✦ 11 ✦

Outside Ramburg Castle, 3 June, Anno Domini 1524, evening

 

MATHIS WOKE WHEN SOMEONE THREW a torrent of water in his face. He opened his eyes and saw the grinning Ulrich Reichhart above him, holding a dripping-wet wooden bucket.

“I think you’ve been asleep long enough,” said Reichhart, his eyes twinkling. “You ought not to miss the celebrations, that’s what the castellan says. And Father Tristan has already tended your injuries. He came over from Trifels at midday. So you have no excuse to laze around any longer.”

“Celebrations . . . Father Tristan . . . ? I don’t understand.” Mathis rubbed his eyes wearily. All at once his memory came back. They were outside Ramburg Castle. He had breached the wall, the battle was won. Yes, Fat Hedwig had exploded, but at least she had served her purpose with the last shot that she fired. All the same, Mathis felt sorry, after all the work he had put into her. The big gun had been his masterpiece.

Shakily, he got up from the bed of straw and twigs where he was lying, and saw that he was in the middle of the temporary field camp on the saddle in the hills, not far from the robber knight’s castle. Night had fallen. Several campfires crackled, and the landsknechts sat beside them, drinking and bawling out songs. A few of the soldiers were so drunk that they lay asleep in their own vomit. Two peasants were performing a folk dance beside one of the fires, while a third played his fiddle.

“Have I been asleep all day?” Mathis asked Ulrich Reichhart, who had been drawing himself a tankard of beer from a large cask. The old master gunner laughed out loud.

“All day? Devil take it, you’ve been asleep for two whole days.We’re going back to Trifels tomorrow.”

“But . . . what have you been doing here all this time?” Mathis asked in surprise.

Reichhart took a long draft. He wiped the foam off his lips before replying. “What people do in war. We’ve been looting. First the castle, then the whole district. After all, the Ramberg peasants supported that bastard.”

“Only because they had to.”

“Huh, who cares about that?” Reichhart shrugged. “Don’t be so soft-hearted, Mathis. We got good loot, and the district’s secure again. That’s all that counts. That minstrel, Melchior, is on the way to tell the other feudal lords about it.” He grinned. “Fought like a demon, that frail little fellow. If you ask me, he’s better with a sword than a lute.”

Mathis was going to say something, but at that moment Father Tristan approached, leaning on his staff. The old monk raised a threatening forefinger.

“Good God in heaven, Reichhart! Didn’t I expressly say the boy wasn’t to get up?” he scolded. “He’s lost a great deal of blood. It’ll be your fault if he dies on me.”

Reichhart grinned guiltily. “He’s not going to die anytime soon, Father. A man who stands beside Fat Hedwig when she blows up isn’t going to be killed so easily.”

Laughing, Reichhart clapped Mathis on the shoulder and went away to get himself another tankard of beer. Only now did the young smith realize how tired he still was. He had fresh bandages on his leg, neck, and shoulders; his whole body felt as if it were wrapped in damp leaves. He felt slightly dizzy and had to sit down again.

“There, just as I said. Well, it looks like nothing will get you down.”

Father Tristan looked hard at Mathis and then sat down beside him on an upturned cart wheel. “There aren’t many I can help,” he said sadly. “So it would distress me a great deal if I’d been working on you in vain as well.”

Mathis glanced at the outskirts of the forest, where the bodies of at least half a dozen men hung from the branches of a large beech tree. They swayed gently in the evening wind, and several crows had already come down to feast on them. The outlines of Ramburg Castle stood out against the darkening sky. Thin threads of black smoke rose from it in several places, and some of the sheds and stables were still burning in the outer bailey.

“How many men died?” asked Mathis.

Father Tristan frowned. “I haven’t been counting, but just about all Wertingen’s men-at-arms, and a good many of the peasants who were helping him. Not so many on our side, but five of those young peasants are among them. And an arquebus exploded in the hand of one of Scharfeneck’s landsknechts. Even the Lord God will have difficulty recognizing the man when he comes before him.” He made the sign of the cross, and glanced at the makeshift gallows. “And any help is too late for the men over there.”

“How about Black Hans?”

“Count Scharfeneck is keeping him for a public trial,” replied the monk wearily, cracking his gouty knuckles. “The idea is to have him hung, drawn, and quartered in Speyer, but Philipp von Erfenstein doesn’t go along with that idea. He and the count are discussing it in Scharfeneck’s tent right now.”

Mathis suddenly felt queasy and propped himself on Father Tristan’s shoulder to keep from falling over. The monk took out a little bottle and handed it to him.

“Drink that. It’s a mixture made of tormentil and arnica to strengthen you. Agnes made it especially for you just before I set out.”

Gratefully, Mathis took a good draft of the aromatic medicament. It tasted sweet, and the fluid seemed warm as it lay in his stomach. He immediately felt a little better.

“How is Agnes?” Mathis asked hesitantly.

“How do you think? Worried to death about you, you idiot! When the first messengers came yesterday with the news that Erfenstein had won, her thoughts were all for you.” There was a twinkle in Father Tristan’s eyes. “She’d like to be here, but I said her father would murder her if she came, so she decided to wait for you at Trifels.”

Suddenly they heard loud voices from the camp. When Mathis turned around, all that he saw at first was a large black shadow being pushed into the large tent by several landsknechts. Only after a while did he see that it was a man wrapped in chains from head to foot. He stumbled several times but remained upright. When he stepped into the light of the largest fire, Mathis recognized who it was at last.

Hans von Wertingen.

He stood there, his face sooty and covered with dried blood, one eye swollen, his breastplate dented, glaring angrily at the mercenaries who surrounded him, laughing and grinning. Black Hans had fought like a lion in yesterday’s battle for the castle, splitting the skulls of two of his adversaries before five men finally overpowered him and put him in chains. Now one of the soldiers picked up a hard clod of soil from the ground and threw it at the knight. Wertingen ducked, but the clod caught the side of his forehead and fresh blood ran down his cheek.

“You cowardly swine!” he bellowed, shaking himself so that the chains rattled. “Oh yes, like a crowd of washerwomen, you can throw dirt at a man in fetters.”

“Who’s the swine here, us or you?” crowed one of the bystanders. “Just look at the sow. Someone stick him with a boar spear in his fat belly to make him hold his tongue.”

The others laughed, and the first stones began flying through the air, although most of them bounced off the prisoner’s chains. One, however, hit Wertingen hard on the shoulder, and he staggered. For a moment it seemed that he might fall into the fire, but then he straightened up again. Mathis remembered how terrifying the robber knight had been when he and Agnes met him in the forest. Now he almost felt sorry for the man.

“Stop that! Stop that at once, I say!”

The order had come from the large tent. Erfenstein and young Count Scharfeneck were just emerging from it. The castellan of Trifels was looking to all sides, with his one good eye flashing angrily. “No one touches my prisoner, no one!” he cried. “Or I’ll string up the guilty man with my own hands from the battlements of the castle ruins.”

Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck smiled, amused, as he watched Wertingen struggling for breath. “Well, I suppose my men may be allowed a little fun with this brute,” he said, making a casual gesture to keep his landsknechts within bounds. “But you’re right, Erfenstein, it would be a pity to extinguish the spark of life in Black Hans here before he makes his big entrance in Speyer, to deter other robber knights. There are still too many gallows birds like him in the Palatinate, calling themselves noblemen but worth no more than mangy dogs.”

“I am of a great house,” Wertingen managed to say, with his chains clinking as he braced himself. “My forebears were imperial ministers. You have no right to treat me like a common thief.”

“Yet that’s what you are,” Erfenstein growled. “There may have been times when you were still rightly called a knight and a baron. Now you are nothing but a marauder and highwayman, and death awaits you.”

Wertingen thrust out his blood-stained chin, threw back his long, matted hair, and stared at his archenemy. “And you’ve become this fellow’s henchman, Philipp. Tell us how long you’ll be able to hold Trifels Castle before His Excellency the count here drives you out of it like a dog.”

“We have an agreement,” said the castellan tonelessly. “The house of Erfenstein will not perish like yours, Wertingen. It . . . it will live on . . .” His voice died away, and from where Mathis was sitting, he could hardly make out the words.

Finally the count, still standing beside the castellan, spoke up.

“You can come to terms with power, or you can fight it and lose forever,” said Scharfeneck quietly, looking at the sorry state the robber knight was in. “Believe me, Wertingen, I’ll make sure that your name is erased from your family’s records forever, as if it had never been.”

“It will be your name that—”

“Quiet, Hans!” Philipp von Erfenstein straightened up to his full height of six feet and looked sternly at his old adversary of past tournaments. “I’ve had you brought here before us to tell you your fate. As you know, the count wanted to have you executed in Speyer, in atonement for your crimes and as a lesson to others. But I thought differently.” He paused. When he went on, his voice was firm and menacing. “Listen, Wertingen. You have plundered my peasants, killed my men, and threatened my daughter. But you were once a knight, so you should die like a knight, even if you don’t deserve it. At sunrise tomorrow morning you and I will fight in single combat, with swords and our fists, until one of us lies dead. That is my verdict.”

A murmur passed through the crowd. Some of the landsknechts shook their heads incredulously. Even Father Tristan frowned. “I’d never have expected young Scharfeneck to allow this,” he muttered. “The count could have made a name for himself in these parts by executing Wertingen in Speyer. In fact I thought that was what he wanted all along, not what little loot he could take here.”

“And why is Erfenstein letting himself in for such a fight?” asked Mathis, surprised. “Why risk his life when the outcome of the feud is decided?”

Father Tristan sighed. “I’m afraid you don’t understand, Mathis. Philipp von Erfenstein comes from another age. He must see this fight as a tribute to the battle of Guinegate. He wants to be a proud knight, not an impoverished castellan submitting himself to the moneyed aristocracy. If he wins he’ll feel that his honor is restored.”

“And suppose he loses?”

Father Tristan shrugged. “He won’t lose, believe me. Wertingen is injured, and despite his height, he’s not as strong as Erfenstein, who to the best of my knowledge always used to defeat him in tournaments.”

Hans von Wertingen had listened to the verdict with his head held high. Now he lowered it, almost humbly.

“Thank you, Philipp,” he said, and his voice broke slightly. “I will not disappoint you. It will be a good fight.” A smile crossed his face. “What if I win?”

“Then the duke will declare you an outlaw,” replied the castellan coolly. “I’ll make sure you get half a day’s start before the hunt for you begins.” He turned to the landsknechts standing around them. “Now get him out of my sight before I think better of my offer.”

As the guards took the prisoner away, Mathis again felt queasy. He sank back on his bed of twigs and closed his eyes. He was asleep within a few minutes. But the loud laughter and the singing of the landsknechts accompanied him into his dreams.

 

Agnes jumped as the first lightning bolt flashed across the heavens, soon followed by a crash of thunder.

Alarmed, she looked up at the evening sky, but the storm was still a little way off and would probably move eastward before it reached Trifels Castle. With a little hesitation, she continued going along the track into the forest. She thought that the clouds might be shedding rain over the Ramburg at this moment. How were Mathis and her father? She had been told that Mathis was alive, but wounded. Agnes had wanted badly to go to the scene of the battle with Father Tristan, but the old monk had made it clear that her father did not on any account want to see her there. So she had stayed at home, still brooding on what Father Tristan had been keeping from her in the library a few days ago. By this time she was firmly convinced that he had met with someone outside the castle early that morning.

Only who? And why? And what brought him up to the library?

To take her mind off the riddle, Agnes had spent the last few days making medicines. The old monk had the use not only of the castle kitchen but also of a tiny room where he kept ointments, tinctures, and medical instruments. Over the last few months Agnes had learned a great deal about the art of healing from him. She had studied the Macer Floridus of the Benedictine monk Odo Magdunensis, admiring its beautiful drawings of healing herbs. She could now recognize the symptoms of several dozen diseases and knew when to pick which plants.

Today, the day of St. Alexius, the country calendar advised you to pick cuckoo flower and, in particular, ground ivy. The moon was waxing, and that intensified the healing power of its blue flowers. So Agnes had put her leather satchel over her shoulder and gone out into the Trifels woods. She knew where to find ground ivy, that inconspicuous little plant that grew best in marshy clearings surrounded by birch trees farther down in the water meadows of the Queich.

As she climbed down the steep, narrow path from the castle to the valley and listened to the thunder in the distance, she thought again of Margarethe and what the lady’s maid had done. Agnes still was not sure whether her treachery had been unintentional or deliberate. Not that it really made much difference now. Since the incident of the silver clasp, Margarethe had not been seen at the castle. Agnes suspected that her maid had fled from the castellan’s wrath and was now trying to make a new beginning somewhere else in the Palatinate. Maybe she was even on her way to the distant, rich city of Cologne, where her cousin lived. She had spoken of it so enthusiastically a few months ago.

Agnes had been sad about Margarethe’s disappearance for a little while for, after all, she had known her maid since childhood. But at heart she had never been especially fond of the simple-minded and talkative young woman, while Margarethe had always been envious of her mistress. Still, Agnes hoped that she would find the rich husband of her dreams at last.

By now she had reached the marshy water meadows of the Queich. The storm had moved away. Agnes saw the blue flowers of ground ivy among the trunks of birch trees. She bent down and began cutting the plants singly from their rootstock with a knife, putting them into her satchel.

A strange noise made her spin around. She realized it was the sound of a lute being plucked, and it was followed by another note, and then another, building up at last into a little melody that seemed to come from the river. Curiously, Agnes shouldered her leather satchel and set off to discover the source of the music. After only a few minutes, she reached a mossy curve on the riverbank where a single weeping willow dipped its branches low into the water.

Under the willow tree sat Melchior von Tanningen, playing his lute.

The minstrel was performing a tune that sounded old and made Agnes feel both sad and happy.

Agnes’s face brightened. She fervently hoped that the minstrel could tell her more about Mathis and his injuries. In addition, a chance meeting with him was always a welcome diversion.

For a while she listened in silence, and she came out from the trees only when the song had died away. When Tanningen heard footsteps, he got to his feet, put the lute aside in a single fluent movement, and drew his sword, but on seeing Agnes, his face relaxed.

“Noble lady,” he said, smiling, and put the weapon back in its sheath. “What a delightful surprise. But shouldn’t you be in bed at this time of night?”

“And shouldn’t you be with Count Scharfeneck over at the Ramburg?” Agnes replied.

“My presence was no longer necessary. I was sent to give Scharfeneck’s father and the neighboring feudal lords news of the outcome of the battle.” The minstrel picked up his lute again and plucked several strings. They mingled with the sound of the little river flowing by, making an almost ghostly melody. “I fear that feud was too small and dirty for a heroic epic, anyway. Although your friend Mathis acquitted himself well in it.”

“How is he?” asked Agnes anxiously.

Melchior von Tanningen’s eyes twinkled as he looked at her. “Well, he has a couple of wounds, but he’ll survive them. There’s no doubt that Mathis has the makings of a leader of men. But you’d better keep your fingers off him, all the same.”

“How dare you . . .” Agnes began, but the minstrel played a soft chord, and she reined in her temper. “What . . . what makes you think there could be anything between me and Mathis, anyway?”

“God gave me eyes to see with, and a heart to feel with as well. Anyway, didn’t you give him something before the battle?” Melchior smiled. “Furthermore, don’t forget that I’m a minstrel. Yours wouldn’t be the first sad love story I’ve had to sing.”

“Then sing about doomed princes and princesses or something, and leave me and Mathis out of it.”

For a moment Melchior von Tanningen looked as if he was about to reply, but then he just looked sympathetically at Agnes. “I’d like to spare you disappointment, that’s all.” He put his head to one side. “And what do you think of my present feudal lord?”

“Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck? Are you by any chance recommending the count as a husband?” She uttered a little laugh that dismissed the subject. “Too kind of you. But the daughter of an impoverished castellan is certainly no fit match for such a man. In addition, between ourselves, that fine count thinks far too well of himself for my liking.”

“Yet you share the same passion.”

Agnes wrinkled her brow. “Indeed? And that would be . . . ?”

“The count loves old stories. Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck reads, indeed devours, everything to do with Trifels Castle. Did you know that? In particular, he’s obsessed with the Norman treasure said to have been kept at Trifels once.” Melchior sighed. “I have orders to write His Excellency a powerful ode about it. I’d rather write about the legend of Barbarossa.” He cleared his throat and began to sing.

 

There was an emperor wore a beard as red as any fire

He slept for centuries, I’ve heard, a loss to our empire.

If he should ever rise again, our countries to unite,

All other princes’ power will wane before his royal might . . .

 

When he had finished, Agnes, pleasantly surprised, looked at him. “That was lovely,” she said. “Did you write it yourself?”

Melchior nodded and stroked his little beard as if embarrassed. “But it’s only the opening. There’s to be a minstrels’ contest at the famous Wartburg next year, and I’d like to take part in it. I’m still looking for the right ode, but Barbarossa’s slumber under Trifels Castle strikes me as a good subject.”

“The Wartburg?” Agnes wrinkled her brow. “Isn’t that the castle where Luther translated the New Testament into German a few years ago? Father Tristan once showed me a copy of it.”

“To be sure, it is a castle with a long history. Almost as long and important as the history of Trifels.” Melchior cast up his eyes. “But the count wants his ballad about the Norman treasure, so old Emperor Barbarossa will have to wait. If Scharfeneck goes on like this, I’ll be writing an ode to his receding hair soon enough.”

Agnes chuckled. The entertaining minstrel could always make her laugh.

“I’m sorry I spoke roughly to you just now,” she said at last. “But these days I sometimes can’t stand even my own company. There are things in my life that are simply too . . . too strange.”

“Strange?”

For a moment Agnes considered telling Melchior about her dreams and the ring, but then she remembered her promise to Father Tristan some days ago.

Promise me not to show it to anyone. And keep your dreams to yourself, too.

“I suppose everything is rather too much at the moment,” she hesitantly replied. “My father’s debts; the feud with Black Hans; your master, Count Scharfeneck, as our new neighbor; and then of course the situation with Mathis. You are right, he . . .” Her voice faltered, and Melchior von Tanningen leaned down to take her hand.

“There are matters that one doesn’t understand until one is older,” he said quietly after a while. “They may appear cruel, but they serve a higher purpose.”

Agnes was about to ask what he meant by this puzzling remark, but suddenly the minstrel bowed courteously to her.

“I’m sure we’ll have time some other day to talk about Barbarossa.” He smiled. “Barbarossa and, for all I care, the Norman treasure as well. It seems that such old tales warm your heart, and who can describe the past better than a minstrel?” He gestured invitingly toward the castle. “Have you ever heard the ballad of Sir Gawain and his fight with the Green Knight?”

They walked up the path to the castle together, and the exciting story made Agnes forget her sad thoughts, at least for a while.

 

Next morning, the wind drove rain over Ramburg Castle. The last of the fires in the stables and sheds were extinguished, the castle itself was a burned-out ruin, the holes where its windows had been now stared into the distance like blind eyes.

Although it was nearly summer, it was unseasonably cool. The storm shook the tents of the field camp as if to awaken their occupants. Father Tristan had had another tent put up for the wounded men, made of several lengths of cloth from the loot that had been taken, and at least Mathis was dry. He had slept badly that night, with his right leg throbbing and painful where the crossbow bolt had hit it. Some pieces of shrapnel had also penetrated his face and his shoulder area; yesterday Father Tristan had removed them with a pair of pincers. Mathis would be left with an ugly scar on his right cheek, but it was a miracle that he was alive at all. When a large cannon exploded, all that was usually left of the gunner manning it was bloody scraps of flesh.

Day was slowly dawning outside the tent, and the voices of the landsknechts and the whinnying of horses came more and more insistently to Mathis’s ears. He stood up with some difficulty, limped past the other injured men, made his way to the tent flaps, and folded them back.

Outside, a storm raged. The many landsknechts who had not found a place in the tents sat in what shelter the carts and gun carriages could offer, cursing and with hats drawn well down over their faces. They were all staring intently at a circle of spears thrust into the ground not far from the largest of the campfires. The circle was about twenty feet in diameter, the ground was soft and muddy. Someone had placed the head of a dead man-at-arms on one of the spears, and it now seemed to be gazing at Mathis with a frozen, blood-stained rictus of a grin.

When the young weaponsmith turned his eyes away, he saw that Philipp von Erfenstein was standing outside the large tent to his right. The castellan was wearing full armor, the visor of his helmet was up, his hands rested on a mighty two-handed sword with its point stuck in the mud in front of him. Lost in thought, Erfenstein was looking up at the clouded sky, where the sun was showing for the first time today as a wan disk behind the clouds. Soon the rain settled into a steady drizzle.

“Like Guinegate,” Philipp von Erfenstein said. “It was so wet there that our horses and the baggage train got stuck in the mud. And it was a devilishly bloody battle.”

At this moment the sun came out from the clouds, shining on Erfenstein’s face. To his surprise, Mathis saw that the castellan was beaming.

He’s about to fight in single combat to the death, and he’s happy about it, Mathis thought. I’ll never understand these knights.

And now, with the clink of metal, Hans von Wertingen, flanked by four guards, approached the circle marked out by the spears. The landsknechts had removed his chains and given him back his dented breastplate and round helmet. He carried the mighty broadsword that Mathis had noticed on their first meeting in the forest. The robber knight looked around almost reverently, noticing, with obvious satisfaction, the many spectators who had begun taking their places around the improvised arena.

“Weather worthy of this encounter, don’t you agree?” Hans von Wertingen said to his adversary, grinning.

In silence, Philipp von Erfenstein strode toward the circle, his armor clinking slightly with every step he took. It was well oiled, and so highly polished that it flashed in the sun. Looking at the castellan, no one could have known that he had been drinking well into the night and had snatched at most a couple of hours of sleep. Among the hung-over landsknechts with their colorful costumes, wild beards, and rusty pikes and arquebuses, Philipp von Erfenstein looked like an envoy from another world. The soldiers watched him in a mood somewhere between admiration and mockery. Many of them were no older than Mathis and knew fully armed knights and tournaments only from the tales told by their fathers and grandfathers. None of them had ever seen two knights in chivalrous single combat.

When the castellan of Trifels finally reached the circle, he bowed slightly to Wertingen, who returned the gesture. It was as if the two of them were conversing in a silent language that only they understood. There was a tense silence in the air.

Suddenly, slow hand-clapping began. Mathis glanced toward the count’s tent. Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck emerged from it, applauding the two adversaries mockingly. Then he sat down on a folding stool.

“An impressive sight, to be sure. Two knights showing courtesy to one another,” he observed in a self-confident voice. “You surprise me, Erfenstein. What makes you bow to a brute like that?”

“There are certain conventions to be observed,” the castellan replied haughtily. “But you’ll be too young to understand them.”

“Maybe. Too young and too impatient. Now let’s have an end to this mummery and get on with it.” The count incredulously shook his head. “A song of farewell to the old days. What a pity our minstrel isn’t here to see it. Very well.” He clapped his hands once more. “What is it that they say? May the best man win.”

The two knights raised their swords and began circling one another. Only after several minutes did Wertingen begin the fight by storming forward, sweeping his two-handed sword through the air, and bringing it down toward Erfenstein. The castellan parried the stroke, and for a while the two of them stood head to head. There were beads of sweat on both their faces, and their muscular arms trembled. Then they moved apart again, and a murmur of disappointment went through the crowd. Anyone who had expected a short, bloody battle was going to learn better.

Mathis observed the two knights closely. Now they circled again, like two hungry lions, exchanging blows in turn, each sword stroke from one parried by the other. Since they were fighting without shields, each stroke had to be fended off by the sword-arm alone—a very strenuous and painful procedure that quickly tired the combatants. In addition, the mud made every step twice as laborious to take.

The fight went this way and that, all in silence; only the sound of the two men’s swords and their heavy breathing was to be heard. The landsknechts standing around the circle had been betting on the outcome, and they shouted encouragement to whichever of the two they had backed. Only the count still looked bored. Mathis saw that he was sitting on his stool, showing no emotion except for an expression of satisfaction that came into his face when the blows fell faster.

By this time Philipp von Erfenstein had driven Wertingen, step by step, to the outer limit of the circle. The robber knight kept retreating and did not notice that one of the spears driven into the ground was right behind him. Coming up against it, he stumbled, flailed his arms in the air, and finally fell into the mud, cursing. Only at the last minute did he raise his sword to parry his adversary’s stroke.

All of a sudden Wertingen threw himself to one side, sweeping his own blade over the ground like a sickle. The crowd cried out when the broadsword struck the castellan’s leg with a clang. Philipp von Erfenstein staggered, and then he, too, fell.

Horrified, Mathis held his breath. A knight in full armor who took such a fall was virtually finished. He could seldom get to his feet again unaided because of the sheer weight of his armor, so lay on his back like a turtle, where he could easily be stabbed by his opponent.

Wertingen, with his light breastplate, found it easier to rise. He struggled to his feet, groaning, and immediately struck the knight still lying on the ground with his sword. The blade caught Philipp von Erfenstein on the inside of his elbow. The spectators cheered or cried out in dismay, depending which man they were supporting.

Black Hans took a step back and looked down, with satisfaction, at the castellan writhing at his feet. Blood ran from Erfenstein’s arm. Hans von Wertingen smiled, and for a moment he looked up at the heavens as if in prayer. Then he prepared to deal the death blow.

“Give the Devil my regards,” hissed the robber knight.

As the blade came down, Philipp von Erfenstein did something strange: without trying to avoid it, he stretched out his hand. He reached for the sharp broadsword with his armored gauntlet, and the blow that had so much strength behind it was abruptly halted. Wertingen uttered a cry of surprise. The castellan of Trifels tugged sharply at the sword blade, so that Wertingen lost his balance and fell directly on top of his adversary. He cried out in pain, and then, groaning, turned on his side.

Erfenstein had rammed his hunting knife into the other man’s belly.

A loud cry passed through the crowd, some of the landsknechts applauded, and even the young count had jumped up from his stool.

“Bravo!” he cried, clapping his hands. “What a magnificent spectacle, Erfenstein!”

The two men lay side by side, on their backs. Blood flowed from the wound in Wertingen’s stomach, his face was so muddy that it could hardly be recognized, but he was still moving. He ran his sword into the moist ground, from which vapor rose in the morning mist, and tried to stand by leaning on it. But Erfenstein, too, was moving. The old castellan rolled over and seized one of the spears driven into the ground. Bellowing with rage and pain, he hauled himself upright with its aid and stood there, swaying, but on his own two feet. With a single swift movement he pulled the spear out of the ground, and strode over to Wertingen, who was still kneeling in the middle of the arena, breathing heavily and with his head lowered. Both men had exhausted their strength.

Raising the spear, Erfenstein uttered a loud cry and brought it down in Wertingen’s shoulder. The blow was so heavy that the weapon broke apart into splinters. Blood shot from the wound in a jet and seeped into the damp earth, while the robber knight, still kneeling, stared incredulously at the shaft of the spear, its point still in him.

Erfenstein looked around for his sword, which was lying on the ground a little way off. Groaning, he picked it up, took the hilt in both hands, and went over to Wertingen.

“Hans von Wertingen,” he gasped, “I sentence you to death for all the evil deeds you have done in the forests of the Palatinate. For your robberies and rapes. For the murders of my man-at-arms, Sebastian, and my steward, Martin von Heidelsheim. For all these I—”

Black Hans looked up in surprise. “I have robbed, whored, and killed,” he wheezed, “but I don’t have your steward on my conscience, Philipp. I swear it by all that’s holy to me.”

Confused, Philipp von Erfenstein held back, but the count cried harshly, “What are you waiting for, Erfenstein? Get it over and done with, or I’ll have the bastard gutted after all.”

“By God, I swear . . .” Black Hans repeated.

“I said kill him!” Count Scharfeneck’s face was white as marble. “Let’s have an end to this farce.”

Grimly, Erfenstein nodded. Then his sword came down, severing Wertingen’s head cleanly from his body. The head rolled a few paces and then stopped, mouth open, eyes staring, right in front of the count’s stool.

Mathis turned away. He staggered several steps away from the crowd and vomited, groaning, while the men nearby broke into loud rejoicing.