. When he looked up, he saw that the stone slab in the roof above was
being pushed aside. The face of Ulrich Reichhart, the master gunner, appeared in the opening. Mathis’s heart began to beat wildly. Was the mayor of Annweiler here to take him away to stand trial? Or had Philipp von Erfenstein relented and was setting him free?

  “Got a visitor for you,” old Ulrich growled. “The castellan said your mother could see you.”

  Next moment, the face of Martha Wielenbach appeared above him. Although it was a good fifteen feet up to the ceiling, and there was hardly any light, Mathis could see at first glance how sad his mother looked. Her once black hair had much more gray in it than when he’d last seen her.

  “Mathis!” she called down, “Mathis! My God, how are you?”

  “As anyone might expect, after spending so long in this hole,” replied Mathis, trying to sound as calm as possible. “Fighting the rats for every bit of bread.” He felt how rough and dry his throat was, and a bitter fluid rose in it. In spite of the grief that suddenly overcame him, he was determined that his mother wouldn’t see him in tears.

  “I brought you something to eat,” said Martha Wielenbach, her voice faltering. “Ulrich is going to be kind enough to let me down to you.”

  “Believe me, Mathis,” the old master gunner assured him, “if it was up to me you’d have been free long ago. But the castellan can be as stubborn as a donkey. At least he isn’t handing you over to Gessler. That’s something.”

  The men-at-arms Gunther and Sebastian lent Ulrich a hand, and between them they let Martha Wielenbach down in a loop of rope. With her free hand, the smith’s wife clutched a basket in which Mathis could see new bread, still steaming from the oven, and cheese as yellow as honey. His stomach rumbled again.

  Down in the cell, Martha Wielenbach quickly climbed out of the loop and hugged her son. “Mathis, dear Mathis!” she whispered. “At least you seem to be in good health.” She shed a few tears. “Oh, why did it have to come to this?”

  Mathis gently pushed her away. “It’s all right, Mother,” he said. “I don’t mind atoning for the theft. But I’m not sorry for the rest of it.”

  His mother wiped away her tears, and looked at him questioningly. “You mean helping Shepherd Jockel to get away?”

  Mathis nodded. “It had to be done. If the citizens of Annweiler are going to knuckle under, then it’s for us ordinary folk to show the powerful that things can’t go on like this. We’re not criminals and cutthroats, we only want justice. God made all men equal.”

  His mother shook her head sadly. “Oh, Mathis, what kind of talk is that?” she said. “Who gave you these notions? Shepherd Jockel? Don’t let your father hear them—he’s in a bad enough way as it is.”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  She sighed. “When he heard about you, he didn’t speak to anyone for three days, not even me. Since then his cough has been worse and worse, and at the end of last week he had to take to his bed. He won’t let me mention you—he’s beside himself if I do.”

  Mathis felt all the anger suddenly go out of him. As a child, he had almost taken his father for God. Hans Wielenbach had been a tall, strong, traveling craftsman when the castellan took him into his service ten years ago, along with his family. There had been five of them then, but little Peter had soon died while still at his mother’s breast, and their big sister had been carried off by severe whooping cough five years ago. Mathis, the middle child, had always had ideas of his own, and over time he had quarreled more and more often with his father. Suddenly Mathis felt dreadfully afraid that Hans Wielenbach might die before he could ask his forgiveness.

  “Give Father my love,” he murmured in a faltering voice. “Tell him I’m . . . I’m very sorry I’ve dragged you both into this situation.”

  Martha Wielenbach stroked her son’s dirty cheek. “I’ll tell him. You’re a good boy after all. It will be all right again, you wait and see. Now, have something to eat.”

  She gave him bread and cheese from her basket, and Mathis began to eat greedily. Over the last few minutes he had quite forgotten how hungry he was.

  “And your little sister sends you love,” said Martha Wielenbach, smiling, as she watched her son eat. “You’re a hero to her. At least, the children of the peasants down on the castle acres told her you were, and of course she believes it. Oh, and I’m to give you this from Agnes.” She handed him a folded piece of parchment.

  “What am I supposed to do with it?” he asked, more roughly than he had intended.

  “She’ll have written you a few lines, I expect. I was always so proud that Agnes taught you to read.” Martha Wielenbach took her son by the shoulders. “Mathis, you shouldn’t be so hard on her. How can she help it that her father has locked you up here? I know very well that she keeps pleading with him for you.”

  “Ha! She’s already shown how much influence she has on her father. None at all.”

  But in spite of his annoyance, Mathis took the parchment. Surreptitiously, he stroked the carefully folded note. Up above, the scraping sound of the stone slab came again. Martha Wielenbach looked at the ceiling, sighing.

  “I must go,” she said. She hugged her son one last time, so hard that it almost hurt him. “If you want to soften the castellan’s heart, then stop all your seditious talk,” she warned. “Be penitent, and it will all turn out well yet.”

  “I’ll think about it, Mother,” Mathis replied.

  Martha Wielenbach planted a kiss on his forehead and then took hold of the rope loop that the men-at-arms had let back down.

  “Don’t forget, you will always be my boy, whatever happens,” she said as tears ran down her face. Then her swaying figure was drawn up through the twilight in the shaft. Next moment the stone slab slid back into place, and Mathis was left alone with his thoughts.

  He held the folded note up to his face and smelled it. It carried the odor of spring and sunlight.

  And Agnes.

  Slowly, Mathis unfolded the parchment and stared at it. Agnes had not written a letter; she had painted him a picture. A picture in shining colors, showing the two of them in a forest clearing. It was bright in the darkness of the dungeon, like someone had suddenly lit a torch.

  Mathis stroked the note once more and then sat down in a corner with it and looked at the picture again and again.

  And once again that bitter flavor rose in his throat.

  Early next morning, Agnes found another opportunity to speak to Father Tristan. She met the monk in the kitchen, where he was pounding some dried herbs in a mortar. The smoke of the fire on the hearth drifted through the room, and so it took the old man a little while to see her.

  “Ah, Agnes,” he said, pleased, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes. “Well, did you dream of Trifels Castle again last night?”

  Agnes shook her head. “Not this time. At least, I don’t remember doing so.” She took a piece of bread and dipped it in a beaker of goat’s milk that Hedwig had left ready for her. “Were you able to speak to my father about Mathis?” she hesitantly asked. “His mother came to see him yesterday and brought him greetings from me. She says he’s not in a good frame of mind.”

  “No, I fear I haven’t spoken to your father. He was out hunting all day yesterday, and early this morning he was . . . let’s say, not very well.” Father Tristan shrugged his shoulders, smiling. “I’ve already given him a decoction of herbs for his headache, and I expect I’ll be able to talk to him sometime soon. Until then, maybe it would be better for you not to go anywhere near Mathis. Or your father will simply lose his temper again and be as stubborn as ever. Will you take my advice?”

  Agnes hesitantly nodded. “All right. If it’s any help to Mathis.”

  She munched the hard slice of bread without much of an appetite and finally put it down, pointing with interest to the mortar. “What exactly are you doing there?”

  “Pounding arnica, comfrey, and angelica together. Mixed with bear’s fat they make an excellent ointment.” Father Tristan stopped using the pestle and looked at Agnes with a grave expression. �
�Down in Hahnenbach yesterday I examined a little boy whose leg had been run over by a cart. I told his parents I’d see what I could do.” He tipped the herbal mixture into a pan and stirred it into the softened fat. “I wonder, would you perhaps come with me?”

  Agnes was happy to agree. She had often visited the sick with Father Tristan in the past and had picked up a few of the principles of medicine. However, that was some time ago, and so she was particularly glad of his invitation now. Anything to take her mind off Mathis and his unfortunate situation was welcome to her.

  When Father Tristan had strapped up his satchel, they went down over the castle acres together to Hahnenbach, a hamlet not far from Annweiler. The old man strode ahead at a good pace. In spite of his great age, he could walk well enough with the help of his staff. It was a warm day, the birds were twittering, and the willows by the roadside were already bearing their soft, fluffy catkins. Not far away the river Queich flowed by, and there was a slight smell of rotting in the air from all the garbage left by the tanners for the river to carry down into the Rhine valley.

  Taking the monk’s advice to heart, Agnes had taken the ring off her finger the previous evening. She was wearing it on a thin chain over her heart now, concealed from view. She said nothing for some time that morning, but then she couldn’t restrain herself. She had been brooding all night over what Father Tristan had said about Emperor Barbarossa and her dream.

  “Tell me, Father—that young man in the picture,” she tentatively began. “Why did you—” But Father Tristan testily waved her question away.

  “I told you I don’t want to talk about it. You think about the past far too much anyway.”