Mathis frowned. “Maybe Hans von Wertingen has her on his conscience. That devil is venturing farther and farther into our forests. I wouldn’t even put it past him to cut an old woman’s throat just for a few chickens and goats.”
“Possibly. But no body has been found.” Agnes hesitated for a moment, as a slight shudder ran down her back. “It’s the same as with Martin von Heidelsheim,” she went on at last. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but something is going on out there.”
For some time they just looked up at the starry sky while Mathis held Agnes’s hand. An owl hooted somewhere close.
“And by the way, I found the book that Father Tristan was hiding from me,” Agnes suddenly said. “It’s in a kind of secret compartment in the library.”
Mathis rolled his eyes, and pushed her hand away. “I thought you wanted to talk about the two of us, and now you’re starting on about those strange stories again. I curse the day when Parcival brought you that wretched ring. You’re obsessed with all that stuff.”
Agnes reached for the ring, hanging around her neck on its chain. She was so used to wearing it now that she sometimes forgot about it for days on end. At the moment it seemed to be heavier than usual. She sat up in their little cavern in the rock. “Don’t you understand, Mathis? I can’t get that ring, and above all the dreams, out of my mind. They seem so . . . so real. And now I know that someone who appears in them really existed.”
She told him hastily about the young knight Johann of Brunswick, and the other information that she had found in the chronicle of Trifels.
“That knight, Johann, was a Guelph,” she offered. “He was here in the castle almost a hundred years after the death of Barbarossa. In my dreams, he wants to tell me something about the signet ring. He seems to be giving me a warning.”
“Agnes,” Mathis tried to calm her down, “those are dreams, that’s all. The ring is on your mind, yes, but that’s not surprising, considering how you came by it. And you know about this knight Johann from the book. You’re simply dreaming of things you know about from waking life. That’s normal.”
“You’re forgetting that I dreamed of Johann before I saw him in that picture. Would you call that normal, too?”
Mathis shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe you did see the book before, but you forgot about it. After all, you spent half your childhood in that dusty old library.”
“Oh, damn it all, Mathis!” Agnes sprang to her feet, bumping her head on the low, rocky roof. Tears of pain and rage ran down her face. “Just because I like to read books, it doesn’t mean I’m crazy.” she said crossly, rubbing the sore place. “Even if everyone says so, including you. I dreamed of that knight Johann before I saw him in the book, I swear by God I did. And I know that the ring didn’t come to me by chance. It was fixed to Parcival’s leg by someone who wanted me to have it.”
Mathis sighed. “And I really thought we were going to talk about us.”
“I want to do that too, but—”
Agnes suddenly stopped, and Mathis looked at her, intrigued. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
She pointed down the hill, to the south. “See for yourself.”
Mathis crawled out of the cavern, and together they stared at about a dozen little lights moving up and down in a dip in the ground between Anebos and Scharfenberg Castle.
“Torches,” said Mathis in surprise. “What’s anyone doing up here in the middle of the night?”
Suddenly Agnes thought of the dwarfs in the old story. Didn’t they watch over Barbarossa’s sleep in Trifels Castle? But she took care not to say anything like that to Mathis. He thought she was a crazy dreamer anyway.
“Didn’t you say young Count Scharfeneck was going to move into the castle at Scharfenberg?” Mathis asked, still looking at the lights. “Maybe his men are here already.”
“Dragging new furniture uphill by night?” Agnes shook her head. “That’s nonsense.”
“Then in God’s name let’s go and see who’s down there,” replied Mathis, turning to move away.
“Mathis, wait!” Agnes whispered. “You can’t . . .” But he was already on the narrow path leading to the ridge down below.
Cursing quietly, Agnes followed him. Her back tingled. She remembered the night, almost two months ago, when they had found Parcival in the forest and had seen those strangers just after that. The men had nothing good in mind. Could they have come back again?
Soon they were standing on the broad hilltop ridge that linked the three castles like an axis. Several natural rocky towers stood among the beech, chestnut, and oak trees, places where guards had once been posted. The path wound its way past them, dividing now and then and following narrow tracks up into the rocks.
They cautiously made their way in the moonlight toward Scharfenberg Castle, which stood on the farthest height of the Sonnenberg. Briefly they lost sight of the lights, although they soon saw them again in the dip just below the castle. The torches, or whatever was burning, now looked very close together. Apart from the faint rushing of the wind, there was not a sound to be heard. All of a sudden the lights formed a regular line, began moving . . .
And disappeared.
Mathis, behind a rock and on his way down into the dip, stopped, taken aback.
“What in the world . . . where did they go?” he whispered. “Did they put the torches out?”
“All at the same time, and so quickly? How could they?” Agnes frowned, but she couldn’t think of an explanation either.
“They can hardly have dropped into a crack in the ground that suddenly opened up,” Mathis snapped.
Agnes did not reply. Once again she was thinking of the legend of Barbarossa and the dwarfs. The little people of folktales were famous for suddenly disappearing into holes in the ground. Could this be the place where the old emperor slept until the world needed him again?
And suppose that time is about to come?
She felt a little dizzy. It was like the feeling she had had not long ago in the dungeon in the keep. What was the matter with her? Was she beginning to believe in the old wives’ tales told to small children at the fireside?
“Whatever it was,” said Mathis, interrupting her train of thought, “it’s gone. And in the dark we’ll only break our bones down in that dip in the ground.” Shrugging, he turned away. “Let’s turn back and have another look tomorrow in daylight. I promised my mother not to be home too late. She has enough to worry about already.”
They walked back to Trifels Castle in silence, following the line of the hilltop ridge. As they passed the rise on which Anebos stood, Agnes thought she saw another light moving up on the rocks. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, the light had gone. With difficulty, she kept control of her breathing.
Sometimes she thought that people were right when they said she was rather strange.
✦ ✦ ✦
A long passage with a door at the end of it. Agnes knows who is on the other side of that door. The three men arrived early today, wearing fine fur-trimmed cloaks under which shirts of mail clinked. They rode into the castle at dawn, mounted on noble warhorses, each of them worth the price of three farms. Agnes felt their eyes on her when the castellan introduced them, and at the same moment she understood that these men wished her ill.
Their ill will was unbounded.
Agnes goes on along the passage. She is carrying a carafe of wine that she is supposed to take to the hall. But when she approaches the door, which stands ajar, she suddenly stops. Through the crack in the doorway, she can see the men. They wait for the castellan by the open hearth, and they are deep in conversation. They speak quietly, but a few words reach her ears, like the echoes of evil spells. Words of death and destruction.
The men are discussing her death. Hers and Johann’s.
What they speak of is so incredible that, for a moment, Agnes thinks she can’t have heard it correctly. Her breath falters, her hands tremble. The whole of Trifels is in danger. She must
warn the castellan at once. But above all, she must warn Johann, and tonight the two of them must . . .
At that moment the carafe slips out of her fingers, now moist and slippery with the sweat of fear. It falls to the floor, where it breaks with a crash like a mountain exploding. The wine flows into a puddle on the stone floor, and for a fraction of a second Agnes see her own distorted face reflected in it. But it is not her face. Or is it? She is older, there is a metal circlet adorned with flowers on her fair hair, the first lines show on her skin, her face is a terrified mask.
The men in the hall fall silent, and their eyes go to the doorway where Agnes is still standing.
She runs back down the passage as angry cries ring out behind her, quickly coming closer. She hears doors slamming, hauberks clinking, the sound of a sword being drawn from its sheath.
The men have come to kill them.
✦ ✦ ✦
Agnes woke with a hoarse cry and looked around her bower, trying to get her bearings. She almost expected the door to be kicked in at any moment, and then she would see the men storming into her room with their swords drawn. But all was quiet. Outside, the first birds were singing to greet the new day.
The dream had gone, broken like a soap bubble, but for some time afterward Agnes could still see her reflection, distorted by fear, in the puddle of wine.
Only when the sun rose above the treetops in the east did that image, too, fade away.
Deep down in the damp, cool crypt of the church of St. Fortunatus in Annweiler, a small group of people stood around a stone altar that early morning, holding hands. They were humming an old Latin hymn in chorus, as they did at all their rare meetings. Few knew about this gathering, not even the priest of the town of Annweiler. In the old days, whoever was priest of the congregation had been an important member of their sworn fellowship. But the present priest, Johannes Lebner, was a fat, greedy drunkard who pocketed part of the money from the sale of indulgences himself, and who was hand in glove with the mayor of the town. He was a scholar from Cologne, far away, washed up by chance in this place, and he knew nothing about the old customs.
Particularly not this one.
There were twelve of them, the same number as the Apostles, simple citizens of Annweiler whose families had made up the members of the order for over two hundred years. Only when one of them died was a new member brought into their circle. They called themselves the Brotherhood of the Ring, and since those dark days of its founding, they had been keeping a secret on which the fate of the empire might depend. Once, and not too long ago, that secret had almost come to light, but they had managed to preserve it just in time.
Now danger threatened again, even if none of them guessed how close they really stood to the edge of the abyss.
The last notes of the hymn died away within the weathered stone walls that were adorned with symbols and coats of arms. Then the head of the Brotherhood spoke. He was well past seventy years old, his face was as wrinkled as dry leather, his hair was white as snow. In a different life he was an ordinary tanner, a good, hard-working man with eight grown children and a countless number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but down here he was surrounded by the magical, commanding aura of an ancient priest. As a sign of his office, he wore a plain cloak that had once been white, but had become gray and threadbare with the passage of the centuries. The back of it bore the image of three lions rampant.
“Good brothers and sisters,” the old man began in a loud voice that echoed through the vault. “As you know, our enemies are now on the point of discovering the secret, for the second time. I must inform you that they have already been in these parts, reaching out their hands for it.” An anxious murmur arose, and the speaker raised his arms to calm the others down. Then he turned to the midwife Elsbeth Rechsteiner, who had stayed in the shadows until now.
“Some time ago we warned Elsbeth, as keeper of the ring, of the coming of the enemy,” said the old man. “All the same, she was found and has had to keep out of the way for the last few weeks. Many of you thought that she was dead. It is good reason for rejoicing that she is back among us again.” He paused for a moment before going on. “I very much hope that Elsbeth can give us more grounds for rejoicing, particularly in all that concerns the safety of the ring . . .” His voice held a note of menace, as all eyes were turned to the midwife.
Elsbeth Rechsteiner straightened up. She had spent the last few weeks with her niece Sophia in Waldrohrbach, in constant fear of discovery. That and lack of sleep had dug deep lines into her already careworn face. At last she plucked up her courage and turned to the members of the order.
“The men of whom our brother and leader spoke,” she began hesitantly, “did indeed come to my house. They turned it upside down to find the ring. But they did not succeed.”
The head of the order nodded in relief. “Then you hid it well.”
“I didn’t hide it. I gave it away.”
For a while there was absolute silence in the crypt. Then they all began talking in agitation at the same time, until the old man angrily clapped his hands.
“Quiet! Quiet!” he cried. “If you go on like that, you’ll certainly be heard in the church above us. Morning mass is about to begin.” When the members of the order had calmed down at last, he turned to Elsbeth, his face red with anger. “You did what with it?”
“I placed the ring in the hand of God, for that is where it belongs.” Her voice faltered, but she chose her words with care as she told the Brotherhood what had happened.
“I am sure those men were sent to finish the work begun so long ago,” she concluded. “That black-skinned man is clever and cunning, and he comes from very far away. Someone extremely powerful must have sent him. I asked people I knew. He also visited other midwives in this area, and he asked them all the same question. And he went to inns and taverns, he visited graveyards, he looked at church registers. He and his henchmen are not going to give up until they have found what they want. I had to do something.”
“You . . . gave our ring to a falcon?” The old man shook his head, unable to believe it. “That should never have happened. Didn’t I tell you how important your task is? Who knows what will happen to the ring now? It is no longer in our power.”
Elsbeth straightened her back. “It is not our ring. If I had kept it, it would now be in the hands of the enemy. Would that have been better? When the bird perched on my window sill, I had a strange premonition . . .”
“Devil take it!” A sturdy man in a leather apron of the kind worn by carters in the Palatinate raised his voice angrily. It was Diethelm Seebach, the landlord of the Green Tree Inn. “Are you saying you gave the ring away because of a premonition? You were its keeper, Elsbeth. The order entrusted the ring to you. What came over you?”
“The . . . the bird . . . it was like a sign,” the midwife replied uncertainly. “Like a messenger from another time.” She thrust out her chin. “And wasn’t I right? What would have happened if those men had found the ring in my home? Don’t forget, the secret that we keep can change the whole empire, the whole of Europe. Do you think such men would have asked politely where the ring came from, and then they would have gone away again?” She laughed despairingly. “No, they would have tortured me until I told them our secret.”
“Then why didn’t you simply hide the ring somewhere?” asked another member of the Brotherhood. The ropemaker Martin Lebrecht had been a member of the order for many years, and his word carried weight among its members. “You could have buried it in the forest, or given it to one of us for safekeeping. We would all have understood.”
“Do you suppose I didn’t think of that, Martin?” The midwife’s laughter had no mirth in it. “The men would have looked for me, found me, and tortured me just the same until I told them the secret.”
“Those are excuses, Elsbeth,” snapped Diethelm Seebach. “You were afraid. And because of your fear the fate of the whole empire may be at stake.”
“You are right
, Diethelm. I was afraid. I don’t think I could have withstood such pain. The fire, the blows, wrenching my sinews apart, breaking my bones. Could you have held out, Diethelm? Tell me, aren’t you afraid?”
Diethelm Seebach hesitated, then he crossed his arms over his broad chest defiantly and said nothing.
“There remains the question of how the men knew that Elsbeth had the ring,” said the head of the order thoughtfully, looking closely at each and every one of them. “Only the Brotherhood knows that Elsbeth is the keeper of the ring. That means one of us must have talked.”
Elsbeth Rechsteiner slowly shook her head. “I thought of that myself. Maybe that’s so, or maybe the men just came to ask me questions. As I said, they visited other local midwives.” She had formed her own opinion, but she was not going to express it openly here.
Who can I trust? If one of us is a traitor, he should know as little as possible.
“All the same, we must be on our guard.” The head of the order straightened his shoulders. “A traitor in our ranks would be the end of us.” Suddenly the church bells up above began to ring. The head of the Brotherhood took off his cloak, and once again he was only an old man with a wrinkled face. “We had better go up before divine service begins,” he said wearily. “Otherwise the priest will suspect something. We must not take any more risks.” Once again, he shook his head. “A falcon bearing the ring,” he murmured. “May the Lord guide it to safe pastures.”
Then they all went up, with heads bent, good brothers and sisters on the way to Sunday mass.
To their ears, the ringing of the church bells sounded like a death knell.
✦ 7 ✦
The Rhine Plain between Trifels and Neukastell, 16 May, Anno Domini 1524, morning
The Castle of Kings Page 20
