The Castle of Kings

  The bronze melted down for half a day, until at last it was as red and fluid as lava. Finally Mathis opened the taphole and poured the steaming mass through clay pipes into the mold prepared and set in a pit underneath it. After the casting had spent two days cooling, the crucial moment came when the outer casing was struck away. A huge gun barrel six feet long was revealed, with a muzzle as large as a child’s head. It was solid, without any cracks, and cast in a single piece.

  Mathis had made his journeyman’s masterpiece.

  He smiled happily: the gun looked exactly as he had always imagined it in his dreams. Mighty and massive—a deadly weapon in the hands of a man who knew how to use it. And by God, he was going to show everyone—including his pig-headed father—that he did know how.

  Mathis was kneeling in front of the muzzle a day or so later, filing away the last uneven places from the gun barrel, when he suddenly noticed that someone was looking over his shoulder. He turned around and saw Agnes standing behind him, looking down with a teasing smile. Had she walked all the way to the monastery, a journey of several hours, just to pay him a surprise visit?

  “Anyone might think you had nothing in your head but that gun barrel these days,” she teased. “If things go on like this, you’ll be taking it to bed with you at night.”

  Mathis shrugged apologetically. It was true that over the last couple of weeks he had devoted far more thought to the gun than to Agnes. On the other hand, it had been her idea to get him out of prison to act as her father’s new gunner.

  “The tough part of the work’s behind us now,” he said, straightening up. His face and hands were blackened from heavy labor. “It’s mainly a matter of filing and polishing now. And of course we have to build a gun carriage. That’s why Ulrich and the others have just gone off to where the charcoal burners work, looking around for suitable tree trunks.”

  “Gun carriage?” Agnes looked at him, her expression blank.

  Mathis proudly paced the full length of the bronze gun barrel. “Well, it used to be very hard work moving the heavy cannon, let alone aiming them properly,” he began, with the enthusiasm of a small boy describing a toy. “The recoil was very strong, and it was still difficult to hit the target. So gunners went over to mounting their gun barrels on movable frames, the gun carriages. They make it possible to move the gun around by turning a crank and taking aim.”

  “I see.” Agnes did not sound particularly interested. She sat on the gun barrel, legs apart, and looked at Mathis thoughtfully.

  “I’ve been back to the library a couple of times myself recently,” she said at last. “I thought I could find out more about my dreams in Father Tristan’s book. But the book . . .” She hesitated.

  Mathis nodded absent-mindedly and pushed his sandy hair back from his dirty face. Agnes had told him, more than once, about her recurring dreams of Trifels Castle as it had been in the distant past. Agnes had also told him how Father Tristan had shown her a book with a picture of the young man in it.

  “What about it?” Mathis finally asked.

  Agnes shrugged her shoulders. “Well, it’s gone. I’ve looked for it everywhere. I almost think that, for some reason, Father Tristan may have hidden it from me on purpose.” She angrily struck the bronze gun barrel with her hand, making it boom softly. “And I want to ask him about it, but whenever I mention the book or the ring, he avoids answering me properly.”

  “He probably wants you to think more about the present and less about the past.” Mathis smiled. “I’ve heard that many of the peasants think very highly of you these days. They say you’re a great help to Father Tristan when he goes visiting the sick.”

  “Maybe. But death is often stronger than anything we can do.” Agnes shook her head sadly. “Yesterday we had to close the eyes of a little girl who was only four. She’d been worn away by fever and the flux until nothing was left of her but an empty husk. Sometimes I don’t understand why God sends us into the world if he’s going to make us suffer so much.” She looked at Mathis with concern. “How is your father now? It’s a long time since I’ve seen him.”

  “He’s a tough man,” replied Mathis . “But I think the smoke from the forge has eaten his lungs away. He’s getting weaker daily. Although he still feels strong enough to tell me off.”

  Agnes moved closer to him along the bronze gun barrel. “You mustn’t hold it against him,” she said gently. “You took advantage of his trust in you, and it will take him a while to get that back.” She leaned down to him and touched his cheek. “Mathis . . . about the two of us . . .” she hesitantly began. “Sometimes I think . . .” But Mathis turned away.

  “You know what your father said,” he muttered awkwardly. “He doesn’t want to see us together, or I’ll have to go back to the dungeon.”

  Agnes rolled her eyes. “I suppose we can talk, all the same. Anyway, my father is a long way off, over at Trifels. So what are you afraid of?”

  Without looking at her, Mathis picked up his file and set to work on the muzzle of the gun. “All I know is that I have to finish smoothing any roughness away from this gun, so that when we start working on the gun carriage tomorrow—”

  “Oh, do stop talking about that gun carriage,” she snapped. “This is about us, Mathis. If we . . .” But Agnes stopped when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ulrich Reichhart waving in agitation as he ran down the winding path that crossed the fields. Gasping for breath, the master gunner came to a halt in front of them.

  “My God, what’s happened?” Mathis asked. “Did someone have an accident? Are Gunther and the others all right?”

  Reichhart nodded his head. It was some time before he had enough breath to speak again. “They . . . they’ve found a dead body over where the charcoal burners work,” he finally managed to say. “It’s horribly disfigured now, but by God, I swear it’s the steward Martin von Heidelsheim.”

  Thick black smoke filled the air above the place where the body had been found, so that it was difficult for Mathis to make out anything at first.

  A few weeks ago, Ulrich Reichhart and the other men-at-arms had built up two charcoal kilns in a small spruce wood close to Trifels Castle. One of them was still smoking heavily. In digging the site to build a third kiln, they had come upon the decomposing corpse.

  Mathis knelt down on the edge of the pit they had been digging and rubbed his eyes, which were reddened by the smoke. What lay down there had obviously been a human being once, but no one could say at first glance whether it was Martin von Heidelsheim. Buried in the ground, the corpse had been safe from wild animals, but all the same decomposition had made its mark. Only the clothes were still reasonably well preserved; the dead man was wearing close-fitting hose, a now ragged shirt, and a simple doublet smeared with dried blood. Retching, Agnes put a hand to her mouth. She had to turn away. But finally, standing a little way from the pit, she nodded to Mathis.

  “That . . . yes, that’s Heidelsheim,” she said faintly. “No doubt of it. That’s the doublet he had on the day I last saw him in the castle stables.”

  The other men were standing at the side of the pit in silence, their arms folded, staring down at the human remains.

  Finally, Mathis and Ulrich Reichhart climbed down into the pit. Holding their breath, they lifted the body onto an improvised stretcher made of saplings and fir twigs and brought it up to ground level, where they put it down some way from the smoking charcoal kiln.

  By now Agnes had overcome her urge to vomit. She chewed a piece of resin to drown out the sweetish smell of decay and knelt down beside the dead body of Heidelsheim. Her eyes passed over the doublet, now encrusted with blood and smeared with earth.

  “That’s a crossbow bolt,” she said at last, pointing to a feathered shaft that stuck out of the ragged garment. “And look, there’s another.”

  “That bastard Wertingen.” Ulrich Reichhart spat on the woodland floor. “I expect he lay in wait for him here in the wood and simply shot him down.”

  “And th
en buried him as carefully as a dog burying its bone?” Mathis shook his head. “Why would Hans von Wertingen go to all that trouble? It would have been more like him to leave Heidelsheim’s body at the castle gate. What’s more . . .” He stood up, and pointed to the feathers on the shaft. “Those are eagle feathers, and the arrow is well made. I don’t think Wertingen or any of the other bandits hereabouts has bolts as good as that.”

  “True,” Gunther said. “Only great gentlemen have such expensive bolts. They take them when they go out hunting deer.” He turned to Agnes. “I think your father has arrows just like those.”

  “And there’s another odd thing,” Mathis added. “The bolt went right into his flesh up to the feathers. Which means the archer must have been very close to his victim.”

  “You think Heidelsheim knew his murderer?” Agnes asked.

  Mathis shrugged. “Possibly. Or else the assassin hid his weapon and brought it out only at the last moment.” He cast a pitying glance at the remains of the steward. “One way or another, the man deserves decent burial. Let’s take him up to the castle chapel.”

  The men nodded, and they carried the stretcher up the narrow path to the castle, only half an hour’s walk away. Meanwhile Agnes and Mathis went a little way off on their own. Agnes looked troubled and seemed to be leaving something unsaid.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Mathis, confused. “I can see that there’s something on your mind.”

  Agnes stopped and waited until the other men had disappeared beyond a group of beech trees. “Mathis,” she began, hesitantly. “Listen, did you by any chance . . . I have to know . . .”

  “Know what?”

  She pulled herself together before going on. “When I told you that Heidelsheim wanted to marry me, and my father had agreed, you . . . you were so angry, you raged and shouted. Tell me honestly: was it . . . do you have Heidelsheim on your conscience? Did you kill him?”

  For a moment, Mathis’s mouth dropped open in sheer surprise. “Did I . . . ? How . . . how on earth can you think such a thing?”

  “Well, you knew that he was going to tell my father about the stolen arquebus. You could have taken one of the crossbows from the castle and—”

  “Agnes, for goodness’ sake, think!” Mathis took her firmly by the shoulders. “After you told me about Heidelsheim, your father put me in the dungeon. So how could I have killed him?” His face suddenly darkened. “If you’re going to express suspicions, then why not think of your father himself?”

  “My father?”

  Mathis defiantly crossed his arms. “Well, after all, your father has exactly the same crossbow bolts. Suppose Heidelsheim turned you down because he didn’t want to marry you anymore, and that infuriated your father?”

  Agnes narrowed her eyes to slits. “And why would Heidelsheim have wanted to turn me down?”

  “Maybe he decided you were a little stranger than he’d thought at first. People talk about you. And since Parcival brought you that ring, you’ve behaved even more strangely.”

  “How can you . . . ?” Agnes flinched and raised her hand to hit him, but then lowered it again. “You . . . you’re . . .” she stammered. Tears of anger ran down her face. “And I always thought you were fond of me.”

  Without another word, she turned and ran into the forest.

  “Agnes!” Mathis called after her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that!”

  But Agnes did not come back. For a little while he could still hear her footsteps, and then the trees swallowed them up.

  Cursing, Mathis kicked a rock standing on its own among the trees. Why did women always have to be so complicated? That girl could always make him furious, yet all the same he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

  Finally, brooding gloomily, he went after the other men, who had disappeared around a bend in the path.

  A pair of watchful eyes followed him for some time. When Mathis’s footsteps had died away, a figure stepped out of the shade of the bushes and disappeared into the forest without a sound. Thoughtfully, head concealed by a scarf, the eavesdropper hurried down into the valley, murmuring almost inaudibly and making the sign of the cross.

  The watcher in the bushes had wanted to find something out, and he had done so.

  They buried Martin von Heidelsheim the next morning, in the castle graveyard, not far from the well tower. The tombstones there stood askew, most of them so covered with moss and ivy that little of the inscriptions chiseled into them could still be read. A number of castellans and their families lay buried here. The slabs on their graves showed stone knights with mighty swords and long-forgotten coats of arms. Farther away were the graves of the simpler folk, including stewards and clerks, as well as captains of the guard, chaplains, and even a smith.

  Behind and a little way from the few other mourners, Agnes saw Mathis, who had come to the funeral with his mother and his little sister, Marie. The thought of what she had said to Mathis yesterday made her close her eyes in shame. What could have come over her? Today her suspicion seemed ridiculous. Had it been because recently Mathis had taken an interest only in his work, and not her? Even if Mathis had killed the steward in the course of a quarrel, he would have told her about it—she thought that after all these years, she knew him well enough to be sure of that. But who had killed Heidelsheim with a crossbow?

  “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis . . . Amen.” After Father Tristan’s last words, the inhabitants of the castle went their separate ways, murmuring and hastily making the sign of the cross. Mathis left as well, without looking up. Agnes sighed softly. He obviously hadn’t forgiven her yet.

  On impulse, she decided to go up to the library. That was the place where, ever since her childhood, she had been able to pursue her own thoughts best.

  As she entered the library on the fourth floor of the castle tower, she was met by the odor of dust, old parchments, and wood smoke, so familiar to her from her childhood. It was the beginning of May, but Father Tristan liked to keep warm, so the stove on the hearth was burning. However, the old monk himself was not here, and Agnes was both relieved and disappointed. She would have liked to ask Father Tristan more questions about her dreams. On the other hand, she liked being alone. Besides, the chaplain was very reluctant to say much about her dreams and the old stories.

  Agnes thought about that. Why didn’t he want to talk about them? Why had the old book with the picture of the Knights’ House disappeared? And why had Father Tristan asked her not to wear Barbarossa’s ring publicly on her finger?

  Lost in thought, she walked past the bookshelves. She ran her fingers over the volumes, hoping to come upon that strange book again, but in vain. Agnes vividly remembered the leather binding and the gold lettering on it. The book was large and thick, not something to be easily hidden. Did the chaplain have it down in the cellar, where many documents and rolls of parchment were still stored in chests?

  Agnes was about to give up the search when, at the end of one shelf at chest height, she noticed the spine of a remarkable book. As she ran her finger over that one, she noticed that the binding was very hard, made not of leather but of wood. She tapped it, put her head to one side, and was able to make out a Latin title.

  Divina Commedia. Decimus circulus inferni . . . Dante’s Divine Comedy, the Tenth Circle of Hell.

  Agnes stopped. She had in fact read Dante’s account of hell three times already. She loved his graphic descriptions, and they sent an enjoyable shiver down her back, especially at night. But she had never heard of a tenth circle.

  Curious to find out more, she tried pulling out the book, but it seemed to be stuck. She pulled harder. There was a sudden click, and part of the shelf swung open like a door, though just a crack. Cautiously, Agnes opened the space as far as it would go, and then stood there amazed.

  What in the world . . .

  There was a stone niche behind the shelf, just large enough to fit a small child. Several books and scrolls lay inside it. Agn
es reached for them and realized that many of them were not handwritten, but printed. They seemed to be recent works by German scholars. The names on them were those of Philipp Melanchthon and Johann von Staupitz, and the name of Martin Luther also appeared several times. Agnes was about to look at the scrolls as well when her glance fell on a book behind them.

  It was the book that Father Tristan had hidden from her. The title made her heart beat faster.

  Magna Historia de Castro Trifels . . . The Great History of Trifels Castle.

  She hastily leafed through it. Written in Latin, with many magnificent illustrations, illuminated initials, and colored lettering, the work described the beginnings of Trifels as an imperial castle. A drawing showed the three castles of Trifels, Scharfenberg, and Anebos, with the guards’ sandstone outposts between them, just as Agnes had seen it all in her dream. The book told the tale of Trifels in the twelfth century, when it had been the center of the German Empire, and how kings and princes used to meet here. It described the imprisonment of Richard the Lionheart in 1193, and the campaign in Sicily against the Normans only a year later. One picture showed the legendary Norman treasure being brought to the castle by Emperor Henry VI, with what looked like an endless line of beasts of burden crossing the chain of hills, with knights in shining armor among them. So the treasure was real.

  Still turning the pages, Agnes finally came to the page with the picture of the Knights’ House at Trifels. Once again she recognized the many guests at the banquet in her dream, including the black-haired young man in his hauberk, kneeling in front of an older man. Turning a page back again, she came upon the title of the chapter. It was written in simple Latin, and she was able to translate it quickly.

  The Accolade of the Guelph Johann of Brunswick, Anno Domini 1293 . . .

  Her heart skipped a beat. Now, at last, she knew the name of the strange young man in her dream. The Guelphs had once been a powerful family, enemies of the house of Hohenstaufen at the time of Barbarossa. They, too, had once appointed a German emperor. The center of their power, as in the old days, was still in Brunswick, although they did not exert anything like the influence they had in the past.