The Castle of Kings

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “What happened then, Father? Tell me.”

  The old monk sighed deeply. “The Habsburgs made short work of the matter. They had the entire garrison of Trifels Castle imprisoned. Reinhard von Hoheneck and some of the leaders were tortured, then gutted like animals and quartered in the castle courtyard. Their heads were displayed on pikes on the battlements of Trifels as a warning.” Father Tristan sadly shook his head. “At first young Johann of Brunswick escaped, but his murderers caught up with him at last in Speyer Cathedral. He fell fighting before the real part he had played in the conspiracy could be discovered. Soon after that, King Albrecht withdrew all privileges from Trifels and made a man subservient to him its castellan. The famous imperial insignia were taken to Kyburg Castle, far away in Switzerland.” Father Tristan sadly shrugged his shoulders. “That was the end of Trifels Castle as a center of the empire, and from then on the castle increasingly fell into disrepair. Today only ballads and stories speak of its former glory.”

  Agnes leaned forward. The weathered old chronicle still lay on the table between them. She drew the book toward her again, and pointed to the young knight. “Father, I have had another dream of Johann,” she began in a low voice. “I think I was dreaming of his flight from here. There was a woman with him, a woman and a child. Do you happen to know who—”

  “Agnes, please stop it!” Angrily, the monk struck the table with his wrinkled hand. “Believe me, you’re making all this up. Dreams of past times, what balderdash!” He took hold of the sleeve of her nightgown. “I’ll tell you what has happened. You had a dream about a noble knight, yes, very well. That may happen to many young women. But when you saw Johann’s picture in the chronicle, you simply imagined that he was the knight in your dream. And now you’re making up more stories. I am sure that any tale I could tell you would suit one of your dreams. Your imagination is playing tricks on you, Agnes, that’s all there is to it.”

  “But there was the woman, and the child. I was the woman myself, I saw her face. And I dreamed of several men who were planning to kill them.” Agnes defiantly pursed her lips. After a moment of hesitation, she went on. “I . . . I think I heard her just now, crying; it somehow seemed to come out of the castle walls. And there was a knocking sound as well . . .”

  Father Tristan laughed in relief. “There, you see, now I can prove that it’s all your imagination. I was knocking myself. I was out in the courtyard gathering healing herbs in the garden. As you know, their effect is at its strongest when the moon is full. Hedwig locked the door behind me, silly woman, and I had to knock for quite a long time to get her to let me in again. That’s all it was.” He rose to his feet with a groan. “I should never have told you those old stories. Even as a child, you had so much nonsense in your head that you couldn’t sleep. Let’s go to bed at last, before it’s full dawn outside. And promise me that from now on you’ll keep your hands off this book and the secret compartment.” His eyes twinkled as he looked at her. “I hope you don’t want to see your father confessor in the pillory in his old age for harboring seditious writings.”

  “No, no, of course I don’t.” With some hesitation, Agnes too rose. Meanwhile, Father Tristan took the disfigured book and put it on one of the top shelves. Feeling weary and confused, Agnes went out into the anteroom of the library. Was the old castle chaplain right, and she was running after something only imagined in her dreams? Was it all just the fantasies of a young woman with her head in the clouds, longing for past times? Pining for a knight in bright armor on a tall, white horse?

  All the same, it had seemed that her confessor was keeping something from her. As they talked, Father Tristan had trembled more than usual, and his eyes had looked nervously back and forth.

  He may not be lying, but he knows more than he wants to admit.

  On the way to the stairs, her eyes looked once more through one of the narrow castle windows. The wan light of the moon—a slender crescent, no more than a thin, bright ribbon—shone through the opening. It took Agnes some time to understand what that meant. Baffled, she looked at Father Tristan as he climbed down the worn steps in front of her. What exactly had he just told her?

  I was out in the courtyard gathering healing herbs in the garden. As you know, their effect is at its strongest when the moon is full . . .

  Humming quietly to himself, the old monk walked on. Agnes stayed where she was, thinking. Father Tristan had lied to her. But why? And anyway, what had he come up to the library for? Wouldn’t he have wanted to take his herbs to the kitchen, if anywhere?

  On the bottom step, Father Tristan stopped and looked up at her. “There’s something else,” he said quietly. “That ring. I have noticed that you still wear it around your neck. Promise me solemnly that you will not show it to anyone.” His usually mild eyes suddenly looked sterner than Agnes had ever known him to appear before. “Show it to no one. Do you understand? And keep your dreams to yourself.”

  With some hesitation, Agnes nodded. “I . . . I promise. But why . . .”

  “Now, get some rest.” All at once Father Tristan was smiling in the kindly way that she had known since her childhood. “Go riding tomorrow, or fly Parcival, and try not to brood. I’ll soon be following your father to the Ramburg to tend the wounded in this accursed feud. So I can give you the week off with an easy mind.” He traced the sign of the cross in the air. “May the Lord bless you and protect you.”

  His back bent, Father Tristan limped off to his bedchamber beside the kitchen. Agnes stood there for some time, watching him go, as her hand felt the ring under her nightgown. Then, with her heart beating fast, she returned to her own bed.

  But, weary as she was, she could not fall asleep.

  ✦ 10 ✦

  Outside Ramburg Castle, 1 June, Anno Domini 1524

  MATHIS MOPPED THE PERSPIRATION from his brow and looked up at the robber knight’s castle rising on the hill ahead of them. They had set out before dawn, and his shirt and doublet were already drenched in sweat. The peasants and landsknechts had pushed the carts and gun carriages, yard by yard, up the castle mound along a narrow, muddy pathway. Now, at nearly noon, their target lay before them. Ramburg Castle had certainly seen better days, and much of it was overgrown by moss. Time had done its work on the battlements. But the walls of the main building seemed to have been repaired only recently, showing fresh mortar and new masonry in many places.

  “That fat badger has done his spring cleaning and crawled away into his sett,” growled the old master gunner Ulrich Reichhart. “Winkling him out of there is going to be tricky.”

  Mathis and the other soldiers scrutinized the terrain suspiciously. The castle was built on a spur of rock that fell away steeply on three sides. To the northwest, it was linked to the neighboring hill by a shallow saddle of rock, and the mightiest defensive wall that the young smith had ever seen rose in front of it. A stone’s throw away, another wall enclosed the outer bailey, while a steep ramp to the west led up to the castle gate.

  Before him, Mathis saw a bleak surface with smoking heaps of ash here and there on it. Hans von Wertingen had devastated the entire hilltop, so as not to offer his enemies any chance of approaching under cover of shrubs or groups of trees. Some of his men-at-arms now appeared on the battlements of the defensive wall. They made obscene gestures directed at the besiegers; one man turned his bare buttocks to them.

  “They won’t be laughing much longer,” swore Philipp von Erfenstein, who had just joined Mathis and Ulrich Reichhart. In spite of the increasing midday heat, the knight wore his heavy armor, and broad streams of sweat ran down his face.

  “Hey, Wertingen!” he called up to the defensive wall. “Come on out, you cowardly carrion, and fight like a man!”

  But apart from some scornful cries, there was no reply.

  “How high do you think that wall is?” Reichhart asked skeptically. “Fifty feet? Sixty?”

  Philipp von Erfenstein shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea, but it’s the highest defensive wall I
’ve ever seen. If Trifels had a wall like that, I’d turn my bare ass to invaders myself.”

  “Ah, but we have our master gunner with us, don’t we?” It was the cutting voice of Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck, who now appeared among his landsknechts, his breastplate shining. “What do you think, boy?” he asked with a smile, turning to Mathis. “How long do you expect that gun of yours will need to breach the wall?”

  “That . . . depends entirely on the wall’s thickness,” replied Mathis uncertainly. He glanced with some doubt at Fat Hedwig, resting on her gun carriage.

  “Oh, I’ll be happy to answer that question.” Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck drew his sword from its sheath, and tested the edge of it with a bored expression. “The defensive wall of the Ramburg is exactly nine feet thick and almost sixty feet high. It’s the tallest and thickest in the whole Palatinate.”

  “And why, damn it, do we learn that only now?” Erfenstein interrupted. “If you know the castle so well, Your Excellency, it would have been helpful of you to share your knowledge with us earlier.”

  “What difference would that have made?” Scharfeneck thrust the sword firmly back into its sheath. “Would our boy genius here have built a bigger gun? Believe me, Erfenstein, that carrion Wertingen has been leading us Scharfenecks a merry dance for a long time.” He pointed to the neighboring hills, where the blurred turrets of Neuscharfeneck Castle could just be made out. “Do you think we didn’t consider taking this den of robbers several times before? Do you think I’d have asked for your help if I could have done it by myself? What I said holds good: raze that castle for me, and I’ll make sure that you enjoy your rightful position and regard as castellan of Trifels again. If you fail, you can crawl back into the dirt you came from. And in that case I’d also withdraw my other offer. Have I expressed myself clearly enough?”

  “You . . . you arrogant . . .”

  Under his helmet, Erfenstein’s face colored red, and his hand twitched. For a moment he seemed tempted to give the young count a resounding slap in the face. Then the old castellan took a deep breath and thought better of it. Meanwhile, Mathis was wondering what Scharfeneck had meant by his other offer. Were there to be more feuds?

  “It may be the tallest and thickest wall in the whole Palatinate,” Erfenstein said. “But wait until you see my gunner blow Black Hans away, castle and all.”

  The young smith gulped. Once again he was aware that all expectations of this campaign rested on his shoulders. A wall nine feet thick. If Scharfeneck was right, even Fat Hedwig would hardly be able to breach the defensive wall. Narrowing his lips, Mathis scrutinized the fortifications again.

  “I see that the wall is lower at the sides,” he said quietly, trying not to sound uncertain. “Is there any particular place where it isn’t quite so thick?”

  “Yes, there is.” That was Ulrich Reichhart. “My scouts have taken a good look at the terrain there. But it turns steeply downhill, and we can’t set up large artillery pieces on that spot. The angle is too sharp.”

  “And out here we’ll be shot down like rabbits, damn it all!” Erfenstein spat. “This place is as bare as a whore’s cunt. We might just as well shoot ourselves.”

  “Not if we make large wooden shields and hide behind them,” Mathis said thoughtfully. He had recovered his confidence, and his brain was hard at work. “We can keep carrying out mock attacks elsewhere with the smaller firearms, while I adjust Fat Hedwig. And we can set traps on the south side.”

  “Traps?” Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck raised his eyebrows skeptically. “You expect Wertingen to fall for that? Ridiculous.”

  “I read about it in a book,” Mathis replied coolly. “Konrad Kyeser’s Bellifortis, if you’ve heard of it. We can use sturdy birch trees. From a distance, the silver color of their bark will look almost like iron. If we add some of our old guns to the display, and leave cannonballs and ropes lying about, they’ll look like the real thing. Wertingen won’t know that we can’t fire at him from that sloping terrain.”

  Or I hope not, anyway, he thought, but I’m damned if I’m going to say so out loud here.

  “Kyeser’s Bellifortis? Forgive me, I quite forgot that you can read.” Scharfeneck grinned. “Well, if that’s the only way, let’s try it. But I’m not sending my men into a useless skirmish just because our master gunner is too craven to fight.”

  “You’re welcome to stand beside me when I fire Fat Hedwig,” replied Mathis, his face expressionless.

  The count was about to make some retort, but Erfenstein intervened. “That’s enough,” he snapped. “Deeds, not words, decide the outcome of war. We’ll do as Mathis says. I have every confidence in this young man. So let’s start making preparations.”

  He glanced at Mathis. There was hope in the castellan’s eyes, but also a touch of threat.

  Erfenstein shouted orders, and soon the landsknechts and peasants were going off to find and fell trees and unload the materiel from the baggage train. Mathis stood in the middle of the turmoil, looking thoughtfully at the high defensive wall. How many feet of stone would Fat Hedwig be able to penetrate? Mathis hoped that the wall was more vulnerable in parts than it looked; in building castles, solid stone was often used only on the inside and outside of defensive works, while the space in between was filled with rubble.

  “Afraid?”

  Mathis turned and saw Melchior von Tanningen, standing right behind him and smiling. The minstrel had come up without a sound.

  “Would that be so bad?” asked Mathis after a moment’s pause.

  Tanningen shook his head. “Oh no, far from it. Only fools are never afraid. Fear keeps us from doing stupid things.” He pointed to the heavy gun being unloaded from its carriage by a dozen landsknechts. “What do you think? Will that monster be able to breach the wall?”

  Mathis sighed. “To be honest, I don’t know. Not at the first shot, that’s for sure, but maybe at the fifth or sixth. Or maybe the gun will explode first and blow me up too. Then you’ll need a new master gunner.”

  “What you said just now was very impressive,” said Tanningen, without going any farther into Mathis’s uncertainty. “You made the right decision very quickly.”

  “We have yet to see whether it really was right.”

  Melchior von Tanningen shrugged his shoulders. “There’s justification for doubts. The songs always speak of the doubts of great generals.”

  “Great generals!” Mathis laughed. “Don’t forget, until very recently I was only the dirty son of the Trifels weaponsmith. We produce great wines in this part of the country, not great generals.”

  “That can soon be altered. Don’t you sense something in the air?” Melchior von Tanningen had come very close to Mathis. “More and more complaints from the peasants, that monk from Wittenberg with his seditious talk, the calls for change . . . a day may come when great generals are needed again. Even in the Palatinate. Good luck, Master Wielenbach.”

  Without another word, Tanningen turned away and walked toward the woods. Mathis shook himself. That minstrel really was a strange fellow. When he talked, you might really think you were standing in the midst of one of those old battles, with knights and archers. Well, as a master gunner he had something more important to do.

  He hurried toward the landsknechts and helped them get the heavy gun off its carriage, with the aid of ropes and winches. Now they must dig out a level position, build protective shields, determine the angle of inclination, and re-mix the gunpowder. Mathis nodded grimly. Fat Hedwig was his only hope, and he would do all he could to help her make her entrance to good effect.

  When Agnes woke, late in the morning, she heard a slight noise out in the corridor. “Who’s there?” she murmured sleepily.

  “It’s only me, Margarethe,” replied her lady’s maid. “May I come in?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Margarethe entered the room. She was wearing a fine white linen gown with fur. She looked expectantly at her mistress.

  “
What is it?” asked Agnes.

  “I only wanted to know if you’ll be needing me today.” Margarethe curtsyed. “If not I’d like to go down to Annweiler.”

  “And meet someone there?” asked Agnes, smiling. She sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes.

  Margarethe looked defiant. “It’s market day. I have to run some errands.”

  “Run some errands. Well, well . . .”

  Agnes stretched, and then asked Margarethe to give her a shirt and the hose in which she went riding from her clothes chest. She was still feeling haunted by her dream and that late-night conversation with Father Tristan. She had lain awake until long after sunrise, trying to think why he had lied to her.

  Why was he out and about at night?

  Agnes thought of the seditious writings in the secret compartment in the library. Maybe, in secret, Father Tristan met the rebels who gathered in the forest. Shepherd Jockel, for instance? Or was it something to do with her father’s campaign? The thought of him and Mathis made her uneasy. That was one reason why she had decided to take the monk’s advice and go hawking in the woods with Parcival. It would take her mind off her anxieties.

  The pleading tone in her maid’s voice brought her back from these thoughts. Margarethe was impatiently holding out her leather shoes. Agnes shook herself and then looked indulgently at her maid’s fine dress.

  “He must be a rich suitor if he can buy you a gown as beautiful as that,” she said, amused. “Is he the same one who gave you that pretty piece of jewelry after Easter?” When Margarethe did not reply, she dismissed the subject. “Well, never mind. It’s not suitable for a hawking expedition anyway.”