A village somewhere on the Upper Rhine, May, Anno Domini 1526
THE MIDDAY SUN, GOLDEN as stalks of wheat, shone down on the newly thatched reed roofs of the little hamlet, and barley was ripening in the surrounding fields. Agnes reclined on a small bench outside the village smithy, hearing the hammer come down on the anvil at regular intervals. It was a reassuring sound, in spite of its volume. There was something monotonous and soporific about it that, along with the warm sunlight, always made her eyes close.
Peace, thought Agnes, lost in reverie. That sound means peace.
It had been almost a year since she and Mathis had left Trifels forever. They had finally found a new home in a village on the Rhine. Exactly as Mathis had said, many parts of the country in south Germany were so devastated that the survivors were glad of any newcomer who would help to repair the damage. Almost all of this once pretty place, with its church, its inn, and some two dozen peasant houses, had been burned down by the landsknechts of the Swabian League. The former smith had joined the Palatinate Band of peasants, and never came home, so Mathis took his place. Together with the villagers, he and Agnes had felled trees in the nearby wood; rebuilt the houses to look better than before; dug up the burned, trampled fields and sowed fresh seed; and rounded up the runaway livestock wandering in the woods. The first of the cows had calved again in spring. Agnes smiled sadly. Life went on. It did not mourn the many dead who found their last resting place in the nearby graveyard.
The old priest had run away from the peasant hordes last year, and the new one was a young monk who had left his monastery and joined the Lutherans. His sermons were mild and full of imagery, and in many ways he almost reminded Agnes of Father Tristan.
The hammering stopped, and soon Mathis appeared at the door of the smithy. He reached for a jug of water that sat on the window sill, drank deeply, and then plopped down on the bench beside her.
“The horseshoes are ready,” he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead. “You can tell old Answin to come and fetch them. But I’ll need a little longer for his harrow.” He grinned. “It’ll be ready for the next early sowing season at the latest, though.”
Agnes laughed. “Don’t say that, with all the work you’ve already taken on.”
“You’re right. I shudder to think of all the hatchets, picks, and horseshoes that I still have to forge.”
Groaning, Mathis stretched his limbs. Now that people had rebuilt their villages, new tools were in demand everywhere. The young smith earned a good living, and he had kept his vow never to forge firearms again. Agnes contributed a few guilders to their household budget with her knowledge of healing. By now people were coming from the neighboring villages to consult her. She had a growing reputation as a skillful healer, and although they were not rich, there was a hot meal on the table every day.
Tired but happy, Agnes leaned against the man she had loved since childhood. Now, at last, they could be together. Mathis had grown stronger over the last year, and a wild sandy beard grew on his face, hiding the scar on his right cheek left after the storming of the Ramburg. In bed at night, Agnes sometimes teasingly called him her Barbarossa. Then they would make love, and the dark thoughts went away for a while. Things improved as the months went by, but it was taking some time. A troubled expression came over Agnes’s face, and Mathis looked at her in concern.
“You were dreaming again last night, weren’t you?” he asked. “I heard you cry out in your sleep.”
She shook her head. “It . . . it was nothing too bad. The usual. I sometimes still see the dead on the battlefields, raising their arms and pleading with me, and I can’t help them.” She sighed. “At least Constanza leaves me alone now, and Trifels has stopped calling to me.”
Mathis smiled. “It’s probably given up hope that you will move back in, as a descendant of the Staufers.”
“Yes, it looks rather like that.” Suddenly Agnes felt somber. The castle had been her home, the castle and the stories that haunted its walls. Now those stories were in the past. A new life had begun, but sometimes the old one came back, knocking and asking Agnes to let it in.
“How’s our little emperor?” asked Mathis, to give her something else to think about. He caressed her belly, which had grown visibly rounder during the last few months.
“Why not empress?” Agnes banished her dark thoughts and smiled. “What gives you men the right to want a male successor to the throne all the time?”
Mathis’s eyes twinkled as he looked at her. “Well, who’s going to wield the hammer in this smithy when I’m old and feeble? Besides, I’d like a great many children. I don’t mind if we have a few daughters among them.” He put his head on one side. “Well, maybe one.”
Laughing, Agnes hit his broad chest. They had married in the spring, when they could simply no longer conceal their good news. Fortunately the local steward was a kindly old man who gave his permission at once. In return, Mathis had made him some particularly fine carpenters’ nails and horseshoes.
The wedding itself had been a splendid village festival, although they had only a small cask of wine, a few loaves of bread, some cheeses, and a ham given by the steward for their celebration. But after all the horror and death, people were so glad of any diversion that a simple fiddle and a tambourine were enough to have them dancing on the tables of the new inn.
“Agnes! Agnes!”
Excited cries came from the outskirts of the wood. Looking up, Agnes saw little Marie hurrying over the fields to them. Close behind her came Mathis’s mother, Martha Wielenbach, desperately trying to keep the child from treading down the ears of barley. But Marie was much too excited to listen to her mother. At last the two of them, out of breath, arrived at the smithy.
“I’ve told her a dozen times not to run through the fields,” Martha Wielenbach panted. “But she’s like her big brother. She just won’t listen.”
Mathis raised a threatening finger, but he was grinning. “Marie, I warn you, listen to your mother or you won’t be allowed to help change your little nephew’s diapers.”
“Or your little niece’s diapers, for goodness’ sake,” Agnes shook her head, laughing. “You still don’t understand, do you, you stubborn creature?”
After their escape from Trifels Castle, little Marie and Mathis’s mother had stayed for a while with a distant cousin near Annweiler. But several months ago, Mathis had sent a message asking them to come and join him and Agnes, and since then they had been a little family.
A family that is soon going to be larger, thought Agnes, and a warm sensation went through her.
“Agnes, look!”
Marie excitedly held out her two hands, which she had cupped together. A baby bird nested in them, chirping furiously. With its soft white feathers, it looked like a ball of wool with a beak.
“Why, he’s a falcon!” Agnes said in astonishment. “I do believe he’s a saker falcon. Where did you find him?”
Marie gestured behind her. “In the wood, in the burned-out ruins of the monastery. He must have fallen out of his nest.” She looked pleadingly at Agnes. “May I keep him? Please? Mother says I have to ask you.”
“Me?” Agnes frowned. It was still difficult for Martha Wielenbach not to think of Agnes as a countess, daughter of the castellan of Trifels, but simply as her son’s wife. This time, however, she was glad to give permission.
“If you look after him well, why not?” Smiling, she stroked the soft down of the frightened chick. “Maybe you can train him when he’s bigger.”
“The way you trained Parcival. Yes, I’d like that.” Little Marie beamed. “I’m going to give him a name.” She thought hard. “Galahad!” she finally cried. “I’ll call him Galahad. You’ve told me so many stories about Sir Galahad.”
Agnes laughed. “A good choice. Although I don’t know how this little bird is going to carry the Holy Grail.”
“Oh yes, tell me about the Holy Grail.”
“Please, not the Grail again,” Agnes groaned. “I’m sure I’ve told you that story a hundred times already.”
Martha Wielenbach cast up her eyes. “I can see it’s all decided, and I’m not needed here any longer.” She knocked the fir needles off her apron. “So I’ll go and sweep out the stable. I’ve been wanting to do that all day.”
“And I’ll do some more work on that harrow,” said Mathis, standing up. “Or good old Answin really will have to wait until next sowing season for it.”
He gave Agnes a last kiss and went into his forge. The monotonous sound of the hammer was soon ringing out of it. When Martha Wielenbach too had left them, Marie sat down beside Agnes. The ten-year-old carefully stroked the little falcon.
“Will you tell me a story now?” she asked hopefully.
Agnes looked at her with a twinkle in her eyes. “All right, as long as it doesn’t have to be the Holy Grail or the Red Knight. So what story would you like?”
For a moment Marie thought, then she suddenly pointed to the golden signet ring that Agnes wore on her right hand. “You once said there was a wonderful story about that ring,” the child suggested. “Tell me that one.”
Agnes hesitated, her face briefly darkening. But then she took the ring off her finger and looked at it thoughtfully. She followed the contours of the bearded face engraved on it. That ring was her last link to her old life. To Trifels Castle, to Parcival, to her dead father. She had been unable to part with it. In silence, Agnes held the ring up to the sun, making it sparkle.
“Well, why not?” she said at last.
Collecting her thoughts, she began in a low tone that sounded like an incantation, a trick that she had once learned from Father Tristan.
“This ring is the ring of a mighty emperor, and his name was Barbarossa. He sleeps under a mountain, and his red beard grows and grows. Once every hundred years, the emperor sends a dwarf into the outside world, to see whether ravens are still flying around the mountain . . .”
Agnes began the story quietly, and Marie listened, open-mouthed, as the sun slowly sank behind the treetops.
It was indeed a wonderful story, and it was not yet over when night fell.