“Then you’d better hurry. That inn looks like it’ll fall down if I so much as sneeze.”
The watchman bleated with laughter and then opened the small door in the right-hand wing of the town gate to let Mathis in.
“Greet Agnes for me,” the bailiff called after him. “I saw her doing well with the crows a few days ago. There really aren’t so many of those pests about now.” He chuckled. “Well, except on the gallows hill. They always have good pickings there.”
“I’ll tell her when I see her.” Mathis turned around once more, and then, with his heart beating fast, went along the alleyway full of dung and refuse to the millstream. The smell of leather and tannic acid was so strong here that it enveloped him like a cloak. Soon he saw the artificial channel, with a dozen millwheels creaking as they turned in its murky waters. Some of the tanners were washing the leather they had made in the stream, and then hanging it up on wooden frames to dry in the sun. A few grubby children laughed as they sailed toy boats on the water, others helped their mothers to scrape skins.
Mathis thought how fine a place the Free Imperial City of Annweiler had once been. Hundreds of years ago, Emperor Frederick of the house of Hohenstaufen himself had given it the right to mint coins. But like Trifels Castle, Annweiler was now forgotten, and the city of the old days was little more than a large village owing tribute to the duchy of Zweibrücken. The town wall and the houses were falling into disrepair. For a long time now, rich merchants had avoided its muddy alleys, preferring to trade in Speyer and Worms.
As Mathis walked along beside the millstream on his way to the inn, his thoughts were on Agnes. He hadn’t set eyes on her these last two days. There had been too much work to do, and whenever he was going to take a break and go up to the castle, his father thought of something else. Mathis kept expecting the castellan to summon him because of the stolen arquebus, but it seemed that he hadn’t yet noticed its absence. And Agnes herself hadn’t come to see him since that strange incident in the forest. On the evening when she found the ring on her falcon’s leg, she had seemed to him curiously withdrawn.
Still deep in thought, Mathis finally reached the inn that lay beside the town wall, at the end of a narrow alley. Like the other buildings around it, it was a whitewashed half-timbered house that had once been imposing. But now the whitewash was flaking away, and the house stood slightly askew, as though a stormy wind had blown at it too hard. The Green Tree was one of the town’s three taverns. As it was close to the millstream, it was mainly frequented by tanners, who made up the largest guild in Annweiler, but a few of the more prosperous weavers and clothworkers sometimes went there to do business. A tall linden tree with a wide canopy stood in a small square outside the inn, giving it its name.
After Mathis had knocked cautiously a couple of times, the door opened just a crack, and the fierce face of Diethelm Seebach appeared. On recognizing Mathis, the landlord nodded in relief.
“Oh, it’s only you,” he said. “I thought it might be the bailiffs paying me a visit on account of the tax on ale. The mayor’s raised it again, damn his eyes, and I’m not paying. He can take me to court, and we’ll see what comes of that.” Impatiently, he waved Mathis in through the door. “Come along, Jockel said you’d be here. The others are waiting in the backroom.” He cast only a casual glance at the bag that Mathis handed him, and then put it down in a corner. “Ah, yes, the nails and axe heads. I quite forgot. I’ll pay you later. First I’ll introduce you to the rest of them.”
Diethelm Seebach led Mathis through the low-ceilinged, stuffy bar that was only gradually filling up now that the church service was over. A couple of toothless old men sat dozing over a jug of wine. The muted sound of voices came from somewhere. When Seebach opened the door to the backroom, the voices were suddenly clear and distinct. Mathis looked at a room where more than a dozen men sat at a large, weathered oak table, arguing heatedly. He recognized some of the tanners, as well as Martin Lebrecht, the ropemaker, and the rich woolens weaver Peter Markschild. Even the apothecary Konrad Sperlin was present—a little man with spectacles and a faded cap, one of the few in Annweiler who could read and write.
But above all, Mathis found his eyes drawn to Shepherd Jockel.
He sat stooped at the end of the table, a wiry man with long black hair that he had tied back in a braid behind his head. His sinewy torso moved nervously back and forth. He had a small hump on his right shoulder, and it made him look a little like an evil-minded court jester. With his sparse beard, torn linen shirt, and shaved calf-hide hose, Shepherd Jockel looked like a beggar compared to the tradesmen around him. All the same, the other men fell silent when he spoke.
“I was walking over near Eusserthal Monastery last week,” he began. His voice was quiet and yet penetrating, like the music of a flute. It was his weapon, and he knew just how to use it. “I was grazing my sheep there; you know there’s not much for them to eat this year. And all of a sudden an aroma rises to my nostrils—the smell of salt meat, of roast meat, of sausage and bacon. I must be dreaming, I tell myself.” Jockel laughed, and it sounded almost like the laughter of a child. But then a cutting, almost menacing note came into his voice. “I look through one of the monastery windows, and I see the clerics carrying in the dishes to be served to their fat abbot, platters piled high with meat, more than the likes of us ever see even at the parish fair. Beef from your cows, pork from your pigs, while you yourselves don’t know how you’ll survive through next winter. And on the gallows there hangs a child whose only crime was to have shot a deer. I ask myself, is that right and just? Tell me, friends, is that right and just?”
The tradesmen murmured together in agreement. They were so spellbound by Jockel’s speech that only now did they raise their heads to see Diethelm Seebach and Mathis standing in the doorway.
“This is Mathis,” said Seebach in paternal tones, noticing the men’s suspicious glances. He clapped the young man on the shoulder. “Son of the castle smith up at Trifels; of course I’m sure you all know him. He—”
“What would we want with this young pup?” the tanner Nepomuk Kistler interrupted. Kistler was a gray-haired old man who sat on Annweiler council, representing his part of the town. His voice was deep and used to giving orders; he had worked for the interests of the community for decades. “This is men’s business, Diethelm. What’s more, who’s to say the lad won’t run straight off to the mayor to tell him about this meeting?”
“Kistler is right,” put in Peter Markschild, the woolens weaver, also a member of the town council. His puffy red face showed that he had probably drunk a jug or so of wine already. “A crazy idea, inviting that boy here. Throw him out, Seebach.”
“The boy stays here. I invited him myself.” Shepherd Jockel’s voice was low and soft, but the weaver reacted with a start all the same.
Mathis remembered how shrill that same voice had sounded a few days ago on the gallows hill at Queichhambach. The shepherd really did have a gift for bewitching men with words.
“But . . . but . . .” stammered Peter Markschild. “What are you thinking of, Jockel? That lad could endanger us. If he goes to the mayor, then . . .”
“Then what can he tell him? That a number of honest men meet at the Green Tree every Sunday and talk to each other?” Jockel shook his head. “We’ve let those who think themselves our betters intimidate us for too long. We can’t be forbidden to talk.”
With a thin-lipped smile, he gestured to Mathis to take the chair beside him. Once again, Mathis noticed that Jockel had only three fingers on his right hand. The other two, those you had to raise when you swore an oath, had been chopped off by the duke’s executioners years ago, because even then he had kept company with rebellious peasants. “Mathis here is a clever fellow, as I know,” Jockel went on. “Trust me, he’ll be useful to us yet.”
Blushing red, Mathis sat down beside the shepherd, who clapped him on the shoulder.
“The boy knows what’s said up at the castle, and he’ll keep his ears
open for us. If the duke or maybe the bishop of Speyer is planning anything against us simple folk, then the castellan of Trifels Castle will be one of the first to know. And soon after that we’ll know too. Won’t we, Mathis? You’ll be our little mouse.”
Mathis nodded, and shifted uncomfortably back and forth on his chair. A bit more than a year ago he had met Shepherd Jockel for the first time, down in the meadows of the Wingertsberg valley with his flock of sheep. They had met perhaps a dozen times since then. Jockel had been the first to tell him about Martin Luther, a scholar and former monk who had translated the Bible from Latin into German and who had been preaching for years against the sale of indulgences. Only recently, clerics had been about in Annweiler itself, promising people the forgiveness of all their sins in return for money.
In his gentle, flattering voice, Jockel had told Mathis about the growing injustice in the empire, the way taxes were always rising while the clergy and the great nobles lived in luxury. At other times he had denounced the serfdom that enslaved the peasants and didn’t even allow their children to marry without the feudal lord’s permission. Even when peasants died, their widows had to pay death dues to the knights, counts, and dukes.
Mathis was not the only one to whom Shepherd Jockel talked like this. Over the years, the journeyman who traveled the valleys and clearings of the Wasgau in a shepherd’s hut on wheels, taking his flock to pasture, had gathered an increasingly large community around him. Recently, many of the citizens of Annweiler had fallen under his spell. Sundays in the Green Tree had become an established meeting point for malcontents. With the excuse of taking a morning drink, they secretly argued about religion and politics there.
“We were just speaking of the way the mayor of Annweiler has raised interest on the grinding of corn again,” Jockel said, turning to Mathis. “Soon the peasants will get no flour at all, but they’ll still have to pay. What do you think, Mathis? Should we put up with this any longer?”
Mathis felt the older men’s eyes all resting on him, and the blood shot into his face. “We ought . . .” he began hesitantly, “We ought to send the emperor a petition. I’m sure he doesn’t know about all that. After all, he can’t want his subjects to starve to death.”
Jockel inclined his head, seemingly deep in thought. As the same time, his hump moved like an animal breathing. “Appeal to the emperor, hmm . . .” he began quietly. “Not a bad idea. But there’s something you may not know. It’s a long time since the emperor had any say in the running of the empire. Even good Emperor Maximilian’s word didn’t count for much, and his newly elected grandson, Charles, is even less influential. He sits somewhere at the other end of the world, where the Moors live. To the best of my knowledge, he’s a spoiled young man who doesn’t even speak our language.”
A few of the men laughed, and Jockel continued, with a smile, “No, it’s not the emperor who rules us. The electors have divided up the country between themselves, handing parts of it over to their dukes, counts, and bishops. And they in turn give presents of land to their knights and barons, who make merry and go hunting. While the peasant, the ordinary working man, is right at the bottom of the pile and has to bear the expense for everyone.” Angrily, he looked around him. “Remember what the English priest John Ball said over a hundred years ago? ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?’ We ought not to put up with it any longer.”
Sperlin the apothecary cleared his throat and adjusted the pince-nez on his nose. “You may be right, Jockel. But what are we to do about it? Fight?” He shook his head morosely. “Those great men have money and weapons at their disposal. That’s the way it has always been and the way it always will be.”
“The way it always will be because we accept it as meekly as my sheep would,” hissed Jockel. “If we all rise up together, no duke or bishop can withstand us.”
“Do you mean we should really rebel and fight?” groaned Markschild, the woolens weaver. “But that would be against the divine order of things. I was thinking that if only we had a word with the mayor, then—”
“We’re not the only ones rising up against tyranny,” Jockel interrupted. “In the Allgäu, on the Upper Rhine, in Franconia—there’s seething unrest everywhere. The church itself is divided. Luther is one of us. He’s declared war on the depraved state of affairs in Rome.”
“Luther only wants to breathe new life into the church,” murmured the apothecary with his head bent. “He says nothing about any new order in the villages, towns, and cities of the realm.”
“You cowards!” spat Jockel, bringing his hand down furiously on the tabletop. “You want changes, but nothing to disturb your peace of a Sunday. You want to eat roast meat, but feed honey to the great men of the empire at the same time. It can’t be done. You’re either in favor of fighting or against it; there’s nothing between the two.”
“Hold your tongue, Jockel. You forget who you’re talking to.” Old Nepomuk Kistler the tanner straightened up in his chair and bent a menacing gaze on the shepherd. With his snow-white hair and deeply lined face, he emanated the authority of an experienced councilor who had already seen many wars. Trembling, but with his head held high, he turned to the men at the table. “Trust me, I was there in my youth when the peasants rose to rebel over thirty years ago, under the banner of the Bundschuh movement.” He was speaking of the laced peasant shoe that the rebels had taken as their symbol. “And what good did it do anyone then? It brought in its wake only death, suffering, and even more famine. Rebellion leads only to the gallows, or even death by fire at the stake. That’s no way to prevail upon us citizens of Annweiler.”
“A wise decision. It will be quite enough for one of you to burn.”
Startled, Mathis looked at the open doorway from which that quiet voice had come. In the heated exchange, no one had noticed that the mayor of Annweiler had been standing there for some time. As on the day of the execution, Bernwart Gessler wore a black unbelted coat trimmed with fur and a velvet cap, also black, surmounting his thin face and bushy eyebrows. Behind Gessler, Mathis saw three or four of the town’s bailiffs, armed with halberds and crossbows, waiting, stone-faced, for orders. Someone must have told the mayor about the secret meeting.
“Your rabble-rousing speeches have been a thorn in my flesh for a long time, shepherd,” Gessler said now, scrutinizing Jockel with a mixture of distaste and interest. “Now I’ve had a chance to hear one for myself. Extremely . . . entertaining, I must say.” He gave a thin-lipped smile and then turned to the citizens and tradesmen of Annweiler, sitting on their chairs as if they’d been turned to stone. “Did you think your little gatherings were any secret from me?” He picked up a bag of money hanging from his belt and made it clink. “There’s always someone who’ll talk. You fellows should know that better than anyone.”
“Your Excellency, we beg you to forgive us. Heaven knows this meeting isn’t what it looks like.” It was the woolens weaver Markschild who dared to speak up first. He trembled as he nervously passed a hand over his pale forehead.
“Ah, and what does it look like?” Bernwart Gessler hissed in a voice accustomed to command. “A comfortable morning drink with your good fellow citizens? Or is it, rather, a conspiracy with the aim of ousting me, the mayor of Annweiler, appointed by the duke, from my position? Speak up, Markschild! And think carefully about exactly what you say. It could be the last I ever hear from you before I hand you over to the authorities in Zweibrücken.”
As the weaver struggled for words, Mathis watched the mayor, who now, with an expression of revulsion on his face, entered the stuffy backroom with its strong smell of beer and male sweat. Bernwart Gessler was a quiet but determined man who always seemed to be surrounded by an aura of power. Only a few years ago the citizens of Annweiler had protested against the duke’s harsh demands for tribute. His Highness Duke Ludwig II had immediately sent in troops and installed Gessler as the new mayor. Since then, as Ludwig’s right-hand man, the mayor had ruled the town with a rod of i
ron. Taxes and dues were arbitrarily set. Expensive tanned calfskin vellum was confiscated as what was called war tribute. Whole families were ruined.
“We . . . we only wanted to ask Your Excellency to discuss the matter in the town council,” stammered Markschild, nervously kneading his hands. “On account of the high taxes.”
“So to do that you have to meet secretly in backrooms and listen to the wild talk of a heretic?” snapped Gessler.
“If you heard us correctly, Master Mayor, then you know that we were not planning any uprising.” That was old Nepomuk Kistler, speaking in a soothing tone. “But the taxes really are too high. We are afraid . . .”
“I don’t enter into discussion with conspirators. This will have consequences, Kistler, I can promise you that. Now seize that filthy shepherd. He can tell us all about it on the rack.”
Those last words were spoken to the bailiffs. Halberds raised, they made for Jockel, who was pale as a corpse. The shepherd had said not a word all this time. His lips were pressed together, his eyes glittered with cold fury. Now he suddenly jumped up and scurried, like a frightened spider, along the wall and away from the bailiffs. The other men, who had been listening to him so raptly earlier, were hunched on their chairs in silence, keeping their eyes down.
“Is that all the thanks I get?” Jockel asked, and then spat contemptuously. “Is that my reward for opening your eyes? You cursed and complained, and now that the mayor of this town crooks his little finger you knuckle under like mongrel puppies. Cowards! Is there no one in this room with the courage to defy Gessler and his henchmen? Not one of you?”
But the men remained silent. Suddenly they all seemed to Mathis very vulnerable and weak, even the sturdy landlord Diethelm Seebach stooped like an old woman. Mathis remembered how excited he had been before coming to the meeting. He had felt he was joining a sworn company who opposed the injustice of the world. Now nothing but unspeakable revulsion filled him. These men were like his father—weaklings who did nothing but complain instead of really wanting to change things.