The Castle of Kings

  “I’m thinking,” replied Friedrich coolly. “You might try it yourself now and then.”

  “Ha! Thinking. You’ve done nothing but think for weeks. If only you’d at least go hunting like other useless young men of your age, but no, the young count builds castles in the air while a mob of idiot peasants loll at their ease in his castle.”

  Friedrich cast up his eyes. “Your own castle in the Palatinate was also burned, Father, don’t forget that. You have Neuscharfeneck back only because the peasants there have now given up.”

  “Because they fear me. In your place, I’d at least have gathered a few men and won my property back.”

  “You know it’s not as easy as that,” Friedrich said, between his teeth. His hands unconsciously felt for the crossbow that was still with him on the battlements, and his fingers toyed with the trigger.

  Just one bolt. Just a brief click . . .

  “Those dogs have hidden away in Trifels, and that, as you know, is much more difficult to capture than the surrounding castles,” Friedrich finally went on. “Do you want me to disgrace myself in public by standing outside my own property, a target for the peasants to shoot at?” His eyes flashed angrily at his father. “What’s more, I have no money left to get myself landsknechts, with a miserly father cutting off my funds.”

  The old count frowned. “Take care how you speak to me, Friedrich. I’m still your father.” He brandished his stick in the air. “And I’m not wasting my money on that old place. When I was your age, I could already call three castles my own, and they weren’t decrepit ruins like Trifels. I never did understand what you saw in those old walls anyway. The Norman treasure—bah! Castles in the air . . .”

  Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck looked out over the fields, staring fixedly at them, while his father went on complaining. He’d have liked to throw the old man over the battlements, simply to put an end to his carping at long last. Almost two months had passed since Friedrich’s headlong flight from Scharfenberg Castle. Long weeks that he had spent here at his father’s ancestral seat, occupying himself with the study of old records and practicing the crossbow, all in the company of dull-witted brutes. At the fall of Scharfenberg, Friedrich had managed to save himself by jumping into the ditch of manure outside the castle walls. It had been such a humiliating departure that the memory of it alone almost sent him out of his mind daily. Since then, his thoughts had gone around in circles all the time. That memory had suddenly forced everything he had dreamed of for so long into the background: the Norman treasure that would have allowed him to cut his ties with his father, an independent life as the proud lord of a castle. He could keep his hatred under control only by killing hares and game birds with his crossbow from up here now and then. That at least brought him relief for a few hours. But Friedrich knew that every time he aimed at a rabbit, pheasant, partridge, or grouse, it was a very different target that he really had in mind.

  Agnes . . .

  His humiliation had begun with her, and only with her would it end. Agnes had left him, in the company of that wretched minstrel, and then she had obviously given away the secret of the escape tunnel to the peasants. She had done it even though they were alike in so many respects. She was the first woman for whom he had felt something like affection. Friedrich knew he wouldn’t rest until he had her in his arms again. He spent nights on end imagining what he would do to her then.

  Where are you, Agnes? Where are you?

  So far, all the messengers he had sent out had returned empty-handed. They had found no trace of either Agnes or the minstrel.

  “Well, maybe you’ll be lucky and won’t have to recapture your castle for yourself.” His father’s words suddenly brought him back to the present. The old man was standing beside him, looking out at the landscape baking in the heat. “I hear that the elector of the Palatinate is hunting the peasants like hares. This nightmare won’t last much longer.” He nodded grimly. “I’m thinking of mounting a punitive expedition in my own lands. There’s at least one rabble-rouser to be hanged in every provincial hole. The wounds must be cauterized before they begin to fester.” Ludwig von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck broke off and seemed to be thinking. Then he looked watchfully at his son. “Well, why not? Think you can do it?”

  “Do what?” Friedrich replied, somewhat irritated. His mind had been wandering back to his gloomy train of thought again.

  “I’ll need a hard man to lead my punishment squad. One who’ll shrink from nothing and feel no sympathy for children weeping because their fathers are hanging from the village linden tree, their tongues blue and hanging out. I also want to raise the rents again. It’s going to be difficult to squeeze any more out of those stubborn blockheads.” The old count scrutinized his son. “At least it would give you something to think about, and you could show what you’re made of.” He suddenly smiled, showing the blackened stumps of his teeth. “I tell you what—if you help me, you can have the men for your own purposes later. Take the fifty men I’d be giving you anyway for the punishment squad, and use them to get your own damned ruins back. How about it?”

  Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck did not reply at once. He was watching another falcon in flight, and that one name was still throbbing in his mind, again and again.

  Agnes. Agnes. Agnes . . .

  “Yes, why not?” he said in a deliberately casual tone. “A little diversion would do me no harm.” He glanced disparagingly at his father. “And after that you’ll really give me the landsknechts to storm Scharfenberg and Trifels?”

  Ludwig von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck nodded. “The landsknechts, a dozen arquebuses, and a couple of my culverins. I give you my word.” He held out his hand. “Shake hands on it, and show me at last that you’re worthy to bear my name.”

  Friedrich shook hands and smiled contentedly. He suddenly felt strangely relaxed. He would get his castle back, he would again go searching for the treasure he so longed to find, and someday he would also find Agnes. But first there was hard if not completely unpalatable work to be done.

  Work for which emotions were entirely out of place.

  A week later, a dozen horses were towing a broad sailboat up the Rhine. The sun, high in the sky, made the water glitter like diamonds. Boatmen with necks burned red waved from the many skiffs, barges, and rafts going the other way. It seemed that the terrible war now coming to an end was taking place only on land, where you were still reminded of it by burning villages, the ruins of castles, and trees with corpses hanging from them. Here on the river, however, peace reigned.

  Under an awning in the middle of the ship, three travelers dozed in the shade. The two men and the young woman wore expensive but not showy clothing. A brand-new sword belt with its sword dangled by the mast, with a lute of polished maple wood leaning beside it. The crystal carafe of Palatinate wine that stood on a small table between the travelers sparkled in the midday light.

  Deep in thought, Agnes reached for her glass and sipped. When she realized how strong the wine was, she put it aside again. She needed all the powers of her mind to make sense of what had happened to her. Her life had changed so much that she sometimes thought she was a completely different person: no longer Agnes von Erfenstein, daughter of the castellan of Trifels, but some kind of shadow being, more likely to have sprung from an old book than from reality.

  After the fire in the library at St. Goar, she, Mathis, and Melchior had left the town in a hurry. First, the master of a raft, although he was suspicious, had taken them on board and upstream to Bingen, then they had continued on another vessel to Mainz, which Melchior had visited several times before. He had taken them to see a rich spice merchant who had paid the minstrel over two hundred guilders for one of the books that he had rescued and offered them passage on one of his ships in the bargain. They had stocked up with new clothes and provisions, and the ship was now on its way to the old imperial city of Worms, where its cargo would be unloaded and they would spend the night at a good inn.

  Yawni
ng, Melchior rose to his feet, went over to his new lute, and plucked a few strings. The tone was soft and warm.

  “A really lovely instrument,” said the minstrel. “Expensive, but worth its price. Like a good woman. I am certainly going to win the laurel wreath at the singers’ contest in the Wartburg with it.” He looked at Agnes with a twinkle in his eyes. “Especially with a ballad in which the identity of a woman who is the last legitimate descendant of the Staufers is revealed. I very much hope you will both accompany me.”

  “Forget it!” Agnes snapped. “I’m tired of all this nonsense. It’s enough to know where I come from at last, and who my real parents were. At least my nightmares have stopped since that dreadful fire in the library of St. Goar.”

  “But remember, you do have a responsibility,” Melchior told her. “Especially in these dreadful times. Think of what Father Domenicus said to you just before he died. You could be the figure who unites the empire. You and the Holy Lance.”

  “Holy Lance,” murmured Agnes. “I don’t want to hear any more about that. How is a single lance supposed to unite an empire?”

  “A lance which, incidentally, we still can’t locate,” said Mathis, stretching out where he sat and yawning. Surreptitiously, Agnes looked at him. Over the last few days, the sun had turned his face and neck brown, and strong muscles stood out under his new shirt of fine linen. Mathis had also taken to wearing a pointed beard. The war, and their long journey, had turned the pale youth of the past into a fine figure of a man.

  “What’s more, I still have no idea what’s so special about this lance,” Mathis went on morosely. He glanced at Agnes, but she immediately lowered her eyes. “Whenever we were about to talk about it these last few days, you’ve dismissed the subject. Why?”

  “Because . . . because all these stories to do with my past are getting me down,” Agnes exclaimed. “Can’t you understand that? Until a week ago I was still an ordinary woman, the daughter of a castellan in the Palatinate, no more. And now, all of a sudden, I’m supposed to be saving the entire German Empire. It’s too much for me.” She sighed. “But yes, let’s talk about it now. I’m sure our minstrel friend will be able to tell us something about the famous Holy Lance.”

  Melchior von Tanningen cleared his throat. “Yes, indeed.” He propped his lute against the mast and sat down cross-legged in front of Agnes and Mathis.

  “The lance has a long history,” he began. “According to legend, it is the very spear that the Roman centurion Longinus used to pierce the side of the Savior on the cross. The blood that then flowed from Jesus cured Longinus of severe eye trouble, so he had himself baptized and later died a martyr in Caesarea. He is said to have buried the blood of Christ first.”

  “I do remember reading about the lance somewhere,” Agnes said thoughtfully. “Oh, of course. In the legend of the Holy Grail. Old King Amfortas guarded both the lance and the Grail itself in the Grail Castle.”

  Melchior nodded. “As the lance bore the Savior’s blood, it is venerated to this day and immortalized in stories. In fact all that was preserved of it was the iron head of the spear, about the length of a man’s forearm, and it also has a nail from the cross in it. The relic is considered the most sacred of the German imperial insignia. I’ve read about it in several books, and the rest of the insignia as well.”

  “The imperial insignia, did you say?” Agnes looked at him in surprise. “The holy objects necessary for the coronation of the emperor?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “Father Tristan told me about the imperial insignia some while ago, because they were kept at Trifels Castle for several centuries. And now I do remember that he mentioned the Holy Lance.” Agnes frowned. “But if it is really so sacred, couldn’t it be that Constanza and Johann simply took it with them when they escaped?”

  Melchior von Tanningen smiled knowingly. He picked up his lute and struck a few soft chords as he went on: “The lance is the most powerful of all those relics, more powerful than the imperial cross, sword, and orb combined. It is said that anyone carrying it in battle is invincible. King Otto threw back the Hungarians at the battle of Lechfeld with it, and it has brought glorious victories to other commanders as well. Without the Holy Lance, no one can be crowned Holy Roman Emperor.”

  “But if Constanza and Johann stole the lance long ago and hid it somewhere, then how have coronations been carried out ever since?” asked Mathis, baffled.

  “How do you think?” The minstrel looked inquiringly at them. “What would you have done in the Habsburgs’ place?”

  “I . . . I would have forged it?” Agnes suggested.

  “That’s probably what happened.” The minstrel struck a dramatic final chord and put the lute down again. “If what Father Domenicus said is true, then the theft had major consequences for the empire. Its loss would have made all coronations since the time of Albrecht von Habsburg null and void. Meaning that no Habsburg ever occupied the throne legitimately, and that includes the present emperor, Charles V.”

  For some time no one said anything, and only the sound of the river running by was to be heard, along with the boatmen’s shouting. Melchior grinned mischievously and finally turned to Agnes.

  “Now do you understand what power that relic could have in the hands of the right person? If you and the Holy Lance appear with me at the Wartburg, in the presence of all the princes, dukes, counts, and barons, who are already shaken out of their sense of security by the war, a storm will arise and sweep the Habsburgs away from the imperial throne. That much is certain.”

  Agnes laughed quietly. “And how do you see that happening? Even if we do find this relic—am I to walk into the Wartburg with you saying I’m a descendant of the Staufers and, incidentally, this is the Holy Lance? We’d be ridiculed, and probably burned at the stake for heresy.”

  “Don’t underestimate the power of stories.” Melchior poured some of the deep red wine into his goblet and clicked his tongue appreciatively. “We also have the ring, and most important of all the deed, certified by Emperor Frederick himself. With my ballad, all that would convey a strong message to the princes. They’ve never been really close to Emperor Charles anyway. It is difficult to rule a large, disunited empire such as that of the German lands from Spain.”

  Now Mathis spoke up. “Do you mean Agnes could lay claim to the imperial throne?” He shook his head incredulously. “Are you serious?”

  Melchior shrugged his shoulders. “Not Agnes personally, as a woman. But at the side of a powerful prince . . .”

  “Oh, let’s have no more of this,” Agnes interrupted furiously. “I’m not to be sold off like a filly at the horse market. Not even to a prince.” She looked angrily at Mathis. “To the devil with the Staufers and this Holy Lance. I’d have expected a little more sympathy from you, at least.”

  “But I didn’t . . .” Mathis began. However, Agnes had turned away and gone to the ship’s rail. She stared discontentedly at the river, sparkling in the sun. Far above her, some of the boatmen clambered around in the rigging, while back in the stern, the steersman shouted his orders, but she perceived it all as though divided from it by a wall. She was both irate and confused. At heart, she did not know what to do next. She couldn’t return to Trifels if she didn’t want to expose herself to the power of her vengeful husband. And as for accompanying Melchior to this singers’ contest, to tell everyone that she was a descendant of the Staufers, that was out of the question. So far they had decided only to travel up the Rhine, without any other definite destination in mind. Clearly Melchior and Mathis wanted to give her time to come to terms with her situation. For the minstrel, the search for the Holy Lance was surely the high point of their adventures together, and he fervently hoped to have it with him at the Wartburg. As for Mathis, was he with her because he loved her, or only for the sake of a rusty old lance?

  All at once she heard footsteps behind her and felt a strong hand on her shoulder. It was Mathis. He now leaned over the rail beside her, looking
out at the water. They were passing a small village with a church and several houses thatched with reeds. All at once, Agnes longed for a quiet life, far from war, castles, and old tales of chivalry.

  “I . . . I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings,” Mathis hesitantly began. “This is all rather too much for me as well. The last year has been eventful enough for an entire lifetime, if not two.” He chuckled. Then, taking her hand, he pressed it. “Believe me, if there’s anything I think worth fighting for, it’s not that damned lance, it’s you.”

  Agnes smiled to herself, but she still did not look at him. Mathis and she had come very close to one another during the last week. Only yesterday they had made love, hidden behind some casks, and it had been wonderful. As time passed, Agnes’s fear of men had receded. The face of Barnabas seldom appeared in her dreams now, and she no longer flinched at any touch, however hesitant. Mathis had taken great trouble to be gentle and considerate with her, and her love for him had grown more and more. All the same, she was not quite sure of him yet.

  “I like to hear you say that,” she replied at last. “Although I can’t really imagine you growing old beside me without fighting, or at least standing up for freedom and justice. You wouldn’t be the Mathis I know.” She sighed, and looked at him at last. “Why can’t we leave these tedious old stories behind us? Get off this ship somewhere and start a new life. So much has changed in the country now. So many people have died, so many have left their old homes. A young smith with a woman beside him must be needed somewhere. It wouldn’t have to be guns that you forged.”

  Mathis smiled. “Never fear, I’m cured of guns. I’d rather turn to horseshoes and plowshares.” His expression suddenly changed as he stared sadly at another village on the bank, where several thatched roofs were burning. Smoke drifted through the air to them. Three dead men hung from the branches of a willow right above the river.