The Castle of Kings

by Oliver Pötzsch

  He looked cautiously around, and then suddenly hauled Agnes over the short distance to Mother Barbara’s cart, which stood a little way from the campfire.

  “Get in there!” he hissed at her. Still with his knife to her throat, Samuel climbed the few steps up to it, and flung Agnes down inside the cart. Satan nimbly followed them, made his way along the poles holding up the canvas cover, and watched from that vantage point to see what would happen next.

  “Old Barbara is dead drunk again,” Samuel said, giggling so close to her ear that she could smell the sour wine on his breath. “Seen it myself. I’ll be finished with you by the time the old hag is awake, and then Marek can carve you up any way he likes.” The blade of his knife slit through Agnes’s dress, slowly cutting it apart. “I guess I ought to thank you for dealing with Barnabas,” he added. “Now I can do all the things to you I’ve only dreamed of.”

  Agnes lay there as if turned to stone. For the second time within a few minutes, she was threatened with rape. And this time there really did seem no way out. If she called for help, Marek and Snuffler would find her, if she kept quiet, Samuel would finish her off. Agnes had already seen for herself how quick he was with a knife; once, on meeting a drunken mercenary spoiling for a fight, Samuel had slit his nose and ears without another thought. This time it would be her turn.

  The blade of the knife moved on through the fabric of her dress, and was level with her breasts, when a shadowy form suddenly emerged from the darkness at the back of the cart. There was a clattering sound, and Samuel collapsed, grunting. His knife fell to the floor of the cart with a clink, while the monkey hooted furiously.

  “Now move yourshelf, girl—hic!—and get away from here fasht. If you really have Barnabash on your con . . . consciensh . . . then God forgive you.”

  It was Mother Barbara, swaying where she stood unsteadily in the back of the cart, with a heavy skillet in her hand.

  “Shhh . . . Shamuel was right,” she babbled. “I got quite tip . . . tipshy. But the fool never saw me come and lie down in my cart.” She chuckled as she stared at the lifeless form of Samuel lying at her feet. Agnes thought she saw a puddle of blood beside him.

  “Guessh why I got sho . . . sho tipshy, eh?” growled the old vivandière suddenly. “Becaushe I gave you away to Barnabash, that randy old goat. And then I feared for my immortal soul, that’s why.” Her foot nudged Samuel, and he rolled aside. “At least he won’t hurt any more women. Bloody men!” Her glance suddenly darkened, then she looked gravely at Agnes, her eyes perfectly clear. It seemed that she was rapidly sobering up. With a sudden movement, she took off her threadbare woolen shawl and handed it to Agnes.

  “Put this on, and be off,” she said. “Limp a little, and they’ll think it’s me.” She nudged Agnes and belched slightly. The sharp smell of brandy filled the interior of the cart. “I’ll look after Agathe, I pr—promise. Now, off with you before I change my mind.”

  She spat copiously, and Agnes turned away. At the entrance to the cart, however, she turned around once more.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  Mother Barbara shrugged her shoulders. “How would I know? Because you’re different? Because I can tell you don’t belong here? Because I’m drunk, and I was once young myself? So be off. I’ll count to twenty, then I’ll scream and say you knocked Samuel out.”

  Agnes nodded a goodbye. At last she climbed down the steps of the cart, while Satan screeched and gibbered like a small, angry child behind her.

  When Mathis and Melchior ran in the direction from which the scream had come, they saw, in the light shed by a campfire of some size, two men with long daggers hurrying toward them. Mathis thought they were being attacked, but the men took no notice of them and ran past. Putting out a foot, Melchior tripped one of them up, and the man fell to the ground, cursing.

  “I do apologize,” said the minstrel regretfully, “but we just heard a woman screaming. You were presumably hurrying to her aid. May I ask what has happened?”

  “No, you damn well may not,” swore the man, scrambling up. He was small, but sturdily built. Angrily, he brandished his dagger in front of Melchior’s face. “Let me by, before I dig a hole in your fancy doublet.”

  “All we want is information,” Melchior persisted. “There’s no call to be offensive.”

  “Damn you, I said—” the man began, but his companion held him back by the shoulder.

  “Let it be, Marek,” he said soothingly. “We have more important business on hand. We’ll catch up with these two later. For now let’s get our hands on Agnes.”

  Melchior raised his eyebrows. “There now, that’s the very girl we’re looking for ourselves.” Almost casually, the minstrel laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. “I’m afraid it’s high time for you to tell us more.”

  At that moment, Mathis saw an old woman limping away from one of the carts that stood not far off. She walked with a stoop, and had a woolen shawl over her head, but something about her attracted Mathis’s attention. He felt that he had seen this woman often before: her figure, the way she held the shawl wrapped around her, the tousled blonde hair coming out from under it . . .

  “Agnes!” he yelled. “Agnes!”

  Without stopping to think, Mathis ran to the woman, who stopped in amazement. At last she stood up straight and cautiously put back the shawl. Mathis laughed out loud. It really was Agnes. They had found her at last. He had followed her through all the horrors of this war, he had traveled hundreds of miles, and now she really stood in front of him, with her blonde hair, her freckles, her high, proud forehead. He could hardly believe his luck. With a cry of joy, he spread his arms wide.

  “Agnes, my God!”

  “Careful, Master Wielenbach!” Melchior screamed from behind him. Mathis turned in mid-movement to see one of the two men running toward him. The other was fighting fiercely with the minstrel, who had unsheathed his sword. Landsknechts were coming up from nearby fires.

  “Hey, you there! Sheathe your weapons!” called one of them. “Or I’ll tell the provost, and you’ll be dangling from the gallows tonight.”

  But neither Melchior nor his opponent had any intention of breaking off their fight. The other man, too, had raised his dagger, and was about to rush at Mathis.

  “Let me by!” he cried angrily. “That woman killed one of us. If you protect her, you’re guilty as well.”

  Mathis stayed where he was. He raised his hands, smiling, and waited for the man to come up to him.

  “There we are,” the man said. “I knew you’d see sense. Now, you help me to—”

  Without warning, Mathis kicked his adversary between the legs with all his might, so that he groaned and fell to the ground, like a dead branch falling from a tree. Then Mathis kicked him again.

  “I don’t know what you did to Agnes,” he said through clenched jaws, “but judging by the look of you, it wasn’t good. So just stay where you are if you want to keep your teeth.”

  Then he hurried over to Agnes, who was still beside the cart, motionless with shock. Now, at close quarters, she suddenly looked very small and vulnerable. It was less than two months since their last meeting, but she seemed to Mathis far older and more mature, although also sadder than before, like something in her had broken.

  “Mathis . . .” she stammered. “You? Here? But, but . . .”

  “I’ll tell you all about it, Agnes,” Mathis said, hugging her tightly for a brief moment. “All about it. But not now. We have to get away from here.”

  “My own opinion exactly.” Melchior approached them, sheathed his blood-stained sword, and pointed behind him, to where an ever larger crowd was gathering in the light of the campfires. There were men, women, and children, but also several armed men with long spears who obviously worked for the provost, helping keep order within the ranks. They were shouting, and swarming in all directions, carrying burning torches and lanterns.

  “Our opponents obviously have friends who are not especially well disposed to
us,” the minstrel went on. “How many landsknechts in this camp? Ten thousand? Yes, it’s high time for us to say goodbye. Allez!”

  Mathis took Agnes by the hand and the three of them ran past the tents, the carts, the crackling fires, and then on into the nearby wood, until at last the hue and cry behind them began to die down and finally fell entirely silent.

  ✦ 21 ✦

  Trifels Castle, 14 June, Anno Domini 1525

  AT TRIFELS CASTLE, SHEPHERD JOCKEL sat on his throne, dispensing justice.

  Two peasants knelt before him with their heads bowed, humbly waiting for his verdict. Crows flew past the empty windows, cawing as though they expected good pickings in the near future. Otherwise silence reigned, a silence that was almost tangible in the cold, sooty walls. Around the throne, which was made of woven willow, leather, and furs, stood about a dozen more men, waiting grimly with their arms crossed to hear what Jockel had to say. The peasants had introduced this sham court a few weeks ago, to show that they were their own masters. But, from the first, they had addressed no one but Shepherd Jockel as master.

  He was toying with a silver goblet set with semiprecious stones, acting as though he was weighing up the case, but he had come to his decision long ago.

  “You made off by night in secret, without permission of the Peasants’ Council, even though we may be about to face the last battle, the one that will decide everything,” he said in a low, firm voice, while he looked at the sparkling goblet in his hands. “What have you to say for yourselves?”

  “Sir,” began one of the two accused men submissively. He wore a torn, threadbare shirt over his thin chest and nervously kneaded his broad-brimmed hat. “I . . . I really don’t know what battle you mean. But battle or no battle, we have to think of our fields at home. The wild boar have been rampaging all over them, trampling on everything, there was a terrible storm that blew down the barns, our wives and children just can’t manage alone any longer.”

  “So you thought you’d leave your comrades in the lurch, and kill a few wild boar instead of the league’s landsknechts?” Jockel asked with an innocent expression. Some of the men standing around laughed quietly. “You tell me what I’m to make of that.”

  “It would only have been for a few days,” muttered the other peasant. He stared at the flagstones on the floor, which were covered with bones, animal droppings, and leaves, as if he could look straight through a hole there and see hell. “After that we’d have come back again for sure.”

  “And suppose the elector of the Palatinate and his men had turned up here first, eh? Did you stop to think of that, you two numbskulls? Did you think not of yourselves for once, but of our common cause, damn it?”

  Jockel had risen to his feet. He threw the goblet straight at the crouching peasant with the broad-brimmed hat. It hit the man right on the forehead, and he collapsed, whimpering.

  “We can’t give in now!” Jockel shouted. “Not now! That’s what they expect us to do—go back to our fields so they can slaughter us one by one. What you did was no less than cowardly desertion.”

  “In the town of Zabern in Alsace, they massacred thousands of us,” ventured one of the dozen or so peasants in the great hall, doubtfully. “Don’t get me wrong, Jockel, we have courage. But how about our wives and children?” When a couple of the other bystanders nodded, he went on more firmly. “They even killed the babies in Zabern. And the landsknechts took the women away as their whores. It doesn’t look good for us here in the Palatinate, either. More and more towns and cities have been giving up, now that Würzburg’s fallen into the hands of the enemy, and the elector here began sending his troops against us. In Speyer the bishop and the citizens have joined together, and over in the county of Neuscharfeneck the peasants live in fear of the old count sending a punishment battalion. Maybe this is the time to negotiate, before there’s nothing left to negotiate about.”

  He paused for effect, and Jockel nodded mildly, like he took the man’s point. He must go to work cautiously now.

  “I see. Negotiate,” he said at last, leaning back in his throne. “Not a bad idea. That’s what the peasants did in Zabern, too. The duke of Lorraine promised them safe conduct. So they came to the city gates without weapons. And then what?” The men looked at him expectantly, and Jockel sighed. “Then the massacre began. Almost twenty thousand of us, slaughtered like cattle. Twenty thousand. Is that what we want? To negotiate?”

  The peasants around the throne murmured quietly. Jockel could feel that he had them in the palm of his hand again. Recently he had found it harder and harder to keep his men under control, even though it had all begun so promisingly. After the discovery of the tunnel, storming Scharfenberg Castle had been child’s play. Unfortunately Jockel had not been able to keep his men from burning and plundering the castle. With all the robbing, drinking, and eating, Count Scharfeneck had slipped through their fingers, and with him a good sum of ransom money. Jockel had been furious and ordered two of the worst drinkers to be whipped.

  The peasants had not been so destructive the next day, when they took Trifels Castle, which was poorly guarded. Jockel had a suitable headquarters at last. Since then, he and his band had ruled over the entire Eusserthal area from the castle. The town of Annweiler had joined the rebellion, and paid tribute. The surrounding castles had been destroyed or were keeping quiet.

  But for some weeks, things had seemed to be changing. Elector Ludwig of the Palatinate, after initially appearing willing to negotiate, had marched against the peasants with the archbishop of Trier, and town after town surrendered or was burned. The insurgents lacked a beacon, a signal that would unite them all again. Sometimes it seemed to Jockel that he was the only one who still knew what was to be expected from a leader.

  He looked around the now filthy Knights’ House and grinned at the thought that Emperor Barbarossa might once have dined here. Now he, Shepherd Jockel, was an emperor himself, lord of Eusserthal and Trifels, with the power of life or death. He clapped his hands in a lordly manner.

  “Listen, my brothers,” he proclaimed. “Nothing is lost yet. On the contrary, only yesterday I heard news that the peasants are rising in other countries as well. In England, in France, even far away in Spain—they’re all on our side.” That was a downright lie, but the members of his audience were glad to clutch at any straw. They looked up at him hopefully.

  “But if we are going to win, we must be strong,” he went on. “Strong and unyielding. And so my judgment is that the two accused be whipped, and then put in the pillory in Annweiler, as a warning to all. That is only just.” He nodded graciously, and made a gesture that closed the matter. He had really wanted to have the two offenders hanged, but he felt that would have been going too far. However, the death sentence might be passed in the following weeks.

  When they had finally won.

  Because Jockel was still firmly convinced that the peasants would be victorious. Even if these meek lambs didn’t share his opinion. What they needed, however, was something to believe in. A symbol, a beacon under which they would unite to sweep away the rulers of this world in a mighty storm of blood.

  Jockel watched as the two sobbing offenders were dragged away by some of the other men, and then he snapped his fingers.

  “Show in the next accused men,” he ordered. “And bring me another goblet of Palatinate wine, quick as you can. Justice is a damn thirsty business.”

  A hundred miles away, a broad barge was making its way through the waters of the Rhine. It was a freighter, lying low in the water, loaded up with several dozen casks of wine and salt. The voyage was so slow that, out of sheer boredom, Agnes had taken to counting the sailboats, rowboats, and rafts coming toward them the other way. They had been obliged to put in, again and again, at the many little tollbooths erected on the riverbank by every county, every bishopric, every fief, however small. Mathis stood beside Agnes at the rail, yawning and stretching his limbs.

  “I guess it would have been faster on foot,” he sighed,
turning to Melchior von Tanningen, who had also come forward to the bow. At least you could feel a little breeze blowing there. It was nearly midday, and the sun burned mercilessly down from the sky.

  “Faster maybe, but not safer.” Melchior von Tanningen pointed to the steep mountain slopes on the left bank, densely overgrown with trees and bushes. “There may be bands of plundering peasants here, too. How are you going to convince them that you’re one of their men?”

  “Am I?” retorted Mathis gloomily. “What with all this slaughter on both sides, I’m not so sure. And the outcome of the struggle was decided long ago. It’s just that the local peasants don’t yet know that.”

  “I don’t think we, of all people, should tell them so,” said Agnes. “The bearers of bad news are always the first to lose their heads.”

  Lost in thought, Agnes was looking at the wooded bank while at the same time she wondered what might be going on at home in Trifels Castle. Was her father’s castle still standing? Had it been stormed, or even razed?

  It was now ten days since they had set off together from the Franconian village of Ingolstadt, going west. So far they had covered almost a hundred and fifty miles, on foot and by water, through a countryside still in flames. Many of the local feudal lords had torched their subjects’ villages out of revenge. Captured insurgents were beheaded, burned at the stake, torn apart by horses, or blinded. Yet there were still parts of the country where the peasants refused to give up. Some bands were stubbornly holding out in the north of the Palatinate, and near the Alps. Agnes was glad that they had reached the Rhine without being ambushed or impeded in any other way. Beyond Mainz, rumors of risings and punitive actions had gradually petered out. Nonetheless, they were still on the alert.

  To avoid unnecessary danger, Agnes had cut her hair short and wore men’s clothing. An extra coat—far too hot for the weather—hid her figure. Melchior had also acquired a plainer doublet, so that now all three of them looked like traveling journeymen or musicians. That had also helped them to buy cheap passage on the freighter now taking them to the destination that Agnes had wished to reach for so long: St. Goar.