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On the Trifels, 21 March, Anno Domini 1524, early evening

 

“WHAT MAKES THAT BASTARD THINK he can touch my daughter? I’ll have him drawn—drawn and broken on the wheel!”

Philipp Schlüchterer von Erfenstein had jumped up from his stool and was pacing in front of the fire on the hearth, red in the face, his wide black coat, trimmed with fox fur, swinging out behind him. His two hounds looked up wearily from the nap they had been taking, then lowered their heads again to the warm boar’s pelt near the fire. They were familiar with their master’s outbursts of anger and knew that they passed as quickly as a summer storm.

“Even as a youth, Wertingen was worthless,” Erfenstein went on, snorting angrily. “Acted very unchivalrously at tournaments and wouldn’t own himself bested in single combat. I don’t like to think what he’d have done to you.” The big man shook his head, and for a moment Agnes could see genuine anger in her father’s face. Today there were gray strands in his once black hair, the result, not least, of sorrow and care. Long ago the knight had lost his left eye in a battle, and the scarred socket had been covered by an eye patch ever since. That and a dueling scar on his left cheek made him look grimmer than he really was. Since his wife’s early death, Philipp von Erfenstein had cared for his only daughter like a mother hen—although, luckily, there were enough hiding places at Trifels for Agnes to get away from her father’s scolding. Now that she was a young woman, his protective instincts had, if anything, increased. Like many men who become fathers at an advanced age, he took particular care of his daughter.

“You haven’t told me yet what you were doing in that part of the forest.” The broad, sturdy, giant of a man turned to his daughter, his forefinger menacingly raised. “There are riffraff of every kind around the place—you know that.”

Agnes kept her eyes lowered, shifting uneasily back and forth in her chair. Her father had already been lecturing her for a good half an hour in the great hall of the castle. Twilight was beginning to fall outside, and long shadows lay in the huge room with its high ceiling supported by a series of weathered columns. Threadbare tapestries and faded carpets hung on the walls, giving only a faint idea of the magnificent designs they had once shown.

Philipp von Erfenstein had spent the whole day down among the cottages and peasants’ houses, collecting their meager rent. As a result he was in a bad temper, and news of the attack on his daughter was the last straw. Agnes had decided to say nothing about the fight and the dead man for fear of upsetting her father even more.

“Was I wrong to go looking for Parcival?” she couldn’t help saying, however. “You know what my falcon means to me, Father. We can be glad that Mathis happened to be near. He . . . distracted the attention of the robbers so that we could get away.”

“He distracted them?” Her father looked at her distrustfully with his one remaining eye. “How did he do that? Not with one of his stinking pots of fire, I suppose? When I was down with the peasants I twice heard a loud noise like a clap of thunder. That wasn’t by chance your friend Mathis distracting them, was it?” He raised a threatening finger again, as his voice rose louder. “I’ve warned the lad a dozen times to leave that devilish stuff alone. He should be forging swords, not meddling with such unchivalrous weapons.”

“He threw stones at the robbers and then ran away.” Agnes was doing her best not to look her father in the eye. “We heard the thunder ourselves. It will have been over one of the neighboring castles,” she murmured, fervently hoping that the castellan would leave it at that.

After a moment’s hesitation, her father accepted the excuse. “Very well,” he growled. “I’ll tell Mathis I’m grateful when I get the chance. That doesn’t alter the fact that the boy should leave gunpowder alone. That fellow isn’t fit company for you anyway,” he said, pouring himself a goblet of wine from a pewter jug. “Mathis may have rescued you this time, but in general he’s a troublemaker. Goes around with Shepherd Jockel, that rabble-rouser. What the devil is he thinking? God has given us all our proper stations in life. Where would we be if everyone did just as he fancied?” He drank deeply and slammed the goblet down on the mantel. “Such things didn’t happen under the old emperor. Fellows of that kind were strung up, and no shilly-shallying about it.”

“Times have changed, Father,” Agnes replied, holding her hands out to the fire on the hearth. Although the logs were crackling and hissing, no real warmth spread through the large hall. “Mathis says the peasants are worse off than ever. Their children go hungry, they’re heavily taxed, and they can’t even hunt and fish. Only this morning the mayor of Annweiler had some more poachers hanged, one of them a young fellow no older than Mathis. The nobility and the church take more and more money—”

“The church takes what it’s given,” Erfenstein roughly interrupted her. “Why do those peasant simpletons fall for the letters of indulgence? Giving the priests money for the forgiveness of their sins, and the sins of their forebears into the bargain.” He shook his head angrily. “Luther was in the right of it when he denounced such nonsense. But he’s little better, encouraging the peasants to rebel.” Angrily, he threw another log on the fire before continuing. “And who thinks of us knights? Our treatment at the hands of the high nobility is shameful. Yes, in the old days, under Emperor Maximilian—God rest his soul—our opinions and our fighting force were worth something. But no one cares for anything but money now that his grandson Charles is emperor. Money and landsknechts . . . we’re supposed to provide those great gentlemen with fighting men as well. When I think how it was at the battle of Guinegate with his Imperial Majesty . . .”

Agnes kept quiet and let her father’s tirade wash over her like gentle summer rain. Although she loved him dearly, it was hard for her to bear his melancholy swings of mood. Ever since the death of Emperor Maximilian a few years ago, Philipp von Erfenstein had thought the empire was going to the dogs. After a tough struggle, the German electors had decided in favor of Maximilian’s grandson Charles, son of the king of Spain, to succeed him. With the Spanish connection, the Holy Roman Empire was now the largest power in Europe, even if it was ruled by an emperor whose residence was on the other side of the Pyrenees and who spoke not a word of German.

The sound of a door squealing stopped Philipp von Erfenstein in mid-monologue. His steward, Martin von Heidelsheim, stuck his head in around the door.

Heidelsheim, who was rather delicate in appearance, wore a broad smile on his face, a smile not entirely reflected in his cold eyes. He had been administrator of the castle’s business for over ten years now, and he was responsible for Erfenstein’s financial affairs. However, the pale and studious man, who always walked with a slight stoop, was beginning to feel that his position was beneath his dignity. In his little office over in the Knights’ House, Heidelsheim often simply stared out of the window, bored, and spoke to the wine in his goblet. He was only in his mid-thirties but he gave an antiquated impression. Only when Agnes crossed his path did his spirits seem to revive slightly.

“Forgive me for disturbing you, sir,” Heidelsheim murmured, his eyes fixed on Agnes. “But the list of the annual rents that you gave me . . .”

“Yes, what about it?” Erfenstein growled. Noticing the direction of his chamberlain’s gaze, he made an impatient gesture. “Go on, Heidelsheim. My daughter is old enough to know about our financial affairs now. After all, she’ll be the wife of the castellan one of these days, won’t she?” He winked at Martin von Heidelsheim, who cleared his throat noisily.

“Well, as I said, the list . . .” the steward went on. “It looks incomplete. The rents of the Neueneck farm and the house down on the castle acres are missing. And the toll collected for the Bindersbach Pass is very low this time.”

Erfenstein sighed and rubbed his unshaven chin. “The peasants have no more to give,” he said. “Last winter was the hardest in memory. Poor devils, they’ve even eaten their own seed corn, and many of their children are almost starving to death. And now that Wertingen—damn him—makes the pass unsafe, merchants often look for other ways to go. That’s why the payment from the toll is low.”

As if in silent reprobation, Heidelsheim raised his eyebrows. “I don’t have to remind you that the duke will demand his share in spite of all that. Those gentlemen won’t be pleased if—”

“Where the devil am I supposed to find the money if there isn’t any?” Erfenstein burst out. “Do you think I should join the ranks of robber knights like Hans von Wertingen, eh?”

Martin von Heidelsheim did not reply. He let his eyes wander over Agnes until they finally fixed on her neckline. Her breasts had grown a good deal larger in the last year, and Heidelsheim seemed to relish the sight of them. Feeling uncomfortable, Agnes turned away and pretended to be warming her hands at the fire again.

“I’ll talk to the ducal administrator at Neukastell,” Erfenstein finally grumbled. “I’ll get him to grant us a longer deadline. The estates of the other knights hereabouts must be in similar difficulty. The peasants are discontented everywhere. We can be glad if there are no uprisings like the one in Würtemberg a few years ago.”

“Well, I’ve heard that the Scharfenecks at Löwenstein have even given the duke a gift this year.” Heidelsheim’s lips stretched in a narrow smile. “One of those pocket timepieces that are being made in Nuremberg these days.”

“Ha! Everyone knows that the Scharfenecks are cousins three times removed of the elector’s family. They don’t need money from their peasants, they have only to drive a cart to court in Heidelberg and load up gold there by the sackful.” Erfenstein laughed bitterly and stared out of the window at the milky landscape, where the sun was slowly sinking in the west. “Only last year those gentlemen had their castle extended, while the likes of us have to watch out for our own rafters falling on our heads. The whole world is out of joint, it’s not just the peasants who are disaffected.”

Martin von Heidelsheim cleared his throat. “If I may make a suggestion, honored castellan? To the best of my knowledge there are still some guns in the armory that could be melted down. Bronze and iron are valuable, especially in restless times like these. We might get a good price for the metal.”

“Melt down the guns?” For a moment Erfenstein looked at his chamberlain in horror. “Have we come to that?” Then, hesitantly, he nodded. “But you may be right, Heidelsheim. I don’t have enough men to defend this castle anyway. And maybe any money we can make will at least buy enough wood and tiles to repair the outer bailey.” He turned to the door through which they reached the dwellings in the tower. “Wait here a moment. I’ll discuss the matter at once with the master gunner. I’d like him to go through our stock of weapons with you in the next few days.”

Agnes froze. If old Reichhart inspected the armory with the steward, Mathis’s theft was sure to be discovered. Feverishly, she tried to think of ways to divert her father’s mind from the idea, but he had already left. Instead, Martin von Heidelsheim was still staring fixedly at her. For a while there was no sound but the crackling of the logs on the hearth.

“I’m glad the two of us have the chance of a moment alone,” said the steward after a while, in an ingratiating tone. “We ought to talk much more often, don’t you agree?”

He came closer, with a playful smile, and sat down beside her on her father’s stool. She instinctively moved a little farther away. Heidelsheim smelled of overcooked onions and his musty study.

“We . . . we’ve known each other so long,” he went on hesitantly, running his tongue over his thin lips. “I remember you as a little girl, always asking me for something sweet to eat. Do you recollect it?”

Agnes nodded in silence. She had in fact gone to see Heidelsheim now and then in the past, knowing that he kept sticky-sweet quince cakes in his chest. On those occasions the steward had always patted her on the head, and sometimes on her little behind as well. Even then his body odor and insinuating ways had repelled her.

Heidelsheim went on, his eyes twinkling. “Well, you’re older now, more mature, and your father has already dropped . . . er, hints to me quite often.”

“What hints?” Agnes sat up very straight. “Explain yourself, Heidelsheim.” She felt her disgust increasing by the second. All the same, she tried to maintain her composure.

Martin von Heidelsheim drew the stool a little closer to her, and laid his hand on her knee in a familiar manner. His fingers moved up to her lap like little spiders. “Remember, you’re sixteen, Agnes, you’ll soon be seventeen. Other girls of your age have married long ago. You should be looking around for a . . . suitable husband yourself. I have some ideas on the subject . . .” He grinned suggestively.

Agnes leapt to her feet, all her fears about the armory and the stolen arquebus suddenly forgotten. Could it really be true that, behind her back, her father was planning to marry her off to Heidelsheim? She knew her father had been looking for a bridegroom for her for some time. So far she had put up with his efforts in silence, for one thing because she knew that she would not be able to refuse to marry for much longer. Her father was hoping for a worthy and above all prosperous successor to his fief, but he couldn’t possibly have meant Heidelsheim—or could he?

“I think you are taking the wrong tone with me, sir,” she said. “Just because you could stroke my hair when I was a little girl, it doesn’t mean that I’m about to fall into your arms now.”

Cool as Agnes appeared outwardly, her thoughts were racing. She still could hardly believe that Heidelsheim had just made her a proposal of marriage, perhaps even with her father’s consent. The whole situation was so absurd that she thought for a moment of simply storming out of the hall.

The steward raised his hands apologetically. Obviously Agnes’s outburst had taken him by surprise. “You . . . don’t have to make up your mind right away,” he stammered. “Maybe in a month’s time, six months’ time if you like . . .”

“You are dreaming, Heidelsheim. I shall never decide in your favor. A scribbling clerk like you is beneath my dignity.”

Suddenly a sharp, almost threatening expression came into the steward’s face. His skin looked even more waxen than usual. “Be careful what you say, Agnes von Erfenstein.” he hissed. “I am not just anyone. I come from a highly regarded family in Worms. You may be the daughter of the lord of Trifels Castle, but that doesn’t mean you can treat me like . . . like dirt.” He had risen to his feet and was looking at her challengingly. “When will you high and mighty noble folk realize that your time is over? Just look at your fine father. Feudal lord over two dozen stupid peasants who can’t even pay him their rents.” He uttered a mocking laugh. “This castle is nothing but a heap of moss-grown stones, and all that’s left of Erfenstein is the old stories of feuds and tournaments long ago.” He took Agnes’s hand in his cold, clammy fingers. His tone of voice was suddenly low and familiar. “You must decide where you are going, Agnes, into the past or the future. In a few years’ time no fine young fellow will want an old maid like you. Other girls are betrothed far younger. People are already beginning to gossip, they think you are . . .” He smiled awkwardly. “Well, they think you’re a little strange. So what do you think?”

Agnes tore herself away and looked at Heidelsheim, her eyes flashing with hostility. “How dare you speak to me like that? I am not your strumpet. I shall tell my father what you’ve just said, and then you’ll be sorry.”

Heidelsheim dismissed that with a malicious smile. “Oh, indeed? Do you think your father will find a new steward to join him in this place? A castle falling into disrepair around him, a place that the duke wrote off long ago? I know Erfenstein is looking for a knight or a baron to marry you, but believe me, he can be glad I’m here and have taken a fancy to his penniless daughter.” A pleading expression suddenly came into his eyes. “Agnes, don’t you understand? I want only what’s best for you.”

Heidelsheim approached her, his arms outspread, but Agnes brusquely turned away.

“Find another woman for your bed, sir,” she said coolly. “You are as dry and tedious as your balance sheets.”

She was about to hurry out of the hall when she suddenly felt Heidelsheim’s sticky hands on her throat. The steward was pulling her to him with all his might. Her dress tore with an ugly sound, her shift and the swell of her breasts coming into view above her bodice. Agnes struggled and shouted, but Heidelsheim clapped one hand over her mouth. He seemed to relish her resistance now. They fell to the floor together. The steward bent over Agnes, his lips passing over her breasts as his stinking breath rose to her nostrils.

“Agnes,” he breathed. “You don’t understand. I . . . I love you. I’ve always loved you, ever since you were a little girl.”

Petrified by fear, Agnes felt the steward’s right hand move slowly down to her private parts and stroke them mechanically. Stammered words came to her ears, but all she could really hear was the thudding of her heart. The penetrating stench of onions and the groping fingers between her legs almost made her faint. She felt Heidelsheim’s wet, rough tongue on her throat, like a slug. When he briefly shifted position to raise her dress farther, she managed to get away with a lightning-quick movement and ran for the steps down to the kitchen.

“Agnes, wait! You must believe me. I . . . I’ll look after you. You’re making a grave mistake.”

Martin von Heidelsheim jumped up to pursue her, but Agnes slammed the door in his face. She heard his yell of pain with satisfaction, and then ran down the stairs, past the fat cook, Hedwig, and the surprised servants, and out into the upper bailey. Blind with haste, she stumbled past the granary and a dilapidated shed, until at last she was standing on the foremost rocky peak of the Trifels—a narrow wedge pointing, like the bow of a mighty ship, to the nearby hills to the south. A cool evening wind blew through her hair, and the leaves of oak and beech trees rustled far below.

Agnes looked around with a hunted expression, but Heidelsheim did not seem to have followed her. Her heart was beating wildly, a caustic flavor crept up her throat and made her retch. Briefly, Agnes closed her eyes to calm herself down, and then she tried to understand what had just happened. In shame, she was clutching her torn linen dress together over her breasts while a sense of cold spread through her limbs. Should she tell her father about the attempted rape? Heidelsheim would probably claim that he had accidentally fallen, bringing her down with him. She had just imagined the rest of it, he would say, a hysterical girl who was known to be prone to fantasies. She thought of what Martin von Heidelsheim had said to her.

Do you think your father will find a new steward to join him in this place?

Agnes swallowed and tried to hold back her tears. She kept thinking of Heidelsheim’s cold, nimble fingers, his wet tongue on her skin. Her father couldn’t possibly want her to marry such a monster. But presumably Heidelsheim was right in what he said. Philipp von Erfenstein should be glad to have a steward to look after this ruin at all. Although he had been installed as castellan by Emperor Maximilian, her father had shown not the slightest economic talent for running the place over the last two decades. He was very good at fighting, drinking, and telling stories of the old days, but Philipp von Erfenstein needed a sharp-witted steward like Heidelsheim, at least for the more prosaic tasks of administration. No doubt her father would appease him and maybe even lay the blame on her. Furthermore, hadn’t Heidelsheim said that her father had already thought of marrying her to him? She instinctively thought of the conspiratorial glance that he had exchanged with Heidelsheim. All the same, Agnes couldn’t think that Philipp von Erfenstein would really give his daughter in marriage to a stinking, dry-as-dust clerk. If she must marry, let her husband at least be a knight, or one of the lower ranks of the nobility, not the steward at Trifels Castle. In her dreams and sleepless nights she thought of only one man anyway, a certain man kissing, caressing, and making love to her.

But he was both very near her and yet as far out of reach as the moon.

Shivering, Agnes rubbed the goose bumps on her bare arms. The rags of the white dress with the close-fitting bodice that she had put on to please her father were fluttering in the wind. She sat down on a fallen beam and stared into the twilight. In the fading light of the sun that had just set, she could see a number of other castles enthroned on the surrounding hills like weathered stone giants. Neuscharfeneck, Meistersel, Ramburg, and next to that Scharfenburg Castle and the Anebos. They had all once been fortresses, protecting Trifels when kings and emperors still had their residence here. But that was long in the past.

Now and then Agnes thought she heard droning and quaking deep within Trifels, as if the castle had briefly awoken from sleep. It sounded like someone quietly calling to her. At such moments she felt very much alone, for she knew that she was the only one who sensed that disturbance around her.

As she sat huddled up on the rotting beam, looking out at night as it fell, another sound suddenly came to her ears. It was very quiet, but she recognized it at once. In sudden agitation Agnes got to her feet and let her gaze move over the surrounding fields and woods that now lay entirely in the darkness.

It was the familiar cry of her falcon.

 

Head bent like a dog driven into a corner, Mathis stood in the middle of the smithy while his father swung the bag of gunpowder back and forth before his eyes. The fire glowed faintly, and only a little dim light fell through the window, which was covered by thin leather stretched over it. It was enough light, however, for Hans Wielenbach to have seen what was in the bag.

“How dare you bring this stuff into my house?” Wielenbach shouted. “A smith like you. Do you know what’ll happen if it catches fire? Do you?”

Mathis ducked as his father swung back his arm to hit him. All the same, he couldn’t avoid the sturdy smith’s hand, which struck his cheek. Gritting his teeth, Mathis rubbed the place, which was already reddening. Then he straightened up again and stared defiantly at his father. The day when he would strike back was not far away.

“Didn’t I forbid you to meddle with that devilish powder? Didn’t I say I wouldn’t have it here? Speak up!”

“Leave him alone, Hans,” Mathis’s mother said mildly. She and little Marie stood to one side by the anvil, and she was rubbing her eyes, which were red with the smoke. They both wore gray smocks smudged with the ashes of the hearth. The famine of the last two winters had left the cheeks of Mathis’s eight-year-old sister pale and thin, though Agnes found a piece of meat now and then for Marie and her brother. Even so, the Wielenbachs were better off than many others in this neighborhood.

“He won’t have meant any ill by it,” Martha Wielenbach went on soothingly. “Did you, Mathis? I expect you found the powder somewhere or other.”

“He was playing about with it. We could all have been blown sky-high, and he knows it.”

Shaking with fury, Hans Wielenbach was still holding up the bag of gunpowder. His face was careworn with work and grief, and the deep lines on it made him look far older than he really was.

Mathis remained obstinately silent. In the confusion in the clearing, he had quickly hidden the little bag under his doublet so as not to lose it. It had taken him weeks to make the gunpowder, stealing out at night to scrape the walls of the shaft in the castle privy in order to get the saltpeter he wanted from the mud that contained urine. Then he had repeatedly mixed the powder with vinegar and dried it again, to get it into a granular form. Should he have left the result of all that hard work behind in the clearing? He had brought the bag home, only to run straight into his father’s arms.

Hans Wielenbach swung his arm back again to strike a second blow. Little Marie whimpered and pressed close to her mother.

“Don’t, Father!” she begged. “Don’t hit him.”

This time Mathis had made up his mind not to flinch. The times when he had run away from his father in tears were long past.

“Do you know what will happen to your mother and me if they find you with this powder?” His hand came down heavily on Mathis’s left cheek, but his son hardly moved. “They’ll hang us, that’s as sure as amen in church,” raged his father, and another blow landed in Mathis’s face. “Now, of all times, when everyone’s talking of rebellion and the peasants are demanding what they call justice in every village, my son has to go running around with a bag of gunpowder. You ungrateful . . .”

His arm went back again, but this time Mathis caught his hand at the last moment and braced himself against it. Hans Wielenbach stood still in surprise, and beads of sweat ran down his broad forehead as Mathis forced his father’s arm aside, inch by inch, like a heavy tree branch. They faced each other head to head, both about the same height.

“And yet . . . it’s true,” Mathis gasped, his face flushed with rage and effort. “The peasants are eating their own shoes while the clerics live high on the hog in their monasteries. Isn’t it only right for them to take what belongs to them? Take it by force if need be?”

From one second to the next, all the life seemed to go out of his father; his strong hand slackened, and he stared blankly at Mathis. A severe coughing fit shook him. That cough had come more and more frequently in the last few years. Hard work at the forge demanded its tribute, particularly when he was agitated. He had already had to take to his bed a couple of times, unable to go on working.

“Then . . . then it was really you shooting in the forest, wasn’t it?” the smith finally croaked. “Very likely with those rabble-rousing friends you always go around with.” He shook his head and took a step back. “My son a rioter, burning and murdering in these parts. Have you killed a man yet? Has it come to that?”

“Curse it, it . . . that wasn’t it.” Mathis could have kicked himself for talking to his father about the peasants and the clergy. Why did the old man have to be so irascible? He was always egging him on to say things that Mathis would rather have left unsaid.

“Stop it, for goodness’ sake, you two fighting cocks!”

Martha Wielenbach came between the two of them and took her son in her arms. “You’re too hard on him, Hans. How is the boy to understand you if you do nothing but beat him? What’s more, you have good reason to be proud of him. He knows almost more than you about the work of a smith, and he’s only seventeen. And the bell-founder who was over at the monastery in Eusserthal last year praised Mathis for his skilled help in casting the bells, too.”

“Well, so he may understand something about casting metal and making artillery and rifles,” said Wielenbach, who had by now calmed down a bit. He pushed his sparse red hair back from his forehead and cautiously felt the bag of powder with his large, callused hand. “And the lad can mix gunpowder like a damn alchemist. But can he forge a proper sword? No, he can’t.”

“Because pretty soon no one is going to need a sword anymore,” Mathis protested defiantly, pointing to the mud-stained bag of gunpowder. “This powder will change the world. Who will want knights, crossbows, and spears if he can blow a hole in the defenses of any castle with a hundred pounds of gunpowder?”

“Don’t let his lordship the castellan hear you say that,” his mother warned, patting him on the shoulder. “Your father’s blows will be nothing to what you can expect then. No more knights?” She shook her head. “Such nonsense! There have always been knights. Princes, knights, peasants, and the clergy—the world is made up of all of them. And mind you, don’t let Agnes hear any of your inflammatory talk. What is she doing these days? I haven’t set eyes on her for ages.”

“Yes, where’s Agnes?” cried little Marie. “I want to play dollies with Agnes again. She hasn’t been to see us for so long.”

“We . . . were in the forest together today,” replied Mathis uncertainly. “With her falcon.” He had made up his mind not to mention their encounter with the robbers to his parents. The atmosphere at home was tense enough as things were.

Martha Wielenbach smiled. “I’m glad to hear that. You and Agnes used to spend so much time together, but these last few months . . .”

“They’re not children anymore, Martha,” her husband said. “It’s better for them to go their separate ways. Agnes is the daughter of the lord of Trifels Castle, and Mathis is only a journeyman smith. Where is that going to lead?”

Mathis looked at his father, his eyes flashing. “Don’t we all have two arms, two legs, and a head to think with?” he replied defiantly, and suddenly his voice sounded like a preacher’s. “Doesn’t a human heart beat in every one of us? God has made us all equal, so why should she be better than us just because she is the daughter of the castellan of Trifels?”

“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 beside 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 door 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.

Unless the owner of that ring knew whose falcon Parcival was . . .

With her mind busily at work, Agnes sat up in bed. Was it possible that someone had sent her a message in the shape of the ring? But what message?

The warm gold slipped through her hands like a small animal. The ring felt good. She put it on her finger and it fit perfectly, like it had been made for her.

Sighing, Agnes lay back again, pulled the warm woolen blanket up to her chin, and closed her eyes. As her blood pulsed beneath the ring, she slowly calmed down. Her heart beat more slowly, and, after only a few minutes, she was asleep. She had a confused dream of falcons and crows, of an explosion that sounded like thunder and streams of blood pouring over her torn white dress. Yet all those impressions suddenly vanished. As Agnes, murmuring, felt for the ring on her finger in her sleep, images came into her mind like waves that carried her away and washed her up on the shores of a distant land. The dream visions that she saw were clearer and more powerful than any others she had ever known.

That was the night when she saw them for the first time . . .

 

✦ ✦ ✦

Soft music, swelling more and more until it echoes in her ears like a peal of bells. Chimes, hurdy-gurdies, and shawms, full of the laughter of many people and the rhythmical stamping of dozens of feet. A minstrel singing an old and familiar song.

“Under the linden tree, on the moorland, there we made a bed for two . . .”

Agnes looks up. She is in a great hall with tables on a dais and men and women in long, brightly colored robes sitting at them. They are robes such as are shown in her book on falconry—wide and easily slipped on, and the men wear multicolored close-fitting hose under them. The hair of the guests, both men and women, is worn long, and many have a circlet of silver or a wreath of flowers on their heads. They hold heavy goblets of chased metal in their hands, from which wine splashes onto tables stained with meat juices. Four servants carry in a roast swan to the sound of loud acclamation. In front, musicians stand by the open hearth playing a tune that goes around and around in circles, like a carousel.

“Under the linden tree, on the moorland, there we made a bed for two . . .”

When Agnes looks around, she is surprised to find that she recognizes the hearth, the pointed arches of the windows, the seats in niches along the walls, covered with valuable furs, the stone sculptures grinning down at her in mockery from the ceiling above.

This is her father’s castle, Trifels.

Furthermore, it is the real Trifels, the imperial castle. Not the gloomy ruin she knows, with the wind whistling through it and swallows and pigeons nesting in the holes in its walls. Emperors and kings meet here, the music plays constantly for dancing, knights ride out from this place to great battles. Agnes feels a great longing; how happily she would stay here, as if the other Agnes in the bleak pile of stones with its drafty holes and tumbledown walls were nothing but a dream.

Maybe, she wonders, this is reality?

Agnes is just about to test the idea by touching one of the women crowned with flowers, when a young man suddenly steps into the hall. The guests fall silent. Unlike the other men, the newcomer wears a shirt of chainmail reinforced at the elbows and shoulders with iron plates.

A long sword hangs by his side; he seems a little unsure how to handle it and seems unused to its heavy weight. The guests drink to him, and he bows with an uncertain smile. As he does so, the point of his sword knocks over one of the goblets on the table, whereupon soft laughter breaks out.

Then a broadly built gray-haired man steps up beside the younger one and raises his hand. He gently takes the young man by the arms and presses him down until he is kneeling on the floor. The old man takes the young man’s sword and touches him with it on the shoulders, as he speaks strange words, words that remind Agnes of a magic spell.

“Better a knight be than a squire . . .”

The youth has a thin, almost ascetic face, like the face of a young monk. His hair is pitch-black, his eyes shine like two green pools.

Suddenly he looks at Agnes, smiling. It is the smile of a boy on the verge of manhood.

“Under the linden tree, on the moorland, there we made a bed for two . . .”

Agnes feels a shudder run over her scalp, and something stirs deep within her. She smiles back, awkwardly, and raises her hand in greeting.

Then the vision blurs. The youth, the old man, and all the others disappear in a mist, until there is only the empty, cold Knights’ House before her. A sudden gust of wind extinguishes the fire on the hearth. Sparks swirl and whirl in a circle, faster and faster, until they form a blood-red circlet.

A ring . . .

✦ ✦ ✦

 

Agnes awoke with a scream, her forehead and her nightgown drenched with sweat. It was a moment before she knew where she was. This was her bedchamber, her bower in Trifels, her father’s castle. All was dark and still except for an owl hooting in the distance. It must be the middle of the night.

Agnes shook herself, trying to return to reality. This was not the first dream of the castle that she had ever had. Especially as a child, she had often dreamed of it, and even then she had dreamed of knights and ladies. But this dream had been so real that she could almost smell the people she had seen in it. Their sweat, the fragrant resinous wood of the tables, even the logs burning on the hearth—it was as if she had only to go downstairs and find it all just as it was in her dream.

Sighing, she lay back on her pillows. Why couldn’t she live in a time as colorful and rich in stories as that dream of hers? Why couldn’t castles be what they once were? Sometimes life seemed to her as gray as a faded picture in a tattered old book. Nothing happened now; everything seemed to be standing still.

But then Agnes thought of everything that had happened to her on the day just passed. She thought of the ring again. Had that been merely a dream as well? She felt her finger until she touched the gold. Only then did she close her eyes again, falling into a deep and this time dreamless sleep.

So she did not hear the chopping, hauling, and hammering sounds that came softly from the forest and through her open window.

 

About thirty miles away, in Speyer, where the bishop had his residence, the secretary Johannes Meinhart was still poring over the records in the scriptorium of the chancellery late at night.

There were a couple of legal cases, just concluded, to be filed away in the archives, and, as usual, the handwriting of the assistant city clerk was so poor that Meinhart had to write out half the minutes of the proceedings again himself. The secretary sighed softly as his pen scraped over the thin parchment. He was an ambitious young man on his way up in the world. It was rumored that the Imperial Supreme Court would soon be moved back to Speyer, and anyone who hoped to be recommended for higher employment there often had to do a few hours of overtime work. In addition, Meinhart confessed to himself that he liked these hours after darkness had fallen. He was all alone in the chancellery then, with no company but a heap of old parchments and the candle burning merrily away. At home there was no one but a shrewish wife and five whining children; he preferred the rustling of the files.

Meinhart was just concentrating on a particularly complex case of the reallocation of a debt when a slight sound attracted his attention. He sat up straight and listened. There it was again: a squealing and rattling as though the wind had blown one of the windows in the room next door open. Meinhart frowned.

But there’s no wind blowing, he thought.

The secretary felt the hairs stand up on the nape of his neck. In the Retscher house nearby there had been another haunting only a few days ago; the maidservant of the patrician Landau had heard heavy furniture moving about in the room above her, but when she went to look, the room was empty. Had the ghosts moved here to the Speyer chancellery?

“Is there anyone there?” croaked Meinhart, his voice as thin as a sheet of paper.

He rose to his feet, and was just on his cautious way to make sure that all was well, when the door of the scriptorium flew open so suddenly that the draft swept all the parchments off his desk. Meinhart’s scream was stifled when he saw who had just entered the room.

It was the devil in person.

The secretary shuddered. No human being’s face could be burned as black as that. In the light of the wildly flickering candle it gleamed like polished ebony, with white eyes rolling back and forth in it. Apart from that, however, the stranger looked very human. He wore doublet and hose, and an expensive fur-trimmed coat over them that had probably cost as much as Meinhart’s entire wardrobe. In addition the man didn’t limp. Nor did he smell of sulfur. Trembling, Meinhart took a step back. If the black-skinned stranger wasn’t the devil, he was still an odd fellow, and he probably had no business being in the Speyer chancellery at this time of night.

“What do you want?” Meinhart managed to say with difficulty, but he kept his composure.

The stranger sketched a slight bow. “Forgive me for disturbing you so late, Master Secretary,” he said with a foreign accent, yet with all the elegance of a fine gentleman. “I could not be here any sooner. It is a long ride from Zweibrücken. I bring a letter from the duke.”

With a fluent movement he brought out a sealed document from under his coat and handed it to Meinhart. The secretary opened it and read the letter. Then he looked at the other man, startled.

“You’re to have access to all the records?”

“I am sure the council of Speyer will not turn down this little request from the duke of Zweibrücken. Especially as I really need only a few specific files.” The stranger adjusted his coat in such a way that Meinhart had a glimpse of a curved sword under it, a weapon more common among the heathen Mussulmen. Where in the world did this man come from?

“I just need information about a particular place,” explained the stranger. “There should be an old castle called Trifels in the Wasgau area. What do you know of the country around there?”

Johannes Meinhart frowned. It was a long time since anyone had asked about that old fief. They said the castle was nothing but a ruin now, and its castellan a drunken old sot. So why would the stranger take an interest in it?

“Well, once Trifels was at the center of the empire,” the secretary began hesitantly. “A mighty imperial palace surrounded by a number of fortresses. Several German rulers had their residence there. Emperor Barbarossa lived at the castle from time to time, and his son Henry went out from Trifels to fight the Normans. But that’s all long ago.” Meinhart ventured a cautious smile. “Of course, there are some who say that old Barbarossa still sleeps under the castle mound, and will awaken again when danger threatens the German Empire.”

“Indeed? How very interesting.” The stranger seemed to be thinking for a moment, and then he went on. “I need all the information you have about that castle. The building, its past, the surrounding countryside. Hamlets, villages, towns. Everything you can find. And now.”

Incredulously, Meinhart shook his head. “But that’s impossible. The records are not in particularly good order. And it’s late, and my beloved wife—”

“Have you forgotten the duke’s order?” The black-skinned man came so close to Meinhart that the latter caught a sweet, exotic fragrance, something like incense. “I am sure the city council would be most displeased to hear of a mere clerk refusing the request of an imperial prince. Speyer is powerful—but as powerful as that?”

Meinhart nodded, perhaps dazed by the sweet fragrance. “I . . . I’ll see what can be done.”

“Do that, and hurry up about it. Or must I tell the duke?” The stranger dropped into the chair behind the desk and waved Meinhart away with an impatient gesture.

His heart thudding, the secretary disappeared into the room of archives next door, where he began feverishly searching among the countless shelves that covered the walls. At least that took him away from the strange, black-skinned man who must come, if not from hell, at least from a country very close to it.

It took three whole hours for Meinhart to collect everything worth knowing about the Trifels and its surroundings. There was far more than he had expected. Satisfied with his work, and relieved, he finally returned to the study with a mountain of files under his arm. The stranger was still sitting in the chair at the desk like a dark monolith. He had closed his eyes, but as Meinhart approached him they suddenly opened.

“Well? Did you find the records?”

Meinhart nodded industriously. “That castle is far more interesting than I knew. A pity, really, that the present castellan lets it go to wrack and ruin. Even the seals show that the most influential ruling houses have been competing for that part of the country for long years. The Salian Franks, the Hohenstaufens, the Guelphs, the Habsburgs . . . I wonder why . . .”

“I didn’t request you to put questions, only to find me information. Thank you for your efforts.” The stranger snatched the files from the hands of the surprised secretary and made for the door.

“But those are valuable papers,” Meinhart called after him. “At least give me a note saying you received them.”

The stranger turned once more. When he smiled, his teeth shone white as moonlight. “I do not think that will be necessary,” he replied. “Or have you forgotten the duke’s orders? I am only acting on his behalf.”

And he was gone, like some uncanny creature, leaving Meinhart to wonder whether the man had not, after all, been one of those ghosts of which there was so much talk in Speyer these days. But then his glance fell on the ducal letter still lying on his desk. Well, if he had been a phantom, then he had been sent from very high places.

Once again Meinhart studied the few hastily written lines, and then looked at the broken seal of the duke of Zweibrücken. In his fright he hadn’t really studied it earlier.

It showed the head of a Moor with his tongue sticking out.

What in the world . . . ?

Cursing, Johannes Meinhart ran to the window and peered out into the night. Directly below him, a shadow scurried over the forecourt of the cathedral and disappeared among the houses. The secretary thought that he heard a faint, almost imperceptible laugh.

With a slight shudder, Meinhart closed the window and decided that the last few hours had been only a dream.

Which at least spared him a number of uncomfortable questions.