Agnes sighed. “Very well. Then at least take my mind off it by telling me something about the Norman treasure. I was reading about it again in the library only the other day. But I have only fragments of its history. And I love those old tales so much.”
“And I told you about it a dozen times when you were a child,” grumbled Father Tristan, but with a smile playing around his lips. “Oh, very well.” He stopped for a moment to get his breath back, and then he pointed up to the Sonnenberg with the Trifels crowning it. “Up there, on the site of the castle acres of today, there used to be a great tournament ground. The jousts held there were famous throughout the whole country. And it was the place where Emperor Henry VI, Barbarossa’s son, assembled a mighty army over three hundred years ago, to go to fight the Normans in Sicily. His wife was a Sicilian princess, so Henry thought he could seize the throne there for himself. At the time, warriors from the entire empire came to the Trifels—there must have been thousands of them. Knights on horseback, men-at-arms, foot soldiers with bows and spears . . .” Father Tristan spread his arms wide, and Agnes recognized him as the old storyteller she had loved so much as a child.
“Henry rode out, won the victory, and took a terrible revenge on his enemies,” the monk went on. “He had a red-hot crown nailed to the head of the leader of a conspiracy while the man was still alive. When the emperor returned, he possessed the greatest treasure ever seen in Christendom. It’s said the Norman treasure was so enormous that a hundred and fifty donkeys were needed to carry it up to Trifels Castle. There was a magnificent coronation robe in it, but above all there were huge amounts of gold, silver, and jewels.”
“And where’s the treasure today?” asked Agnes, curious to know. “Obviously not at Trifels, or my father would have nothing to worry about.”
Father Tristan laughed. “You’re right there. No, it’s said that Henry’s son Frederick II, known to this day as Stupor Mundi, the Wonder of the World, had it taken later to Apulia, where his faithful Saracens guarded it. And the imperial jewels are no longer here either.”
“Imperial jewels?” Agnes frowned. “You mean the insignia used in the coronation of the German king?” She knew that, as far back as anyone could remember, the king was crowned in an established ceremony, usually held in the imperial city of Aachen. The insignia played an important part in the coronation, but it was news to her that those sacred objects had once been kept at Trifels Castle. “I thought the imperial insignia had been kept in a church in Nuremberg.” she said.
Father Tristan shook his head. “Once, at the time of the Hohenstaufens, the imperial jewels were here in Trifels Castle. The Cistercians of Eusserthal took care of them. They are the holiest objects in the empire. The sword of Charlemagne, the imperial orb, and the scepter, crown, and coronation robe. And of course the Holy Lance that once pierced the side of Our Lord at Golgotha . . .” The old monk stopped to draw breath again. Groaning, he stretched his back. “Whenever a new king is crowned, they are part of the ceremony. They give the ruler his power. Without the insignia, there can be no coronation to this day.” He sighed. “But the jewels are no longer here. No one cares about Trifels these days, reluctant as your father may be to admit it.”
“But in my dream—” Agnes began. However, the monk interrupted her.
“Forget your dreams, Agnes,” he said brusquely. “You’re living here and now. And look, we’ve nearly arrived.”
Soon they had reached the village. Mud-stained children were playing with pebbles in the only road, where slurry stood in puddles. The children were barefoot and wore only rags tacked together; they were all shockingly thin, their bellies swollen with hunger. They looked at the new arrivals out of eyes sunk deep in their faces, and only when they recognized the monk did they break into muted rejoicings.
“Father Tristan, Father Tristan!” they shouted as they danced around the old man. “Have you brought us a treat?”
“Maybe,” said Father Tristan, smiling. “But please make sure that everyone gets a fair share, you scamps.”
He took a few wrinkled dried plums from last fall’s harvest out of his satchel and divided them among the shouting children, who greedily stuffed the sweet fruits into their mouths at once. When there was nothing left, Father Tristan turned left, with Agnes, to where a small, crooked cottage stood a little way back from the road.
“Here we are,” he said, knocking softly on the door. “Let’s hope the child is no worse.”
A careworn old woman let them in. She smiled wearily on seeing Father Tristan, and Agnes was shocked to see that she had lost nearly all her teeth. Her hair was gray, her skin lined.
“Where’s your son, goodwife?” asked Father Tristan. Only his words told Agnes that the woman was not the child’s grandmother but his mother.
“God bless you, Father,” replied the woman in relief, beckoning him in. “The boy’s lying on the floor back there. He has a high fever.” She glanced suspiciously at Agnes. “But that is . . .”
“The castellan’s daughter,” said Father Tristan. “I know. She wants to make herself useful.”
“Make herself useful?” The woman laughed. There was contempt in her voice as she said, “How can a girl like that be any use?”
Agnes suddenly suspected, uneasily, that Father Tristan had not brought her with him just to tell her more about Trifels Castle. She stared at the dark interior of the cottage, which was built of willow branches daubed with dried mud. A fire burned in the middle of the room, its smoke escaping in thick clouds through a hole in the roof. In a corner at the back lay a boy of about six on a bed of leaves and twigs. His right leg was wrapped in blood-stained rags, and the foot seemed to have swollen to twice its proper size.
Father Tristan knelt down and put his hand on the boy’s forehead, which was wet with sweat. “Yes, the fever is very high,” he murmured. “We must try to lower it a little.” Putting his hand in his satchel, he took out a little leather bag and gave it to Agnes. “Here, make us a decoction of these dried linden flowers.”
Soon Father Tristan had cleaned the dirt and dried blood from the boy’s swollen foot. “Is that decoction ready?” he asked Agnes.
She nodded and handed him the pan.
“I am going to clean the wound with the decoction now,” said Father Tristan. “It must be boiled first, that’s important, remember.”
He bent over the boy, washed the injury with a clean rag, and rubbed some of the ointment he had brought into the injured leg. Meanwhile, Agnes poured what was left of the hot liquid into an earthenware beaker and got the boy to drink a little of it. He moaned, but he did as she wanted.
Father Tristan’s small eyes, surrounded with little lines, twinkled at her. “You’re doing well, Agnes.”
“Maybe I should do such things more often,” replied Agnes quietly, but with a grin. “If you will let me, even though I’m a fine gentleman’s daughter.”
✦ ✦ ✦
A mild wind caresses her face. Agnes opens her eyes and sees that she is on the battlements of Trifels Castle, at the very top, above the staterooms and living quarters. It is a warm afternoon in fall, with the leaves of the trees around the castle changing color, their branches swaying slightly in the breeze. Agnes turns her head and sees Scharfenberg Castle on the neighboring hill, distempered red and white, a fortress rising proudly above the woods. Halfway between Trifels and Scharfenberg stands Anebos Castle, not quite as large as its sister, but equally stately. Not a ruin as Agnes knows it in her waking life, but a sturdy tower built on sandstone rock and surrounded by houses, cottages, and walls. She can see men on horseback holding brightly colored banners and standards. Farther away, other sandstone rocks with platforms and watchtowers on them rise like spikes on a dragon’s back. The whole Sonnenberg is a single huge fortress, from Trifels to Scharfenberg Castle.
Agnes looks down at the courtyard. Where she sees only piles of rubble and empty spaces when she is awake, there are stables, sheds, whole buildings. The Knights’ Ho
use, in her own day so dilapidated, is attractively covered with red tiles, and black smoke curls up from its chimney. There is busy coming and going everywhere. Huntsmen clad in green hold back a pack of yapping hounds; washerwomen with buckets hurry down to the cisterns in the outer bailey, laughing. A group of mounted men gallops through the open gateway, with pheasants and partridges hanging from their saddles. Grooms, chattering noisily, carry a dead bear slung over a tree trunk into the courtyard. A horn blows somewhere, to be answered by another, and then a third horn calls.
Suddenly Agnes senses a slight draft on the back of her neck. When she turns around, she sees the young man from her first dream. He looks more mature this time. His hair is as thick and black as before, but his features are more marked and less soft. The stubble of a beard makes him look older, more virile. Once again he is wearing his shining hauberk, but she sees the shape of broad shoulders under it. Pine needles cling to his muddy cloak, and his right hand wears a leather glove on which a gray-blue sparrowhawk perches. Now the young man hands the falcon over to a groom and approaches Agnes smiling, with his arms spread wide.
Her heart leaps. She loves this man as she has never loved anyone before. And she knows that her love is returned. She was never happier than at this moment. When he embraces her, she smells his sharp sweat mingling with the resinous aroma of the pine needles. She wishes he would never let her go. She thinks of the song she heard when she last saw him.
Under the linden tree, on the moorland, there we made a bed for two . . .
When he moves back from her, he suddenly takes her hand and speaks to her imploringly. The expression in his eyes is very serious now, and his lips move, but Agnes cannot hear what he is saying. All that comes to her ears is the sound of the wind. Yet she knows that he is saying something of great importance, a matter of life and death.
The young man takes her hand and holds it even more tightly. It hurts. Something is cutting into her finger. When she looks down she sees that it is a ring causing the pain, a ring like an iron band getting tighter all the time.
It is the ring with the seal showing a bearded man.
Barbarossa’s ring.
She looks into the young man’s face again. His lips are forming sounds that she can’t hear. “Take the ring off! Take the ring off!” he seems to be calling to her.
Agnes cries out soundlessly herself. She tries to remove the ring, but it digs its way deeper and deeper into her flesh. She feels it slowly come to rest around her finger bone. Like a necklace cutting off air from her throat.
The ring becomes one with her.
When she looks up again, the young man has disappeared. The castle courtyard is empty, and she is all alone.
✦ ✦ ✦
Gasping, trembling all over, Agnes awoke with the moon shining brightly into her room. She jumped out of bed, panic-stricken, and ran to the open window.
Where am I?
But she saw only the courtyard of Trifels below, just as she had known it since her childhood. From up here, she could see the outlines of the kennels and the aviary, the tumbledown walls and the Knights’ House leaning to one side, not as she had just seen it in her dream, a fine sight with its red tiles. Her hand went to her throat, and she pulled out the chain with the ring on it from under her nightgown. White moonlight lay on the engraving. The ring looked just the same as in her dream, and although it had been next to her heart all night, it felt cold as ice.
What on earth does it mean? What is this ring doing to me?
Agnes took a few deep breaths and finally managed to put her thoughts in order. Things from real life kept slipping into her dreams. That was nothing unusual; the same happened to other people. The only unusual part of it was the way her dream, and so the ring too, had seemed so real. As before, she had felt and heard everything—the mild wind on her skin, the resinous aroma of the pine needles, the sharp sweat of the man she loved . . . What was it about that young man whom she obviously desired so much? Who was he? Now that she was awake, she felt nothing for him, almost as if she had been someone entirely different in her dream. Agnes frowned. The young man had warned her against the ring. Did it represent a danger for her? Father Tristan had suggested as much.
She instinctively put her hand to the cool metal and shook her head. Very likely Father Tristan’s warning had simply influenced her dream. That was all. She was beginning to see ghosts.
You should work in the garden more often, then you wouldn’t have time for such fancies.
Only now did Agnes notice how cold she felt in her thin nightgown. She went back to bed, shivering, and slipped under the covers. She thought of taking off the ring but decided to go on wearing it over her heart. Without it, she felt strangely naked.
Not until the first rays of the sun fell on her face and a rooster crowed in the distance did she fall into a brief, feverish sleep.
✦ 5 ✦
Annweiler, near Trifels Castle, 8 April, Anno Domini 1524
ONLY A FEW DAYS LATER, three men on tall horses reached Annweiler early in the morning.
The few tanners standing by the town’s millstream, washing animal skins still matted with blood and the remnants of flesh that clung to them, looked up for a moment, no more, as the trio rode by. Then they quickly ducked their heads. The strangers’ clothing was unusual. They wore the costume of landsknechts, but the fabric looked expensive and was of colors not generally seen in this part of the country. In the normal way, it boded no good for strange folk to visit a place. They were often messengers from the duke, coming to collect dues and taxes, or heralds announcing new electoral edicts—edicts that demanded yet more dues. Taxes had been raised five times in the last twelve years, and as many activities had been banned in the same time. Not just hunting, but fishing, and even chopping wood were now forbidden. The rulers were squeezing more and more out of the peasants and other ordinary folk; it was as if they were in a grape press, but no juice came out—only blood.
The tanners saw at first glance that the leader of the three men, riding a fine steed, was a great gentleman. He wore slashed blood-red hose, a doublet of black velvet, and a fur-trimmed coat over these garments that was also black as night. The cap pulled well down over his face was adorned, in the military fashion, with several colored feathers. A certain indefinable aura of menace surrounded the stranger, like a disturbance in the air suggesting a coming thunderstorm.
“Hey there!” he called in the tone of a man accustomed to giving orders, to one of the tanners by the millstream, an emaciated elderly man. His voice had a curious foreign accent. “Where will I find your mayor?”
“He’ll probably be over at the town hall, sir,” the old man muttered without looking up. “Just ride along the street here to the marketplace, and then you’re outside it.”
Without a word of thanks, the well-dressed stranger spurred on his horse, and the other two men, muscular fellows with shaggy beards and long hair, followed him. The hooves of the three horses clattered down the dirty street. Somewhere a rooster crowed, a few pigs squealed, and morning mists drifted slowly through the town.
The leader dismounted in the empty marketplace and tied up his horse to a trough. He gave his companions a curt order in a foreign language. They nodded and then let their eyes wander without interest over the square. A young maidservant had just been opening the shutters to hang out some washing, but at the sight of the horsemen she slammed the window shut in alarm.
“Boo!” said one of the two men. They laughed quietly as their horses, which were sweating heavily, drank water from the trough.
Meanwhile, the leader went into Annweiler Town Hall. It was a half-timbered house, painted red and white, and its size and grandeur recalled the heyday of this former imperial city. It looked curiously out of place amidst the other low-ceilinged, crooked buildings. The man’s boots echoed on the steps up to the town hall, which were stained oxblood red.
Up in his study, Bernwart Gessler was brooding over some files. The mayor of A
nnweiler was busy completing the lists of the dues and taxes that had already been collected. All the villages and hamlets had now paid up. There was to be a meeting of the newly elected council in an hour’s time to discuss measures that might be taken to counter the increasingly subversive activities of the so-called Lutherans. These days more and more monks and peripatetic priests were emerging and preaching against papal decrees. After what had happened at the Green Tree Inn recently, Gessler had insisted on a quick reelection of the council. Opponents were removed, supporters and the undecided left in office. The mayor was sure that he was now more or less back in control of the town.
When there was a knock on the door, the mayor didn’t even look up.
“Oh, for God’s sake, not now!” he snarled. But the door opened anyway.
The man who entered the study looked both dangerous and distinguished. As a result, Gessler bit back the curse already on the tip of his tongue and looked expectantly at his visitor.
“Yes?” he asked cautiously.
The stranger pulled up a stool, sat on it, and crossed his legs. His cap was still pulled well down over his face. “I am visiting this little town of yours in search of something,” he began in a curious, soft accent. “Maybe you can help me.”
The mayor gave a thin-lipped smile. “Maybe. You’d better come back tomorrow. Around noon. Then I can . . .”
“I do not have time for that,” the man interrupted him. “I come from far away.” He pushed his cap back, and now Gessler saw that the stranger’s face was as black as night. White eyes shone in it like cold, sparkling diamonds. “From very far away.”
Suddenly he reached into his full slashed upper hose and brought out a bag of clinking coins. With a quick movement, he pushed the purse over the table so that it stopped right in front of the mayor. “A payment for granting my modest wish. And there will be as much again if your help turns out useful.”