The other three laughed, and Hans von Wertingen, pleased with himself, stroked his tangled beard. His long black hair was matted, his face red and bloated by cheap brandy. Agnes knew many stories of famous knights, once celebrated in song by bards, whom the misery of the last few years had turned into ragged vagabonds. Her father had told her that the Wertingens themselves had once been a highly regarded family. They had risen to be ministers of the emperor’s domains, but then their income from letting out land on lease dwindled more and more as their debts increased.
Agnes looked at this dirty, verminous man on his rickety horse and knew at once that she could expect no mercy from him.
“Get hold of the girl,” Wertingen ordered in his harsh voice. “You can send the boy to the devil for all I care.”
Whinnying, the horses moved into a semicircle around the two captives.
Puck ran over to the shouting men and circled them, yapping. As he did so, the little dog took care to stay clear of the big mastiff that was growling at him and tugging at the leash.
“Did you ever see anything like it?” Hans von Wertingen was laughing so hard that his battered armor clinked slightly. “A puny little cur attacking my Saskia. The creature’s as crazy as his mistress. Go on, Saskia, get him!”
He let go of the leash, and the monster fell on Puck like a black demon. It all happened so fast that Agnes didn’t even have time to scream. The mastiff’s fangs closed on the dachshund and tossed him into the air like a wet rag. Next moment Puck was lying in front of his mistress with his throat bitten through. He uttered a last hoarse yelp, and then the little bundle of fur went limp.
“You . . . you murderer! You damned murderer!”
Crying out, Agnes ran at the knight, who was still laughing, and flailed at his legs with her gauntlet. Hans von Wertingen gave her a kick that sent her slipping backward, where she hit the back of her head on a rock. Sharp pain shot through her, and for a moment everything went dark before her eyes.
“Stupid girl,” Wertingen said. “Shedding tears over a wretched mongrel like that. Never mind the dog, tell us where your falcon is. He’ll be worth a good sum. Talk, or else . . .”
“Don’t make a move, you bastard!”
In her pain, it took Agnes a moment to grasp the fact that it really was Mathis who had spoken those words. When she rose from the ground, groaning, she saw the smith’s son standing beside the arquebus, with a burning fuse held just above the flash pan in his right hand. The metal tube was still lying on the rocks, aimed directly at the four men.
“You swine have just as long as the fuse goes on burning to get away from here,” Mathis warned them. His voice shook slightly, but his eyes were firmly fixed on Hans von Wertingen. “Or even your own mothers won’t recognize your stinking corpses.”
For a few seconds, everything in the clearing was so still that only the hiss of the burning fuse could be heard. Then Hans von Wertingen began roaring with laughter again.
“A stupid little peasant threatening me with a gun.” He mopped the tears of mirth from his eyes. “Mind you don’t burn your fingers, lad. What did you load that infernal device with—acorns?”
“With a leaden ball weighing six ounces and a good pound of the best granular gunpowder. Enough to send at least one of you to hell any day.”
Hans von Wertingen’s laughter stopped abruptly, and his three men, too, now seemed considerably less sure of themselves.
“So it was you firing that shot just now?” the knight murmured suspiciously. “But how is that possible? It would take a highly experienced landsknecht just to load the thing. And granular gunpowder’s expensive, that’s for sure.”
“Half the fuse is burned,” Mathis pointed out. “You don’t have much time left.” He raised the gun, this time aiming it straight at Wertingen. “So get out of here.”
“You . . . you windbag of a . . .” It was visibly difficult for Hans von Wertingen to control himself. At last he spat grimly on the forest floor. “Devil take it, you don’t fool me. I’ll be bound that thing’s not loaded at all. Get him, men!”
But the three robbers sat on their horses and did not move.
“I said get him, damn your eyes. Or I’ll shove that arquebus up your fat asses with my own hands.”
This threat was enough to start the men moving at last. They trotted their horses toward Mathis and Agnes at a menacingly slow pace, with a murderous light in their eyes.
When they were only a few paces away, a mighty clap of thunder shook the clearing. It was as loud as if the whole world were coming to an end in fire and smoke.
Agnes flung herself down on the hard ground, and out of the corner of her eye saw one of the men fall from his horse, as if struck down by a divine hammer. His torso was a mass of red. The castellan’s daughter felt something wet on her face, and at the same moment a fine rain of blood began drizzling down on her.
Thick black smoke poured from the mouth of the arquebus.
Agnes cried out in horror, while horses and men fell into panic nearby. Deadly fear came over her. What had Mathis done? There was no going back after this. The robber knight’s men would undoubtedly kill them both now. Agnes desperately tried to crawl away into the bushes at the edge of the clearing, but her legs refused to obey her. After the gun had been fired, all sounds seemed muted and far away, as if her ears were wrapped in thick wool. The huge mastiff had crept under an overhanging rock, whimpering; two of the horses had thrown their riders and were galloping away, whinnying loudly. Only Hans von Wertingen still sat firmly in his saddle, his face red with anger and stained with blood.
“You’ll pay for this!” he shouted, beside himself, reaching for the mighty two-handed sword at his side. “The hell with a ransom. Philipp von Erfenstein can have his daughter back—head, arms, and legs one by one.”
Roaring furiously, his broadsword drawn, he made for Agnes where she crouched, frozen, in the middle of the clearing. As if time had suddenly slowed down, she saw the knight riding toward her, step by step. The air was full of the clink of metal. The blade of the sword was already coming down when Agnes suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Mathis, hauling her aside at the last moment.
“We must get away from here! Can you hear me?” he shouted into her ear, his voice muted.
Agnes nodded, as if in a trance, but then she thought of something. “Parcival!” she cried frantically. “I can’t abandon Parcival.”
“Forget the falcon, our lives are in danger! Look, that bastard is coming back.”
Mathis pointed to Hans von Wertingen, who had turned his horse and was galloping back toward them.
Desperately, Agnes looked around, but she could see no sign of Parcival anywhere in the devastated clearing. At last she struggled up and ran into the forest with Mathis. They could hear the snorting and whinnying of the horse behind them.
“I’ll get you yet, damn it,” Hans von Wertingen called. “Stand still, and perhaps I’ll be chivalrous and show you mercy.”
“Chivalrous!” Mathis gasped as he pulled Agnes on by her hand. “A moment ago he was going to quarter us.”
They stumbled through the bushes, over hollows in the ground and moldering branches, panting with fear, until the sound of whinnying died away behind them. At last Agnes stood still and listened. Her hearing seemed to be intact, apart from a slight ringing in her ears. Relieved, she realized that the knight could not follow them through the thickets on his horse.
“We’d better hide,” she whispered. “Then he’s sure to ride past us.”
“You’re forgetting the mastiff. She can smell us.” Mathis made her go on until they reached a small brook winding its way through the forest. “If we wade along this stream for a while, the dog may lose track of our scent.”
Still out of breath, they scrambled down into the cold water, which came up to their knees. Agnes clung to Mathis’s doublet with her right hand and did her best not to think of the pitiful bundle of fur that only a few minutes ago had been
her dear, cheerful little Puck.
They followed the current of the brook downstream. Once they thought for a moment that they heard a dog barking, but it was too far away to be dangerous. Agnes was staggering rather than walking, and she had lost her gauntlet long ago. She stumbled and fell on the bed of the stream but hardly felt herself graze a knee. The terrible end of her beloved Puck, the loss of her falcon, the man’s bleeding torso—all these images haunted her mind simultaneously. She staggered on behind Mathis until they finally clambered out of the brook. They made for the castle mound, moving in a wide arc around it. Tears ran down her face, and again and again she suppressed sobs. The day that had begun so well had turned into sheer nightmare.
Only when they had reached the fields around the castle, and the Trifels towered strong and gray above them, did Agnes know that they were in safety.
There was still no trace of her falcon.
Not far away, in a hut in the forest, the old midwife Elsbeth Rechsteiner threw a log on the fire and watched blue flames lick around the wood. A large pot on a tripod simmered over the flames, hissing slightly. The smoke had difficulty finding its way through an opening in the roof of reed thatch, and so the little cottage was full of it.
Elsbeth thoughtfully stirred the pot. A few pale flowers and birch leaves floated in the liquid it contained. She had jumped when she heard the bang a few moments ago and murmured a quiet prayer, although she had no idea what had caused the noise. But these days, the forest that had been her home since childhood seemed a dark and dangerous place. Like an evil being that would reach for her with its branches and twigs when she wandered for hours along overgrown game paths. More and more robber knights and bandits went about their nefarious business in these parts, emaciated wolves and wild boar as big as bears had become a plague, and famine even changed many a usually peace-loving villager into a wild beast.
But if Elsbeth’s hand shook now as she fed the fire with dry twigs, it had nothing to do with robbers, wild beasts, or that loud explosion; it was because of the three men sitting at the well-worn little table behind her. She had known them all for many years, but until now they had always met in secret in a cellar under the church of St. Fortunatus in Annweiler. Their sudden arrival here, in her cottage, showed Elsbeth how serious the situation was.
The enemy was back.
For some time they had all sat there in silence, with only the warning cry of the jay outside to be heard. Only now did the midwife turn to the three men.
“And the news is true?” she asked, with a lingering touch of doubt in her voice. Elsbeth was now over sixty. Age, hard work, and worry had dug deep lines in her skin. Only her eyes still shone as brightly as in her youth.
One of her visitors nodded. Old age had left its mark on him as well. The hands enfolding a beaker of hot herbal brew were bent with gout, his face furrowed like a freshly plowed field. “They’re on the road again, Elsbeth,” he said, “there’s no doubt about it. My cousin Jakob saw them in Zweibrücken, where they searched the archives, but I don’t suppose they found anything. Who knows where they’ll be riding now? Worms, Speyer, maybe Landau . . . It won’t be long before they’re here in Annweiler.”
“After all these years.” Elsbeth Rechsteiner sighed and stared into the flames, her eyes clouded. She was cold in spite of the fire, the frost of March lingering in her old bones. “I thought they’d given up,” she went on at last. “It’s so long ago, and we’ve kept the secret so well. Is all the terror to begin again?”
“Believe me, they won’t find anything,” one of the other two men said reassuringly. He was younger, and his dirty leather apron showed that he had made haste here from his place of work. “The traces are well blurred. Only the Brotherhood knows about them. And none of us will talk, not a single one. I’d stake my life on it.”
Elsbeth Rechsteiner laughed softly and shook her head. “How can you be so sure? These men are clever, and as cruel as bloodhounds. You know what they broke last time. They know no mercy. They’ll search everywhere, people will talk out of fear, and in the end they’ll find something. Either with you or with me.”
“Remember what you promised, Elsbeth. Remember your oath.” The old man put his beaker down and rose, groaning. “We came to warn you, but that does not release you from your task. If the secret is to be well hidden, better here than in the city.” He gave the other two men a sign, and they walked to the door together. Only there did the old man turn once more. “We have sworn to keep the secret until the day comes at last. So many generations, and they have all kept silent. Nothing can release us from that promise.”
“And suppose the day has already come?” Elsbeth Rechsteiner asked quietly, as she stared into the fire. “Suppose this is the time to act, at last?”
“It is not for us to decide that, as only God knows.” The old man raised his stained hat. “Thank you for the hot brew, Elsbeth. May heaven protect you.”
The three of them turned away in silence and left her hut. Their footsteps crunched on the twigs that covered the forest floor and slowly died away.
Elsbeth Rechsteiner was left alone with her fears.
Silently, Agnes and Mathis climbed the steep path up to the castle. They had rushed here from the clearing. Agnes’s heart beat rapidly and sweat stood out on her forehead. Again and again she saw in her mind’s eye the man’s shattered, bleeding torso and heard the shouting of her pursuer. She knew that she had only just escaped death. By this time she had calmed down enough to imagine, at least, what her father would say about all that. Not only had she lost her falcon, Parcival, not only was little Puck dead, they had also had to leave the arquebus behind. If Philipp von Erfenstein found out that Mathis had stolen the gun, he would fall into one of his notorious fits of rage. Agnes did not think that her father would hand Mathis over to the mayor of Annweiler, but he was still in danger of imprisonment or even exile.
“Maybe that experiment in the clearing wasn’t such a good idea,” Mathis muttered beside her. He too was visibly downcast. He shivered slightly and was as pale as death, a pallor that stood out even more against the marks of soot left on his face.
“Not such a good idea? It was the most stupid idea you ever had!” Agnes exclaimed. But she was too badly shaken to be truly angry. “I’d think that explosion was heard all the way to Rome,” she went on, a little more calmly. “We can think ourselves lucky that even more such ruffians didn’t turn up.”
“At least there’s one ruffian fewer.” Defiantly, Mathis pushed a lock of sandy hair back and wiped the soot off his face. Once again it occurred to Agnes that the journeyman smith was not really handsome in the usual sense of the word. He had broken his nose many years ago in a scuffle, and it had been slightly askew in his finely formed face ever since. His eyes were dark, and their expression was usually gloomy. Since early childhood, there had been something angry and hot-tempered about Mathis that had always made him interesting to Agnes.
“I should think your father would be proud of me if he knew about it,” he grumbled.
“I think he’d more likely beat the living daylights out of you, so you’d better make sure he never finds out. That second explosion could have made him suspicious already. After all, he knows how you like playing with firearms.”
Mathis snorted contemptuously. “If he wasn’t so pigheaded, what I know could be worth gold to the castle. I . . . I really just have to talk to him about it some time . . .”
“The Trifels doesn’t need any help, or at least not from a simple journeyman smith,” Agnes interrupted him roughly. “So forget that, before you drive my father to white-hot fury.”
With an anxious presentiment, she looked up at the weathered castle on the rocks where her father had been castellan for many years. The Trifels was enthroned on a mighty sandstone wedge that towered, like the nave of a great church, above the surrounding forests. Tall rock formations rose on three sides of the castle to fifty feet high, hence the meaning of its name, the Three Rocks. Only
to the east did a sloping plain lead to the castle, protected on that side by walls, although they were falling into ruin. The Trifels had once been an impregnable fortress, but those days were long gone. The entire castle was becoming more and more of a ruin, and Agnes knew that Mathis was right in his critical assessment. But she also knew what her father, who had been brought up in the ways of chivalry, thought of firearms—nothing at all. And as castellan he would never listen to advice from a vassal only seventeen years old. Philipp von Erfenstein was too proud and too obstinate for that. Moreover, there was no money to spare for plans such as Mathis had in mind.
Soon they passed the northern wall of the castle and the well tower, standing a little to one side and linked to the main castle building by a crooked covered bridge. A well-trodden path, just wide enough for a cart, led along the wall to the front gate of the castle. It almost seemed to Agnes that the tall, massive building were eyeing her distrustfully—like a mighty animal blinking wearily before falling into a slumber that would last for centuries.
“Suppose we simply told your father the truth?” Mathis suggested hesitantly. “After all, Black Hans was going to abduct you. Erfenstein should be glad we were armed and killed one of Wertingen’s ruffians. And I wanted to talk to him about the arquebuses anyway. The arsenal is in a truly dreadful state, not to mention the rest of the defenses.” He pointed to what had once been a tower, although today only its foundations were left. “If something isn’t done soon, a single fierce storm will bring everything here tumbling down. Yes, and over in Eusserthal the clerics are enhancing the beauty of their monastery daily.” Mathis’s voice rose. “Only last year they had a new bell cast. Paid for by their hungry serfs.”
Agnes herself had been against it when the new Eusserthal bell was consecrated with pageantry and at great expense last summer. The local peasants had been fobbed off with a little alms. Mathis, who had watched the casting of the bell closely, lending the master bellfounder a hand now and then, stayed away from the ceremony of consecration. In the following days he had secretly met with several strangers to the district in the forest.