The Castle of Kings

  The castellan of Trifels took a deep breath and then forced his mount into a trot for the last few yards. No one must say that he had become a feeble old man. The guards nodded to him as he rode through the wide gateway. Erfenstein was well known in the countryside here.

  The knight was surprised to see several other horses being watered at troughs in the castle courtyard already. Their coats were black and gleaming, and a groom was just rubbing them down.

  “Does the duke’s steward have visitors?” Erfenstein barked.

  The groom nodded. “Young Count Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck has just arrived. He’s paying His Excellency Castellan Rupprecht von Lohingen the honor of a short visit.”

  “That’s all I need,” Erfenstein said under his breath. He dismounted and scrutinized the other magnificent steeds with an expert eye.

  “I suppose the count didn’t come alone?” he asked out loud.

  “No, sir. Brought his squires and a few men-at-arms.” The groom grinned. “They’re eating and drinking at our castellan’s expense over in the annex at this moment.”

  Erfenstein’s lips narrowed. The idea of Scharfeneck’s men making merry here while he had to deprive his own peasants of the last few grains of their harvest turned his stomach. As so often when he was displeased, the empty socket under his eye patch began to itch. In silence, he climbed the stone steps to the tower where the castle’s dwelling quarters were located and entered the main hall through a double doorway.

  The hall was adorned with carpets, furs, and tapestries, some of them hanging in multiple layers on the walls. Rushes and sweet-smelling herbs lay on the floor, and a huge fire burned on a hearth almost three yards wide. The sudden warmth almost made Erfenstein retreat into the cool air outdoors.

  “Ah, Philipp! They told me you were on your way. I hope you bring good news.” The duke’s steward rose from a long table set with wineglasses, silver platters piled with steaming meat, and bread baskets. Rupprecht von Lohingen was an elderly, battle-hardened knight whose girth had increased in recent years as a result of his consumption of wine and good food. His hair was sparse, and like Erfenstein he had a bushy beard in the old fashion. The two knights had known one another for a long time and had both been faithful companions of Emperor Maximilian in the old days. But unlike the castellan of Trifels, Lohingen had won the favor of the duke of Zweibrücken by means of soft words and gifts, and had been installed as his steward here several years ago.

  “As I can hear, I come at the wrong time,” Erfenstein said. “You already have a guest.”

  Lohingen smiled. “Those who bring me money never come at the wrong time. I hope you do have the outstanding rents with you?”

  Philipp von Erfenstein cleared his throat to say something, but the steward interrupted him.

  “How discourteous of me,” said Lohingen, shaking his head. “We should satisfy the rules of courtesy first, don’t you agree? So please pay young Count von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck the honor due to him.”

  Only now did the castellan of Trifels notice another figure sitting at the far end of the table, partly hidden by the smoke from the fire. The young man was clad in black and in the Spanish fashion, with a high white collar showing above his close-fitting doublet. A neatly trimmed beard adorned a handsome if rather pale face with two mocking eyes sparkling in it. He might have been in his early twenties.

  “Your Excellency.” Erfenstein bowed his head briefly. “I didn’t see you—I beg your pardon.”

  “Granted.” Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck waved the apology away. “Sit down and join us, Erfenstein. You must be hungry after your strenuous ride.”

  The castellan nodded hesitantly but sat down at the richly laid table. He did not touch any of the aromatic dishes. Only when a cupbearer came over and poured wine for him did he drink deeply and in long drafts. Young Löwenstein-Scharfeneck scrutinized him attentively.

  “The duke’s steward here has just told me that you’re behind with the payments?” he said, his eyebrows raised. “Obviously you aren’t taking enough from your peasants.”

  “Where there’s nothing to be had, it can’t be taken.” The castellan of Trifels wiped his beard, wet as it was from the red wine, and suppressed a curse. All he needed was for this young upstart to criticize him. The Löwenstein-Scharfenecks were the richest landlords in the district. Their fiefs bordered on the duchy of Zweibrücken, and also on Erfenstein land. It was said that Friedrich’s father, Ludwig von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck, knew no mercy and would squeeze the last drop of blood out of his peasants. “Last winter was the hardest for a long time,” Erfenstein went on. “The peasants are starving. And you know as well as I do that my fief is much smaller than your father’s. As for the toll from the Bindersbach Pass . . .”

  “Excuses.” Lohingen interrupted him brusquely. “The young count is right, Philipp, you’re too soft. If your fief is small then you must raise the rents to make up for it.” He leaned over the table, lowering his voice. “The emperor is fighting those damned French down in Italy again, as I’m sure you know. Francis I may have lost the election to be king of Germany, but he still thinks he’d make a better ruler of Europe. And Charles isn’t so firmly settled in the saddle as one might think. The German princes will always come down on the side of whoever can be most useful to them. So we all have to do our part, however insignificant it may be.” Lohingen pointed to the count. “His Excellency has just placed a company of landsknechts at the duke’s disposal.”

  “I have no landsknechts, Rupprecht,” Erfenstein said. “I have three men-at-arms and a drunken master gunner, that’s all.”

  “Is the master gunner any good at his trade?” asked Lohingen curiously. “Maybe . . .”

  “I can count myself lucky if he doesn’t blow himself sky-high.”

  The steward sighed. “Then you’re bound to make payments, one way or the other.” He leaned forward in a comradely manner. “Philipp, think about it. Major tithes, minor tithes, socage, tallage—there must be something to be had by imposing those. I’m open to all suggestions, for the sake of our long friendship. Raise the toll for using the pass, why don’t you?”

  “First we’d have to get the better of that robber knight,” replied Erfenstein, picking up his wineglass again. “As long as Hans von Wertingen is out and about on the Bindersbach Pass, the merchants will take a long detour around it. That dog almost abducted my daughter recently.”

  “I’ve heard of your daughter,” remarked Count Löwenstein-Scharfeneck, gnawing a pheasant leg with relish. “She’s said to be a real beauty, if also . . .” He smiled broadly, and wiped his mouth. “If also, well, a little strange.”

  “She takes after me. We Erfensteins have always gone our own way.” Philipp von Erfenstein tried to appear calm, although inwardly he was furious. What business had this young fop to talk like that about his daughter? Although he had to admit that Agnes really did behave strangely in many respects. He ought at least to forbid her to wear those leather hose.

  “As for Black Hans the robber knight,” said Rupprecht von Lohingen, pouring more wine for himself and the count, “smoke the brute out, Philipp. It can’t be so difficult. I hear that his castle’s in a pitiful condition, and he has only a few scoundrels to stand beside him.”

  “Damn it all, Rupprecht!” Philipp von Erfenstein set his glass down so hard that the wine in it slopped out over the table. “You’ve besieged castles yourself. How am I to do that with exactly four men? You’ve just heard that I can’t afford any landsknechts. And since the emperor did away with feudal law, I’m not allowed to pick a quarrel anyway.”

  “Unless you get the duke’s permission,” Lohingen pointed out. He shook his head. “Although I doubt that His Highness will put men at your disposal if you can’t even afford to pay your own dues.”

  “Then you can borrow mine.”

  Scharfeneck’s voice had been so quiet that it took the castellan of Trifels some time to understand his offer.

&
nbsp; “I can what?”

  The young count nodded. “You heard me, Erfenstein. You can make use of my men. As soon as permission comes from the duke, they will fight for you. I have three dozen battle-hardened landsknechts—that should be enough to deal with those louts.”

  Erfenstein grunted derisively. “If Wertingen digs himself in up there in the Ramburg, even an army won’t get him out. It’s a hard place to crack. Old Hans von Ramburg sold it to the Dalbergs a few years ago, but they posted only a single guard, and Wertingen took the castle.” He sipped his wine again. “Black Hans may be a bastard, but he knows how to fight.”

  Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck frowned. “Are you by any chance refusing my offer?”

  “I’d call the count’s suggestion very generous, Philipp,” Rupprecht von Lohingen put in. “Think: if you defeat Wertingen, the pass will be safe again. And you’ll take loot, so you can pay your debts right away.”

  “And the ducal permission?”

  The steward shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll see to that.” He gave a knowing smile. “And in return I get some of the loot—agreed?”

  With his one remaining eye, Erfenstein cast a suspicious glance at the young count as he sat waiting for an answer, with his arms folded and a slightly mocking expression on his face. Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck came from an influential family; his father was an illegitimate son of the former elector of the Palatinate. Erfenstein had met Friedrich only a few times, at court occasions. He was the youngest of ten children and regarded as a daydreaming ne’er-do-well. Hitherto the youth, who always seemed to be cool and composed, had been in his father’s shadow, and his suddenly forthright stance surprised the castellan.

  “And?” asked Erfenstein, hesitantly. “What do you want from me in return?”

  “Why would I want anything much?” Löwenstein-Scharfeneck shrugged his shoulders. “After all, it’s in my own interests for that wretched cur to stop making trouble. His castle is a disgrace, and it also lies close to one of our own seats of government. He’s already laid waste several of our villages and has even attacked a monastery. It’s high time we sent him packing.” He leaned forward, smiling. “So I get half the loot—that’s only fair.”

  “Is that all?”

  Scharfeneck shook his head as he rinsed his greasy fingers in a bowl of water. “Well, it’s possible that I shall be asking you for a small favor in the near future.”

  Erfenstein frowned. “Out with it.”

  “You’ll know what it is when the time comes. Well, how about it? Do you agree?”

  Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck offered his now clean hand, and after a brief moment of hesitation Erfenstein took it. The young man’s fingers felt cold and surprisingly hard. Erfenstein wondered whether the count was really as soft and foppish as everyone thought.

  “Then that’s all settled,” said Scharfeneck. “Now, please forgive me.” He rose and smoothed any creases out of his doublet that came from sitting so long. “I promised to visit my landsknechts over in your annex. They’re to receive their monthly pay. It seems that we’ll soon be needing their swords and their daggers.” Smiling, he looked at the steward. “I’m sure you will do all you can to get the necessary permission from the duke?”

  Erfenstein and the ducal steward stood up and bowed formally.

  “It has been an honor, Excellency,” said Rupprecht von Lohingen. Then he turned discreetly to Erfenstein. “You heard the count, Philipp. I will ask the duke to put off the due date for the payments you owe, although only for a year, and only part of them. This is your last chance. I very much hope that you will soon get permission to drive that bastard Wertingen away for good.” He winked. “Just like the old days, eh, Philipp?”

  The knight nodded as bile rose in his throat. Just like the old days, he thought. You sit here in comfort while I do the dirty work.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He should really be pleased; he had gained at least half of what he wanted. Yet, strange to say, that did not give him satisfaction. Lost in thought, Erfenstein looked at his hand. It still hurt after the count’s firm grasp of it.

  It felt like it had been burned.

  Agnes and Mathis waited, on tenterhooks, for Philipp von Erfenstein to return. At last, early in the evening, they found the castellan in the upper bailey, where he had just unsaddled his horse and was throwing some large pieces of meat to a pack of hounds. He spoke to the dogs quietly and affectionately, as if they were his children.

  Agnes smiled involuntarily. At such moments her father was calm and composed. He visibly blossomed when he went hunting, and it had been the same at tournaments in the old days. That was the life he knew and loved. The life of a knight, not of an impoverished, drunken castellan who had to wring taxes out of starving peasants and lived only on his memories.

  When Philipp von Erfenstein turned around to them, Agnes could see that his conversation with the duke’s steward had not gone well. For some years now, the lines had been digging ever deeper into his face, bloated as it was by alcohol, and today it seemed to have some new ones.

  “Ah, Agnes,” he muttered. “Good news. Rupprecht von Lohingen listened to me. He’ll defer part of the payments. So we’re snatched from the jaws of death this time.”

  “I’m glad.” Agnes frowned. “But there’s something wrong, Father, isn’t there? Or you wouldn’t be looking like that.”

  “I . . . I’ll tell you about that some other time.”

  Erfenstein stared gloomily into space. He didn’t even seem to have noticed Mathis, standing right beside Agnes. After a while the castellan turned his eyes on his daughter and scrutinized her with displeasure.

  “I’ve told you hundreds of times that I don’t approve of women wearing doublet and hose like a man,” he snapped suddenly. “It’s not right for ladies of high rank.” He frowned. “Have you been out riding like that? What are people going to think when they see you?”

  “Father,” began Agnes, hesitantly. “Mathis and I have something to confess to you.”

  “Aha.” Philipp von Erfenstein smiled wearily. Only now did he seem to notice the journeyman smith who was still standing beside his daughter in silence. “I suppose the pair of you have been out in the woods with Taramis. Just as well you told me. I’d have found out anyway.”

  Agnes shook her head. “That’s not it, Father. But maybe we should go over to the Knights’ House.” She looked around the castle courtyard, where Margarethe and Hedwig were feeding the geese and looking at them curiously. “It’s not something that everyone has to know,” she added quietly.

  Philipp von Erfenstein clucked and went on throwing meat to his barking hounds. “There are no secrets on the Trifels, mark that. Or at least none that a daughter can’t tell her father out loud. Who do you think you are? The emperor’s wife? Go on then, talk or let it drop.”

  “Very well.” Agnes took Mathis’s hand and held it tightly. “Mathis . . . Mathis took an arquebus out of your armory, and now he’s wanted by the mayor of Annweiler as a rabble-rouser as well.”

  The dish containing the meat slipped out of Erfenstein’s hands and dropped to the ground, where the hounds immediately fell on it. The castellan stared at Mathis, wide-eyed. “He’s what?”

  “It was a mistake,” Mathis began formally. “Not about the arquebus, I mean, but about Shepherd Jockel. I was just so . . . so angry with all those councilors sitting on their broad bums, and I suddenly lost it . . .”

  Agnes sighed and trod on her friend’s toes. If Mathis went on like that he really would be talking his neck into a noose.

  “Maybe it would be better for me to tell him,” she said quietly.

  Philipp von Erfenstein’s eyes went back and forth, between anger and bafflement. The hounds jumped up at him, but he pushed them aside impatiently.

  “Yes, maybe that would be better,” he said curtly. “Before I set my hounds on this bastard. But hurry up, because they’re hungry.”

  Agnes clos
ed her eyes for a moment and said a silent prayer. Then she began telling her father the story, from the arquebus that Mathis had pilfered to his flight from Annweiler. She left out only her encounters with Martin von Heidelsheim. This was certainly not the right moment to speak to her father about his plan to marry her to the chamberlain.

  When she had finished, there was absolute silence for a while. Only the geese cackled, while Margarethe peered inquisitively across the courtyard. But her lady’s maid was too far off to be able to hear anything. Her heart beating fast, Agnes watched her father, who was clearly agitated. You could never tell how Philipp von Erfenstein would react. Since he had taken to drinking more and more, his fits of rage had been increasingly violent. Sometimes, however, he merely brooded in silence instead.

  Thoughtfully, the castellan rubbed his unshaven chin.

  “The arquebus . . . that was bad,” he began quietly. “Even if it was old and rusty, you stole from me, Mathis. I can’t tolerate that. Thieves have no business at Trifels Castle. What’s more, presumably the firearm is now in the hands of my worst enemy. So one way or another I must banish you from my castle.”

  Agnes felt something break inside her. Mathis, too, was white as a sheet, but he stood erect and looked the castellan in the face.

  “As you command, sir,” he managed to say.

  “On the other hand . . .” Philipp von Erfenstein went on. “On the other hand you killed a scoundrel with that arquebus, and you rescued my daughter. And I can’t have the mayor of Annweiler doing as he likes with one of my vassals without so much as a by-your-leave. If I throw you out, Bernwart Gessler will be sure to take you prisoner and put you on trial. What times are these, when the word of a windbag of a mayor counts for more than anything the lord of Trifels can say? What in God’s name are we coming to?”

  Philipp von Erfenstein was talking himself into a rage now. His face was red. “Don’t those newly rich fine folk know that I was a friend of Emperor Maximilian himself? We rode together in many tournaments in our young days, we fought together at Guinegate against the damned French. I lost my eye protecting him. I come of a highly regarded family—my great-grandfather served the emperor of his time as a knight. And now some patrician is going to tell me what I can and can’t do? Never!”