✦ 17 ✦

Somewhere on the river Rhine, 22 April, Anno Domini 1525

 

THE BOAT MOVED STEADILY ALONG the sluggish waters of the Rhine. Vineyards, castles, and little villages passed Agnes like a toy landscape. A fishing boat went by only a stone’s throw from her, closely followed by a raft laden with casks and timber, drawn along by two oxen on the bank. A few men were lashing the load down, so close to Agnes that they would surely hear if she shouted for help. But she knew it was a forlorn hope. And what could the fishermen do but wave to her?

Agnes sat in the bow of the boat, trailing her hands in the cool water. She would have liked to dangle her feet over the rail as well, but Marek and the man they called Snuffler were watching to make sure she didn’t lean too far over. She had already tried jumping overboard once, on the day after her abduction. Thereupon Barnabas, the robber chief, had had her tied up. He no longer thought that necessary here, in the middle of the river, but all the same he had warned her.

“Next time you try getting away, I’ll tie you up again,” he had said. “And then I’ll throw you over the rail with my own hands. I don’t think you’d make it to the bank.”

Agnes knew that he would carry out his threat. She was valuable goods, but the procurer with his wild black beard and shaggy hair suffered fits of rage, and in them he forgot any kind of reason. In addition, Barnabas had not forgiven Agnes for the fact that three of his men had lost their lives during her abduction.

“Death to the French! Death to the French!”

The shrill high screeching brought Agnes back from her thoughts. It came from a rusty cage standing on a traveling trunk in the middle of the boat. Two brightly colored birds with big hooked beaks sat on a perch in it, fluttering their wings in agitation. Agnes had been shocked when she first heard them speaking human language. By now, however, she realized that they were only imitating sounds. Barnabas called them parrots. He had bought them at a market in Naples, like the little monkey, Satan, who was on a leash, picking his way along the side of the boat as he stared at the bank. The monkey danced excitedly, like there were a wild lion lying in wait there, and the men laughed at the show he put on. Someone threw Satan a nut, which he caught skillfully and cracked with his sharp teeth.

Agnes hated Satan. It was true that she soon realized he was only an animal, not a demon, but all the same she sensed malice in the monkey. His little red eyes seemed to follow her all the time, he scratched and bit, and it was the noise he kicked up that had foiled her first attempt to escape. Sometimes she thought the animal had more brains than his master. He glared at her while he nibbled his nut.

“Hey, countess! Get your ass back into the boat before I make you move.”

Barnabas stood in the stern and spat copiously into the water.

“I don’t like the longing way you look at the other craft on the river,” he went on. “You’ll turn the fishermen’s heads like a mermaid.” He laughed and moved the rudder over to avoid a small whirlpool. The men had hoisted a sail, which made it possible for them to make slow progress upstream even without oars. A slight wind was blowing from the north, showing Agnes yet again that she was going farther and farther from her real destination.

She sighed quietly and slid down from the rail to sit on one of the front benches meant for oarsmen. They had been traveling for nearly ten days now. The fast-flowing river Queich had taken them to the Rhine, and since then their journey had been calm and monotonous. They were going upstream, which meant that the men sometimes had to row when the current was too strong. Now and then they put in at one of the harbors for ferries, to entertain the paying public with a genuine demon, two talking birds, and a few tricks. Barnabas held the attention of the audience with flamboyant speeches, while Marek and Snuffler picked pockets, and Samuel kept an eye on the two women.

Samuel was the worst of them. His malice was as great as the monkey’s, and he was almost as hairy as the animal too. He was the brother of the man Mathis had killed at the Albersweiler tavern. Samuel’s eyes often wandered like little spiders over Agnes and the innkeeper’s daughter, Agathe, while he played with his knife and made suggestive remarks. He hadn’t touched them yet, but that was only because Barnabas did not want his wares to be damaged. In addition, the pimp thought that little Agathe was still a virgin, which would put up her price. Barnabas had provided both girls with tight-fitting skirts and bodices such as the whores in the cities wore. When they put in at the little harbors, Agnes felt the men’s eyes lingering on her like dirty fingers.

“Stop crying, little one. It will only make you tired and hungry.” Agnes turned sympathetically to the innkeeper’s daughter, who crouched in the bottom of the boat, her eyes red rimmed. She had wound her arms around her knees, as if that would keep anyone from touching her. Agathe was only thirteen years old, and she had lived alone with her father since her mother and little sister had died of consumption two years ago. Now her father was dead, too, and Agathe faced a short, unpleasant life as a cheap village whore or a landsknecht’s wife.

“Would you like me to tell you another story about King Arthur and the Round Table?” asked Agnes, smiling as she bent down to the girl. When Agathe hesitantly nodded, Agnes drew close to her on the bench, and put an arm around her shoulders. Even if she was only a few years older, she felt almost like an anxious stepmother to the girl.

“The story of the Holy Grail,” Agathe said, wiping her swollen eyes. “How Parcival found the castle of King Amfortas.”

Agnes began telling the story in a steady voice. She knew the legend so well that it was easy for her to embellish it here and there, or make some slight changes. The girl listened, open-mouthed, forgetting her troubles at least for this short time. It was a mercy not granted to Agnes. She had never felt so alone. Tears rose to her eyes, and it was only Agathe’s dreamy expression that kept her from flinging herself over the rail.

She needs me. She needs my stories.

Early in the evening, they put in at a place called Rotmühle. The town had a small ferry harbor, with a tollbooth and a long pier on which several bored quayside laborers were amusing themselves. When word got around that a boat from distant lands had arrived, with talking birds and a small hairy devil, the inhabitants of Rotmühle streamed down to the harbor. Barnabas and his men had made a kind of arena on the pier, with crates and bales of cloth. Inside the arena, the procurer stalked ostentatiously, announcing to the audience the sensational performance to come.

“The birds are from a country beyond the sea, where the dogs, the cats, even the much-feared lions can talk as well as we do,” he told the gawping locals. “They are wiser than the pope, and more talkative than my revered mother-in-law.”

The people laughed, while Agnes watched the show—which was always the same—from the rowing bench to which the men had tied her and Agathe. The rope chafed her wrists and, as always, Samuel kept a careful eye on her.

“You can be glad our master is spoiling you like this,” the robber growled, cleaning his fingernails with the point of his knife. “If I had my way, you two would be feeding the fishes by now.” He grinned. “Of course not before I’d given you both a good seeing-to, by way of saying goodbye.”

“You’d better hope I don’t tell Barnabas you said that, blockhead,” Agnes retorted. “We’re valuable goods, and don’t you forget it. No playing about with those.”

She had found out, by now, that the procurer had been going up and down the Rhine and the Danube for several years, looking out for pretty girls he could buy from their destitute parents, selling them to brothels on the Black Sea as precious white-skinned ladies. It was a two-way trade, because he also brought Turkish slaves back to the German lands.

“Valuable goods, huh?” Samuel spat into the water. “Who says you’re even a countess at all? Maybe those damn peasants lied to us. And if you are, what’s the harm if we fuck you first?” He gave her a sly grin. “After all, we ought to try out our wares, eh?”

“Touch me and I’ll scream so loud every soul in Rotmühle will hear it. And then we’ll see what your master has to say.”

Shrugging, Samuel turned away and went back to cleaning his fingernails with the knife. Meanwhile, Barnabas had taken the parrots out of their cage and had one perched on each arm.

“The pope is a glutton! The pope is a glutton!” one of the birds screeched. Barnabas had taught it that remark, because he had noticed that opinion in the German countries had turned against the Church of Rome, and this trick always got a good laugh. Then he pretended to be horrified and corrected the bird.

“Carry on like that, and you’ll end up in the Inquisition’s cooking pot,” he threatened. “Follow your brother’s example. He knows what’s right.” He pointed to the other parrot.

“Hurrah for Emperor Charles! Hurrah for Emperor Charles!” screeched the second bird. But this time the audience did not react.

“So where’s the emperor when we need him, then?” someone shouted from the back rows. “The clergy, the dukes, the counts are taxing us out of house and home. But not for much longer. There’s a storm brewing in the south fit to blow those fine gentlemen away.”

Murmurs of agreement rose from the crowd.

“In Franconia the peasant bands have joined together into a large army,” someone else called. “Even the knights are with them. And down by Lake Constance there’s said to be thousands who forced the seneschal to sign a treaty. We ought to do that here.”

“We don’t need the emperor,” several voices claimed. “We don’t need Charles, nor his brother Ferdinand either. We’ll take what’s rightfully ours for ourselves.”

Barnabas saw that the situation was getting out of hand. He raised both arms to appease his audience.

“Mercy, mercy! I promise you I’ll pluck the bird this very day,” he said, smiling, pulling a feather out of the screeching parrot’s tail. “And then we’ll see whether this stupid lickspittle goes on singing the emperor’s praises.”

A few of the spectators laughed, and Barnabas signed to Snuffler to hand him the monkey. It was time for the high point of the show.

“So never mind those two fawning courtiers the talking birds, we’ll turn to a demon I caught in the jungle of West India with my own hands. That’s where you’ll find the entrance to hell, and I swear, this monster came crawling straight from the jaws of the inferno itself . . .”

Agnes turned away. She had heard the performance almost a dozen times now. Barnabas told his tall tales well, but she hated to see Marek and Snuffler secretly picking the pockets of the admiring crowd. She was about to turn back to little Agathe, when she saw something glinting on the bottom of the boat.

Samuel’s knife.

The robber was now sitting in the middle of the boat, looking bored and throwing pebbles at the screaming seagulls. He had taken his eyes off the two prisoners, and the knife must have fallen out of his pocket.

Agnes reached her feet out, stretching as far as possible, but she could not get close enough to the knife. Finally she nudged Agathe, who was closer to it. The girl was about to protest, but then she saw what Agnes was looking at, and understood her meaningful gaze. Agathe nodded, and with her own feet pushed the knife within reaching distance of Agnes.

Both of them had their hands tied to the oarsmen’s bench, but Agnes had no shoes on, so she could grasp the small knife with her toes. She slowly pulled it closer to her, until at last she felt the blade against her left calf.

“Curse it, when’s the old fellow going to finish this performance? I want to go and get a drink before nightfall.”

Samuel suddenly turned in their direction as he stared listlessly at the crowd of people on the quayside. Agnes gave a start, and the knife threatened to slip away from her toes. She felt sweat making her skin slippery. Beside her, Agathe let out a soft whimpering sound.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Samuel, looking suspiciously at the innkeeper’s daughter.

“You want a drink, do you?” Agnes quickly put in. “There’s a tavern over on the other side of the river. If you’re lucky Barnabas may be going there later.”

“Over where?” Samuel turned back to the river again. “Curses, I don’t see anything.”

“Over there, you slowworm. Near the three large linden trees where they’re just unloading that raft.”

While Samuel, baffled, gazed at the opposite bank, Agnes worked the knife far enough up the side of her leg to be able to take it in her fingers at last. Relieved, she hid it in the hollow of her hand.

“Oh, the light in the window has just gone out,” she said with feigned surprise. “I’m afraid they must be closing.”

“Stupid whore.” Samuel threw a stone at her, but she ducked swiftly away. The knife in her hand felt cool and good. For a moment she considered cutting the rope at once, trying to overpower Samuel, and casting the boat off. But then she realized that Barnabas would soon be coming to the end of his performance, and there would be too much danger of his coming back before she had finished. So she thrust the knife up inside the sleeve of her dress. There would be a better opportunity soon.

Shortly the other men did indeed come back to the boat.

“Stingy Rhinelanders,” Barnabas grumbled, while Satan hopped frantically up and down on his shoulder. “Devil take them all. Thinking twice about every coin they spend, and carrying on about rebellion until I thought the bailiffs would set the dogs on us.” He grinned. “But all the same we relieved them of a few purses.”

Marek spoke up thoughtfully. He was the most level-headed of the four men, and acted in a way as Barnabas’s deputy. “Folk are saying there’ll soon be war in Franconia, and Alsace too. It’s all seething with unrest there. Peasants are gathering everywhere, setting castles and monasteries on fire. Maybe we’d do better to wait here.”

“Nonsense,” Barnabas said, heaving the cage with the squawking parrots on board. “The gentry have always cut the peasants down to size. Anyway, if it does come to war, we’re no peasants, nor landsknechts neither. And whores are in even more demand when there’s war than in peacetime.” He laughed, and winked at the two young women.

“I’m sure we’ll find a pimp ready to pay good money for you in Strasbourg, girlie, and as for the countess here . . .” His eyes went to Agnes, and he smiled broadly. “I’ve something special for you. One of the men from the raft told me just now that Khair Ad-Din’s slave traders are out and about on the Black Sea.”

Agnes frowned. “Khair who?”

“The lord of Algiers. A much-feared corsair and a mighty general, even if he’s a godforsaken heathen. The man said he’s looking for fair-skinned noblemen’s daughters for his harem. You’ll fetch a good price for me, my little pigeon. A very good price.”

The monkey on his shoulder bared its teeth and screeched. The sound was like mocking laughter.

 

With a loud cry of rage, Count Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck smashed a goblet against the wall of his bedchamber and watched the wine drip to the floor, leaving blood-red streaks behind it. For a moment he was prey to the delusion that the wine really was blood, and the goblet a skull that he had beaten against the wall, again and again, with all his might.

Preferably the skull of that faithless bitch Agnes, he thought. Or the skull of the minstrel who is probably fucking her somewhere . . .

Friedrich sat down on the edge of the broad four-poster bed, closed his eyes, and tried to breathe calmly. These days he was overcome by fantasies of violence more and more frequently. Even as a small boy he had dreamed of battles in which he bathed in blood. But in the last few months such dreams had become increasingly graphic, and sometimes Friedrich wondered if it was these old walls slowly driving him mad.

These old walls, or Agnes . . .

A messenger had just arrived at Scharfenberg to tell him that the search for his wife had been fruitless. The landsknechts he sent out had not been able to find either Agnes or that damned minstrel. The trail petered out in nearby Albersweiler, and from there the two of them—seemingly accompanied by several others—had continued their flight by boat. Before that, their accomplices had killed an innkeeper and some of his guests. It was impossible to find out where they had gone. The German Empire was large, and Melchior von Tanningen was sure to know some castle or other where they could hide. For a moment the count had toyed with the notion of asking his influential father for help. But he would rather have cut off a finger than confess to the old man that he had been mistaken about Agnes.

Friedrich bit his lower lip so hard that he raised tiny drops of blood on it. Although he had been unwilling to admit it at first, he had really loved the girl. Even more, he had revered her as one of those old minnesingers might have revered the lady of whom he sang. Agnes was pretty, yes, but that wasn’t it—a great many girls were pretty. Rather, it was her mixture of clever understanding and a passionately wild temper that had clouded his mind. Agnes was like a beast of prey that had to be tamed. In addition, she shared his passion for old times and the old stories. As a child, Friedrich had immersed himself in tales of knights and squires, and the bloodier the stories were, the better. He was crazy about legends of battles, treasures, and ancient mysteries. When, at the age of ten, he first heard of the Norman treasure, the greatest in Christendom, it was like he had been enchanted, and he had been under its spell ever since.

And now it seemed he had lost both Agnes and the treasure.

Friedrich rubbed his temples and tried to dispel the violent images that rose before his mind’s eye.

I’ll flay that minstrel, I’ll flay him slowly. And I’ll make Agnes watch.

Was the Norman treasure perhaps only a myth? All the sources he had studied indicated that some great secret lay buried at Trifels Castle. But what that secret was they did not say. Could those legends all be invented, like the tale of the sleeping Barbarossa? He had searched everywhere, in the castle itself, in the surrounding forest. He had even killed to eliminate anyone else who might know the secret.

Had all that been for nothing?

Friedrich was just about to go over to his large desk to study some old sheets of parchment when he heard a distant noise from the upper bailey.

Annoyed, he went to the window and was opening the heavy wooden shutters when an arrow flew past, only a hand’s breadth away from him. It stuck in the tapestry on the other side of the room, its shaft quivering.

What the devil?

Alarmed, the count stood with his back against the wall, while the noise in the courtyard swelled. After some hesitation, he worked his way close enough to the window frame to venture a brief look outside.

It was sheer chaos in the courtyard.

Men-at-arms and landsknechts ran around, shouting. Some of the guards already lay twitching on the ground, while others had drawn their swords to fight. At first Friedrich thought that a few footpads had stormed the wall. But then he saw more and more men coming through an opening under the battlements. They were armed with boar spears, daggers, sickles, and small bows, and they were forcing the castle garrison farther and farther back under a hail of arrows. They came crawling out of the hole like a swarm of ants and flung themselves on the landsknechts, who had been taken by surprise. Only now did Friedrich realize who they were, and how they had made their way into the castle.

By God, the insurgent peasants. And they know about the sally port and the old secret tunnel.

Until now, the count had thought nothing of the warnings of other noblemen. He knew what had happened at Eusserthal, and he had also heard of other castles being captured over the last few weeks. However, Scharfenberg Castle was well fortified after last year’s repairs, and Friedrich had far more men than most other feudal lords. But what use was that if the enemy could get into the castle along a secret passage?

It was Agnes. Agnes told them where they could come in.

Friedrich glanced down into the courtyard once again to get an impression of the situation. More arrows flew his way, but they bounced off the outer wall. A single man, a hunchback, stood on the steps up to the keep. The cripple was not fighting but watching the fray below him with an expression of satisfaction, like a general standing on a hill. He suddenly looked up at the window, and his face twisted in a grin.

“There’s the count, men!” Shepherd Jockel shouted, pointing at Friedrich with his three-fingered hand. “Get him! We’ll hang him from the highest pinnacle of his castle and watch him kick.”

Count Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck ran to his desk and snatched up the most important of the documents. Obliged to run away from a pack of peasants—how had it come to this? He must at least save the papers about the Norman treasure. Everything else would probably go up in smoke. Fear and fury swept over Friedrich at the same time, while the blood rushed to his head.

You’ll pay for this, Agnes. Oh, you’ll pay in full.

The count cast one last look at the courtyard. Then, in sudden panic, he looked for a possible route of escape. But wherever Friedrich turned his eyes, he could not see one anywhere.

Loud, heavy footsteps, like those of a large, angry animal, were hurrying up the steps to his chamber.

 

Mathis swayed in his sleep. He didn’t know whether he was in a bed or on a horse. It was a steady up and down movement, accompanying him through his dreams. He was bathed in sweat. Yet he kept seeing Agnes with her hands stretched out to him, before she disappeared, screaming, drawn into a black whirlpool. The whirlpool was like a large ring, turning faster and faster. Mathis reached for her, but her hands slipped away from him, and she disappeared into the darkness.

“Agnes! The ring—the ring!”

Screaming, he opened his eyes and saw a termite-eaten wooden ceiling above him. A damp, moth-worried sheet covered his body like a shroud. Mathis threw it off, sat up, and realized that he had been lying in a bed. It stood in a low-ceilinged attic room with old, rotting rushes on the floor. The red globe of the sun setting in the west shone through the open window.

Where am I? How long have I been asleep?

He mopped cold sweat off his forehead, and memory slowly came back. Soon after they had set off from Albersweiler, he had fallen sick with fever, and they’d had to rest for a while. After that they had ridden for days, first along the Queich, then in the shallow valley of the Rhine, going upstream, because Melchior was convinced that the procurers would go south, toward the Danube and the Black Sea. They had asked in every tavern after a group of men with two women and a small, hairy monster, but no one could give them any information.

Meanwhile, the wound in Mathis’s leg had become more and more inflamed. The healing herbs that Melchior had found in the Albersweiler tavern had failed to have the desired effect. Shaken by feverish fits, Mathis had ridden until he no longer knew if he was awake or dreaming. The swaying of the horse was his constant companion. The green landscape of willow, birches, and marshy water meadows blurred more and more indistinctly before his eyes into a thick mist that threatened to smother him. At some point he had simply fallen off the horse. From then on his memories consisted only of fragments in which Melchior spooned hot soup into him or changed his bandages.

Agnes. We must go on in search of Agnes. Or has that minstrel left me behind?

Mathis hastily stood up, but immediately felt dizzy. He staggered, and then fell full length on the wooden floorboards, knocking over a bowl of water that had been standing beside the bed. The crash of the breaking bowl echoed through the room.

Next moment he heard hasty footsteps on the stairs outside, and the door was flung open. Melchior von Tanningen stood in the doorway with a bowl of steaming soup in his hands.

“Who said you could get up?” asked the minstrel, wagging a mock-threatening finger at him. “You’re far too weak still. Look what you’ve done.”

He picked up the broken pieces of the bowl, helped Mathis back into bed, and then handed him the soup. “Here, eat this. A good meat broth, it’ll help you to get your strength back.”

Mathis pushed the bowl away. “We don’t have time for that. We must—”

“What you must do is get better. A day more or less won’t make any difference.”

“How long have I been lying here?” Mathis asked.

“Three days.”

“A whole three days?” Mathis sat up, horrified, but Melchior laid his hand on his shoulder.

“You can be thankful you’re still alive. Another day on horseback and you’d have died of gangrene. I had to carry you the last few miles to this inn like a sack of flour.” The minstrel smiled reassuringly and put a spoonful of soup in Mathis’s mouth. “Anyway, we’re no worse off for the delay. If I’m right, and those louts are going on upstream in their boat, they’ll have to get it hauled along the towpath, or row it, or put up a sail. All that takes time. We’ll be faster with the horses.”

“Suppose they’re going downstream?” asked Mathis.

“I don’t think they are.” Melchior’s eyes twinkled. “I have good news, Master Wielenbach. While you were lying here sick, I’ve been down to the river harbor talking to some travelers coming from the south. They remember a group of men with a monkey and two talking birds. And they think there were two women with them. So my assumption was right.” Melchior dipped the spoon in the soup again, and ostentatiously blew on it to cool it. “Now, eat up. The sooner you’re on your feet again, the sooner we can set off and catch up with Agnes. How does that sound?”

Sighing, Mathis gave in and ate his soup. It tasted surprisingly good, of meat, salt, and fat. Every spoonful seemed to give him new strength.

“You spoke of a ring several times in your dreams,” Melchior said, watching Mathis eating. “Was that the ring that Agnes has with her? Do you know anything about it?”

Mathis shrugged his shoulders. “Only what Agnes has probably told you, too. She found it one day tied to her falcon’s leg. The ring itself dates from the time of Barbarossa, and it’s a signet ring.”

“Did she ever see it earlier?” Melchior persisted. “Maybe when she was a child?”

“Not that I know of. Her dreams began when she had the ring with her, but that is all I know.”

Feeling pleasantly well fed, Mathis spooned up the last of the soup. “How have you been paying for food and these beds?” he asked. “You didn’t sell your lute, did you? Not that I’d exactly burst into tears over that, but all the same . . .”

The minstrel smiled. “No, I would never do that. But I’m afraid we’ll have to content ourselves with coats of much coarser cloth. The count’s garments brought in some money—the silver clasp on the cloak you were wearing was worth a small fortune in itself. What we have now should pay for the rest of our journey.”

“And where will that take us?” Mathis’s face darkened. “Even if the men are going upstream, they could leave the river anywhere. We don’t even know if Agnes is still alive.”

“She’s certainly alive. She’s too valuable to them that way. And the leader of those scoundrels gave us a clue, remember? They’re going to sell our fair maiden, as he put it, on the Black Sea, and what with the stuff they’re taking around with them, they’ll go there by water as far as possible.” The minstrel got up from the side of the bed. “I served a count in the Black Forest a few years ago. He was a drunken old sot, but he paid well and let me go around the local villages, so I know my way about those parts.”

Melchior picked up a rush from the floor and used it to draw some lines in the dust on the floor. “This is the Rhine,” he explained. “Farther east is the Danube, and eventually the Danube leads to the Black Sea. Those two great rivers are the largest in the German Empire. To reach the Danube from the Rhine, travelers often use a small river called the Kinzig, which flows, voilà . . .” The minstrel drew another line from the Danube to a certain place on the Rhine, “into the beautiful city of Strasbourg.”

He made an elegant bow and threw the rush out of the window. “I’d wager my lute that the villains will stop off there with Agnes. If we make haste, we’ll get there in time to rescue her from those scoundrels. Wonderful material for a ballad. When I appear at the singers’ contest in the Wartburg this coming fall, the audience will love it, bien sûr.”

Melchior von Tanningen raised his pleasing tenor voice and sang ardently:

 

But in the forest, sad to say,

The lady fair is stolen away

On board a boat—who now can save

Her beauty from a watery grave?

Two warriors bold are on her track,

Hoping to win the lady back.

In Strasbourg town they come to battle . . .

 

Here the minstrel hesitated, and shook his head. “No, nothing much rhymes with battle . . . cattle, rattle? They won’t do. I’m afraid I’ll have to polish up those lines a bit more, but we have a long journey ahead of us, so I’ll have plenty of time.”

Groaning, Mathis lay back in the bed again, too tired and weak to protest.

 

Agnes lay in the bottom of the boat, trying to breathe very quietly. Agathe was beside her, sobbing now and then in her sleep and tossing and turning restlessly from side to side. Agnes fervently hoped that her sobs would not awaken Samuel, snoring on one of the oarsmen’s benches as he leaned on the rail.

It was now five days since she had stolen his knife, and so far something had always happened to keep her from using it. The men had not been sleeping soundly enough, or the place where they had stopped was not a favorable choice, or they were anchored too far from the bank. But here, not far from Strasbourg, she thought the right time for her to escape had come. The robbers had chained her and Agathe to the benches, as they did every night, to keep them from running away. A rusty padlock was attached to the chain around her right ankle, cutting off the blood supply. She had already practiced forcing the lock with Samuel’s stolen knife several times in secret.

With the tip of the knife, she felt her way through the keyhole to the springs inside the padlock. She had to start again a couple of times, but at last there was a slight click, and the lock sprang open. Agnes managed to catch hold of the chain at the last minute, before it crashed to the bottom of the boat. She carefully placed it beside a coil of rope and rubbed her foot. Blood pulsed painfully through her ankle.

Then she was free.

Hesitating, Agnes looked at little Agathe, who was still crying in her sleep. It would be so easy just to let herself slip over the rail of the boat. A few strokes, and she could swim to the bank and safety. But she had made up her mind to take the girl with her. And besides that, she wanted to get hold of something first.

The ring.

Barnabas was keeping it in the seaman’s chest built into the bottom of the boat, near the bow. Agnes knew that she was endangering her escape, if not making it impossible, but she couldn’t go without Barbarossa’s ring. It was almost as if it were calling to her. Everything had begun with that ring, and everything would probably end with it as well.

One way or another.

Moving at snail’s pace, she straightened up and peered over the side of the boat. The moon was shining brightly above the Rhine, casting its pale light on the rooftops of the little town of Kehl that lay on the eastern side of the broad river. This was where they had anchored. A wide wooden bridge standing on piers led across the Rhine to Strasbourg. She could see a red glow of light in the city, and the tower of the famous minster pointed to the sky like a warning finger.

Over the last few days, Barnabas had been constantly boasting of the high price he would ask the Turkish slave traders for Agnes. He planned to make for the Danube by way of the Black Forest, and then they could reach the Black Sea within two or three months. However, he had looked increasingly concerned the closer they came to Strasbourg, for there were more and more signs of war on both banks of the Rhine, the Palatinate side and the Alsatian side. As the boat went along, Agnes saw churches, abbeys, and castles burning almost every day, and often hamlets and peasant villages were also engulfed in flames. The baggage trains of troops of landsknechts were seen on the great trading routes on the banks of the river more and more often, strung out like long snakes winding their way over the water meadows, with drums and pipes playing as they marched toward the peasants. The few times the robbers stopped to come on land and stock up on their provisions, they heard horror stories of burned fields, mass rapes, murdered peasant children, and landsknechts drinking blood. Yet it did indeed seem that the peasants were on their way to victory. In a small town called Weinsberg in Swabia a genuine count—the son-in-law of Emperor Maximilian, no less—had been made to run the gauntlet. The great city of Stuttgart had been conquered already, and more districts were falling into the hands of the peasants all the time. Agnes kept thinking of Mathis, who had always told her that the time of rule by the nobility would soon be over. Was that reversal of fortune really imminent?

She carefully took one step at a time, to avoid making the planks of the boat creak. Marek, Snuffler, and Barnabas slept beside the boat on the pier by the bank, wrapped in threadbare blankets. Agnes could see the procurer’s hairy chest as he snored like a dozen woodcutters at once. Only Samuel had been left in the boat as a guard, but his head had slumped forward, and a thin trickle of saliva ran from the corner of his mouth. He did not look like he represented any danger.

Satan might, though.

The monkey was crouching on one of the front oarsmen’s benches. In the dark, Agnes could not see whether his malicious little red eyes were open or closed. Presumably she wouldn’t find out until he began chattering angrily. But she had to take the risk.

By now she had reached the monkey and was only a few steps away from the bow. She said a silent prayer, and then prowled past Satan like a cat.

One of the planks creaked.

Agnes stood as still as a pillar of salt, but the monkey had already heard her. Hissing quietly, it straightened up and tried to jump onto her shoulder, but the leash around its neck pulled it back. The steady scratch of its claws on the planks sounded as loud as thunder.

Swiftly, she reached under her skirt and brought out a few nuts that she had been secretly collecting for the last few days. She put them in front of Satan’s nose, whereupon he first looked at her suspiciously, but then began nibbling with relish. Agnes heaved a sigh of relief. She would have at least a moment’s peace.

She quickly went the rest of the way to the bow and slid back the bolt on the seaman’s chest. She had to search about, but at last, among a few discolored coins and all kinds of cheap trinkets, she found her ring. Picking it up, she was about to hurry back to Agathe and set her free when there was a deafening sound.

It was a shrill horn signal.

Agnes had to control herself to keep from bursting into tears. It had taken her so much trouble to open the lock, pacify the monkey, and go on to the bow of the boat undiscovered, and now the horn signal had wrecked it all.

Barnabas and the others turned restlessly in their sleep, the parrots began to screech in their cage, and Samuel rubbed his eyes, muttering. The large quantity of brandy that he had consumed only a few hours earlier kept him from becoming fully alert yet. Agnes hesitated for a moment, and then put the ring back in the chest. If Barnabas found that it was missing before she made her escape, he would certainly suspect her before anyone else. The ring must wait.

She closed the chest, hurried back, and lay down beside Agathe, who was just opening her eyes. The padlock clicked shut again.

“What—” Agathe began, surprised, but Agnes put her hand over the girl’s mouth.

“Sh!”

It was not a second too soon. Samuel was already making his way over the benches to them. He looked relieved to see both girls still lying at the bottom of the boat.

“Thought you two pretty birds had flown,” he said. “What’s that damned racket?”

Sure enough, more horns were blowing now, and they were joined by the clatter of horses’ hooves, the sound of drums, and of soldiers’ songs in the distance. Barnabas had risen to his feet on the pier, and now he stared at the bridge. A great troop of soldiers was crossing from Strasbourg and making for the town of Kehl. It stretched so far back that Agnes couldn’t see the end of it.

“Curse it, what are those landsknechts doing in the middle of the night?” Barnabas growled angrily. “Can’t they let decent citizens get a good night’s rest?”

By this time the first soldiers had reached the bridgehead, only a few feet away from where the boat was anchored. Barnabas raised his arm and hailed the nearest landsknecht.

“Hey, what brings you here at this time of night?”

The soldier had a drum buckled in front of his stomach and was beating out a dark, monotonous rhythm on it. He looked at Barnabas without interest.

“Going north. The peasants are outside Speyer, and even the bishop there is shit-scared,” he finally replied. “Didn’t you hear of it? All Swabia, Franconia, and the Palatinate are in turmoil. Those stupid millet-eaters are a real plague. High time we tanned their hides.”

Agnes pricked up her ears. If Speyer fell, Annweiler was not far away. Had the peasants already captured Trifels Castle?

“To be sure, you’re doing God’s work.” Barnabas nodded earnestly, as he shifted from foot to foot. Agnes could almost see his mind busy at work. “Tell us, what’s it like in the Black Forest? Has the war reached there, too? We were planning to go along the Kinzig and then . . .”

The landsknecht roared with laughter. “Not a good notion to travel in times like these, not a good notion at all. Didn’t I just tell you? The land’s laid waste, villages are burning. Only a fool would travel now—there’s nothing but death waiting on the road.”

At that moment one of the parrots screeched. “The pope is a glutton! The pope is a glutton!” The other bird joined in. “Hurrah for Emperor Charles! Hurrah for Emperor Charles!”

The astonished soldier looked suspiciously at Barnabas. “What in heaven’s name is that?”

“Only my talking birds.” Barnabas managed to smile at him. “We’re a company of traveling entertainers. I have a monkey as well.”

“Entertainers, with a monkey?” The landsknecht, enthusiastic now, looked at his comrades, who were about to move on. “Did you hear that? We could use them in the baggage train, right? The men like something to laugh at, after all the killing. And I see you have women too. Pretty women, at that.”

His lascivious eyes lingered on Agnes, who was still beside the rail of the boat, observing the conversation. Meanwhile, Barnabas seemed to be thinking.

“Thanks,” he finally called to the soldiers. “I’ll think over your proposition.”

“Do that. And remember, where we go there’s loot. And women, wine, and gold. We thrash the whereabouts of those saucy peasants’ money out of them and then hang them from the nearest tree.”

Laughing, he beat his drum again and moved away with the procession as it rolled over the bridge like an army of ants. Barnabas stayed where he was for some time. Finally he turned to his men and the two captives, and twirled his black beard.

“You heard what he said,” he announced in the tone of one used to giving orders. “The journey through the Black Forest is too dangerous. I’m not risking my life for a couple of savages hoping for an intact delivery. Particularly not when there’s a better opportunity.” He rubbed his hands together with satisfaction. “We’ll go north with this baggage train. When the unrest dies down we can always go along the Danube and do business there. Until then, let’s go where fate casts us up.” Barnabas raised his head, sniffing the air like a dog. It smelled of burning torches, gunpowder, and horse dung. “I smell money, plenty of money. Unpack the crates, men, and let’s steal a cart. We’ll go along with the war.”

 

When Mathis and Melchior reached the gates of Strasbourg, the city was pure pandemonium. The streets were crowded with fugitives who seemed to come from all over Alsace. There were many monks and Catholic priests among them, but also prosperous citizens with all their worldly goods in rucksacks or on handcarts. Babies were crying, small children whining for their parents, barkers and peddlers taking advantage of the crowds to offer their wares at greatly inflated prices.

During the last few days, the two men had ridden so fast that their horses were going lame. They had finally sold the animals to hungry landsknechts and came the last twenty miles on foot. The countryside through which they traveled was in turmoil. At first only the peasants of Upper Alsace and the Sundgau had risen, but soon the whole western side of the Rhine was on fire. The simple folk were now taking up arms in neighboring Lorraine as well. Their joint leader was a man called Erasmus Gerber, a craftsman who had unified the separate and sometimes conflicting bands and had many supporters in Strasbourg itself.

Melchior was just back from one of the many harbor taverns that lay on the Ill, a tributary of the Rhine. The minstrel, looking discouraged, shook his head. They had already tried a dozen inns, asking in vain if anyone had seen a group of entertainers with a monkey on their way to the Black Forest. They had also questioned beggars and pickpockets in the streets and had visited raftsmen, brothel keepers, and ferrymen, but so far with no success at all.

“I think we’d better try Kehl, on the other bank of the river,” said Melchior, as they walked through Strasbourg’s stinking tanners’ quarter. “Maybe the fellows set off from there just before we arrived, leaving Strasbourg behind.”

“If they ever came to Strasbourg at all,” said Mathis, gloomily. His leg had healed up well in the last few days, leaving him with only a slight limp. But doubts still tormented him. Had Agnes and her companions really gone upstream along the Rhine?

They crossed the forecourt of the minster, which marked the center of the city. The cathedral was so enormous that for a moment Mathis forgot his troubles and looked up, marveling at the towers, the crooked rooftops, the figures of saints, and above all the gargoyles who seemed to mock him with their grimaces. He had heard that the minster now belonged to the Lutherans, who had established themselves in Strasbourg very early. The city was one of the spiritual centers of the German Empire; maybe the revolution would spread from here all over the country. But when Mathis saw all the weeping, wailing fugitives streaming toward the city gates, he doubted whether the peasants were going about it the right way.

Good never comes of evil, he thought.

They left Strasbourg and went toward the Rhine down a broad road that was spanned by a mighty bridge at this point. Handcarts and horse-drawn wagons came to meet them, and more and more often they saw people who wore bandages drenched with blood, or who had to be carried on stretchers. One-legged soldiers and beggars with horribly scarred faces held out their hands to Mathis and Melchior.

The scene was far pleasanter in Kehl. The gentle foothills of the Black Forest reached far to the east; barges and rafts rocked in the water by the bank, ready to go on along the little river Kinzig. There were a couple of taverns but, here again, no one had heard of a troupe of entertainers.

Discouraged, the two men sat down at last on a dock and dangled their bare feet in the cool water that washed away the dirt of the last few days and soothed the cracked skin and blisters that had developed as they walked the final miles.

“It’s just as I said,” Mathis sighed. “We’ve finally lost the trail.”

Melchior von Tanningen said nothing, but Mathis could tell that his mind was hard at work. Empty-eyed, the minstrel gazed at the water as he bit his lower lip. Melchior had proved a valuable traveling companion. Not only was he an outstanding swordsman, his reason was almost as sharp as the blade of his Toledo steel sword. Until now, he had come up with a solution to all their problems, but this time even his store of knowledge seemed to be exhausted.

“I was so sure,” he said, shaking his head wearily. “So damned sure.”

They both fell silent. Finally Melchior stood up and put on his dusty boots again. Reaching for his lute, he strummed a few notes. “Well, we can always go on to St. Goar,” he suggested.

“That monastery downstream along the Rhine?” Mathis looked at him blankly. “What would we do there?”

“Find out more about the secret Agnes dreamed about. My ballad can’t end unfulfilled. What’s more—if Agnes does manage to escape, she will surely set off for St. Goar herself. Maybe we’ll meet again there.”

“In a ballad, maybe, but not in real life.”

A hoarse cry interrupted Mathis. It came from a small tavern at the far end of the harbor that they had not yet visited. Now a shrill voice could be heard, like someone calling out in mortal fear.

“Hurrah for Emperor Charles! Hurrah for Emperor Charles!”

Melchior von Tanningen gave a wry smile. “Sounds as if respect for Charles V still survives, even in these bad times. Rather dangerous but very praiseworthy, if you ask me.”

“It sounds more like a child, or . . .”

Suddenly Mathis remembered the night of the abduction, the rocking boat, and the strange voice that he had heard. This voice sounded just the same, hardly human, more of an animal screech, almost as if it came from . . .

Mathis put a hand to his brow. Then he jumped up, pulling Melchior with him as he began to run.

“Come on, quick!” he cried. “Maybe we’re still on the trail after all.”

Together, they ran to the crooked little tavern that nestled against one of the warehouses along the harbor. Mathis pushed the door open and blinked at the dimly lit room inside. There was not a single guest to be seen, but a cage stood on one of the scratched tables, and there was a brightly colored bird inside the cage. It flapped and screeched at the top of its voice.

“Hurrah for Emperor Charles! Hurrah for Emperor Charles!”

Breathing heavily, Melchior stopped in the doorway. “By my faith, a parrot,” he said at last, laughing. “Presumably one of the parrots those fellows had with them.”

Mathis nodded. “I heard that cry once before, when they were taking Agnes away on their boat,” he explained. “I couldn’t understand the words, but I do remember that sound.” He went up to the cage and looked at the strange bird. When he put his finger on the perch in the cage, the creature pecked at it with its large beak.

“Do you two want to buy it?” asked a deep voice. The bald-headed landlord had come up the steps from the cellar, puffing and blowing. He had a cask of wine in his broad, hairy arms, which he now put down carefully. “You can have it. That bird is getting on my nerves.”

“Where did you get it?” asked Mathis.

“From a couple of loud-mouthed entertainers that wanted to be rid of it. I guess it was too risky for them, traveling through the German lands these days with a bird that loves the emperor.” The landlord let out a bark of laughter. “Those louts said it could talk like any book, but that’s all I’ve heard it say.”

“Hurrah for Emperor Charles! Hurrah for Emperor Charles!” the parrot repeated.

“Well, how about it?” asked the man. “You want to buy it or not?”

“These entertainers,” said Melchior von Tanningen. “Did they by any chance have a monkey and two women with them? I mean, one young girl, one slightly older girl with freckles and wild fair hair?”

The bald-headed man stared at him in surprise. “That’s right. They were here at my place. Drank a mug of spiced wine apiece before going on their way again.”

“Going up the Kinzig into the Black Forest, I expect?” the minstrel inquired.

“Oh God, no! Far too dangerous these days. Those oafs went off with the landsknechts from Lorraine. Bound north for Swabia. Hoping for good loot, I guess.” Suddenly a calculating look came into the landlord’s eyes. “You know them, do you?” he asked sharply.

Mathis dismissed this. “Er, no. We . . . we met them once, but . . .”

“Because they stole my handcart and left this lousy bird here in return. So I suggest you take it away with you and give me the money for a new cart.” The landlord squared up to them menacingly. “How about it, then?”

“One more question before we talk business,” Melchior persisted. “How long have you been in possession of this delightful little creature?”

“Three days. It was three days ago those scoundrels absconded.” The landlord stretched his lips in a bitter smile. “Three long days and nights I’ve had to put up with this shrieking.”

“Hurrah for Emperor Charles! Hurrah for Emperor Charles!”

The parrot beat its wings frantically, and Melchior made a little bow.

“Pleased to have made your acquaintance. Unfortunately we have no use for the bird. But I know that there are some exquisite recipes at the French court in which parrots play a leading role. Maybe you could offer your guests a truly exotic dish one of these days.”

Without another word, they went out to the harbor, leaving the landlord hurling abuse after them. For a long time they could still hear the call of the parrot, risking life and limb as it went on praising His Majesty emperor Charles V to the skies.

“Hurrah for Emperor Charles! Hurrah for Emperor Charles! Hurrah for Emperor Charles . . .”