He snorted and then pointed to Mathis. “I can’t banish you; I’m not about to do the mayor that favor. But I can’t let you off scot-free either, or I’ll be the laughingstock of my own household. So I am going to lock you up in the dungeon here until I know what I’m going to do with you.” His eyes narrowed. “And maybe you’ll wish yet that I had banished you, Mathis.”
After the gamut of emotions she had been exposed to in the last few minutes, Agnes didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Mathis was not to be banished; he was staying near her in the castle. But her father was throwing him into the dungeon, and presumably worse would soon threaten him.
“But, Father,” she implored, “Mathis took the arquebus only to help you. He wanted to repair the firearms, he wanted—”
“Save your breath,” Philipp von Erfenstein replied brusquely. “I’ve told the lad often enough to leave gunpowder alone. I never could abide it—diabolical stuff. He ought to be forging swords like his good father. Instead, he steals from me and goes around with a pack of rebels. But those who won’t listen must be made to feel. Ulrich! Damn it, where are you? Ulrich!”
Erfenstein shouted across the courtyard, and soon the old master gunner emerged from the Knights’ House. The gray-haired former landsknecht walked with a stoop, and his scarred face was also marked by brandy.
“Your Excellency?” he mumbled, wiping barley broth out of his beard.
Erfenstein pointed to Mathis. “This lad has stolen one of my arquebuses out of the armory. I’ve a good mind to lock you up along with him, you drunken sot. Left the key lying around somewhere again, did you?”
Guiltily, Ulrich Reichhart looked at the ground. “It’s a mystery to me how he ever—”
“Forget it.” Erfenstein silenced the master gunner with an abrupt gesture. “We’ll talk about it later. Now, take the boy to the dungeon. I have yet to think what I’ll do with him. But until then I don’t want to see his rebellious face here.”
Reichhart nodded and turned to Mathis. “You heard it yourself,” he grunted, almost as if placating him. “That was a stupid thing to do.”
For a moment Agnes thought that Mathis was going to run for it. But when he looked at her, all the fire seemed to go out of his eyes. He let himself be led away.
“Mathis! For heaven’s sake, Mathis!” Agnes cried after him. “Hold out, I will—” But her father seized her by the shoulder.
“I always knew that boy was good for nothing,” he said angrily. “His father, now, he’s a capable, good man. But the son was always contrary.” He shook his head. “Keeping company with the likes of Shepherd Jockel. You’ll see, creatures like that hunchback will bring death and destruction to our country yet.”
Agnes wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was watching Mathis, who disappeared into the castle, walking with his head held high. It looked like he was leading the master gunner away, instead of the other way around.
“And put that boy out of your mind,” her father said, more sympathetically. “He’s not fit company for the daughter of a castellan, a girl who lives in this proud castle.” He tried to summon up a smile. “I wanted to talk to you about this anyway, Agnes. I’ve discussed it with Martin von Heidelsheim. He’s a decent man, and above all a man of means. I know I always promised you a knight, but the situation has changed. I don’t have the money to provide you with a dowry, and Heidelsheim can envisage taking you even—”
“I’ll never marry Heidelsheim, not after all that’s happened. It . . . it would be the death of me.” Agnes tore herself away from her father, fighting back her tears, her face a stony mask.
Philipp von Erfenstein looked at her in surprise. “How do you know . . .” he began. But then he straightened his shoulders. “Pull yourself together, child. I’ll forgive you—you’re not mistress of your own feelings. Obviously that lad Mathis has turned your head.” He wagged a threatening finger at her. “I am the lord of Trifels Castle, and I’ll decide who you marry. And I can tell you one thing: from now on there’ll be an end to all your whims and fancies. Wearing doublet and hose like a man, flying a falcon, your head always in a book—bah! I’ve put up with it far too long.” Beseechingly, he took Agnes by the shoulders. “Don’t you understand that we can save Trifels only if you marry a man of property? It’s about the fate of the castle, not you. Get that into your head. Heidelsheim will take you as his wife, and that’s that.”
Agnes turned around, weeping, and set off for the living quarters in the tower. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Margarethe watching her with a mixture of curiosity and mockery, and then turning to the cook, Hedwig, who stood beside her. Clearly the two servants had heard the end of the conversation. Now it would soon be all over the castle, and in a week at the latest the whole countryside would know. Agnes dried her face and walked past them with her head held high.
“Stupid child,” Margarethe whispered to fat Hedwig. “I don’t know why she’s carrying on like that. Master Heidelsheim is a good match, and that Mathis is no great loss.”
Agnes spun around, her hand raised to strike the maid. But at the last moment she thought better of it. “Be quiet,” she said coldly. “Mathis is worth more than all of you put together.”
With that she hurried up to her bedchamber. She felt as though an icy fist were slowly squeezing her heart.
✦ 4 ✦
Trifels Castle, 3 April, Anno Domini 1524
MORE THAN A WEEK PASSED, and Agnes was not allowed to see Mathis. Her father had had the young journeyman smith locked up in the dungeon in the former keep and forbade her from communicating with him in any way. Philipp von Erfenstein did not say what he was going to do with Mathis, and Agnes suspected that he didn’t know himself. His anxiety about the rents and the new demands that the duke’s steward kept making occupied his mind entirely, and, as usual, Philipp von Erfenstein drowned his troubles in brandy. Whenever Agnes mentioned Mathis to him, he either replied evasively or growled at her to put the young man out of her head.
“As I guessed,” was all he would mutter, “you’ve fallen in love with him. I can’t let him out until you’re cured of that, anyway.”
Agnes protested vociferously, but later, in her bedchamber, she threw herself on her bed in tears. She felt her inevitable fate approaching, and it was like a rock slowly pressing the life out of her. There was no doubt of it: she must bury all hope of Mathis forever. Sometimes, when she thought angrily that he had only himself to blame for his predicament, she didn’t understand what she really saw in him. He could be wild and headstrong—but he had brains in his head, and she loved the way he was equally passionate in his enthusiasm for better methods of harvesting, the rights of poor peasants, and new developments in firearms. And it broke her heart to know he was still down there in the dungeon.
From time to time, Agnes had tried talking to Mathis through a narrow crack in the masonry going down from the castle courtyard to the dungeon, but after only a few words she had always been discovered by the guards, who had her father’s orders to send her away.
Now she stood at the top of the Trifels rock formation and looked out over the countryside. Although it had been a long winter, the cold weather was slowly but steadily coming to an end. There were still persistent patches of snow in a few deep, shadowy valleys, but otherwise the warm sun shone over the vineyards of the Wasgau, and the fresh green buds of oak and beech leaves swayed in the wind. Agnes breathed deeply. Then her thoughts returned to Mathis, and her face darkened.
It’s still dark and cold for Mathis down there.
The mayor of Annweiler had arrived the very day after Mathis’s spectacular flight to Trifels Castle to take the journeyman smith away. But Philipp von Erfenstein had made it very clear to the mayor that he had no intention of handing Mathis over. Nonetheless, Agnes had a sinking feeling that they had not by any means heard the last of that business.
Another of her anxieties, however, had unexpectedly disappeared, dissolving into thin air. Martin von Heidelsheim
, the steward, had apparently turned his back on the castle. At least, there had been no sign of him since his angry outburst in the stables, and Agnes suspected that he had accepted a position somewhere else out of a sense of injured pride—something that had Philipp von Erfenstein drinking more heavily than ever. After all, he now had to deal with all the tiresome paperwork on his own.
“I suppose I could understand that you didn’t want to marry Heidelsheim,” he complained to Agnes now and then, in his cups, “but damned if I can forgive you for scaring my chamberlain away. As if I didn’t have enough on my mind as it is. But don’t entertain any false hopes—I’ll see you married this year yet. Even if I have to marry you off to that mayor of Annweiler. Curse it all, I need the money.”
A sudden gust of wind tugged at the dress Agnes was wearing, and she stepped back from the edge of the cliff for fear of stumbling and falling into the depths below. She was about to go back to the outbuildings of the castle when she noticed a small black dot down there on the castle acres. Agnes peered at it. Her heart leapt up as the dot came closer and turned out to be a stooped figure in a monastic habit. She had been expecting him all morning, and now here he came. Her tutor, the castle chaplain, Father Tristan, was on his way back to Trifels after almost five months.
Soon Agnes could see his frail figure clearly as he came over the fields. Like all Cistercian monks, Father Tristan wore a black robe, the scapular, over his white tunic, which was now stained and splashed with mud after his long walk. But when he saw Agnes up on the rocks he gave her a friendly wave.
“Father Tristan! Father Tristan!” she called, although she knew that he couldn’t hear her down there.
With her heart racing, Agnes ran across the castle courtyard, through the gate, and out into the narrow road until she met her tutor on the other side of the well tower. She embraced him tightly. Besides her father, the frail old man was the only person who sometimes made her feel like a little girl again. After a while Father Tristan, laughing, pushed her away and struggled for breath.
“My word, Agnes, you’ll smother me. I’ve been on pilgrimage to Eusserthal, not Rome!”
But when he saw her sad face, his own expression grew darker. “Child, what’s happened?” he asked anxiously. “You look so pale, like you’ve been in mourning and haven’t eaten for days.”
Father Tristan was nearly eighty years old, and his face was covered with lines and wrinkles. Yet his clever, friendly, watchful eyes shone. For as long as Agnes could remember, the monk had been her teacher and spiritual guide. When he went to Eusserthal monastery for several months every year, she always longed for the day of his return. And now she needed his help more than ever before.
“Some bad things have happened while you were away, Father,” said Agnes gloomily. “I’ve been waiting for you so long.”
Father Tristan smiled mildly. “You know the cold, damp winters up in this castle don’t agree with me. The heating is better in the monastery, and Abbot Weigand needs me to check our accounts. The new bell may sound beautiful, but it was far from cheap. However, here I am now.” He put his pilgrim’s staff aside and took Agnes by the shoulders. Then he looked at her gravely. “So, tell me what has happened.”
Agnes fought back her tears. “My . . . my father has thrown Mathis into the dungeon for stealing an arquebus,” she began quietly. “And he’s wanted by the mayor of Annweiler as a rabble-rouser too. And I’m supposed to marry Heidelsheim, but he isn’t here anymore . . .” Her voice faltered.
“I can see that your story will take some time.” Father Tristan picked up his pilgrim’s staff and led her across the courtyard. “Why don’t we go up to the library and talk about it there at our leisure?” he suggested. “I could drink a glass of hot spiced wine there, too—now that I’m an old man, the cold lingers in my bones, even though winter is behind us.” He shook his head in annoyance. “This windy weather has played the devil with me.”
Relieved, Agnes nodded, and together they climbed the steps to the living quarters in the tower.
The library was on the fourth floor of Trifels Castle, just above the chapel. A grate the size of a cart wheel gave a view of the chapel below. Once, persons of high rank could attend mass from this exalted viewpoint and did not have to mix with commoners. It was said that kings and emperors had been among them. But these days the grate covered only a drafty shaft. Agnes knew that her father had been talking of walling it up for some time, but so far he had not put the plan into practice.
Rapt in thought, Agnes looked around the large square room with a tiled stove rumbling away in the left-hand corner. The walls were lined with shelves of all kinds on which a number of parchment scrolls, dusty books, and leather-bound tomes lay. The main archive of the dukes of Zweibrücken was still kept here at the Trifels, and Father Tristan was its official curator. His was a task as interesting as it was unrewarding, for many of the volumes were nothing but old inventories and balance sheets that had to be numbered properly. Other documents were stored in moldering chests down in the castle cellars, where they were slowly falling to pieces. But from time to time, as he sorted through the records and lists, Father Tristan came upon genuine treasures: magnificently illuminated volumes, old collections of ballads, and treatises by ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato. Agnes had spent half her childhood up here among the books.
“Ah, I see that good Hedwig has already been kind enough to light a fire for us,” said Father Tristan, approaching the tiled stove with his hands outstretched. “This accursed gout, dear child! Be glad you’re still young.” With his teeth chattering, he picked up a jug standing in a niche beside the stove and poured himself a goblet of steaming spiced wine. Agnes herself felt cold. Particularly in spring, the castle was like a cave in the ice. The mild sunbeams were not enough to bring any real warmth to its ancient walls.
“Now, tell me all about it,” Father Tristan told her, sipping the hot drink. He settled comfortably on the warm bench beside the stove, and Agnes sat down on a stool in front of him. “And don’t leave anything out,” the old monk added, raising a finger in playful warning. “After all, I am still your confessor.”
Agnes took a deep breath and then told Father Tristan about all the recent events at Trifels, including her father’s marriage plans for her, and the strange ring tied to Parcival’s leg. Father Tristan listened in silence, only drinking a little spiced wine from time to time.
“And Heidelsheim has simply disappeared, leaving no trace at all?” he finally asked. “He took nothing with him and left no farewell message?”
When Agnes assented, the monk shook his head skeptically. “I can’t believe that. You know that I never thought very much of the man, Agnes, but all the same, he was a clever and reliable steward. That just isn’t like him. He’s not one to walk out in a temper, leaving all his worldly goods behind. I begin to fear that some accident may have happened to him.”
Agnes sighed. “I suppose we’ll never know. At least, my father hasn’t had a search mounted for him. He just sits brooding to himself. Now that he can’t count the rents anymore he is drinking harder than ever. It was only when he was showing the mayor of Annweiler the door that he was his old self again.” She smiled, but she was serious again the next moment. “Father still hasn’t said what he is going to do with Mathis. And I’m not allowed to visit him either.”
Father Tristan nodded his head thoughtfully. “The mayor won’t have liked being dismissed so unceremoniously by Erfenstein,” he murmured. “Gessler has right on his side. If I know him, he’ll have sent a messenger straight to the electoral court in Heidelberg. This may not turn out well for your father.”
“And it may not turn out well for Mathis, either,” Agnes added gloomily.
Father Tristan nodded, and then looked hard at Agnes. “That ring you mentioned. May I see it?”
“Of course.” Agnes took the ring, which until now she had worn only at night or when she was unobserved, off her finger and, with some
hesitation, offered it to the monk.
Father Tristan rubbed the gem in his gnarled fingers, held it up to his eyes, and looked at the engraving. Then Agnes heard his sharp intake of breath.
“Do you know the ring?” she asked hopefully.
The old monk hesitated. He seemed to be about to say something, but then he only shook his head. “No,” he said briefly. “But I know the seal. To say any more would be mere supposition.”
“So? What kind of seal is it?”
“Well, as I’m sure you have noticed, it shows the head of a bearded man,” began Father Tristan quietly, giving the ring back to Agnes. “There are many men who wear beards, but only one was ever so powerful that the beard became, so to speak, a symbol of the man himself and served him as a seal.”
Agnes felt her heart beat faster. “And who was that?”
“Barbarossa.”
The name seemed to hang in the air while Agnes leaned back thoughtfully. Emperor Barbarossa featured in many of the stories she had devoured up here in the library of Trifels Castle. He had been the first of the famous emperors from the Hohenstaufen family who had ruled the German Empire for several generations about four hundred years ago. Barbarossa had been tall and strong, and his red beard was legendary. At a great old age he was drowned in the Saleph River while on Crusade, but there was a story that he was still sleeping under the Trifels. It was a legend that had probably arisen because, after the Hohenstaufens, there had been a time without an emperor when lawlessness prevailed.
“Does that mean this ring belonged to Emperor Barbarossa himself?” Agnes asked at last, amazed.
“No, certainly not!” Father Tristan laughed and leaned comfortably back against the warm side of the stove. “There were many such rings at the time, you see. Each of the ministerial officials of the empire, the authorized representatives of the emperor, had one so that he could seal important documents in His Imperial Majesty’s name. But I have no idea how that ring came to be on your falcon’s leg. Perhaps . . .” He hesitated, and Agnes looked at him expectantly.