The Castle of Kings

  “What do you mean?” asked Agnes.

  Philipp von Erfenstein rubbed his beard, which was wet with wine. “Last time I went to Speyer, the cloth merchant Jakob Gutknecht dropped a few words about his son. He’s twenty years old now, and still something of a rascal.” The castellan grinned, as if he had suddenly cast off his anxieties. “Gives his father all the trouble he can. That’s why Gutknecht wants to see him in safe harbor as soon as possible.”

  Agnes felt her heart beating faster. “You don’t mean . . .”

  “Agnes,” her father said brusquely. “You’re not going to get a noble knight for a husband, can’t you understand that? We knights have come down in the world. Although I’m sorry to say so, the future belongs to the merchant class. I know those fops. They look down on us, but at heart they all look enviously at our titles. Any patrician would be happy to show off a pretty baroness or a castellan’s daughter as his wife.” He clapped his hands. “Yes, it might just work.”

  Agnes said nothing, but her expression darkened. A jewel for a patrician to wear. So that’s all I mean to him . . .

  “We should visit Speyer soon,” said Erfenstein, his cheeks glowing with wine and enthusiasm. “In fact the sooner the better. Now that Black Hans knows our plans, we must attack before he makes his castle impregnable. Every day counts.” He looked sharply at Agnes. “And don’t you think you can go there in doublet and hose. Your best gown will be only just good enough. We want to bargain for a good price, and . . .” Only now did he seem to interpret his daughter’s expression correctly. “Not sulking, are you?” he asked suspiciously. “How much longer are you going to hide yourself here? I’ve always told you this day would come. And there are worse things than marrying the son of a rich merchant.”

  Yes, for instance, not marrying anyone, was the thought that shot through Agnes’s mind. A woman without a husband, unprotected, and without a castle . . .

  She said nothing for a while. At last the words came hesitantly out. “I . . . I’ll do what I can. If we can save Trifels Castle that way.”

  Erfenstein smiled. “That’s my girl. And it may not come to that. It could be enough to hint at something. Hold out the prospect of a marriage, and get credit from Gutknecht at no interest.” Swaying, he rose to his feet and went looking for two intact glasses for new wine. “Ah, now we can blow up Black Hans’s castle right under his fat ass,” he said triumphantly. He held out a glass to Agnes. “We should drink to that.”

  Agnes took the goblet and sipped from it. Then she put it down on the dirty floor.

  “We’ll need a new table,” she said quietly. “At least we can still afford that.” She turned to the door. “I’ll go and see the head groom and tell him to look for suitable timber in the woodshed.”

  Without another word, Agnes left the Knights’ House, while her father tipsily hummed an old war song. His words still gnawed away at her.

  Any patrician would be happy to show off a pretty baroness or a castellan’s daughter . . .

  Was that to be her future task? Playing the part of a piece of cheap jewelry, just to save Trifels Castle? She sighed deeply. It really did look like she must soon resign herself to her fate. And any husband would be better than Martin von Heidelsheim, even if she would never have wished the steward of Trifels to meet with such a terrible end.

  As Agnes stepped out into the bright light of the midday sun in the castle courtyard, she saw Mathis standing down by the cisterns. She quickly dismissed her gloomy thoughts and went toward him.

  “I’ve heard about Sebastian. I came straight here,” he said sadly as they met near the stables. “He was a decent man. Talked rather too much, maybe, but good at heart. And I’ll miss him at the furnace, too. There’s so much to be done at the moment that I hardly know whether I’m coming or going.”

  “We’ll have to be finished sooner than expected, all the same, now that Black Hans knows the plan. As soon as possible, in fact. Father and I are going to Speyer to borrow money there.” Agnes told Mathis about her father’s plans, leaving out the fact that she was supposed to act like a pretty decoy. She did not want to hurt Mathis unnecessarily, and she felt ashamed of the plan as well.

  “I can’t be through with it before June,” he replied at last. “We’ll need at least a week for the fine adjustments to the gun. And I have yet to make the gunpowder. Besides sulfur, which is expensive, and charcoal, I’ll need saltpeter, which we can scrape out of the privies. Maybe, if we all work together—”

  “It must be fast,” Agnes interrupted him. “The longer we wait, the more time Black Hans will have to prepare for Father’s attack. He’ll fortify his castle—and do it with the money he stole from us.”

  “I’ll do my best, all right? I can’t promise any more than that.” Mathis took a deep breath and then went on, more calmly, “I actually came to tell you that your comical count really is moving into the ruins of Scharfenberg. I saw a crowd of soldiers and carters down on the pass with heavily laden carts. Furniture, chests, armor, spears, crossbows . . .” He grinned at her. “Why don’t we go and look at it from close quarters? That may take your mind off Black Hans.”

  When they reached Scharfenberg, the huge baggage train had already drawn up outside the castle gates. Agnes counted over a dozen heavily laden carts. Their way had taken them along the dip in the ground where, a week ago, she and Mathis had seen the strange lights that disappeared so suddenly. When they happened to pass the same place the next morning, they had noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

  Now, hearing the carters shouting, the horses whinnying, and the servants cursing as they unloaded the heavy crates one by one, Agnes felt like that nocturnal incident had been unreal. In bright sunlight, the castle and its surroundings seemed almost homely.

  Knights of the Neipperg family had lived in Scharfenberg Castle until a few decades ago. But when the last of that old family died, the ducal steward had not bestowed the fief on anyone else. Stormy winds, rain, and snow had knocked out the once magnificent thickly glazed windows in the lord’s apartments. Tiles had blown off the roof, and some of the merlons on the battlements had fallen into disrepair. But otherwise Scharfenberg was still in reasonably good condition. The small company of guards left to protect it had ensured that potential looters were at least kept away from the inner ring of walls. Agnes knew other castles that had deteriorated within a few years and became stone quarries for peasants, who used what material came to hand for their own houses. Again and again, you found stones in peasant cottages with inscriptions indicating an earlier noble owner.

  Scharfenberg Castle, like Trifels, lay on the Sonnenberg, on a south-facing plateau of rock, but it was much smaller. Its most striking feature was the tall keep standing in the upper bailey, close to the castellan’s apartments. Lower down there were sheds, stables, and dwelling quarters, surrounded by a circular wall. A deep moat lay on three sides of the buildings, and on the western side a drawbridge led to the first castle gate, through which some of the carts now leisurely rolled. Workmen had put up scaffolding against the outer walls and were beginning to render them with new mortar, while other men retiled rooftops. A group of colorfully clad landsknechts sat on a mossy rock in the sun. They were playing dice, laughing, and singing so loudly that Agnes had heard them from a long way off.

  Agnes and Mathis stood at some remove,watching all this activity. The castellan’s daughter was trying to work out how much money Count Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck would be paying to restore this castle. It must amount to thousands of guilders, such a sum as her father had never even seen in his entire life.

  “Father Tristan told me that Scharfenberg was once a prison,” she told Mathis, as they watched a couple of glaziers at work. The workmen were just putting in new stained-glass windows on the first floor of the castellan’s dwelling. “When they’ve finished, this will look as grand as the elector’s palace in Heidelberg.”

  “And down in Leinsweiler and the other villages, the peasants are sta
rving.” Mathis shook his head. “It’s shameful. This castle is being renovated with human blood.”

  “You’re forgetting that the count will help the local workers to earn a good living,” replied Agnes. “They have to earn their bread one way or another.”

  “It may help these glaziers—they’re craftsmen—but it won’t do anything for the peasants. And as for the money our fine count uses to pay the craftsmen, he took it out of their pockets first as taxes. It’s high time things changed in the empire. Well, look!” Mathis nodded his head to the left. “Speak of the devil . . .”

  Sure enough, there was a horseman on the road from the pass to Scharfenberg, riding a tall steed whose harness sparkled in the sun. Agnes, too, now recognized Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck. The young count wore a flowing woolen cloak, clasped at the neck with a golden brooch. The cap tipped jauntily over his forehead was made of the finest Flanders cloth, and he wore close-fitting silken hose.

  When the count saw Agnes, he rode over to her and took off his cap. She noticed, for the first time, that the black hair under it was already thinning slightly.

  “God be with you, noble lady,” he said, smiling. “Didn’t I say we’d be meeting again soon?”

  Agnes made a dutiful little curtsy. “You do me honor, Excellency.” She indicated Mathis, who was standing beside her with his eyes lowered and his arms crossed. “May I introduce Mathis Wielenbach, who is the son of the smith at Trifels Castle? It’s Mathis who has been casting the heavy gun with which my father plans to take Wertingen’s castle.”

  The count nodded pleasantly. “I’ve heard of you already, boy. Indeed, they say amazing things about you. Although I still cannot believe that a young, simple armorer is capable of such things. Who taught you? Your father?”

  “I found the art of it in books, Excellency,” Mathis replied coolly.

  “In books?” Scharfeneck grinned. “You don’t mean to say that you can read, fellow? Or rather, did you just look at pictures?”

  “With respect, the fact that my father is a smith makes me no more stupid than any fine gentleman.”

  “Indeed?” The count raised his right eyebrow, offended. “I suppose you are one of those who consider all men equal. Then what else I am told about you must be correct? They say that the mayor of Annweiler wants to arrest you for sedition.”

  “By my honor, I have done nothing to shame me before God.”

  “Mathis is under my father’s protection,” said Agnes, trying to make peace between them. “He may sometimes be a little outspoken, but . . . but he knows his place.”

  “So I should hope.” Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck leaned down to her on his prancing horse. “But if I may offer you my advice, young lady, be careful of the company you keep. Only last week, I hear, a countess on her travels had her throat cut in Worms by a gang of savage peasants. These are dangerous times for those of noble birth. Rabble like that are getting bolder every day.”

  “Mathis would never hurt me. He is my friend, he—” Agnes began, indignantly, but the count waved her protest away.

  “Some are servants and some are masters, castellan’s daughter. God has given every living creature a place in the established order. A fish does not want to fly, an eagle does not dig damp burrows in the ground. Why should it be different for human beings?” Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck sat up very straight in the saddle, turning his eyes sternly on the silent Mathis. “Those who try meddling with the divine order of things offend against God. Remember that, peasant.”

  “I am a smith, for heaven’s sake,” Mathis hissed through gritted teeth. But the count was not listening to him.

  “I must go and see how the workmen are doing,” said Löwenstein-Scharfeneck, taking a firm grip of his horse’s reins. “Scharfenberg Castle will shine with new radiance. A worthy home for our ancient family. I would be glad if I might welcome you to my hall in the near future, Lady Agnes. On your own,” he added smugly. “Over a glass of wine and beside a warm fire burning on the hearth, those like you and me can enjoy ourselves very well speaking of old sagas and legends.” With that, he spurred on his horse and rode away.

  Agnes turned to Mathis, who stood beside her, white as a sheet. His nostrils flared slightly; that was the only movement she could see in him.

  “Just forget what that idiot said, Mathis,” she told him, laying her hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off.

  “ ‘He knows his place,’ right?” he said, mimicking her voice. “That stupid smith.”

  Agnes sighed. “I only said that to—”

  “I don’t care why you said it. Those were the words that came out. And maybe that self-satisfied popinjay is right: there are two kinds of people, and one kind should have nothing to do with the other.”

  Mathis abruptly turned away and hurried along the path back to Trifels Castle. After only a few steps, he had disappeared among the sandstone rocks.

  “Mathis!” she called after him. “Mathis, wait for me! Damn it, don’t be so pig-headed.”

  She stamped her foot angrily. This was their second quarrel within a few weeks. Why did he always have to be so stubborn?

  She was going to hurry after him when she suddenly heard the soft sound of a lute coming from the castle. A pleasant tenor voice sang along to the lute and was very different from the earlier raucous bawling.

  As Agnes turned to the castle again, she saw that another man had joined the group of landsknechts playing dice on top of the hill. Like the count, he wore close-fitting hose, but his doublet was brightly colored and slashed in the military manner. The cap on his head was adorned with bright purple feathers; Agnes could not have said what strange bird they came from. He wore a sword with a handguard by his side, a weapon also favored by the landsknechts. But he held a wooden lute in his hands and was just striking up another merry song on it. The crude text of the song tickled the soldiers’ sense of humor.

  “Come landlord, ere we die of thirst, bring in the wine, bring in the wine. Although your belly be fit to burst, bring us more wine, bring us more wine . . .”

  Feeling curious, Agnes went closer. The minstrel was so delicately built that she took him for a youth at first, but now she saw that he was no longer young, perhaps in his mid-thirties. The hair under his cap was red, like parts of his colorful costume, and freckles were sprinkled over a face that sported a ridiculously small pointed beard. He was not exactly handsome, but he had a natural air of distinction that marked him off from the landsknechts surrounding him. When the minstrel noticed Agnes, he stopped singing abruptly and made her a slight bow.

  “Forgive my coarse words, noble maiden,” he said in a rather affected and old-fashioned tone of voice that made Agnes instinctively smile. “Had I known that such a lovely young lady was listening to my risqué rhymes, I’d have chosen a courtly love song instead.”

  “Oh, but I liked it,” replied Agnes. “It sounded old, like a song from another time.”

  “You heard it correctly. It was—”

  “Hey, none of your blarney, minstrel,” called one of the landsknechts. “Go on playing. And the girl can dance to it—and maybe drop her skirt.”

  The others laughed and roared, and the red-haired man cast them an indignant glance. “Fool that you are, don’t you recognize when you have a genuine lady before you?” he roughly asked the spokesman, who was still grinning suggestively. “Apologize to her at once.”

  “It really doesn’t . . .” Agnes began, but the minstrel interrupted.

  “I must insist, fair maiden. I cannot tolerate such manners. Well, how about it? Where’s your apology?”

  The last words were directed once again at the landsknecht who had insulted Agnes. The man had a wild growth of untrimmed beard, and wore wide, colored hose, with a sword as long as an arm dangling from his belt. His grin disappeared, and he straightened up, growling.

  “Listen to me, you joker,” he began, grasping the pommel of his sword. “You may have a fine, high singing v
oice, but I can make sure it’s soon higher yet, if you take my meaning.”

  “I take your meaning perfectly,” the little minstrel replied coolly. He carefully laid his lute down on the moss-grown rock and put his hand to his own sword. “Never mind that, you will now apologize to the lady at once.”

  The landsknecht laughed, then suddenly drew his sword. With a loud cry he made for the delicately built minstrel, who was a full head shorter than he was.

  “You windbag of a—”

  But he got no farther, for the minstrel had stepped aside with surprising speed. As the soldier ran past, he put out a leg and tripped the man up, so that he slipped on the moss and fell to the ground, cursing.

  “Let that be a warning to you,” said the minstrel. “Now, get on with that apology, and we’ll let the matter rest.”

  But the landsknecht had no intention of apologizing. He stood up and flung himself at his opponent, shouting and raising his blade. The minstrel stoically stood his ground and raised his own sword only at the last moment, thrust under the other man’s blade with it, and immediately stepped to one side. Baffled, the landsknecht stood there staggering for a second time, but now he was quicker, and did not fall but swung around with a cry of triumph—only to feel the tip of the minstrel’s sword at his throat. He stared in horror as the steel tip just pierced his skin, so that a few drops of blood ran down his neck.

  “The apology,” whispered the minstrel. His voice was as soft as it was determined. “I’m waiting.”

  “I . . . I apologize,” the other man muttered.

  “Louder. I don’t think the lady heard you stammering like that.”

  “I apologize.”

  “You must say: I apologize, fair maid.”

  The landsknecht rolled his eyes. His comrades stayed where they were on the rock, their own weapons half drawn. No one dared to move, including Agnes.