“Hear that, Martha?” cried Hans Wielenbach. “That’s the kind of thing that lousy shepherd whispers in his ear. You know who I mean, the hunchback from Annweiler with his treasonable talk.”
Martha groaned. “That’s enough, you two. There’s barley broth been simmering over the fire in the living room for an hour now. Marie is hungry, and as for you, Mathis . . .” She took the bag of gunpowder from Hans Wielenbach and pressed it into her son’s hand, lowering her voice as she spoke to him. “You’d better scatter this stuff out on the fields as soon as you can, and then there’ll be an end to it. Promise me. But for God’s sake, get far enough from the smithy first.”
She looked at him gravely, until at last he hesitantly nodded. Then she gave him a pat on the shoulder and closed the door behind him.
After the heat of the forge, the cool, damp evening air felt like a wet cloth on Mathis’s face. But the sudden silence in which he was alone did him good. Anything was better than another minute with his furious father, who just couldn’t understand what Mathis was talking about.
Mathis blinked to accustom his eyes to the twilight and then turned to walk away. The smithy was on the eastern side of the castle, right beside the outer wall. A muddy path led alongside the wall and then branched off to the left, where it passed over the steep ramp and then went down to the fields. Although it was already the middle of March, a great deal of snow still lay on the castle acres, where seed corn had recently been sown, and the expanses of snow were ghostly white in the fading daylight. Beyond the fields stood the black forest.
With the bag in his hand, Mathis walked along another path past the fields and finally turned off it into the forest. He thoughtfully weighed the bag of those precious gray-black grains in his hands. Maybe the sensible thing would really be to do as he had promised his mother and throw the gunpowder away. He thought of the robber’s blood-stained torso, his screams, and all the blood around him. It was the first time he had seen what the mixture of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal could really do.
Ever since Mathis, as a little boy, had watched traveling entertainers shooting colored rockets into the air in the Annweiler marketplace, he had been fascinated by gunpowder. In secret, he had leafed through books about firearms in the library of Trifels Castle and had laboriously taught himself to read with the help of the colorful illustrations. At first Agnes had helped him with the difficult passages. Later, Shepherd Jockel had taken to pressing thin, cheaply printed pamphlets into his hand, leaflets speaking of the oppression of the poor, of that brave professor of theology Martin Luther, who had set himself up against the pope and the emperor and for the peasants who for centuries had gone obediently like lambs to the slaughter.
Hidden in the pigpens next to the smithy, Mathis had spent endless hours poring over those pamphlets, deciphering them word by word. They were in the German language, leaflets such as the Reformatio Sigismundi, produced on the newfangled printing presses now to be found in large numbers all over the empire, and distributed to the people. Much of what they said was familiar to Mathis—the description of poverty and famine, the daily injustices large and small. His father, who brought up red spittle when he coughed, and his skinny little sister were all the examples he needed of how want and hard work could wear some human beings down, while others lived in luxury. Once again the memory of that boy dangling at the end of a rope haunted Mathis’s mind. Under the gallows this morning, it had looked for a moment like the peasants might rebel, but then fear and the usual old routine had won the day yet again.
Deep in thought, Mathis entered the dark forest that fell gently away downhill to the west, and took out the little bag. Hunchbacked Shepherd Jockel had told him that a new age would soon begin, an age in which the clergy and the nobility would be swept away by God’s holy anger, and simple folk would be able to live in freedom. Secretly, Mathis had wondered whether Agnes and her father would be among those swept away. Philipp von Erfenstein was sometimes irascible, but on the whole he was a just and kindly castellan, and Mathis had spent almost his entire childhood with Agnes. They were like brother and sister—and they would never be more than that to each other, for after all, she was the daughter of the lord of a castle, and he was only a smith’s son.
Although he was already seventeen, and a good-looking young fellow in the bargain, Mathis had never yet felt drawn to any of the girls in the town. A few hurried embraces in the hay, a few kisses, that was all. Mathis did not have the money to get married, and in addition, no sensible woman would want to move up to the castle mound with him and live next door to a drafty, godforsaken ruin of a castle.
And then there was something else: every time he touched one of those girls, he saw the face of Agnes before his mind’s eye. It was like a curse. When he had seen her again today after a long time apart, he had felt almost faint. He loved her mass of tumbling blonde hair, all her little freckles, and the tiny lines around her nose when she wrinkled it in annoyance at something or when she was buried in her books. Even as a child he had admired her skill in reading and writing. To him, the letters of the alphabet were restless spirits, and he had difficulty in catching and holding them fast.
Mathis shook his head and took a deep breath. Shepherd Jockel couldn’t possibly have meant Agnes and her father when he talked about the end of the ruling classes. The elector and the bishop, yes, and maybe also fat Abbot Weigand of Eusserthal monastery, but not Agnes.
He put his hand in the bag with its stinking contents that had caused death and destruction today. The grains ran through his fingers like poppy seeds. He gazed gloomily at the darkness of the forest, when he suddenly heard the call of a bird not far away.
The cry of a falcon.
Mathis pricked up his ears, and the screech came again. Could it be Parcival? Had he returned? Quietly, he put the bag of gunpowder back under his doublet and went farther into the forest. He would think about his promise to his mother later; the priority now was to find the falcon. If he brought Parcival back to Agnes, he was sure she would be able to smile again—and then everything would be the way it used to be.
On tiptoe, he stole through the trees in the direction from which the screech had come. The ground underfoot was slippery and uneven, but all the same he tried to avoid stepping on broken twigs and dead branches. He knew from Agnes how timid saker falcons were. A single crack and the bird would fly away again. Once again he heard that high-pitched sound, almost a lament, but this time much closer. And now he could also hear the familiar ringing of a little bell. So he was on the right track. As Mathis pushed aside a low-hanging branch of a beech tree, he saw the elfin figure of Agnes among the trees. She was standing in a little clearing, an outcropping beyond which the slope fell steeply away to the valley. In the moonlight, she looked in her white dress like one of those magical beings his mother used to tell him stories about. She was holding the fluttering bird on the leather glove she wore, and talking to him in a strange, soft language.
“Abril issi’ mays intrava, e cascus dels auzels chantava . . .”
“Agnes,” Mathis whispered, taking a few steps forward. “So here you are. I might have known.”
Agnes gave a start, and only after a moment did she smile in relief. “What a fright you gave me, Mathis. I thought it was Wertingen’s men again.” Cautiously, she raised the little saker falcon in the air. He obviously felt comfortable on the glove. “Look, Parcival has come back. I heard his call all the way from the Dancing Floor Rock.”
“I heard him too; that’s why I’m here.” Mathis stroked the falcon, who now had a leather hood over his head and was perfectly calm. “You were talking to him in a foreign language. What was it?”
“Oh, just a few scraps of Occitanian, the old language of bards and kings. I picked it up from the books in the Trifels library. I think Parcival likes it. It calms him—that and the hood.” Smiling, Agnes ran her hand over the leather helmet that made the falcon look like a miniature knight. “I put it on him because he was besid
e himself,” she explained quietly. “Poor fellow—that loud bang probably scared him into flying all the way down to the plain of the Rhine. Look, two of his tail feathers are broken. I’ll have to mend them.” Cautiously, she searched the falcon’s plumage for any other injuries, and suddenly stopped in surprise.
“What for heaven’s sake is that?”
She felt Parcival’s right leg and finally drew something small and glittering off it. A ring. In the pale moonlight it shone gold like a ducat coin. Its upper part was beaten into a flat surface with something etched on it. Mathis took the ring and held it in front of his narrowed eyes.
“It’s obviously a signet ring,” he said at last. “But what a strange seal. It shows the head of a bearded man, that’s all. Where exactly did you find it?”
Agnes took the ring and rubbed it thoughtfully in her fingers. “It was on his leg, quite firmly fastened there with a bit of twine. It can’t be chance. If you ask me, someone fixed it to his leg on purpose.”
Mathis laughed. “On purpose? Agnes, really! There are plenty of thieves who steal rings from people’s fingers, but attaching a golden ring to a falcon’s leg? I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”
“I know it sounds odd, but is there any other explanation? Parcival can’t have put the ring on his own leg.”
“Maybe he just got married?” Mathis grinned broadly, but Agnes just glared.
“Very funny. Why not try to work out what all this means instead of laughing at me?”
“I think . . .” said Mathis, but suddenly he stopped when he heard a horse whinnying. The next moment they caught the muted voices of several men.
Not again, he thought. Dear God, don’t let it be Wertingen and his men out for revenge.
He held Agnes’s hand firmly and put a finger to his lips. It was not unusual for horsemen to be out and about in these parts, even after dark. Except that the sounds came from the forest, not from the road leading up to the Trifels. What would travelers be doing in this deserted part of the woods? Mathis felt his heart beat faster.
Silently, he pointed to a hollow in the forest floor, overgrown with prickly brambles. Agnes understood his gesture, and together they crawled into the damp dip in the ground, taking the falcon with them. They could already hear the thud of horses’ hooves.
Only a little later the shadowy outlines of half a dozen men appeared, leading their mounts on a short rein behind them. The animals were sturdy ponies loaded with all kinds of items, although Mathis couldn’t see exactly what in the darkness. And he could see only the vague shapes of the men themselves from the hollow in the ground. They were whispering excitedly to one another when one of them suddenly hissed. He was the only man in the group to be sitting on his horse, a large creature prancing nervously up and down. He wore a cloak with a hood that he had drawn down over his face.
“Keep still, for God’s sake,” he whispered. “It’s not far now. All we have to do is—”
At that moment the falcon uttered a cry.
It was only a short screech, but enough to make the men listen intently. The one at the front stopped in his tracks and looked around the clearing. He was only a step away from the dip in the ground, his heavy breathing clearly audible. In alarm, Mathis glanced at Agnes, who was moving her lips in soundless prayer and stroking Parcival’s hooded head.
“What the hell was that?” asked the man directly in front of them. “Did the rest of you hear it? That cry clearly came out of the ground.”
“Yes, there’s witchcraft abroad near the Trifels,” said a second figure just behind the first. “Could be evil dwarfs wanting to lure you into their caverns, or the Emperor Barbarossa himself.” The man chuckled, and his companion nudged him hard in the ribs. “Maybe you just awoke him?”
“Devil take it, stop this nonsense! It’s bad enough freezing our balls off here by night. I can do without your stupid horror stories.” The man shrugged. “It was probably an owl. Although . . .”
“What’s going on up there?” hissed the man on the horse, obviously the leader of this strange group. “Go on, and no dawdling! Or must I make you get a move on?”
Grumbling, the troop began to move on, until finally they were out of the young couple’s field of vision. Only the leader lingered for a moment longer in the clearing, looking slowly around. Mathis thought he could see the man’s eyes shining under his hood. At last the stranger dug his heels into his horse’s sides and trotted after the others.
Mathis and Agnes stayed where they were for a little while, lying rigid in the hollow. At last Agnes cautiously sat up.
“Who were they?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Mathis crawled out of their hiding place beside her, pulling bramble thorns out of his doublet. “Maybe Hans von Wertingen and his men? It was too dark to tell. But judging by his voice, he could have been the leader in that hood. And the horse was black, like Wertingen’s.”
“Do you really think Wertingen would venture so close to my father’s castle?” Agnes asked incredulously.
“We annoyed him very much, to say the least. Maybe he wants to see whether the castle is well guarded by night, or if attacking it would be worthwhile.” Mathis lowered his voice. “You ought to tell your father about this, in any case.”
“Oh yes, and what am I supposed to say?” asked Agnes, with a mocking frown. “That I was out in the forest with you after dark, where he’s expressly forbidden me to go? And all that after, only this morning, you went off with one of his arquebuses . . .” She stopped, and struck her forehead.
“What is it?” asked Mathis, baffled.
“The arquebus! I entirely forgot. Heidelsheim and the master gunner are going to inspect the armory in search of some weaponry to be melted down to make money.” Agnes bit her lip. “If they see that there’s an arquebus missing there will certainly be questions. Father suspects that you’ve been playing with fire again anyway.”
“And he’s not the only one.” Mathis’s face darkened. “Your father, my father, old Ulrich Reichhart, and now that windbag of a steward into the bargain. Anyone might think the whole of Trifels was in league against me.” He angrily kicked a fallen tree trunk with mushrooms growing all over it. “Damn it, I ought to have left the rusty old thing where it was.”
“And then I’d be in the hands of Wertingen now, and my father would probably be setting fire to half the Palatinate in his fury.” Agnes stroked his cheek, and Mathis felt a wave of heat surge through him. “I have you to thank that I’m not, Mathis. It takes a lot of courage for one man to face four robbers.”
“Nonsense,” he muttered. “Anyone else would have done the same. And besides . . .” He stopped and looked at Agnes’s dress. Only now did he notice its torn bodice.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “Did you get caught in a thicket just now?”
“Ex . . . yes, that was it.” Her glance wavered slightly. “A pity, but a dress can be mended. Unlike other things . . .” she added darkly. She beckoned to him to follow her. “And now let’s go home. We can think all this over tomorrow.”
Mathis walked after her. As he put his hand to his right side, he suddenly felt the little bag still hanging from his belt. Damn it, the gunpowder! And I promised Mother to throw it away . . .
But on the spur of the moment, he decided not to get rid of it just yet. The stuff was simply too expensive to be scattered over the fields. He would bury it behind the house, where his father would never find it.
Furthermore, he might yet need it someday.
Half an hour later, Agnes was lying in the canopied bed of her bower, staring up at the wooden paneling overhead.
She had taken the still restless Parcival to the falconry down in the castle courtyard. The little bird was screeching and fluttering wildly back and forth on his leather leash, and only when Agnes gave him a large piece of raw pigeon did he slowly calm down. Something that she could not do after the day’s events.
Her eyes wandered to the doo
r of the room, which she had locked, for safety’s sake, after her dreadful experience with Martin von Heidelsheim. Her room was plainly furnished with a chest roughly put together by a joiner for her clothes, a stool, and one of the few tiled stoves in the castle that could be heated. All the same, in winter icy drafts came in through the windows; their thick bull’s-eye glass had broken several years ago. The old head groom, Radolph, had covered the spaces with leather as an emergency measure, since there was no money to spare for new glass. The only other personal possessions that Agnes had were some books that she kept in another chest under her bed, and she cared for them as the apple of her eye.
She carefully drew a well-worn tome with its thick parchment pages out from under her bedstead and began leafing through it. Although this book had always soothed Agnes in the past, this time she was still strangely on edge. Her heart was thudding so much that it hurt her rib cage. Finally she put the book down and tossed and turned in bed restlessly. She kept thinking of this morning’s explosion, of Heidelsheim’s attempt to rape her, of the strange men with their heavily laden horses in the Trifels forest, and of the ring.
Most of all she thought of the ring.
It was lying on her chest of clothes beside the bed, hard and firm as a pebble. Now she picked it up and examined the golden seal more closely again. It showed the head of a bearded man, and that was all. No name, no initials, not even a date. The gold had a dull shine with tiny scratches all over the surface, as though the ring had been worn for a very long time. But that very simplicity was what made it so remarkable. Agnes could almost believe that she was holding one of those magical rings she had read of in old tales and legends.
How in the world had Parcival come by that ring?
Agnes was sure that someone must have tied it to the falcon’s leg. But why? What was the point of putting a ring on the leg of a bird that happened to fly near you? A gold ring at that, surely worth many guilders.