The Castle of Kings

by Oliver Pötzsch

  The old man put his broom down in a corner and wiped his hands clean on his habit.

  “I am the dean,” he replied. “My name is Father Domenicus.”

  Then he shuffled over to the steps and climbed to the gallery, groaning with the effort.

  “Please follow me. It is indeed time for you to know more about the ring and those who have worn it.”

  The man who had introduced himself as Father Domenicus went up the steps to the gallery without turning around to look at his three companions. They followed him, hesitantly. The canon led them to a narrow door to the right of the apse, which he unlocked with a rusty key from the bunch at his waist. Then he beckoned them in. The door opened into a small room with narrow windows, through which not much sunlight could fall. A few torches burned in their holders. Gravestones were set into the stone of the floor and the walls, memorials with reliefs showing the dead, who seemed to watch Agnes. There was a musty smell, and she felt a slight draft that she could not explain.

  “This is the oldest part of the church,” said the Father, and his hoarse voice echoed through the vault. “St. Goar’s baptismal chapel. A series of great lords who had done good service to the monastery were laid to rest here.” He pointed to one of the tombstones on the wall, showing an old man with a little lamb in his arms. “For instance Friedrich von Fels, abbot of Prüm at the time when the abbey became a principality under the Staufer emperors. Next to him is Abbot Regino, who ruled the foundation during the bad times of the Norman occupation and was one of the greatest historians of his epoch. And Countess Adelheid von Katzenelnbogen . . .” With a shaking hand, Father Domenicus pointed to a gravestone let into the ground, showing an elegant lady in court dress with a veil. “She gave the monastery a large sum of money that enabled the library to be extended.”

  “Excuse me, Father,” Mathis said. “But weren’t you going to tell us about the ring that Agnes wears?”

  “Quiet, boy!” Father Domenicus’s eyes flashed at the young man. His bushy brows shook slightly in the torchlight. “Young people are always in such a hurry, they overlook what’s really important. If you want to understand all this, then kindly listen.” He took a deep breath and then went on.

  “It is not by chance that so many abbots of Prüm lie here. That mighty Benedictine abbey has always watched over this foundation. It was no less than Frederick of the house of Hohenstaufen, Barbarossa’s grandson, who made the abbey an independent principality a good three hundred years ago. However, the emperor had one stipulation . . .” Father Domenicus raised his voice, so that it filled the whole room. “Frederick was obsessed by knowledge. He was crazy about inventions, studies, written records, books, parchment scrolls—in fact everything that mankind has ever thought of. His clever mind was legendary. The scholars of that time called him the Stupor Mundi, the Wonder of the World. And he charged the abbey of Prüm with hoarding that knowledge. So the monks planned a huge library. It was to be in the middle of the German Empire, in a place that was easily accessible to travelers and could also be reached by water in troubled times. Their final choice was St. Goar.”

  “But I don’t see any library here,” Agnes objected. “I mean, if it was to be so large, where are all the rooms that would be needed, all the shelves? Not in this church, I suppose. Is it in the abbey nearby?”

  Father Domenicus gave a small smile. “As I was saying, those who hurry ahead too fast miss seeing what is essential.”

  He went over to the last memorial stone on the wall. It showed an ecclesiastical figure with an abbot’s crozier, holding a small box in his right hand. Only now did Agnes notice that the box was covered by a small plate also set into the stone. Father Domenicus pushed that aside to reveal a hollow space with a rusty handle in it. When the canon pulled the handle, there was a slight jolt, and the tombstone squealed outward. A spiral stone staircase came into view behind it, and a cold draft of wind met Agnes and the others.

  “The library is down there,” said Father Domenicus, as he took a torch from its holder on the wall. “The greatest collection of knowledge in the entire German Empire. Abbot Dieter von Katzenelnbogen had it built with his mother’s money. Now his own memorial forms the door to it.” Groaning, the old man climbed down the well-worn steps. “Come with me, and see the miracle of St. Goar.”

  Like the interior of a snail shell, the staircase wound its way deeper and deeper into the rock under the church. It finally ended at an arched gateway, with a door of solid wood reinforced with iron plates. Father Domenicus used his torch to light a sooty glass lantern hanging from a hook beside the arch. He carefully extinguished the torch, and only then did he take the large bunch of keys out from under his habit again and put one of the keys into the lock.

  “Candles and torches are forbidden in here,” he explained. “And the separate rooms through which we shall now be going are all secured with fireproof doors. If a conflagration were to break out, then at least we can confine it to a certain area. That has happened twice in the last three hundred years, and even so the loss was painful enough.”

  The door swung open. Agnes held her breath.

  All she had known before was the little library at Trifels, and once she had been allowed to visit the library of Eusserthal monastery, but this was quite different. She saw a whole universe full of books spread out before her. Shelves full of large tomes, slim leaflets, documents, letters, and parchment scrolls towered many feet above her and went on back into the darkness, where she lost sight of them. Ladders and portable steps led to the upper rows, and there were small balconies around the walls. Agnes heard a rustling sound and saw a monk with an armful of books bending low to go along a passage to her left. He said not a word, but the sound of his footsteps rang through the vault, producing a strange echo that sounded like individual raindrops falling. There was also a slight fluttering noise, like they had scared an animal by intruding.

  Meanwhile, Father Domenicus went ahead, holding up his lantern to show the full extent of the building, shelf by shelf. Agnes estimated that this hall must be over fifty yards long, and many corridors branched off among the shelves, leading to other doors. It all seemed to have been hewn out of the rock, a laborious task. Suddenly she was glad of her warm coat. It was cold as the grave down in this vault.

  “Not exactly a comfortable situation for a library,” remarked Melchior, shivering as he rubbed his hands and looked up at the high ceiling.

  “But a safe one,” retorted Father Domenicus. “The low temperature and dry air mean that the works do not go moldy. That is probably also to do with the salt that seeps out of the rock here, although we don’t know for certain. However, there is no better place to store so many books.”

  “How many are there?” asked Agnes.

  “We think about a hundred thousand. Most of them, however, are parchment scrolls and worn old records that need daily attention. Incidentally, the famous library at Alexandria had a stock five times as large. All the same, we think we can be proud of ours.”

  Father Domenicus went on past the tall shelves. Once again a single monk carrying books crossed their path, and he greeted the dean by bowing his head.

  “How is it that no one knows about this library?” asked Melchior. “You said that travelers have access to it, so why have I never heard of it before?”

  “Earlier, in the time of Frederick the Staufer, it was indeed open to all interested people. But then came the bad times when there was no emperor, and we thought it better to close our gates. These days, a few know about it again. We seek out such people, and there are more of them every year. Why not?” Father Domenicus sighed. “Since the invention of printing, books are not so special any longer. There are some in every city. That does make them less attractive to thieves, but their magic, sad to say, is also lost.”

  They had now turned off along a passage to the right and came to another door, which the dean opened with one of the keys from his bunch. The room beyond it was considerably smaller, but full t
o the roof with large volumes and parchment scrolls. Walls of books up to the ceiling divided the space into niches, corridors, and blind alleys, all in the dark. The center of the room, which was empty, contained a heavy round table, with a design of three black lions on a yellow field. Several rickety, ancient-looking folding stools were placed around it. Father Domenicus carefully put down the lantern on the table and lit a series of glass chandeliers hanging from the rock of the ceiling by chains. At last it was light enough for Agnes to stop feeling as if she’d been buried alive.

  “This is the heart of the library,” Father Domenicus began, as he walked along the bookshelves in search of something and disappeared behind a wall of shelves. “These are the books that Frederick the Staufer had read himself—or, in the case of some, had written in his own hand.” He came back with a shabby book, its cover showing a crowned king beside a griffin.

  “I know that book,” Agnes cried in surprise. As if by magic, the room seemed to swallow her voice up. “I have it too. It is the—”

  “De arte venandi cum avibus,” the dean finished, smiling. “The art of hunting with birds. Emperor Frederick II wrote it himself. This is the original, which many think was destroyed in his own time at the siege of Parma.” Lovingly, he stroked the leather spine of the book, and then put it back on a shelf and turned back to the three visitors. “But we are not here to discuss birds, but because of the ring you wear on your hand, are we not? May I examine it for a moment?”

  Rather reluctantly, Agnes took the ring off her finger. Father Domenicus brought out a glass lens from under his habit and held it and the ring close to his face, so that a huge fish’s eye seemed to be looking at Agnes. At last, satisfied, the dean nodded. “Barbarossa’s signet ring, no doubt about it. There is only this one, which can be identified by the tiny initials hidden in the beard. To the untrained eye, they look like scratches.”

  “But I thought there were many such rings,” Agnes said.

  Father Domenicus laughed. “Whoever told you so either had no idea of the facts, or was trying to hide something from you. This one ring was handed on by the Staufers from generation to generation as a sign of their power. Frederick Barbarossa himself wore it first, then his son Henry VI, after him Frederick II, and then his sons Henry, Conrad, and Manfred. They all died, and so did Frederick’s illegitimate sons, either in battle, by poison, or of sickness. When Conradin, Frederick’s grandson, was killed by the French, the ring passed to the last male descendant of the Hohenstaufen line: his uncle Enzio, who was imprisoned in Bologna for twenty years, until his death.”

  Agnes nodded thoughtfully. “My father confessor at Trifels, Father Tristan, also told me about Frederick’s descendants, although he didn’t mention the ring in that connection. I’m more and more inclined to think that Father Tristan wanted to hide something from me. But why?”

  In spite of her warm coat, she was suddenly overcome by a shivering fit. Mathis took her hand and gently pressed it.

  “Agnes found the ring near Trifels Castle,” he said, turning to the dean. “Or rather her falcon did. Have you any idea how it came to be there? Maybe it was all just coincidence.”

  “Coincidence? Oh no, I think not. Quite the opposite. But to understand that, you must first listen to a story of some length.” With a wave of his hand, Father Domenicus indicated to his guests that they should sit at the table. Then he took another large book off the shelves and leafed through it. It contained a series of colored illustrations. When the dean had found what he wanted, he placed the book on the table in front of Agnes and pointed to a page showing a handsome young man with his hair cut in the bobbed style typical of the chivalric period.

  “This is Enzio, Frederick’s favorite son, even though he was born out of wedlock,” he said mildly. “He is said to have been very like his father. Eager for knowledge, and inclined to poetry. But in his youth, he was taken prisoner at the battle of Fossalta and was kept captive in Bologna for the rest of his life. He was allowed to write letters and see visitors, but his guards took care that his meetings with those visitors never went unobserved. Except in one case . . .” Father Domenicus cleared his throat. “Well, there was a nun. Her name was Eleanor of Avignon, she was descended from the Norman nobility, and she must have been very beautiful. Enzio fell in love with her. And there was a child of their love, a daughter called Constanza.”

  “My God, Constanza!” Agnes said. She began trembling again. “The woman in my dreams.”

  “And a hitherto unknown descendant of the Hohenstaufen family.” Melchior von Tanningen took his lute off his shoulder. “What a subject for a ballad. Listen to this . . .” He was about to play his lute, but a dark look from Mathis silenced him.

  Father Domenicus looked at the minstrel with some annoyance, but finally he went on. “At the time of Constanza’s birth, the Staufer dynasty had in practice died out. There were a few members of the family, but they had been scattered far and wide, and without the ring they lacked the necessary legitimacy. In addition, Frederick II had drawn up a deed to avoid quarrels over the succession. Only the ring and the deed made their possessor the one true heir of the Staufers, whether a man or a woman. Both were in the hands of Enzio, and he passed them on to his only child.”

  “Constanza,” murmured Agnes. “Is that why she had to be eliminated?”

  Father Domenicus nodded. “Enzio knew that his child’s life was in danger. Charles of Anjou, the French king’s brother, had already had the Staufer descendants Conradin and Manfred killed. He also had Manfred’s sons imprisoned in Castel del Monte, where two of the brothers were finally blinded and went mad. Only the third managed to escape, but he, too, died, in distant Egypt, his mind deranged. Charles of Anjou was not to know about Constanza.” The dean leafed through the old book until he came to the drawing of a castle that was extremely familiar to Agnes. A shudder ran up her spine, and it was nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

  “That was why Enzio secretly sent the child to Trifels, where she grew up in anonymity as a lady’s maid,” said Father Domenicus, reading on. “Constanza herself knew nothing of her high birth. Only Philipp von Falkenstein, then the castellan of Trifels Castle, was in on the secret. And it was he who kept the ring and the deed for Constanza. In the end, and while she was at the castle, Constanza met a handsome young squire about to receive the accolade of knighthood. His name was—”

  “Johann,” Agnes whispered. “Johann of Brunswick. My God—my dreams were all true!”

  Father Domenicus looked at her in surprise. “Yes, Johann of Brunswick,” he replied at last. “A Guelph, and thus a scion of the second most powerful dynasty after the Staufers. Only at their wedding did Constanza learn about her background from the castellan. Philipp von Falkenstein solemnly gave her the ring and the deed, and she let Johann into the secret.”

  Agnes now looked as if she were in a trance as she listened to the dean’s words.

  “Constanza bore Johann a son, and they called him Sigmund,” Domenicus went on. “For a while they were happy. But then a terrible thing happened: the Habsburgs, now ruling the German Reich, heard about Constanza’s true origins. And they also heard about the child . . .” Father Domenicus sighed deeply. “Imagine: a child descended in equal measure from the two most important dynasties in the empire—dynasties that had been at loggerheads with each other in the past. And his existence came to light in the difficult time when a power struggle for the German throne was in progress among the nobility. The princes would certainly have made little Sigmund their king. The Habsburgs could not tolerate that, so they sent their henchmen to murder the young family.”

  Lost in thought, Agnes nodded. She was glad she was sitting on the rickety stool, because her legs suddenly felt as soft as butter. Mathis was still holding her hand.

  “But the three of them escaped,” she murmured. “I saw that, too, in my dreams. What became of them?”

  Once again, Father Domenicus sighed. “Johann was captured in Speyer and
beheaded. Constanza also fell into the trap set by the Habsburgs’ men. She was tortured, and then walled up alive in Trifels Castle. The Habsburgs were merciless.”

  “My God,” breathed Agnes. “And the boy?”

  “He had disappeared, and was never found. It was the same with the ring and the deed.”

  “Disappeared?” Mathis leaned over the table and looked keenly at the dean. “What do you mean, disappeared? I don’t think you would have told us this whole story if that was the end of it.”

  Father Domenicus gave a small smile. “You may be right, my young friend. Very well, the boy had not really disappeared. At the last moment, Constanza managed to hide him with a family of tanners in Annweiler, and with him the ring and the deed. She told the family the secret of her origin, and asked them to protect her son. Sigmund grew up to be an ordinary tanner. Only when he was an adult did his foster parents tell him about his true descent. Sigmund told his own firstborn child later, and he in turn passed the information on in the same way. As time went on, these descendants of the Staufers took some other citizens of Annweiler into their confidence, relying on their help to keep their secret and protect them. This went on for many generations, and a myth grew up in the Wasgau around these last descendants of the first Staufer emperor.” The dean rose to his feet and looked up at the rock of the ceiling, with his hands folded as if in prayer. “A myth that was preserved by a little order in Annweiler, a sworn brotherhood devoted to the protection of the heirs of the Staufers, who would pass on their knowledge from generation to generation until the day when darkness fell on the world once more, and a true emperor was needed again. Many think that day has now come . . .”

  At last Father Domenicus fell silent, and only the echoing footsteps of other monks in the vast catacombs could be heard.

  “How do you know all this?” Mathis asked at last.

  “How do I know it? Well, there have long been rumors of a descendant of the Staufers called Constanza who had a baby at Trifels Castle. But we knew for certain only about a year ago. One of the legendary Annweiler Brotherhood came to see us, bringing bad news. He said that after so many centuries, the Habsburgs had learned of the secret that had been kept so long. They had already tried to kill Constanza’s last descendants, several years ago, and now they were trying again.”