The Castle of Kings

by Oliver Pötzsch

  The devil took out a strange instrument from under his coat, a thing that looked like a tiny cannon, with a handle and a fuse, and held it to Kistler’s forehead.

  He’s stealing my soul. It was a terrible thought. This black Satan is stealing my soul, just as he did to Bernwart Gessler.

  It was too much for the old man. His heart suddenly seemed to explode. He clutched his chest, breathing laboriously, and then collapsed and lay in the stinking pool of lye. Cursing, the devil bent over him.

  “Here, what are you doing?” he said angrily. “If this is some kind of game, I can only advise you to think better of it. And now talk, you obstinate fool.”

  Kistler rolled his eyes as the devil tugged at him, preparing to drag him away to hell. He would have borne any torture, but the prospect of losing his soul made him weak. In the extremity of despair, he seized the devil’s collar and pulled him down to his own face. “St. . . . Goar . . .” he stammered. “St. . . . Goar . . . And now . . . let me . . . depart in peace . . .”

  Kistler’s heart twitched once or twice more, and then at last it stopped. As the old man moved toward a point at the end of a tunnel, a point growing brighter and brighter all the time, he was filled by the happy thought that he had escaped from Satan just in time. If at the price of the secret he had kept safe for so long.

  Then there was nothing but warmth and light, and a figure raising a hand in kindly greeting where the tunnel ended.

  It had a red beard and wore a golden crown on its head.

  Agnes held the hand of a dying peasant as a pulsating flow of blood streamed from his ruined throat. The man murmured a few indistinct words, twitched once more, and then his gaze went empty. A deep gray sky hung overhead, with flocks of crows cawing as they flew by. Agnes thought of her falcon, Parcival, and how she had taken him out hunting crows last year. That seemed a century ago, in another time, in another world.

  She gently closed the dead man’s eyes and looked at the battlefield. Dusk was already falling. Recently Agnes had seen many such scenes, but this was the most horrible so far. The golden rows of wheat that had reached to the outskirts of the forest yesterday were all trampled underfoot. The dead, the dying, and the wounded lay among them, like huge molehills. They wailed, screamed, and lowed like cattle, while the black birds circled above them, seeming to mock them with their croaking cries. Now and then the crows came down to settle on a corpse, pecking at it voraciously.

  For two weeks now Agnes, Agathe, and the robbers had been traveling with the landsknechts of the notorious Swabian League. The mercenaries they had met in Kehl had been sent to fight the league by the duke of Lorraine. Together, they were expected to defeat the peasants of Württemberg, who were on the march through the countryside, looting and burning. There had finally been a decisive battle here near Böblingen. At first the insurgents had taken shelter within a barricade of carts, but the landsknechts turned their firearms on them from a neighboring hill. Thousands of peasants had been killed as they tried to escape. The soldiers shot down those who took refuge in the tops of trees like birds.

  “Don’t stand there dreaming. If Barnabas sees you, you’ll get a beating again.”

  Agnes turned to the gray-haired woman who was limping toward her. Despite her fifty years, and her slightly stooped gait, Mother Barbara still cut an impressive figure. Her eyes were as bright as those of a girl of twenty, and she combed her ample, shoulder-length hair every morning. She had once been the most beautiful whore in the baggage train, but then an intoxicated landsknecht had broken both her legs in a fight, and now she earned her living as a vivandière. Barbara sold the mercenaries provisions and all kinds of trinkets, and she was also regarded as an experienced healer. She bound up wounds, removed crossbow bolts and leaden bullets, and had even been known to amputate legs with a bone saw. But most help of that kind came too late for the men on this battlefield.

  “Look at this.” Grinning, Mother Barbara held up a knife almost as long as a forearm, with traces of blood still on it. “Almost new, with a fine horn handle. I’ll get at least half a guilder for it. Now, hurry up. If you go on staring into space like that, half the battlefield will be plundered already.”

  Agnes nodded without a word, and went over the trampled blades of wheat to the next stiff body. As often happened these days, she and little Agathe had been sent to plunder bodies after the battle. Most of the dead were poor peasants, so there was not much to be found. But at least many of them wore good leather boots that had presumably already been stolen from a dead landsknecht. In addition, she might find scythe blades, sickles, copper shirt buttons, colored feathers from hats, sometimes silver rings or knives such as the one that Mother Barbara had just found.

  Agnes cast an anxious glance at her bag, still all but empty. If she didn’t soon find something valuable, Barnabas would fall into one of his fits of rage. Now that he wouldn’t be selling her, he had begun to fall on her like a predator. She had borne it in silence, lying unmoving as a pebble on the bed of a river with the water flowing over it. She had closed her eyes and tried to think of nothing but endless forests. At least it was soon over, and after it she had always washed herself very thoroughly. In return for her silence, Barnabas saw to it that the other men left her alone. But if she didn’t bring back enough loot, that could easily change. Fortunately, she knew herbs that prevented pregnancy.

  There were moments when Agnes imagined cutting Barnabas’s throat in his sleep. But so far her fear had been stronger than her hatred.

  The cart in which Barnabas and the others were traveling was not far from the large tent belonging to the master of the baggage train, who was responsible for keeping it in order. Agnes was still surprised by the speed with which Barnabas had adjusted to the new state of affairs. With Marek, Snuffler, and Samuel he gave a well-attended show almost every evening, featuring the monkey and the talking parrot. They had left the other bird with a tavern keeper in Kehl, taking a rickety cart and a lame old horse in exchange.

  Barnabas had joined forces with Mother Barbara. The vivandière knew what the landsknechts needed, and Barnabas’s men took it from battlefields and the surrounding countryside. Then she sold the stock from their two carts to the soldiers, at greatly inflated prices.

  The procurer had just thrown the chattering monkey a few dried plums when Agnes and Mother Barbara approached.

  “I send you off to get some plunder, and what do you come back with? Nothing!” he thundered. “What am I to do with you?”

  “I . . . I found a silver crucifix. Isn’t that something?” Agnes said.

  “Show it here.”

  She offered the crucifix to the procurer, and he examined it. “Hmm, not bad,” growled Barnabas at last. “It’ll be worth something at least. But don’t start thinking you can sell anything yourself and run away. I’ll find you if I have to search all of Swabia for you, and then you’ll wish I’d sold you to the Turks.”

  Agnes nodded in silence. She had in fact thought more than once of flight. In contrast to their time on the boat, Barnabas was not chaining her and Agathe up here, and Samuel and the other two oafs were very inattentive guards. But if she escaped, where could she go? The probability of being raped or killed out of hand by landsknechts prowling around was too great. Furthermore, Barnabas still had her ring, which he had taken to wearing on a chain around his neck. But so long as he, and the ring, kept going north, that hardly mattered.

  Because northward, on the Rhine, was St. Goar.

  Agnes gave a thin-lipped smile. Without the need for her to do anything about it herself, she was once again on her way to her real destination. Soon the day when she and Barnabas parted company would come.

  Even if I have to cut your throat, you bastard.

  She spent that night with Barnabas again, in the drafty cart with only canvas stretched over it, among casks of brandy, crockery, rusty weapons, and all kinds of junk. It smelled strongly of the old bales of leather that the procurer had stolen only today from a
tannery that had burned down.

  The smell reminded Agnes of Annweiler.

  Little Satan stared malignantly down at her from a chest, while Barnabas snored beside her. At least his intoxication had sent him straight to sleep, so that he could not molest her. She gradually fell asleep only hours later. Suddenly the rasping breath of the man beside her sounded like an old oak tree creaking in the wind, and the cart in the baggage train seemed to carry her away.

  The cart . . . she thought just before her eyes closed at last. The leather . . .

  ✦ ✦ ✦

  A jolting cart, squealing and groaning. Agnes lies at the back among bundles of tanned leather tied up in bales. She knows the smell, a mixture of mold, acid, and the forest. She has encountered it often.

  Agnes feels safe. She hums the Occitanian lullaby that her mother once taught her, and she is holding her little hand-carved doll. Finally she snuggles down into the leather and closes her eyes as the cart jolts on. Familiar voices up on the driver’s seat soothe her. A hand caresses her hair and goes on singing the song. The voices are like a soft wave on which she is gliding away.

  Coindeta sui, si cum n’ai greu cossire, quar pauca son, iuvenete e tosa . . .

  But suddenly there is shouting, the cart stops, and Agnes wakes with a start. The clink of weapons and cries of pain are heard through the thin canvas cover over the cart. A shrill voice cuts through Agnes like a knife. She knows that voice, and a great lump comes into her throat. In fear, she crawls under all the leather skins. The smell is so strong now that she feels like a little animal, a calf being dragged to the slaughter. She hears someone tear the canvas over the cart into pieces. Muted sounds now come to her ear, someone is striking the bales with a sharp object, again and again, the sounds coming closer.

  Suddenly there is another groan, a heavy body falls to the forest floor beside the cart, and a hand pulls the leather skins away from Agnes. She is very small now, very vulnerable, her eyes are closed, she doesn’t want to see the monster that is going to eat her. But the monster doesn’t eat her, it picks her up, jumps off the cart with her, and runs away. Blinking cautiously, Agnes sees the face of the kindly driver, Hieronymus. Behind her, she sees some shapes lying doubled up on the ground. Smoke rises to her nostrils, a fire crackles, but Hieronymus runs so fast that soon there is nothing but spruce and beech trees over her. Their branches stretch out long, scratchy tongues to stroke her. Blood drips from the driver’s forehead onto her face and her little dress.

  They are all dead, dead, dead . . .

  Now she hears hoofbeats, coming closer fast. Hieronymus gasps, staggers, and finally he presses a kiss on Agnes’s forehead and puts her inside the hollow trunk of an oak tree.

  “For God’s sake, keep quiet!” he whispers.

  He hesitates for a moment, and then puts a chain with a small object hanging from it over her head.

  “Your mother . . .” he begins, falteringly. “She wanted you to have this. You mustn’t lose it, do you hear? Give it only to someone you trust, and let that person keep it for you.”

  Hieronymus kisses her on the cheek for the last time, and then the man runs on without her. Soon he has disappeared among the trees. Suddenly a hoarse scream echoes through the forest. After that there is silence.

  She is alone.

  Agnes feels spiderwebs on her face, beetles scrabbling over her, the crumbling dust of rotting wood running into her nose and ears. But she keeps quiet, just as Hieronymus told her. Even when the horses trot past her, and she hears voices calling out, she keeps quiet.

  After a while it gets dark. Night is coming, the moon shines brightly in the sky, and Agnes cautiously comes out of her hiding place. She thinks of little Clara and how they always liked playing with their dolls together. One day Clara caught a bad cough, and then she was dead. She lay in a little casket, stiff and cold, and Agnes kept hoping Clara would stand up and get out of it. Just as she herself gets out of the hollow tree trunk now.

  They are all dead, dead, dead . . .

  Pale moonlight shines through the branches. She feels her way over damp moss, stumbles through brushwood, tears her lovely new dress on bramble bushes. And suddenly there is a woman in front of her, standing there like a wicked witch, with a stick in her hand and a basket on her stooped back. She bends down to Agnes, and her voice is very gentle, not like the voice of a wicked witch at all.

  “What in heaven’s name are you doing all alone here in the forest, my child?”

  Only now does Agnes begin crying. It is a quiet whimpering, but the tears flow and flow. The woman looks at Agnes’s torn dress and the blood on it, then she carefully looks around and makes the sign of the cross.

  She lifts Agnes into the basket and carries her through the forest. The gentle rocking is almost as soothing as the jolting of the cart. And while Agnes sinks down into deep darkness, as if into a pond, words keep ringing through her head.

  They are all dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead . . .

  ✦ ✦ ✦

  Agnes woke with a cry and looked around frantically.

  The forest, the witch. . . . Where am I?

  Only after a while did she realize that she was in the cart with Barnabas. Beside her, the procurer grunted and opened an eye. His breath stank of vinegary wine, drowning out the smell of leather from the tanned skins around them.

  “What is it?” he muttered drowsily. “Are the peasants attacking?”

  Agnes shook her head. Her dress was damp with cold sweat. “I . . . I just had a bad dream.”

  “Then go back to sleep, or I’ll give you something to have bad dreams about.”

  Trembling, Agnes lay back, her heart racing. The dream had been as real as the dreams at Trifels Castle. But this time she had not been Constanza, she had been herself, as a little girl of about four or five. She could feel the roughly carved doll in her hand. And in her ears she still heard the Occitanian lullaby that her mother had sung to her.

  Mother?

  In the dream, she had not seen who was singing to her and stroking her hair. Had it been her mother? Katharina von Erfenstein had died when Agnes was about six years old. Could this have been a first, early memory? Agnes stared at the cover of the cart above her and brooded. Had the other people in the dream not been imaginary at all, but real? Then who was the woman she had taken for a witch, and who was the driver? Why had the cart been attacked?

  Finally she shook her head and stretched her stiff limbs. It was much more likely that she had simply had a wild dream. No wonder, with all the killing around her, the cruelty that she saw every day. She must concentrate on the here and now. She must find a way to escape.

  ✦ 19 ✦

  Würzburg, 13 May, Anno Domini 1525

  THE MOON SHONE DOWN ON Würzburg, and Mathis was lining up the gun with the fortress of Marienberg yet again when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a flickering light. He turned and saw a peasant coming along the alleys close by, with a lighted torch raised aloft.

  “Dear God in heaven, how often do I have to say I won’t tolerate a naked flame anywhere near the guns!” Mathis said furiously. The peasant looked at him in alarm. The newly appointed chief master gunner of the Black Band pointed to several sacks of gunpowder, piled up on the ground. “A single spark, and there’ll be a mere spoonful left of you and me.”

  The weedy man muttered an apology and set off quickly to join his comrades, though not without turning for another look at the young fellow who was soon going to turn the hated fortress of Würzburg into a burning heap of rubble.

  Wearily, Mathis rubbed his eyes. With a detachment of peasants, he had been working since daybreak on the few rusty guns that the army took about with it, and he’d had only a few hours’ sleep. Over the last ten days, they had been laying waste the countryside around Würzburg, always going farther north, storming castles, forts, and monasteries, while most of the villages and towns opened their own gates to the army. The reputation of Mathis as an experienced master gunner ha
d grown with every new assault, and yet he felt no real pleasure in that. He and Melchior had asked those few landsknechts that the peasants took prisoner about a troupe of entertainers with a monkey and a parrot, but in vain. It was as if the war had swallowed up Agnes, and so the two of them had finally gone on to Würzburg with Götz von Berlichingen and his so-called Black Band.

  The rich city, seat of a bishopric, had opened its gates to the peasants after some slight hesitation, and the citizens had come out to welcome them with enthusiasm. Only Marienberg, the archbishop’s fortress, on a steep hill overlooking the river Main, was still in enemy hands. The hated Prince Bishop Konrad von Thüngen had fled to Heidelberg, and the provost of the cathedral was refusing to surrender the fortress. After heated discussion, the citizens of Würzburg and the peasants had finally decided jointly to attack Marienberg, and that meant they needed Mathis. But it was clear to him that he owed his elevated position mainly to one thing: trained master gunners were as rare in the insurgents’ army as gold nuggets in a heap of Palatinate sand.

  Mathis wiped the sweat, dirt, and powder dust from his forehead and hurried over to the next cannon. He must continue fighting for the peasants in this one battle before he could go on in search of Agnes. He had no other option: Götz von Berlichingen had described to him and Melchior, in the most graphic of terms, what happened to a gunner who deserted. Quartering was the very least of it.

  He had had most of the artillery pieces set up near the Deutschlandhaus Church in the Main River quarter of the city, where he had the best angle of fire. The fortress of Marienberg towered above him, dark and defiant. Its towers had a solid look, and its walls were strong and firm. No enemy had ever taken it. Mathis had heard that the men under siege up there had a powder mill of their own, and newly cast guns, though he had to make do with what the peasants had captured on their campaigns: artillery often bent out of shape, some of it dating from the last century.