The Castle of Kings

by Oliver Pötzsch

  Agnes closed her hand around the little piece of parchment. Getting to her feet, she went to the library door, her thoughts still hard at work. Father Tristan had lied to her, probably several times. Just before her father’s death, for instance . . .

  Pursing her lips, Agnes hurried down the steps of the tower and out into the yard, where the surprised guards hastily rose and bowed again. But the new Countess von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck, mistress of Trifels Castle and daughter of the knight Philipp von Erfenstein, took no notice of them.

  Agnes had to talk to Father Tristan, and soon.

  ✦ 15 ✦

  Eusserthal Monastery, 8 April, Anno Domini 1525

  DAWN WAS BREAKING WHEN THE peasants attacked Eusserthal monastery, just before Lauds, the first divine office of the day.

  The sun was still hidden behind the treetops of the forest, announcing its imminent rise with a tinge of reddish light on the horizon. It lent a glow to the sandstone of the monastery building—it reminded Mathis of blood.

  All the blood that will soon be shed here, he thought. And not the Savior’s blood transformed into wine, but real, spurting blood.

  In the faint light of dawn, the usually beautiful valley that lay hidden between two chains of hills suddenly seemed strange and uncanny, like a pit full of murderers. There were about a hundred men lurking behind low brushwood and hawthorn hedges, listening for their leader’s command. Shepherd Jockel had not waited for the band from the country around Dahn and Wilgartswiesen to join them. Mathis suspected that he wanted to present the others with a situation showing who, in the band they were forming together, had the last word. A leader who could offer his allies a camp in a monastery with cellars full of provisions could be sure of many supporters.

  Mathis looked to right and left, seeing the determined faces of peasants and laborers, sooty charcoal burners, ragged shepherds, cowherds, knackers, and journeymen millers; there were even a few Annweiler citizens among the insurgents. As weapons, they carried scythes, threshing flails, spears, sickles, and rusty daggers. Many of them did not even possess shoes but had only rags to wrap around the chilblains on their feet. Their leather hose were torn, their bearded faces gaunt with hunger and want. Mathis had no illusions: as soon as these men met the fat monks, with their full larders and richly adorned altars, greed would carry them away like a raging torrent. It was true that Mathis himself, Ulrich Reichhart, even Shepherd Jockel had warned the peasants against unbridled excess—after all, they wanted to be able to use the monastery as an army camp once they had taken it—but he had only to look into their eyes to know there was no prospect of their paying any attention to that warning.

  They had the eyes of hungry wolves.

  At a whistle from Jockel, a vanguard party of about a dozen men ran, bending low, to the gatehouse with its two massive oak doors. The monastery lay in a large clearing, near several peasants’ cottages whose inhabitants had joined the revolt, whether they had wanted to or not. The monastery buildings themselves were surrounded by a wall nine feet high with a gatehouse on the western side. A small stream had been diverted to flow directly into the monastery, at a point roughly where the flat roof of the metal-casting workshop showed behind the wall. Once again, Mathis felt his conscience prick him. The monks had let him cast the heavy cannon within their precincts, they had put their furnaces at his disposal, and they had been as helpful and obliging as on the earlier occasion when he had watched the bell being cast. On the other hand, Mathis had seen their lavish way of life, while peasant children were starving only a stone’s throw away.

  It is as it is, he thought gloomily, and I can’t change it now. I can only try to prevent more people from dying than is absolutely necessary.

  In the light of dawn, Mathis now saw a peasant directly below the wall throwing a hook through the air on the end of a rope. The hook caught in the wall, and four of the men climbed the rope in silence. They made their way along the wall to the battlements above the gatehouse. Mathis heard several dull sounds and muted screams, and then a lifeless body fell from the wall to lie before the entrance. Soon after that, both halves of the heavy door swung open, and the peasants, who had been waiting anxiously in the undergrowth, ran across freshly sown vegetable beds and fallow fields to the monastery.

  At that moment the high sound of a bell came from the gatehouse. It rang several times before abruptly falling silent.

  “Damn it!” swore Shepherd Jockel, still waiting behind the hawthorn hedge with Mathis. His two bodyguards, Paulus and Jannsen, and the old master gunner, Reichhart, were lurking there beside them. “The second gatekeeper has managed to raise the alarm. I told the fools a hundred times to cut both men’s throats at once. Now half the monastery will be roused.”

  And indeed, another bell soon rang, while loud shouting and the noise of fighting came from behind the wall. Mathis ran to it without paying any attention to the others. He had meant to hold back from the looting of the monastery, but now it was a case of preventing the worst of it. As he ran, he looked back for Shepherd Jockel, who was still watching from behind the hedge. After some hesitation, he too began to run, shouting as he drew the shining sword that he had taken from a marauding landsknecht. His two bodyguards stormed forward with their spears, and finally they were followed by Ulrich Reichhart.

  “Down with the clerics and their ilk!” cried Jockel. “Kill them all!”

  Mathis cursed quietly. This went against their agreement to conduct the attack with as little bloodshed as possible, if only to avoid infuriating the duke of Zweibrücken unnecessarily, bringing an early intervention by his landsknechts down on them. Now he got the impression that Jockel was positively anxious for a bloodbath.

  When Mathis raced through the open gate toward the monastery, the fighting was in full swing. Several lifeless monastery servants and two monks were lying bent double on the ground outside the church, and there were also some peasants among the dead. A tall, broad-shouldered giant in the white habit of the Cistercians was fighting with a broken-off spit against three of the insurgents at once. He was bleeding from several wounds, reciting an Ave Maria at the top of his lungs in the morning light as he ran the spit into the side of one of the peasants. Horrified, Mathis recognized the usually kindly Brother Jörg, who had helped him to cast the cannon last year. Mathis stepped into a warm pool of blood. Looking straight ahead, he ran on to the dormitorium, where the monks had their cells. Maybe he could save at least a few lives.

  There was already fighting outside the dormitorium, a large red sandstone building next to the church. Three men on an upturned cart were fighting with swords against the attacking peasants. In the last few decades, the monastery had been raided again and again, and the Cistercians had employed a series of men-at-arms—men such as these, now desperately opposing the attackers. But it was only a question of time before they were all massacred.

  Mathis ran past two men fighting each other with daggers on a dunghill steaming in the cold, ducked away from a stone thrown from the shadows, and entered the building that he knew from previous visits. A few cheering peasants came toward him, heavily laden with candlesticks and all kinds of glittering loot. From somewhere, Mathis smelled smoke.

  When he turned the corner, he finally found himself in the passage leading to the separate cells where the monks slept. Most of them were open. Monks passed him, wailing. Some of them were kneeling to pray, others already lay lifeless and bleeding among their brothers.

  “Never fear!” Mathis called loudly, realizing at the same moment how ridiculous those words must sound, in view of the surrounding horror. Nonetheless, he went on. “If you do as I say, no harm will come to you.”

  Briefly, the monks stopped lamenting and stared at him anxiously.

  “I know you, don’t I?” said one of them at last, a particularly corpulent Father whose voluminous white habit was stretched taut over his belly. “You’re the son of the smith at Trifels Castle.” His face distorted into a mask of hatred. “God curse
you. You and your murderous band.”

  “God will judge me later,” retorted Mathis. “Maybe he won’t be so hard on me if I save the lives of some of his servants first. Follow me. Anyone who stays here is a dead man.”

  For a few instants the monks stayed where they were, undecided, muttering and praying. But Mathis had already hurried on. Finally, they ran after him, some of them helping their injured brothers, dragging them along the corridor, where the smell of burning was getting stronger. The first sheds and stables were on fire, and smoke billowed up from the metal-casting workshop as well.

  If those fools out there carry on like this, we soon won’t have a camp for our band at all, thought Mathis.

  He turned left and had soon reached the portal leading to the cloisters. The square courtyard, surrounded by columns, linked the main building to the church. Mathis stepped into the secluded square. A marble fountain burbled in the middle of it, and stone benches between the columns invited one to sit down. For a brief moment the fighting and killing seemed to be very far away, but then a long, drawn-out scream was heard coming from somewhere, and the monks cried out and again fell to their knees.

  “Get to the church,” Mathis ordered. “They won’t dare touch you there. And then you can go on praying, for all I care, but hurry up.”

  He ran across the square of the cloisters to a low door, opened it, and shooed the terrified Cistercians into the church. It had a nave, two aisles, and glazed windows through which red light now came. It took Mathis a moment to realize that it was not the light of sunrise, but of fires. The peasants had indeed set fire to the surrounding outbuildings of the monastery, the granaries, storehouses, and barns. Shouts of jubilation could be heard in the distance.

  They’re burning their new home. And when the fires have gone out tomorrow, we’ll be cold and hungry again.

  When Mathis turned his head to the altar, he suddenly saw the fat abbot of Eusserthal standing there. Weigand Handt was regarded as a poor administrator who owed his position solely to his noble birth. He was the third son of a count from the Baden area, and he exploited the resources of the monastery to enrich himself. Only Father Tristan’s expert bookkeeping had kept the abbot from disgrace. At this moment, Father Weigand was throwing assorted silver candlesticks, golden goblets, and brocade-and-gem-covered jewelry boxes into a sack.

  “Drop that sack if you value your life,” Mathis snapped.

  The big-bellied abbot jumped. When he saw who it was addressing him, his mouth twisted into an ingratiating smile.

  “Ah, the young master gunner,” he croaked. “I didn’t expect to see you here, after all we’ve done for you.” He ducked his head, like an animal at bay. “But I’m sure you’ll see that they let me go, won’t you?”

  “If you leave that sack here, I’ll put in a good word for you,” Mathis said reluctantly.

  The abbot looked at him in alarm. “But . . . but these are the holiest of relics,” he stammered, running his tongue nervously over his fleshy lips. “They must be saved from the flames. Would you go against the will of God?”

  Mathis gave him a thin-lipped smile. “I had no idea that silver candlesticks were holy relics. And what about the coins there in your sack? Did St. Peter himself give them to the monastery?” He indicated the brimming purse from which recently minted golden guilders clinked as they fell to the floor.

  “Those . . . those are donations made by God-fearing folk,” stuttered the abbot. “I—”

  “Then they should be used for the good of other God-fearing folk. Put the sack down.”

  Abbot Weigand’s shoulders drooped. For a moment it seemed like he was going to do as Mathis said, but then he suddenly shouldered the heavy sack and ran to a door beside the altar. Mathis hesitated. Ought he to go after the abbot and leave the monks to their fate? As he was still thinking it over, whimpering came from the other side of the small door, and then, finally, a shrill scream that stopped abruptly.

  The door flew open, and in came Shepherd Jockel and his two bodyguards. The shirts of the two former vagabonds were wet with sweat and blood, and their faces blackened with soot, so that they looked like the devil himself. Jannsen wiped his long dagger on his coat, while Paulus flung the abbot’s sack over his own shoulder. Shepherd Jockel stood between them with his arms folded, grinning at Mathis.

  “Well, fancy that! Here’s Mathis in the church,” he said in a voice that echoed through the large building, so that even the monks farther away would be bound to hear it. “You must have a good nose for the whereabouts of a fat rat like the abbot. My compliments.” He winked at Mathis. “Although you almost let him get away. It’s a good thing we picked him up out there. The swine actually begged for mercy before he died. But he couldn’t expect any pity from us.” Shepherd Jockel spat on the consecrated ground. “Did he ever have mercy on the poor himself? A few crusts of moldy bread for the poor, and gold for the clergy. But that’s all over now.”

  He held out his hand to Paulus for the heavy sack and greedily searched its contents. “What do you think, Mathis?” he chuckled. “How many arquebuses can be bought with this? How much gunpowder? We’ll be able to blow Speyer cathedral sky-high if we want, won’t we?”

  “I hope that won’t be necessary,” replied Mathis curtly.

  Now the great west door opened as well, and the peasants entered the church in silence. Mathis noticed some of them taking off their caps. Others surreptitiously made the sign of the cross.

  They’ll never dare to kill the monks in here, he thought. Not beside the font where their own children were baptized.

  The monks, still uninjured, about ten or them, were now kneeling at a side altar in front of the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, peering in trepidation at the peasants. There was a pregnant silence in which only the sound of the flames from the nearby outbuildings could be heard.

  Jockel strode firmly toward the stone pulpit that stood several feet high beside the chancel. He climbed the marble steps, placed his hands on the parapet, and looked down on his dirty troop of peasants like the proud commander of an army.

  “Friends, brothers, we have won a victory,” he announced, his voice ringing through the large church. “But it is only the first of our victories. Many others will follow. The power of the nobility and the church is over at last.”

  The men shouted and cheered, and only now did many of them seem to cast off their awe of the consecrated building entirely. They stamped their feet, raising their sickles and scythes into the air.

  Now Shepherd Jockel pointed to the band of monks crouching in front of the altar to the Virgin like frightened lambs. “These clerics drank your wine, they ate your bread, they slaughtered your calves,” he cried. “You obediently paid your tithes to the church year in, year out, yet your children went hungry while these fat monks in their white robes lived like lords.” All of a sudden he tipped the contents of the sack over the parapet of the pulpit, sending the silver candlesticks, goblets, and coins crashing to the floor. “They stole all this from you,” he shouted. “And now they must have their due punishment. So I say, hang them! Hang them high from the windows of their church, so that their fellow brothers in other monasteries can see what happens to those who have stolen from us for so long.”

  Once again the men cheered him, but not so wholeheartedly this time. Mathis saw a number of them glancing around anxiously. Ulrich Reichhart, standing at the back of the crowd, shook his head and made a disapproving sound. The wailing and praying of the monks rose to a single litany of lamentation.

  “Be quiet, all of you. Be quiet, I say!”

  Mathis had raised his voice without actually intending to. Now all the men were looking expectantly at him.

  They want me to tell them what to do and what not to do. Damn it, why didn’t I keep my mouth shut?

  “We have done all that we intended,” he went on, feeling his way. “We have captured the monastery, the larders and cellars are ours and the church treasures too, and the abbot has
met with his just fate. Now let’s show these bloodsuckers how true Christian folk behave. They show mercy.”

  A murmur went through the body of the church.

  “Our enemy is not God,” Mathis went on, in a stronger voice. “It is the Roman church that oppresses us. The pope and his cardinals and bishops. As Martin Luther has said—”

  “Luther’s no better than the rest of the clergy,” Shepherd Jockel roughly interrupted him. Speaking from the pulpit above them, his voice was much louder and more audible than the voice of Mathis. “Oh yes, he promises you the kingdom of heaven, but only if you’ve been meek and mild here on earth. The man Luther is hand in glove with the elector of Saxony; he’s not one of us, he’s one of the oppressors.”

  “And so are we, if we act as they do,” Mathis protested, turning almost pleadingly to the peasants standing around. “I tell you, if we hang these monks we’re not a whit better than that accursed Mayor Gessler, who’s burning in hell now for his evil deeds.”

  That last remark aroused more discussion among the men. Mathis saw them nodding, and angling their heads together. Jockel’s fingers clutched the parapet of the pulpit. His eyes roamed uneasily over his followers down below. He clearly felt his control over them slipping slowly away.

  “If we let these monks go, they’ll run to their bishop and tell him we are craven, a soft touch,” he tried again, this time in a milder tone. “Friends, we can’t show any mercy or we have no prospect of victory. We must—”

  “I’ve killed three men in the last hour,” Ulrich Reichhart interrupted him. “That’s enough for me. I want no more blood on my hands.”

  “Not all those monks were bad,” said another man, an old man, trembling as he leaned on his scythe. “Think of Father Tristan. He cured so many of us with his medicines.”

  “Brother Emanuel always had a bit of bread for our children,” pointed out a younger peasant. “And now he’s lying out there in his own blood. That can’t be right.”