The Castle of Kings

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “A profitable business for everyone, then,” said Agnes coolly. “Especially you and the duke.” She looked around inquiringly and at last saw her father among the men. The old castellan was laboriously dismounting from his horse. Beads of sweat stood out on his pale face, and he was shaking.

  “Father! Are you all right?” Agnes ran to give him her hand. “I didn’t know that you were wounded . . .” she began, but Erfenstein morosely pushed her aside.

  “I’m well enough,” he muttered in a slurred voice. “I need no help.”

  “Your father cut off Hans von Wertingen’s head after a single combat worthy of a knight,” said the count. “You can be proud of him.”

  “Proud of him for putting himself in unnecessary danger?” Concerned, Agnes looked at her father, whom Father Tristan was now leading up to the castle. Erfenstein was swaying and seemed to find every step hard to take.

  “I thought the battle was long over,” Agnes said.

  “It was. But yesterday morning your father decided to bring the campaign to a . . . well, a chivalrous conclusion.” Scharfeneck sighed, and watched the progress of the last crate as his men took it up to the castle. “I warned him, but he’s a stubborn man. Wertingen is dead now, yes, but your father injured one arm and a foot in the fight. He obviously has gangrene.”

  “Gangrene?” Agnes frowned. “After less than two days? That’s hardly possible. How badly is he wounded?”

  “You’ll have to ask your old monk that question. Maybe the wound became inflamed while he was dressing it.”

  “Nonsense!” Agnes said indignantly. “Father Tristan would never—”

  “Now listen, Lady Agnes,” the count interrupted, his voice suddenly unusually mild. “I don’t want to quarrel with you. Far from it. Over the last few days your father and I have had many opportunities for conversation.” In spite of his youth, Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck looked down at Agnes from his horse with an almost paternal expression. “You are a beautiful child, and I—”

  “Forgive me, Excellency, but I’m afraid your compliments will have to wait,” Agnes said as she scanned the peasants and landsknechts on the castle acres. “First I’d like to know where Mathis is. I don’t see him anywhere.”

  “Ah, the playmate you miss so much.” Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck said nothing for a moment, and then he added, with a sour smile, “I must disappoint you, lady, but the young smith would rather drink cheap brandy in the town with fellows like himself than come to see you. When I last saw him, he was on the way to Annweiler with a crowd of my landsknechts. As I heard it, they were looking for willing whores.”

  For a moment Agnes was incapable of speech. Scharfeneck used the pause to continue.

  “You must forgive him,” he said indulgently. “He’s a young man from a simple family. The kind of man whose idea of amusement is wine, women, and song. The whores will take off his bandages and . . . treat his injuries in their own way.”

  Almost fainting with fury, Agnes turned and marched up to the castle. As if through a wall, she heard the count’s angry voice behind her.

  “Devil take it, didn’t your father teach you any manners?” he shouted. “How dare you simply walk away? You won’t go until I, Count Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck, tell you to go, understand? Well, we’ll soon see an end to this kind of thing, I promise you. I’m tired of your whims and fancies, castellan’s daughter.”

  The count’s voice faded as Agnes climbed the flight of steps to the castle. Her own rage made her blind and deaf. She had been so worried about Mathis, indeed terrified when she heard of his wounds. When she had given him the carved wooden amulet before he left, she had been convinced that he did feel something for her in return. And now he had nothing better to do than make merry with whores and drunks in Annweiler. Men were all the same. It was best not to get involved with any of them.

  In her fury, she made her way up the steep path to the Dancing Floor Rock, the southernmost point of the Trifels. She was so lost in thought that she didn’t even notice someone coming quietly up behind her. Only when a wrinkled hand was laid on her shoulder did she start, uttering a slight cry. It was Father Tristan, his face gray with sorrow.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Agnes,” he said, and she could feel his hand shaking slightly. “It’s your father.”

  Agnes put her hand to her brow. Even infuriated as she was by Mathis, how could she have forgotten her father? She turned anxiously to Father Tristan.

  “His injuries?” she asked quietly. “Are they serious?”

  Father Tristan sighed. “I must admit that I hardly know what to say. I cleaned and bound up his wounds only this morning. They are not particularly deep, and I thought they were going to heal well. But now . . .”

  “Then Count Scharfeneck was right, and gangrene has set in?” Agnes asked. But the monk shook his head.

  “I’ve just removed the bandages and looked at the wounds. They are clean. But I will readily say that your father gives the impression of suffering from gangrene.”

  “Impression?” Agnes frowned. “What do you expect me to make of that?”

  Father Tristan looked cautiously around them, and then lowered his voice. “What I say now must remain between us,” he whispered. “Do you understand? If not, it could cost me my life.”

  When Agnes nodded, he went on, quietly, “Your father is feverish and has shivering fits. His heart is racing, there seems to be some paralysis on his right side. And he speaks of tingling sensations on his lips and tongue. All those are symptoms for which, to be honest, I know of only one cause.”

  “And that is . . . ?” Agnes asked hesitantly.

  “Monkshood.”

  “Monkshood?” Agnes clapped her hand to her mouth so as not to shriek out loud. The blue flowers of monkshood were the strongest poison known to Christendom. As few as five petals, or an extract made from them, could lead to death. And the plant grew in this part of the countryside. Father Tristan had warned Agnes against it when she was little.

  “You think that my father has been poisoned? But why? And by whom?”

  Father Tristan leaned very close to her. The rocky abyss yawned below them. “When we left today, he was still doing well,” he whispered. “But we stopped to rest just before the baggage train reached Annweiler. I saw your father drinking wine with Count Scharfeneck. They seemed to be celebrating something with a toast.” There was a wealth of meaning in the pause that followed.

  “You think that Count Scharfeneck poisoned my father?” Agnes stared at the chaplain in horror. “Oh God! But . . . but why?”

  Father Tristan shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t tell you why. All I know is that this strange fever set in only after we had rested on the way, and since then it has been worse with every passing hour.”

  The news was so terrible that Agnes could not even shed tears. She just stared into the void. If her father was really suffering from monkshood poisoning, there was no hope. The poison would gradually paralyze him, until at last he stopped breathing. She held Father Tristan’s cold hands tightly. Her face was white as a sheet.

  “Please, Father,” she sobbed at last. “This can’t be God’s will. Why would he allow such a thing?”

  “God allows many terrible things to happen, and we can never understand him. But maybe I am wrong, and your father is feverish only because his wounds are inflamed.”

  Agnes looked at him hopefully, but when she saw his expressionless eyes she knew that Father Tristan was trying to comfort her, nothing more.

  He gently stroked the unruly hair back from her face. “He has been asking for you,” he said gently. “You ought to go to him now.”

  Narrowing her lips, Agnes nodded. Then she straightened her back and, holding her head high, walked to the living quarters of the castle and her sick father’s room.

  While the returning fighters loudly celebrated throughout Annweiler, Mayor Bernwart Gessler sat in his study in the town hall, trying to
concentrate on his calculations in spite of the noise.

  He rubbed his temples as music and laughter came to his sorely tried ears through the closed window shutters. The municipal balance sheet was as full of holes as a threadbare rug, and some of the citizens seemed to believe that the new, higher rate of taxation did not apply to them. The duke’s courier would be here next week, and he must have all the accounts drawn up and proof against any queries by then. And those stupid fools out there could think of nothing better to do than drink and make merry.

  However, it was not just the noise that prevented Gessler from going through the accounts once more. It was also the memory of the stranger who had been there again, only yesterday, asking for more information. A letter that he brought had vouched for him as the representative of a ruling house that must be unconditionally obeyed. The man had been there three times in all, like the black-skinned devil who called himself Caspar. Gessler had been able to put them both off on every occasion, and so far neither knew about the other. But the mayor guessed that a time would come when he took the game too far. It seemed that the patience of that man Caspar, in particular, was running out. The mayor smiled to himself as he thought of what, last week, he had finally dug out of the depths of the Annweiler archives. He loved to gamble; the higher the stakes, the higher the ultimate profit.

  But then again, the higher was his own risk.

  Gessler shivered as he thought of the curious little handgun that the man Caspar had shown him last time he was there. What was it the black man had said to him then?

  I myself have seen the head of a traitor disintegrate into blood, splintered bone, and white brains . . .

  Well, Gessler was going to make one more move on the chessboard before bringing the game to an end. For there was a third party who might be interested in his find. Tomorrow he would seek that man out, and then he would see which of the three was ready to pay the most.

  Sighing, the mayor of Annweiler pushed his balance sheets and calculations aside and went over to the wall of pine veneer paneling that had a secret niche behind it. When he pressed part of a carved vine, a flap swung open, and the mayor felt around inside the little compartment until he finally had the well-worn document in his hands. Gessler felt a slight tingling as his eyes rested for about the twelfth time on the scrawled lines of writing. The document was dated 28 June in the year of Our Lord 1513, and it described an event in the countryside near Annweiler. Gessler’s predecessor, old Helmbrecht von Mühlheim, had included it in a list of unsolved robberies. One of many cases—the forests of the Wasgau were dangerous, and it wasn’t the first time that a young family had fallen victim to marauders and highwaymen. The incident many years ago was not really very remarkable—or not until two men, obviously sent here by powerful ruling houses, took an interest in it at the same time. Along with the second find, he thought, the information was worth a lot of money.

  Bernwart Gessler smiled and put the piece of paper carefully back in the niche. As he had told his two strange visitors of these last few weeks, playing for time, he had gone in search of it himself. He had asked in the right quarters and leafed through the right books. Both of those strangers were fools if they thought he was going to act as their henchman. By now Gessler was more or less sure who they were after, even if he didn’t know why.

  He closed the secret door with a click. The mayor of Annweiler went back to his desk and resumed his work, humming quietly. Arithmetic was easy now that he knew he would soon have enough money to turn his back on this filthy dump forever.

  After a while he heard a knock on the door. Looking up in annoyance, he put his quill pen down.

  “Yes?”

  The door opened, and the apothecary Konrad Sperlin came in. He had been Gessler’s secret informer for years. Only a few months ago, he had told the mayor about the meeting with Shepherd Jockel at the Green Tree Inn.

  The little man nervously twisted his shabby cap in his hands and bowed low. “Your Grace,” he hesitantly began, “you were right. That boy Mathis has indeed come back to Annweiler. He’s in the Green Tree at this very moment.”

  “Aha, in the Green Tree.” Gessler smiled. He blew sand over the parchments to blot his writing, and watched the little crystalline grains trickle to the floor. “He does seem to like that tavern. Thank you, Sperlin, that’s all.”

  Bernwart Gessler tossed his messenger a coin, which, for all his apparent clumsiness, Sperlin caught skillfully. With another bow, the apothecary went away before anyone in the town hall could see him.

  Quickly stowing away his papers, Gessler put on his coat and his velvet cap and climbed down the broad staircase of the town hall building with a smile. When he gave orders for the gates to be opened for the landsknechts, he had hoped the impudent young smith from Trifels Castle would be one of those coming to celebrate here. And obviously he had been fool enough to do so. The lad must think himself safe, but Gessler would show him who was really master of Annweiler.

  On the first floor of the town hall, the mayor turned to the guardroom on his left, where three men were on duty day in, day out.

  “Follow me. We’re going to—”

  Gessler stopped short, and the smile vanished from his face. The guards had gone, the room was empty, except for a few dice and two empty tankards standing on the table.

  Cursing, the mayor kicked the table leg with the toe of his boot, and the dice clattered to the floor. Those layabouts had actually ventured to leave their posts and go to join the celebrations. Well, he would set them straight and no mistake. Presumably they were down in the guardhouse by the lower gate, drinking with their comrades. Gessler decided to look in there, and then go on to the Green Tree with a couple of chastened guards in order to take that young rabble-rouser into custody at last. If the count’s landsknechts got in his way, a sharp command would bring them to see reason. After all, the duke himself had appointed him mayor of this town, thus giving him authority over His Excellency the count as well.

  Leaving the town hall behind, Bernwart Gessler hurried over the empty square, past the pillory, which was daubed with excrement, and on in the direction of Mühlbach, where the noise was coming from. The guardhouse lay at the end of Market Alley, not far from one of the town gates. Gessler swiftly approached the channel in which the squealing millwheels turned. Several leather skins, covered with greenish mold, were fastened to poles in the water to the right and left of a little bridge, left to soak there overnight. Even at this hour there was a smell of decay in the tanners’ quarter. Nauseated, the mayor spat into the murky water. How he loathed this town. High time to shake the dust of it off his feet.

  The door of one of the sheds on his left was wide open, and Gessler could see the pits inside, filled with tanbark fluid, or lye. The skins lay for up to three years in these stone basins, soaking in the acrid brown liquid until they were soft and supple at last. The stink of the liquid and the decomposing skins was so penetrating that the mayor had to hold his hand in front of his face.

  Gessler was going to hurry on when, near the bridge, he noticed a row of wooden posts with skins hanging from them to dry. From a distance, these frames looked like mangy scarecrows who seemed to be waving their arms. Fat bluebottles flew around them, buzzing, and the leather flapped in the wind. Surprised, the mayor stopped short.

  What wind?

  All of a sudden, one of the skins seemed to ruffle up, the leather was moved aside like a curtain, and a black figure emerged from behind it.

  “Forgive me for troubling you so late, Master Gessler,” said Caspar, “but I can reassure you, this is the last visit I will be paying you.”

  In his right hand, the black-skinned man was holding the remarkable little gun he had shown the mayor before. The muzzle pointed directly at Gessler.

  “I am afraid I am losing patience with you, Master Mayor,” Caspar went on. “The fact is, I cannot stand being taken for a fool. And my hearing is acute, very acute. Did I not tell you not to talk about my business
to anyone else?”

  “I . . . I really don’t know what you mean,” Gessler stammered. At the same moment he felt angry with himself for sounding so anxious and uncertain. Fear was the death of any negotiation.

  “You cut a pitiful figure, Mayor. Annweiler really deserves a better man in charge of it.”

  For the first time in his life, Bernwart Gessler felt that he had taken a game too far. He looked around in panic, but there was no one in sight who might help him. He heard the sound of music and laughter in the distance.

  “I . . . I have good news for you,” he croaked, slowly taking several steps backward. “I have found something in the archives.”

  “And how much did the other side pay you for that information?” asked Caspar, as he took out a little key and used it to slowly wind the weapon’s clockwork.

  Gessler flinched. “I swear by all the saints I haven’t told a soul about it,” he protested. “You’re the first, believe me. I . . . I have found the person you are looking for. Truly!” He retreated a little farther, until he suddenly felt resistance behind him. He had come up against more posts with leather skins hanging from them. The leather was smeared and slimy, and it clung to his expensive coat.

  Caspar put the key away again and pushed the trigger over the flash pan. The weapon was now loaded.

  “I tracked down Elsbeth Rechsteiner, the woman whom you mentioned to me,” he said in a dangerous voice. “Your advice was very sensible: as a midwife, she could indeed have known the name. But for some reason the good old soul jumped into the Rhine rather than have a harmless conversation with me.” He looked sharply at the mayor. “Tell me, why did she do that? What in the name of three devils did she know to make her prefer death to answering my questions?” Caspar took another step toward Gessler. “What is going on in this filthy little place of yours, Master Mayor?”