“What’s the matter with you, Agnes? Dreaming again? You know, I worry about you when you gaze into space like that.”
Agnes started as Mathis’s voice brought her back from her thoughts. He sounded much less certain of himself than he had an hour or so ago. In spite of her anxiety she couldn’t help smiling.
“What about it? Would it be so bad for me to dream?”
“As long as all you dream about is me.” Mathis grinned so broadly that she saw his teeth flash white. Next moment, however, a shadow fell over his face. “You’re probably right. If we tell your father about stealing the arquebus, he’ll skin me alive.”
“Of course he won’t skin you, you idiot. Who’d make him his beloved swords and daggers when your poor sick father can’t do it anymore? Wait and see. I’m sure things will turn out all right.” Agnes spoke encouragingly, although secretly she was thinking hard about exactly what she ought to say about the incident. What would she do if Philipp von Erfenstein questioned her directly about the missing arquebus? Lie to him? The castellan knew his daughter too well and would probably see through her at once. All she could really do was pray for her father to never notice that the gun was missing.
Sighing, she pressed Mathis’s hand. “You know I’ll always stand by you. All the same, what you did is theft, Mathis. What were you thinking? And now the precious arquebus has fallen into the hands of Black Hans.” With a groan, she felt the back of her head where she had struck it on the rock in the forest clearing. “However that may be, I can hardly hide this bump from my father. And he’s sure to ask about Puck and Parcival. So, one way or another, I’ll have to tell him what happened. And that when he has so much anxiety because the peasants can’t pay their rent these days.” Thoughtfully, she wiped away the last traces of soot from Mathis’s face. “We’d better leave the arquebus and your strange experiment out of it, or there’ll be another misfortune. You yourself know that my father can explode as easily as your wretched gunpowder.”
But as they finally reached the narrow path up to the castle entrance, Agnes gave him a conspiratorial wink. As usual, the iron-clad wooden gate was wide open. The old man-at-arms, Gunther, his leather doublet stained with the small beer he drank at midday, dozed in a little niche to the right of it. His slightly bent halberd was leaning against the wall beside him like a broomstick. Nowadays gray-haired Gunther, together with the gunner Reichhart, who was usually drunk, and two other guards, made up the entire garrison of the castle. When Gunther saw the castellan’s daughter coming, he jumped to attention.
“Good day, mistress. What luck did you have out hawking?” The watchman, grinning, chewed on a toothpick he had cut for himself, but then he looked at Agnes with concern. “But where’s your falcon? And why is young Mathis looking as gloomy as a month of Sundays?”
Narrowing her lips, Agnes shook her head. “It’s nothing to worry about, Gunther.” Turning to Mathis, she whispered, “It may be better if I go to see my father on my own. Otherwise he’ll think you’ve been dragging me into mischief.”
Mathis nodded, but then asked quietly, “What about the arquebus?”
“Trust me, I won’t tell him anything.”
Once again, Agnes briefly, pressed his hand and then, watched suspiciously by Gunther, stepped into the bailey, or outer courtyard of the castle, which was entirely deserted. Only a few cackling geese ran over ancient paving stones sprinkled with muck and droppings; otherwise there was an almost uncanny silence. The tower and main dwelling, built of reddish stone, rose thirty paces into the air above Agnes, overshadowing the courtyard. On the left was the so-called Knights’ House, a half-timbered building on the edge of the abyss below. It had once been handsome, but it was now in poor repair, and the roof leaked. Beyond it were a few decrepit sheds and the domestic buildings.
Feeing heavy at heart, Agnes climbed the well-worn steps to the small upper courtyard of the castle and slipped into the drafty, sooty kitchen while she wondered what to do next. She was so deep in thought that she didn’t notice the cook, Hedwig, until she was right in front of her. The stout old woman was stirring a pot of pea soup. Concerned, Hedwig looked out from under her cap and stopped stirring.
“What’s the matter, child?” she asked sympathetically. “You look like a ghost.” Agnes had known Hedwig all her life, so it didn’t bother her that the cook sometimes treated her like she was still a little girl.
“I’m tired, that’s all,” replied Agnes, her voice cracking.
“Have some of this pea soup, then, that’ll be sure to do you—”
“Good heavens, why can no one in this castle see that I simply want to be left in peace?” Agnes snapped. “Is that so hard to understand?” At the same moment she was sorry she had spoken so roughly.
In surprise, the cook put down the bowl she had been about to give Agnes. “All right, all right,” she muttered. “I only wanted to help. Maybe you should lie down for a little; you’re all agitated.” She gave Agnes a mischievous smile. “That happens, you know, when you get to be a woman, with the blood surging in your veins. You feel hot-headed. You and Mathis haven’t by any chance been . . . ?”
Seeing Agnes’s reproachful glance, Hedwig stopped short and went on stirring her soup. But Agnes thought she still saw a slight smile on the old cook’s face.
Without another word, but with her heart beating fast, Agnes climbed the steep stone spiral staircase to her own room. Wearily, she let herself drop on her bed, closed her eyes, and tried to forget the incidents of the day.
But the thunder of the arquebus still echoed in her ears.
A few miles away, a falcon soared high in the air, among scraps of pale cloud. His wings beat wearily, some of his tail feathers were broken, and soon he would be forced to come down to land. But the deafening danger still lay in wait down there, that mighty, heart-rending thunder that had startled the little falcon so much that he was now far off course, somewhere in a district with which he was unfamiliar. He could not hear the cooing sounds of his mistress’s voice, or see the flickering lure she always used to bring him back to her.
He was alone.
As his wingbeats became weaker and weaker, the falcon let himself come closer and closer to the ground as he flew in wide circles. Among the many green, brown, and white dots beneath him, his keen eyes had seen a box-shaped structure in the forest below that vaguely reminded him of his home. He made for it, and was soon coming down to perch on the sill of an open window. The falcon fluttered, called for his mistress, squawked as he had learned to do since he was a chick, and at last helping hands were reached out to him. But not the soft, familiar leather of the gauntlet that usually received him.
Other hands took firm hold of his plumage.
“Surely I know you,” said a surprised voice. “Who sends you to me? God or the devil?”
Something was placed over his head, and the darkness before his eyes immediately made the falcon keep still. He stopped fluttering.
Then the hands drew him into a crackling, comfortable warmth.
The game had begun.
✦ 2 ✦
On the Trifels, 21 March, Anno Domini 1524, early evening
“WHAT MAKES THAT BASTARD THINK he can touch my daughter? I’ll have him drawn—drawn and broken on the wheel!”
Philipp Schlüchterer von Erfenstein had jumped up from his stool and was pacing in front of the fire on the hearth, red in the face, his wide black coat, trimmed with fox fur, swinging out behind him. His two hounds looked up wearily from the nap they had been taking, then lowered their heads again to the warm boar’s pelt near the fire. They were familiar with their master’s outbursts of anger and knew that they passed as quickly as a summer storm.
“Even as a youth, Wertingen was worthless,” Erfenstein went on, snorting angrily. “Acted very unchivalrously at tournaments and wouldn’t own himself bested in single combat. I don’t like to think what he’d have done to you.” The big man shook his head, and for a moment Agnes could see genuin
e anger in her father’s face. Today there were gray strands in his once black hair, the result, not least, of sorrow and care. Long ago the knight had lost his left eye in a battle, and the scarred socket had been covered by an eye patch ever since. That and a dueling scar on his left cheek made him look grimmer than he really was. Since his wife’s early death, Philipp von Erfenstein had cared for his only daughter like a mother hen—although, luckily, there were enough hiding places at Trifels for Agnes to get away from her father’s scolding. Now that she was a young woman, his protective instincts had, if anything, increased. Like many men who become fathers at an advanced age, he took particular care of his daughter.
“You haven’t told me yet what you were doing in that part of the forest.” The broad, sturdy, giant of a man turned to his daughter, his forefinger menacingly raised. “There are riffraff of every kind around the place—you know that.”
Agnes kept her eyes lowered, shifting uneasily back and forth in her chair. Her father had already been lecturing her for a good half an hour in the great hall of the castle. Twilight was beginning to fall outside, and long shadows lay in the huge room with its high ceiling supported by a series of weathered columns. Threadbare tapestries and faded carpets hung on the walls, giving only a faint idea of the magnificent designs they had once shown.
Philipp von Erfenstein had spent the whole day down among the cottages and peasants’ houses, collecting their meager rent. As a result he was in a bad temper, and news of the attack on his daughter was the last straw. Agnes had decided to say nothing about the fight and the dead man for fear of upsetting her father even more.
“Was I wrong to go looking for Parcival?” she couldn’t help saying, however. “You know what my falcon means to me, Father. We can be glad that Mathis happened to be near. He . . . distracted the attention of the robbers so that we could get away.”
“He distracted them?” Her father looked at her distrustfully with his one remaining eye. “How did he do that? Not with one of his stinking pots of fire, I suppose? When I was down with the peasants I twice heard a loud noise like a clap of thunder. That wasn’t by chance your friend Mathis distracting them, was it?” He raised a threatening finger again, as his voice rose louder. “I’ve warned the lad a dozen times to leave that devilish stuff alone. He should be forging swords, not meddling with such unchivalrous weapons.”
“He threw stones at the robbers and then ran away.” Agnes was doing her best not to look her father in the eye. “We heard the thunder ourselves. It will have been over one of the neighboring castles,” she murmured, fervently hoping that the castellan would leave it at that.
After a moment’s hesitation, her father accepted the excuse. “Very well,” he growled. “I’ll tell Mathis I’m grateful when I get the chance. That doesn’t alter the fact that the boy should leave gunpowder alone. That fellow isn’t fit company for you anyway,” he said, pouring himself a goblet of wine from a pewter jug. “Mathis may have rescued you this time, but in general he’s a troublemaker. Goes around with Shepherd Jockel, that rabble-rouser. What the devil is he thinking? God has given us all our proper stations in life. Where would we be if everyone did just as he fancied?” He drank deeply and slammed the goblet down on the mantel. “Such things didn’t happen under the old emperor. Fellows of that kind were strung up, and no shilly-shallying about it.”
“Times have changed, Father,” Agnes replied, holding her hands out to the fire on the hearth. Although the logs were crackling and hissing, no real warmth spread through the large hall. “Mathis says the peasants are worse off than ever. Their children go hungry, they’re heavily taxed, and they can’t even hunt and fish. Only this morning the mayor of Annweiler had some more poachers hanged, one of them a young fellow no older than Mathis. The nobility and the church take more and more money—”
“The church takes what it’s given,” Erfenstein roughly interrupted her. “Why do those peasant simpletons fall for the letters of indulgence? Giving the priests money for the forgiveness of their sins, and the sins of their forebears into the bargain.” He shook his head angrily. “Luther was in the right of it when he denounced such nonsense. But he’s little better, encouraging the peasants to rebel.” Angrily, he threw another log on the fire before continuing. “And who thinks of us knights? Our treatment at the hands of the high nobility is shameful. Yes, in the old days, under Emperor Maximilian—God rest his soul—our opinions and our fighting force were worth something. But no one cares for anything but money now that his grandson Charles is emperor. Money and landsknechts . . . we’re supposed to provide those great gentlemen with fighting men as well. When I think how it was at the battle of Guinegate with his Imperial Majesty . . .”
Agnes kept quiet and let her father’s tirade wash over her like gentle summer rain. Although she loved him dearly, it was hard for her to bear his melancholy swings of mood. Ever since the death of Emperor Maximilian a few years ago, Philipp von Erfenstein had thought the empire was going to the dogs. After a tough struggle, the German electors had decided in favor of Maximilian’s grandson Charles, son of the king of Spain, to succeed him. With the Spanish connection, the Holy Roman Empire was now the largest power in Europe, even if it was ruled by an emperor whose residence was on the other side of the Pyrenees and who spoke not a word of German.
The sound of a door squealing stopped Philipp von Erfenstein in mid-monologue. His steward, Martin von Heidelsheim, stuck his head in around the door.
Heidelsheim, who was rather delicate in appearance, wore a broad smile on his face, a smile not entirely reflected in his cold eyes. He had been administrator of the castle’s business for over ten years now, and he was responsible for Erfenstein’s financial affairs. However, the pale and studious man, who always walked with a slight stoop, was beginning to feel that his position was beneath his dignity. In his little office over in the Knights’ House, Heidelsheim often simply stared out of the window, bored, and spoke to the wine in his goblet. He was only in his mid-thirties but he gave an antiquated impression. Only when Agnes crossed his path did his spirits seem to revive slightly.
“Forgive me for disturbing you, sir,” Heidelsheim murmured, his eyes fixed on Agnes. “But the list of the annual rents that you gave me . . .”
“Yes, what about it?” Erfenstein growled. Noticing the direction of his chamberlain’s gaze, he made an impatient gesture. “Go on, Heidelsheim. My daughter is old enough to know about our financial affairs now. After all, she’ll be the wife of the castellan one of these days, won’t she?” He winked at Martin von Heidelsheim, who cleared his throat noisily.
“Well, as I said, the list . . .” the steward went on. “It looks incomplete. The rents of the Neueneck farm and the house down on the castle acres are missing. And the toll collected for the Bindersbach Pass is very low this time.”
Erfenstein sighed and rubbed his unshaven chin. “The peasants have no more to give,” he said. “Last winter was the hardest in memory. Poor devils, they’ve even eaten their own seed corn, and many of their children are almost starving to death. And now that Wertingen—damn him—makes the pass unsafe, merchants often look for other ways to go. That’s why the payment from the toll is low.”
As if in silent reprobation, Heidelsheim raised his eyebrows. “I don’t have to remind you that the duke will demand his share in spite of all that. Those gentlemen won’t be pleased if—”
“Where the devil am I supposed to find the money if there isn’t any?” Erfenstein burst out. “Do you think I should join the ranks of robber knights like Hans von Wertingen, eh?”
Martin von Heidelsheim did not reply. He let his eyes wander over Agnes until they finally fixed on her neckline. Her breasts had grown a good deal larger in the last year, and Heidelsheim seemed to relish the sight of them. Feeling uncomfortable, Agnes turned away and pretended to be warming her hands at the fire again.
“I’ll talk to the ducal administrator at Neukastell,” Erfenstein finally grumbled. “I’ll get hi
m to grant us a longer deadline. The estates of the other knights hereabouts must be in similar difficulty. The peasants are discontented everywhere. We can be glad if there are no uprisings like the one in Würtemberg a few years ago.”
“Well, I’ve heard that the Scharfenecks at Löwenstein have even given the duke a gift this year.” Heidelsheim’s lips stretched in a narrow smile. “One of those pocket timepieces that are being made in Nuremberg these days.”
“Ha! Everyone knows that the Scharfenecks are cousins three times removed of the elector’s family. They don’t need money from their peasants, they have only to drive a cart to court in Heidelberg and load up gold there by the sackful.” Erfenstein laughed bitterly and stared out of the window at the milky landscape, where the sun was slowly sinking in the west. “Only last year those gentlemen had their castle extended, while the likes of us have to watch out for our own rafters falling on our heads. The whole world is out of joint, it’s not just the peasants who are disaffected.”
Martin von Heidelsheim cleared his throat. “If I may make a suggestion, honored castellan? To the best of my knowledge there are still some guns in the armory that could be melted down. Bronze and iron are valuable, especially in restless times like these. We might get a good price for the metal.”
“Melt down the guns?” For a moment Erfenstein looked at his chamberlain in horror. “Have we come to that?” Then, hesitantly, he nodded. “But you may be right, Heidelsheim. I don’t have enough men to defend this castle anyway. And maybe any money we can make will at least buy enough wood and tiles to repair the outer bailey.” He turned to the door through which they reached the dwellings in the tower. “Wait here a moment. I’ll discuss the matter at once with the master gunner. I’d like him to go through our stock of weapons with you in the next few days.”