The Castle of Kings

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “A noble maiden does not go hawking,” Margarethe replied coolly. “She sews and does embroidery. And waits for a lover to come along.”

  Looking at her maid, Agnes thought, once again, of Margarethe’s appearance. She was a thin woman with a rickety look, and there were deep lines at the corners of her mouth that gave it a rather bitter expression.

  Like an old maid, thought Agnes. It’s certainly time she found a husband, and I ought not to stand in her way.

  Suddenly she gave a start.

  What in God’s name . . .

  Agnes felt her heart miss a beat. The silver clasp in Margarethe’s hair seemed to her strangely familiar.

  “Where did you get that?” she asked sharply, pointing to the ornament.

  In alarm, Margarethe took a step back. “It . . . it was a present.”

  “A present from your suitor?”

  Margarethe nodded defiantly. Small red patches showed on her thin throat.

  “What did you give him for it?” Agnes persisted.

  The lady’s maid frowned, but Agnes could tell that Margarethe was only pretending to be puzzled. “What do you mean?” she asked. “I’m afraid I don’t understand . . .”

  “You understand me very well.” Agnes was on her feet now. She had always been a little taller than Margarethe, and now she looked angrily at her maid, who seemed to writhe like a worm in front of her. “I’ll tell you what happened,” she went on, with a cutting edge to her voice. “There was a man who made eyes at you. He invited you to drink wine with him, he gave you money for that dress. But he wanted something in return, didn’t he?” Her forefinger was boring into Margarethe’s bodice. “You told him when Gunther and Sebastian would be going to Neukastell with the tithes. And later you told the same man what firearms Mathis was forging.”

  “How dare you suspect me of such things!” Margarethe retreated to the wall, her arms crossed defiantly over her breast. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  “It’s you who ought to be ashamed.” Agnes came over to her and snatched the silver clasp from her hair. “Silver, like Judas’s reward, and it’s given you away. Do you even know what it is? This clasp used to be my mother’s. A few weeks ago, my father added it to the coins that the castellan of Neukastell was to receive. Because he didn’t want to squeeze our peasants for more money.” There was incredulous horror in Margarethe’s eyes now. She started shaking all over, and her formerly crossed arms fell to her sides.

  “You can’t have known that, because you’ve never seen the clasp before,” Agnes went on, scarlet with rage. “But I’ve known it since my childhood. Your suitor gave it to you after the tithes were stolen, presumably to get more details out of you. Isn’t that so? You . . . you snake in the grass!”

  By now Margarethe had slipped down to the floor, with her back to the wall, and had her hands in front of her face to ward off blows.

  “Please, please don’t tell your father!” she begged. “It wasn’t what you think. I didn’t know that man was one of Wertingen’s people. He was well dressed, like a good craftsman. And he gave me wine—a lot of wine. After that, I swear, I don’t know just what I told him.”

  “But all the same you went on meeting him and told him even more,” snapped Agnes. “You ought to have been suspicious when Wertingen’s men knew about the money being delivered and killed Sebastian.”

  Margarethe sat hunched up, her voice a mere whimper. “I didn’t want to believe it,” she said. “I thought here at last was the man to take me away from this place. I thought I could sit beside a fire in a nice house with him, have a couple of children in my arms . . .”

  Agnes left Margarethe to her tears, coolly examining her.

  “I could almost believe you were that stupid,” she said at last. “I’d like to believe it, if only for the sake of our old friendship. But I can’t. I think, deep down inside, you knew what you were doing. But you thought only of yourself.”

  “So suppose I did?” Margarethe had suddenly stopped crying. Defiantly, she dried her tears and straightened up. “How would you know what it’s like, waiting here for years for a man to come along? Getting older and fearing the time when it will be too late? Fearing the castellan will kick you out into the forest to die when you’re old? What do you know about real life, castellan’s daughter? What Shepherd Jockel says is true: When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”

  Margarethe had uttered those last words like a curse. Now she gathered up the skirts of the dress for which she had paid such a high price and ran out without another word. For a moment Agnes could have taken her not for a maidservant but a mistress. Then the door slammed, and she was alone.

  Still trembling with anger, Agnes sat on her bed and tried to calm down. Margarethe had the death of Sebastian on her conscience, and perhaps, soon, the deaths of many others—now that Black Hans presumably knew all about the firearms Mathis had been making. But had she really acted intentionally? Could Agnes tell her father how Margarethe had betrayed them? The penalty for treachery was death in its worst form: traitors were quartered, impaled, or boiled in hot oil. What would her father do? Agnes thought of Margarethe’s last words, and all the poor peasants struggling out there, year after year, against starvation, cold, and all the injustice of the powerful.

  What do you know about real life, castellan’s daughter?

  Maybe Margarethe was right, and she was only a spoiled brat who went hawking with her falcon and dreamed of the tales of knights in bygone days. Suddenly she no longer felt like taking Parcival out into the forest. Brooding, she stared up at the ceiling, where a couple of bees, buzzing angrily, were desperately searching for a hole to slip out through.

  It was evening of the next day by the time the landsknechts and peasants had unloaded all their equipment on the plateau in front of the robber knight’s castle and set it up. The longest job was building the large wooden shields behind which Fat Hedwig and some of the other firearms were to be concealed. What made it more difficult was that Wertingen’s men had dug pits all over the empty terrain and had set some wolf traps. The day before, a peasant from Trifels had walked into one of the large metal devices, whetted until it was sharp as a knife, and now he was lying on a bed of branches in the forest, his screams reminding his companions that war was a dirty, cruel trade.

  When Mathis looked over at the newly rendered masonry of the Ramburg, he realized once again that Hans von Wertingen had prepared well for this attack. He must have been warned. Beside him, Philipp von Erfenstein was offering, for about the dozenth time, a reward for whoever told him the name of the traitor. Again and again, the old castellan inspected the progress being made on the entrenchments, while Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck spent most of the time in the shade of his tent.

  As the sun sank behind the trees again, Hans von Wertingen appeared on the battlements of his castle for the first time.

  “Hey there, Erfenstein!” he bellowed down from the tall defensive wall. “What a wretched little company you’ve scraped together. Do you really think you can take my castle with those men?”

  “The number doesn’t matter so much as whether they’re really men,” Philipp von Erfenstein retorted. “All I see up there with you is a passel of rogues.” His voice echoed over the ravaged terrain.

  “And what do you have? Lily-livered peasants and paid mercenaries. Ha! I shit on them!” Wertingen’s vassals laughed. Mathis saw half a dozen of them up on the battlements with him, armed with crossbows and longbows. Metal muzzles also protruded from some of the embrasures. So Wertingen obviously had a few firearms as well.

  “And if you think you can intimidate me with your magic fire, then let me tell you,” Hans von Wertingen went on grandiloquently, “the walls here are so thick that even your one-ton gun won’t make any impression on them, let alone your pathetic arquebuses.”

  Mathis cursed quietly. Wertingen was well informed about their artillery. That meant they must depend all the more on the
surprise factor. As ordered, the landsknechts had built up several tree trunks on the steep south side of the terrain to look like traps, including one huge trunk of about the same circumference as Fat Hedwig. Along with cannonballs, two falconets, and a little other materiel, it really did look like they planned to launch their main attack from that spot. On the more level northwestern side, however, only some tall wooden shields faced the defensive wall, giving the impression that only a few archers armed with crossbows sheltered behind them. Black Hans couldn’t possibly guess that this was where Fat Hedwig was waiting to be fired.

  Count Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck had come out of his tent. He curiously scrutinized the defenders.

  “In the old days we’d simply have starved the bastards out,” he said moodily to Erfenstein. “But I don’t have time for that. When do we mount the attack?”

  The castellan looked at Mathis, who felt his heart beat faster. It was clearly up to him to give the orders.

  “Work on the entrenchments is nearly finished,” he calmly replied at last. “We’d better wait overnight and attack at sunrise. Then I’ll have enough light.” He turned to Scharfeneck. “I suggest a few of your men stay with the peasants by the traps, putting on a fireworks display. Meanwhile Ulrich Reichhart and I will see to Fat Hedwig. The rest of the landsknechts should divert Wertingen’s attention by attacking the castle gate from the west.”

  “A mock attack?” Scharfeneck frowned. “With my well-trained men?”

  “They must believe we’re really storming the gate,” replied Mathis. “That’s why the landsknechts should try a genuine attack.”

  “Erfenstein’s peasants can do that just as well.” The young count shook his head. “I’m not risking my expensive mercenaries on an attack that’s only meant to be a sideshow.”

  “But the peasants will be defenseless against their weapons,” said Mathis angrily. “That’s plain murder. They have no experience of warfare.”

  Scharfeneck shrugged. “That’s why they’re dispensable. I’ve said all I have to say. The peasants can attack the gate, my men will remain in the background.”

  “But . . .” Mathis began again. However, a strong hand coming down on his shoulder stopped him.

  “I’ll lead the peasants,” said the old castellan firmly. “I brought them here, so I will ensure that they go home to their families safe and sound.” He paused, thoughtfully. “Most of them, at least.”

  Then he turned away and went over to the tent. “And now to oil my armor for the last time,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. “It’s been a few years since Guinegate.”

  Tired and hungry, the midwife Elsbeth Rechsteiner crouched on a jetty, looking out over the cloudy waters of the Rhine. To the west, the sun was just setting behind the mountains, and evening brought cool weather that made Elsbeth shiver. She pulled her threadbare shawl around her shoulders and then looked back at the wooded hills rising beyond the plain of the river from which she had fled like a hunted beast two days ago. But here, on the bank of the Rhine, her journey had been forcibly interrupted, for the last ferry to the opposite bank had left several hours earlier. The local peasants had told her that the next boat would not cross the river until dawn. She must wait until then.

  Wait in fear, wondering if the pursuer was already on her heels.

  Elsbeth Rechsteiner shivered under her thin woolen shawl. She had suffered severe pangs of conscience since the Brotherhood’s last meeting in the forest clearing. Had it really been right to place the fate of the empire in the hands of unknown monks of some kind? Who knew whether they might not use the document for purposes of their own? If the order was dissolved, not a soul would know where the parchment deed was. So Elsbeth had decided to share the secret with one other person, an old and wise friend. Let him decide when the time to reveal it was ripe. After that, Elsbeth had felt easier in her mind at last.

  But then something terrible happened: as she was going to slip back into her niece’s house in Waldrohrbach that night, someone had already been there asking about her—that black-skinned stranger who had already lain in wait for her once before. Elsbeth could not say whether he had found his way to her by himself or with the aid of a treacherous member of the Brotherhood. Ultimately, it made no difference.

  Since then, the midwife had been on the run.

  Exhausted and hungry, the old woman rubbed her sore toes while the evening mist slowly closed in. Broad rafts and barges lying deep in the water passed her. She heard soft music coming from one of the boats. The air smelled of waterweeds, fish, and peat fires. The other bank was only about fifty yards away, but in the gathering dusk, all that Elsbeth could see of it was a black strip of land. About a quarter of a mile farther on, she saw the soft lights of a village: Dettenheim, where her cousin lived. There would be a warm place for her to sleep and a steaming bowl of stew waiting for her there. Once over the river she would soon make it there.

  Elsbeth was about to dip her sore feet in the cool water of the Rhine when she heard the crunch of footsteps on the path behind her. Turning around, she saw a single black-clad figure coming down the broad access path to the river. It might be only another traveler who, like Elsbeth, had missed the last ferry of the day, but something made the midwife hold her breath. Only after a while did she know why the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end.

  Not only was the man’s cloak black, so was his face.

  With a cry of terror, Elsbeth jumped up and ran off the jetty, into the reeds. The stranger hesitated for a moment and then quickened his pace. The midwife ran along the bank, where a narrow towpath followed the river. The reeds here were as tall as a man, and soon she could not see whether the pursuer was still following her. He was indeed the black devil who had been after her for weeks to get the secret of the order out of her.

  Elsbeth Rechsteiner stood where she was for a moment, gasping for air, and listening. Not far away, she heard the reeds rustling, and the sound of muted footsteps on the marshy ground.

  The stranger was following her.

  She went on along the towpath, praying soundlessly to all the saints. Had the black man’s henchmen tracked down the other members of the order as well? Then it occurred to Elsbeth that, besides her, only the head of their order knew about the monastery to which, she supposed, he was on his way at this moment.

  And then of course there is a third person who knows, she suddenly thought. By Our Lady, I never ought to have passed the information on. They will torture us and find out the hiding place. More than two hundred years of silence, over so many generations, and now it’s all over.

  Gasping, she ran through the reeds, while their rustling could still be heard behind her. That sound came closer. Suddenly the path ahead of her branched into two even narrower paths. She decided to take the right-hand path and stumbled on, until all at once she was on the edge of a crumbling dock. Ahead of her lay the broad black ribbon of the Rhine, behind her the reeds swayed in the last faint light of the evening sun. Elsbeth Rechsteiner gritted her teeth to keep from screaming.

  She had run into a dead end.

  Only a little later, the reeds parted, and the black man stepped out of them. In the dark, he looked even more surreal than when she had seen him outside her hut. When the stranger saw her, he raised his hands in a reassuring gesture and smiled.

  “What a delightful surprise,” he said slowly. His voice was hoarse from chasing her, and he had a strange accent. “So what your pretty niece in Waldrohrbach told me in exchange for a bag of coins was true.”

  Elsbeth closed her eyes, whimpering quietly. Could Sophia really have given her away? Her husband, a carpenter and a drunk, had an injured leg and hadn’t been able to work for weeks. Their children were going hungry. But would she have gone so far as to hand her own aunt over to this devil?

  “You must not be angry,” said the black man, as if he could read her thoughts. “She could not pay the rent, those brats of hers were wailing most pitifully. A
nd I promised her I would not hurt you. At least, not if it could be avoided.” He shrugged with an air of boredom. “All I want is for us to talk a little. Is that so difficult?”

  The midwife looked at him with a stony expression, although her breath was still coming fast after the chase. She had been running away from this stranger for weeks. She had given the ring away, she had warned the order, the deed had been taken to a safe place—but none of it had done any good.

  He knows, she thought. He knows what happened in the past. Someone must have given the secret away to him. What a mercy that I didn’t tell the Brotherhood everything . . .

  Elsbeth Rechsteiner made her decision. She closed her eyes and murmured a last prayer.

  “Sanctus Fridericus, libera me, libera me. Vade satanas . . .”

  Then she jumped.

  “Maldito, estupida gallina!”

  The stranger swore out loud in a foreign language and then strode to the end of the landing stage. Looking up through the surface of the water, Elsbeth saw his face blurred, distorted like a diabolical mask, dissolving into oily streaks. Finally it was gone, and the midwife felt herself drifting almost weightlessly down the river. Like a bird, like the falcon to which she had entrusted the ring, she was flying away. She opened her mouth for a final prayer, and water streamed into her lungs. Briefly, a terrible pain overcame Elsbeth, but it soon gave way to deep contentment.

  She had not told the secret.

  The attack on Ramburg Castle began shortly before sunrise.

  The woods at the foot of the hill were still deep in darkness, with the first faint touch of red in the sky showing only above the tops of some tall beech trees. It was the time when the birds began singing their dawn chorus. Then the first shot rang out over the terrain around the castle. Another followed, then another, and the peasants, who had been hiding behind trees until now, ran toward the castle gate, shouting. Philipp von Erfenstein strode ahead of them, bellowing orders. The surprise tactic seemed to be working; at least, so far no guards had appeared on top of the walls.