✦ 18 ✦

Höchberg in Franconia, 4 May, Anno Domini 1525

 

EVENING TWILIGHT WAS FALLING, a few days later and many miles farther away, as Mathis and Melchior walked through a devastated landscape.

Once the bald-headed landlord had told them which way the robbers had gone, the two set off immediately. Just beyond Kehl, Melchior managed to steal two old nags from a stable. But the horses had begun to go lame three days later, so they were back to traveling on foot. In spite of the pace they set for themselves, they had not yet caught up with the baggage train of the landsknechts from Lorraine. Or had they perhaps left it behind long ago? It was as if the war had swallowed up the soldiers lock, stock, and barrel.

By now, in conversation with some of the fugitives they met, Mathis had discovered that the landsknechts with whom the procurers were traveling were probably off to join the Swabian League. It was only for show that the commander of the league, Seneschal Georg von Waldburg-Zeil, had negotiated with the peasants near Lake Constance, and he was now preparing to strike a blow to utterly destroy them. Some ten thousand mercenaries were marching from the south, including over a thousand armored cavalry, murdering and burning all the country on the right-hand bank of the Rhine in an unparalleled campaign of vengeance. No one seemed to know just where those landsknechts were now, but Mathis suspected that he and Melchior, setting off in such haste, had gone much too far north.

“We’re looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack,” he murmured as they passed half a dozen burned-out cottages. “This war is everywhere, and Agnes is in the middle of it, unprotected, alone with those animals. She may not even still be alive.”

The corpses of several peasants swung from the branches of two charred elms in the wind. There were women and children among them.

“You lack confidence, Master Wielenbach,” said Melchior von Tanningen. Despite the gloomy atmosphere, he strummed a few chords on his lute. The wind carried the thin sound of the music away. “As long as Agnes is still with the robbers there’s hope. A parrot and a monkey. Sooner or later someone is going to remember such strange creatures. And then we’ll know we’re on the right track again.”

“Suppose Agnes has been sold to someone else?”

“Then we’ll find the scoundrel who bought her.” Melchior smiled confidently. “Don’t forget, this ballad of mine is going to win the prize at the Wartburg. And the ballads that I compose always end happily.”

He plucked a few strings again, and Mathis rolled his eyes.

“You’d be doing me a real favor if you’d only—” he began. But Melchior von Tanningen had already stopped playing and slung the lute over his shoulder. His hand went to the hilt of his sword.

“What is it?” Mathis asked cautiously.

They were just crossing a field of wheat, with its stalks rustling in the wind. Gray swathes of smoke drifted toward the two travelers. Melchior waved his hand in front of his face to disperse the smoke. He peered ahead, with some difficulty, for visibility was getting worse all the time, and in addition the sun was going down behind the trees.

“There’s someone here,” the minstrel finally said. “In this field. See for yourself.” He pointed to some stalks of wheat bending away from the direction of the wind. “It’s too late to run for it, so let’s at least hope there are not too many of them.”

And indeed, several figures now emerged from the smoke. There were about a dozen men, all of them shabbily dressed peasants, armed with scythes and flails. They had been hiding among the ears of the tall wheat and now slowly approached the travelers with their weapons raised.

“God be with you,” Melchior called to them, with a friendly smile. “We are simple folk on our travels, and mean no one any harm.” He raised his hands, whispering to Mathis, “If they attack us, we fight back until we’ve created enough confusion to let us run over to the outskirts of those woods, understand?”

Mathis nodded hesitantly and clutched his cudgel. The way the usually amusing minstrel could suddenly become a dangerous fighting man never ceased to surprise him.

The peasants reached them. They all looked exhausted, and many had blood-stained bandages on their heads, legs, or arms. The expression in their eyes was like that of hunted animals. Mathis suspected that they were the survivors of a major battle.

“Who are you, and what are you doing in these parts?” shouted a tall man with the mark of a recent wound on his face, running from his right ear to his lip. He was brandishing a scythe, ready to strike with it at any provocation.

“We are ordinary pilgrims on the way to Rome,” Melchior said as calmly as possible. “We ask for free passage, as the old law prescribes.”

“What old law?” The giant glared at him blankly. Mathis realized that he was not especially bright, but all the same, he seemed to be the leader of the band. “You’re dressed too fine for a pilgrim,” he grunted at last, and then pointed to Melchior’s lute. “What would you want with that thing in Rome?”

“I am going to sing a song at the porch of St. Peter’s Basilica about the sad plight of peasants in the German Empire, and pray to God to be with them.”

There was a general murmuring. Obviously these men could not agree on what to do next.

“Curse Rome and curse the clergy!” one of them suddenly shouted. “That monk Luther is our new pope now. And the sale of indulgences is forbidden on pain of death.”

“The sale of indulgences, maybe, but not pilgrimage,” Melchior objected. “Didn’t the venerable Master Luther himself go on pilgrimage to Rome?”

That left the peasants baffled, and they began whispering together again. Finally it was the tallest man who spoke up once more.

“One way or another, you’re neither of you simple folk like us,” he spat, looking Melchior von Tanningen up and down. “Particularly not you. You’re a merchant or a baron or some such thing. Maybe there’s even a ransom for the likes of you two. The knight can decide what we do with you, so come along with us.”

Taking Mathis and Melchior into their midst, the men drove them on with kicks and blows into the shady beech wood that began at the far end of the field. Before long, the trees thinned out, and a wide plain with campfires burning all over it stretched out before their eyes. Now, as evening came on, it was as if the starry sky had come down to earth.

The smoke, thought Mathis. And I thought it was hay burning. This is the largest camp I ever set eyes on.

Almost all the men sitting beside the many fires in the twilight wore the simple, gray-brown clothing of serfs. Banners waved in the wind, most of them with the image of the tied shoe typically worn by peasants that had long ago become a symbol of the wars of liberation. Here and there, someone was playing a fiddle or performing a melancholy tune on a willow whistle, but many of the men had a weary, grim look, and a good number wore bandages stiff with dirt. As Mathis and Melchior were led through the camp, they both drew hostile glances.

“Hang ’em from the nearest tree,” someone called after them. “They’re gentry, anyone can see that.”

“Hold your tongue, you drunken sot, the knight will decide what to do with them,” the tall leader retorted. “You know he wants all prisoners brought to him.”

While Mathis was still trying to work out who this strange knight might be, they approached a plain black tent in the middle of the camp. Two elderly peasants with stooped shoulders stood on guard outside it, holding boar spears.

The giant cleared his throat and stepped nervously from foot to foot. “Here’s two prisoners that might earn us a ransom,” he said humbly, bowing his head. “Could be the commander ought to see them.”

“We’ll take them to him. You wait outside.”

The guards pushed the two captives into the tent, which was illuminated by a large fire in a brazier. Beyond it, in the dimmer light, was a large table with many maps lying on it. A figure bent over them. With a grunt of dissatisfaction, the man rolled up one of the sheets of parchment again and turned to Mathis and the minstrel. Only now could they see him properly. Mathis noticed that Melchior von Tanningen gave a brief start, as if he recognized him.

The man whom the peasants called “the knight” was broadly built, and at first sight looked fat, but his sturdy arms and bull-like neck suggested that most of his bulk consisted of muscle. A scratched breastplate glinted in the firelight.

“Well, well, two prisoners,” he growled. “So what were you doing so close to my camp? Spying? Come on, we’ll find out anyway. Or do you want me to hit you with this, eh?”

The knight menacingly raised his hand, and Mathis instinctively flinched back. The man’s entire right forearm was made of iron. The stiff fingers gleaming in the firelight were curled into a fist, with which he now struck the table so forcefully that some of the parchment scrolls fell to the ground.

“Speak up, or I’ll have your tongues cut out.”

“We are simple pilgrims on our way to Rome.” Melchior began, but the knight swept a pitcher of wine off the table with his iron hand, silencing the minstrel.

“That story may satisfy my credulous peasants, but it’s not good enough for me. You’re clearly going in the wrong direction for Rome.”

“We lost our way,” Melchior replied.

The knight was about to make some reply, but then he suddenly narrowed his eyes and looked closely at the minstrel. “Wait a moment, I know you from somewhere,” he murmured. “You’re from Franconia, like me, right? I’ve seen you before.”

“You must be confusing me with someone else. I’m just an ordinary minstrel in the service of a count in the Palatinate.”

The knight came over to them with a threatening look. “Oh yes, just an ordinary minstrel, are you?” he boomed. “And I suppose the fellow with you is his lordship the count in person?”

“I’m a common craftsman,” Mathis said. “We met on our pilgrimage only a few weeks ago.”

“Ho, and what sort of craft is yours, then?”

“I’m a master gunner.”

Mathis had spoken without much thought. Now that a sudden silence descended in the tent, and he saw the two guards as well as the knight scrutinizing him curiously, he realized that he might have made a mistake.

“A master gunner?” the knight finally inquired in a quiet voice. “Really? Then you’re certainly serving in some army or other in times like these. Who knows, you may even be with the Swabian League?”

Mathis earnestly shook his head. “No, no. I learned my father’s trade at the count’s castle. I’ve never been beyond the Wasgau in my life. I would never—”

The knight’s iron hand shot out and seized Mathis by the throat so firmly that he retched. Colored circles appeared before his eyes, while he struggled like a fish on the hook.

“You lie the moment you open your mouth,” the commander snapped. “But you’re in luck. As chance would have it, we need a trained gunner above all, now that we’re facing Würzburg. I couldn’t care less what you did before, so long as you fight on our side now.” He let go of Mathis, who sank to the floor, gasping.

“The peasants are brave, but they don’t understand either tactics or firearms,” the knight went on more calmly. “I’ll forget all your barefaced lies if you’re telling the truth in this one point, and you really are a master gunner. If not, I’ll have the pair of you shot from here to Würzburg by our falconet. Guards!”

He turned to the two grinning guards and gave them a signal. “Take these two over to our arsenal. There’s an old cannon there that can’t be charged properly. Let this lad show us what he can do. And if he fails, you know what you have to do.”

 

As the two captives were taken away through the dark camp by a detachment of peasants, Melchior von Tanningen turned to Mathis at a moment when they were unobserved.

“Why the devil did you have to say you were a master gunner?” he whispered. “Now we’ll either fly sky-high with their old cannon, or we’ll be cannon fodder ourselves. We’d nearly caught up with the landsknecht army, and now our young lady is right out of our reach again.”

“Oh, and why did you have to say we were pilgrims on the way to Rome?” retorted Mathis. “This is a peasant army. The pope is the antichrist to these people.”

“The peasants are still devout believers. And I wasn’t to know that they’d chosen one-armed Götz as their leader.”

Mathis looked at him, taken aback. “You know the man?”

“Götz von Berlichingen is a Franconian robber knight with a thirst for blood. He’s of good family and was brought up at the court of Ansbach, but at some point his true character emerged. He’s been involved in over a dozen feuds in Franconia, some against members of my own family.” Melchior von Tanningen nodded grimly. “It’s just like him to join the peasants. Whenever there’s robbery, loot, or plunder in the offing, Götz will be there.”

“And that . . . iron hand?” Mathis asked hesitantly. “I never saw anything like it before.”

“A stray bullet shattered his right hand at the siege of Landshut. Our bad luck that he didn’t die of gangrene. Anyway, he had two artificial hands made. One for ceremonial occasions, one for fighting—that’s the one you just met. They say that Götz can even wield a sword with it, and not badly either.”

By now they had reached a part of the camp that was particularly heavily guarded. Tents and campfires stood in a circle around a dozen or so dirty artillery pieces, some of them bent out of shape, standing on gun carriages or horse-drawn carts. Casks that Mathis assumed held gunpowder stood on other carts.

“It’s the cannon back there,” said one of the peasants, pointing to a bronze artillery piece encrusted with dirt, and with a green tinge to it. “We took it at Weinsberg. Our smith, Michel Roider, says it’s too dangerous to fire the thing.” He grinned. “But you and your fine friend are welcome to try.”

Mathis went over to the old gun and gave it a cursory inspection. It was of the kind known as a culverin, strapped to a gun carriage, and would fire cannonballs weighing some ten pounds. The muzzle and touchhole were badly encrusted, and the rotting wheels of the gun carriage would have to be replaced, but all the same Mathis could see no obvious cracks in the bronze of the barrel.

“I need spatulas and scrapers,” he said, turning to the guards, who were gawping at him. “And a small barrel of coarse-grained powder to charge it, a dry fuse, and a ten-pound . . .” He hesitated. “No, an eight-pound cannonball. Can you get me those?”

The guard nodded, and went off to the carts of gunpowder with a couple of his comrades.

“Well?” Melchior whispered. “Will you be able to repair this gun?”

Mathis sighed. “With God’s help, and yours, maybe. It’s at least fifty years old. We’ll have to clean it very thoroughly.”

Having brought Mathis what he asked for, the guards retreated to a prudent distance and watched him and Melchior as they began freeing the culverin of verdigris and the remains of old powder. As they worked, Mathis kept checking all parts of the barrel for any cracks, cleaned the touchhole, and filed the muzzle like a man possessed. It took them until the early hours of the morning, but at last Melchior von Tanningen began charging the barrel with gunpowder.

One of the guards rose wearily from his station, rubbing his eyes. “Don’t you dare fire it into our ranks,” he threatened. “Or I promise you a slow death.”

Mathis shook his head in silence, while the red glow of morning began to dawn. He was tense and excited. As usual, work on the cannon had put him into a kind of trance that was now slowly wearing off. Beside him, Melchior von Tanningen could hardly stay on his feet. His expensive garments were black with soot and gunpowder, his face pale and tired.

“It’s going to be a fine day,” said the minstrel, smiling wearily. “Time for a demonstration of your arts. My life is entirely in your hands. Who’d have thought it a few months ago?”

“And my life is also in your hands,” replied Mathis quietly. “If you haven’t cleaned the barrel properly, a bright flash of fire is the last thing either of us will see on this Earth.”

He looked around and then pointed to a shed standing to one side in the middle of the trampled field. The derelict hut was about three hundred yards away from them.

“Is there anyone in there?” Mathis asked the peasants who were hurrying up from all directions. The sun was now above the horizon, and word had gone around that an alleged master gunner was about to put his skill to the test.

“The shed’s empty,” replied one of the guards, from where he had taken cover behind a large cart. “We searched it yesterday evening. Nothing but rats and mice.”

“Then let’s give those vermin a rousing morning greeting.”

Mathis released a lever on the gun carriage and tilted the barrel until it was slanting up toward the sky. When he was satisfied with the angle of inclination, he pushed the cannonball into the muzzle, tamping it well down. Then he picked up the burning fuse and, with a shaking hand, held it to the touchhole.

“Holy St. Hubert, patron saint of metalworkers,” he murmured, “carry this ball to its mark. Not for me but for Agnes, who may still need our help.”

With his hands covering his ears, Mathis waited. For what felt like an eternity, the only sound was the hissing of the powder in the touchhole. Just as he was thinking that the powder must be damp, there was a sudden sound like thunder. The shock wave sent him falling backward on the soft ground. Mud spurted up into his eyes, and he could see nothing for a while.

Am I dead? Did the barrel explode?

When he sat up again, and looked at the place where the shed had been, he saw only a smoking ruin. Splinters of wood were scattered far and wide over the field.

There was an almost eerie silence in the peasants’ camp, but then cries of jubilation were heard, first only sporadically, then more of them, in louder voices. Several of the peasants threw their hats into the air. They did not know what the shot meant, but it seemed to them a suitable demonstration of their own power. Very few of them had any idea how firearms worked, so their enthusiasm for a thunderous crash and a flash like lightning was all the greater. The guards cautiously approached, none of them threatening Mathis with their weapons. On the contrary, some nodded at him encouragingly.

“Hey, the knight will be glad we have such a damn good gunner in our own ranks,” said one of the older peasants, laughing as he turned to his comrades. “You wait and see, next time this fellow will be shooting the mitre off the bishop of Würzburg’s head.”

Melchior von Tanningen took off his sooty hat and bowed low to Mathis. “My respects, Master Wielenbach. It looks to me that this band has found a new gunner, along with his humble assistant.” He sighed. “I fear my ballad is going to be considerably longer than I first thought.”

 

The Annweiler tanner Nepomuk Kistler raised the heavy wooden slab from the lye pit, trying not to breathe too deeply. The first moments when the accumulated vapors of the last few months spread through his workshop were always the worst. The corrosive smell of the lye made from oak bark and the stink of rotting flesh made tanning one of the least sought-after trades. The skins lying in the pit in front of Kistler had been washed and scraped, but tiny scraps of flesh still clung to them, and stank to high heaven.

Nepomuk Kistler ran his fingers, roughened from the chalk he used, experimentally over the cowhide. It was of good quality and would make a sturdy saddle. Much more valuable, however, was the calfskin on the shelves at the back, from which he would make parchment in the winter months. The white-haired old tanner smiled to think that the sublime knowledge of mankind was written down, for the most part, on the backs of thick-witted cattle.

Including that precious deed, he thought.

Kistler’s expression immediately darkened. He hadn’t thought of it for a long time. Too many things had happened. Annweiler had been in turmoil for weeks. After the peasants of Landau had risen up to attack the Palatinate, and were even now besieging Speyer, the citizens of Annweiler had decided to open their gates to the insurgents. There had been sheer chaos in the town ever since. Johannes Lebner the priest had fled, and so had several prosperous members of the town council, fearing for their money. And since the terrible murder of Bernwart Gessler, no new mayor had been appointed.

The older citizens in particular stayed in their houses, while outdoors the peasants and the younger people of Annweiler, who had joined the revolt, patrolled the streets. Meanwhile the wildest of stories were told in the taverns—tales of slaughter, of abbots crucified alive, of knights and their ladies hanged from the battlements of their castles like game animals caught in the hunt. The peasants had taken Trifels, and neighboring Scharfenberg Castle, too. There was no trace of Count Scharfeneck or of his young wife.

Nepomuk Kistler thought of what the midwife had said at their last meeting in the forest: Maybe this is the time of which our founding fathers spoke. The end of the world as we know it. Perhaps it is time for the secret to be made known at last . . .

Was the end of the world really coming? Many prophets had foretold that the present epoch would be a turning point. At least Kistler had done well to get the deed away last year.

Breathing heavily, Kistler took the stinking skins out of the lye pit and plunged them into a tub of fresh water as he pursued his own thoughts. His heart was troubling him more and more now that he was nearly seventy. He had not stood for election to the leadership of the Brotherhood but had inherited it many years ago from his father, who in his own turn had inherited it from his father before him. Ever since the days of Emperor Frederick II, Barbarossa’s grandson who had granted the town of Annweiler its charter, the Brotherhood had held masses for the souls of the Staufers. But their true task was a different one, and as leaders of the Brotherhood the Kistlers had kept that immensely important document, the deed, safe over all those years. The ring had come into the order’s possession only a few years ago.

They had been waiting ever since for the evil to return.

Last summer, when Nepomuk Kistler had discovered the mayor’s dead body in the lye tub, he had been the only one who did not believe that Mathis was guilty of the murder. Secretly, he had believed that someone else was striking terror into the town of Annweiler. A monster sent by dark powers to do a deed that had been planned hundreds of years ago.

Maybe it was the sound of the dragging footsteps, or simply the strange, unusual smell that hung in the air of the room—something had attracted Kistler’s attention all of a sudden. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He slowly turned, and in the dim light saw a man in a plain but well-made black coat. Only his teeth gleamed white in his dark face.

“God be with you, Master Kistler,” said the stranger. “It has taken me a long time to find you at last.”

Trying not to tremble, the old tanner slowly retreated until he stood on the edge of the lye pit. In the taverns of Annweiler, they had been saying for some time that there was a black devil at large in the area. Now the devil seemed to be here. Nepomuk Kistler hastily made the sign of the cross. The old midwife had been right: this really was the end of the world, and their enemies were more terrible and powerful than he had ever guessed.

“Vade . . . Satanas!” he managed to say, with difficulty.

The black man sighed, sounding bored. “Let us not go through this pathetic routine. The midwife tried that, and I did not dissolve into smoke, leaving a smell of sulfur behind.” He slowly came toward Kistler. “Just give me what I want before I really do turn into a devil. Imediatamente, miúdo!”

The strange sounds transfixed Nepomuk Kistler with shock. He had always been a deeply superstitious man. Now fear for his life, and the man’s uncanny outer appearance, turned his presentiment to certainty. This really was the devil himself, and he was speaking the language of hell.

“Your pitiful Brotherhood is mentioned in the old charter of Annweiler,” the devil hissed. “So do not play the ignorant fool. Unfortunately most of the documents have been destroyed or are up at Trifels, where the peasants are in charge now, and I have no access to them. It has taken me a whole week to find what I wanted in the ducal archives at Zweibrücken. A week to find out that the Kistlers have always been at the head of a mysterious order. This is enough. Tell me the name I want, or you shall suffer the same fate as your obstinate mayor.”

The devil took out a strange instrument from under his coat, a thing that looked like a tiny cannon, with a handle and a fuse, and held it to Kistler’s forehead.

He’s stealing my soul. It was a terrible thought. This black Satan is stealing my soul, just as he did to Bernwart Gessler.

It was too much for the old man. His heart suddenly seemed to explode. He clutched his chest, breathing laboriously, and then collapsed and lay in the stinking pool of lye. Cursing, the devil bent over him.

“Here, what are you doing?” he said angrily. “If this is some kind of game, I can only advise you to think better of it. And now talk, you obstinate fool.”

Kistler rolled his eyes as the devil tugged at him, preparing to drag him away to hell. He would have borne any torture, but the prospect of losing his soul made him weak. In the extremity of despair, he seized the devil’s collar and pulled him down to his own face. “St. . . . Goar . . .” he stammered. “St. . . . Goar . . . And now . . . let me . . . depart in peace . . .”

Kistler’s heart twitched once or twice more, and then at last it stopped. As the old man moved toward a point at the end of a tunnel, a point growing brighter and brighter all the time, he was filled by the happy thought that he had escaped from Satan just in time. If at the price of the secret he had kept safe for so long.

Then there was nothing but warmth and light, and a figure raising a hand in kindly greeting where the tunnel ended.

It had a red beard and wore a golden crown on its head.

 

Agnes held the hand of a dying peasant as a pulsating flow of blood streamed from his ruined throat. The man murmured a few indistinct words, twitched once more, and then his gaze went empty. A deep gray sky hung overhead, with flocks of crows cawing as they flew by. Agnes thought of her falcon, Parcival, and how she had taken him out hunting crows last year. That seemed a century ago, in another time, in another world.

She gently closed the dead man’s eyes and looked at the battlefield. Dusk was already falling. Recently Agnes had seen many such scenes, but this was the most horrible so far. The golden rows of wheat that had reached to the outskirts of the forest yesterday were all trampled underfoot. The dead, the dying, and the wounded lay among them, like huge molehills. They wailed, screamed, and lowed like cattle, while the black birds circled above them, seeming to mock them with their croaking cries. Now and then the crows came down to settle on a corpse, pecking at it voraciously.

For two weeks now Agnes, Agathe, and the robbers had been traveling with the landsknechts of the notorious Swabian League. The mercenaries they had met in Kehl had been sent to fight the league by the duke of Lorraine. Together, they were expected to defeat the peasants of Württemberg, who were on the march through the countryside, looting and burning. There had finally been a decisive battle here near Böblingen. At first the insurgents had taken shelter within a barricade of carts, but the landsknechts turned their firearms on them from a neighboring hill. Thousands of peasants had been killed as they tried to escape. The soldiers shot down those who took refuge in the tops of trees like birds.

“Don’t stand there dreaming. If Barnabas sees you, you’ll get a beating again.”

Agnes turned to the gray-haired woman who was limping toward her. Despite her fifty years, and her slightly stooped gait, Mother Barbara still cut an impressive figure. Her eyes were as bright as those of a girl of twenty, and she combed her ample, shoulder-length hair every morning. She had once been the most beautiful whore in the baggage train, but then an intoxicated landsknecht had broken both her legs in a fight, and now she earned her living as a vivandière. Barbara sold the mercenaries provisions and all kinds of trinkets, and she was also regarded as an experienced healer. She bound up wounds, removed crossbow bolts and leaden bullets, and had even been known to amputate legs with a bone saw. But most help of that kind came too late for the men on this battlefield.

“Look at this.” Grinning, Mother Barbara held up a knife almost as long as a forearm, with traces of blood still on it. “Almost new, with a fine horn handle. I’ll get at least half a guilder for it. Now, hurry up. If you go on staring into space like that, half the battlefield will be plundered already.”

Agnes nodded without a word, and went over the trampled blades of wheat to the next stiff body. As often happened these days, she and little Agathe had been sent to plunder bodies after the battle. Most of the dead were poor peasants, so there was not much to be found. But at least many of them wore good leather boots that had presumably already been stolen from a dead landsknecht. In addition, she might find scythe blades, sickles, copper shirt buttons, colored feathers from hats, sometimes silver rings or knives such as the one that Mother Barbara had just found.

Agnes cast an anxious glance at her bag, still all but empty. If she didn’t soon find something valuable, Barnabas would fall into one of his fits of rage. Now that he wouldn’t be selling her, he had begun to fall on her like a predator. She had borne it in silence, lying unmoving as a pebble on the bed of a river with the water flowing over it. She had closed her eyes and tried to think of nothing but endless forests. At least it was soon over, and after it she had always washed herself very thoroughly. In return for her silence, Barnabas saw to it that the other men left her alone. But if she didn’t bring back enough loot, that could easily change. Fortunately, she knew herbs that prevented pregnancy.

There were moments when Agnes imagined cutting Barnabas’s throat in his sleep. But so far her fear had been stronger than her hatred.

The cart in which Barnabas and the others were traveling was not far from the large tent belonging to the master of the baggage train, who was responsible for keeping it in order. Agnes was still surprised by the speed with which Barnabas had adjusted to the new state of affairs. With Marek, Snuffler, and Samuel he gave a well-attended show almost every evening, featuring the monkey and the talking parrot. They had left the other bird with a tavern keeper in Kehl, taking a rickety cart and a lame old horse in exchange.

Barnabas had joined forces with Mother Barbara. The vivandière knew what the landsknechts needed, and Barnabas’s men took it from battlefields and the surrounding countryside. Then she sold the stock from their two carts to the soldiers, at greatly inflated prices.

The procurer had just thrown the chattering monkey a few dried plums when Agnes and Mother Barbara approached.

“I send you off to get some plunder, and what do you come back with? Nothing!” he thundered. “What am I to do with you?”

“I . . . I found a silver crucifix. Isn’t that something?” Agnes said.

“Show it here.”

She offered the crucifix to the procurer, and he examined it. “Hmm, not bad,” growled Barnabas at last. “It’ll be worth something at least. But don’t start thinking you can sell anything yourself and run away. I’ll find you if I have to search all of Swabia for you, and then you’ll wish I’d sold you to the Turks.”

Agnes nodded in silence. She had in fact thought more than once of flight. In contrast to their time on the boat, Barnabas was not chaining her and Agathe up here, and Samuel and the other two oafs were very inattentive guards. But if she escaped, where could she go? The probability of being raped or killed out of hand by landsknechts prowling around was too great. Furthermore, Barnabas still had her ring, which he had taken to wearing on a chain around his neck. But so long as he, and the ring, kept going north, that hardly mattered.

Because northward, on the Rhine, was St. Goar.

Agnes gave a thin-lipped smile. Without the need for her to do anything about it herself, she was once again on her way to her real destination. Soon the day when she and Barnabas parted company would come.

Even if I have to cut your throat, you bastard.

 

She spent that night with Barnabas again, in the drafty cart with only canvas stretched over it, among casks of brandy, crockery, rusty weapons, and all kinds of junk. It smelled strongly of the old bales of leather that the procurer had stolen only today from a tannery that had burned down.

The smell reminded Agnes of Annweiler.

Little Satan stared malignantly down at her from a chest, while Barnabas snored beside her. At least his intoxication had sent him straight to sleep, so that he could not molest her. She gradually fell asleep only hours later. Suddenly the rasping breath of the man beside her sounded like an old oak tree creaking in the wind, and the cart in the baggage train seemed to carry her away.

The cart . . . she thought just before her eyes closed at last. The leather . . .

 

✦ ✦ ✦

A jolting cart, squealing and groaning. Agnes lies at the back among bundles of tanned leather tied up in bales. She knows the smell, a mixture of mold, acid, and the forest. She has encountered it often.

Agnes feels safe. She hums the Occitanian lullaby that her mother once taught her, and she is holding her little hand-carved doll. Finally she snuggles down into the leather and closes her eyes as the cart jolts on. Familiar voices up on the driver’s seat soothe her. A hand caresses her hair and goes on singing the song. The voices are like a soft wave on which she is gliding away.

Coindeta sui, si cum n’ai greu cossire, quar pauca son, iuvenete e tosa . . .

But suddenly there is shouting, the cart stops, and Agnes wakes with a start. The clink of weapons and cries of pain are heard through the thin canvas cover over the cart. A shrill voice cuts through Agnes like a knife. She knows that voice, and a great lump comes into her throat. In fear, she crawls under all the leather skins. The smell is so strong now that she feels like a little animal, a calf being dragged to the slaughter. She hears someone tear the canvas over the cart into pieces. Muted sounds now come to her ear, someone is striking the bales with a sharp object, again and again, the sounds coming closer.

Suddenly there is another groan, a heavy body falls to the forest floor beside the cart, and a hand pulls the leather skins away from Agnes. She is very small now, very vulnerable, her eyes are closed, she doesn’t want to see the monster that is going to eat her. But the monster doesn’t eat her, it picks her up, jumps off the cart with her, and runs away. Blinking cautiously, Agnes sees the face of the kindly driver, Hieronymus. Behind her, she sees some shapes lying doubled up on the ground. Smoke rises to her nostrils, a fire crackles, but Hieronymus runs so fast that soon there is nothing but spruce and beech trees over her. Their branches stretch out long, scratchy tongues to stroke her. Blood drips from the driver’s forehead onto her face and her little dress.

They are all dead, dead, dead . . .

Now she hears hoofbeats, coming closer fast. Hieronymus gasps, staggers, and finally he presses a kiss on Agnes’s forehead and puts her inside the hollow trunk of an oak tree.

“For God’s sake, keep quiet!” he whispers.

He hesitates for a moment, and then puts a chain with a small object hanging from it over her head.

“Your mother . . .” he begins, falteringly. “She wanted you to have this. You mustn’t lose it, do you hear? Give it only to someone you trust, and let that person keep it for you.”

Hieronymus kisses her on the cheek for the last time, and then the man runs on without her. Soon he has disappeared among the trees. Suddenly a hoarse scream echoes through the forest. After that there is silence.

She is alone.

Agnes feels spiderwebs on her face, beetles scrabbling over her, the crumbling dust of rotting wood running into her nose and ears. But she keeps quiet, just as Hieronymus told her. Even when the horses trot past her, and she hears voices calling out, she keeps quiet.

After a while it gets dark. Night is coming, the moon shines brightly in the sky, and Agnes cautiously comes out of her hiding place. She thinks of little Clara and how they always liked playing with their dolls together. One day Clara caught a bad cough, and then she was dead. She lay in a little casket, stiff and cold, and Agnes kept hoping Clara would stand up and get out of it. Just as she herself gets out of the hollow tree trunk now.

They are all dead, dead, dead . . .

Pale moonlight shines through the branches. She feels her way over damp moss, stumbles through brushwood, tears her lovely new dress on bramble bushes. And suddenly there is a woman in front of her, standing there like a wicked witch, with a stick in her hand and a basket on her stooped back. She bends down to Agnes, and her voice is very gentle, not like the voice of a wicked witch at all.

“What in heaven’s name are you doing all alone here in the forest, my child?”

Only now does Agnes begin crying. It is a quiet whimpering, but the tears flow and flow. The woman looks at Agnes’s torn dress and the blood on it, then she carefully looks around and makes the sign of the cross.

She lifts Agnes into the basket and carries her through the forest. The gentle rocking is almost as soothing as the jolting of the cart. And while Agnes sinks down into deep darkness, as if into a pond, words keep ringing through her head.

They are all dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead . . .

✦ ✦ ✦

 

Agnes woke with a cry and looked around frantically.

The forest, the witch. . . . Where am I?

Only after a while did she realize that she was in the cart with Barnabas. Beside her, the procurer grunted and opened an eye. His breath stank of vinegary wine, drowning out the smell of leather from the tanned skins around them.

“What is it?” he muttered drowsily. “Are the peasants attacking?”

Agnes shook her head. Her dress was damp with cold sweat. “I . . . I just had a bad dream.”

“Then go back to sleep, or I’ll give you something to have bad dreams about.”

Trembling, Agnes lay back, her heart racing. The dream had been as real as the dreams at Trifels Castle. But this time she had not been Constanza, she had been herself, as a little girl of about four or five. She could feel the roughly carved doll in her hand. And in her ears she still heard the Occitanian lullaby that her mother had sung to her.

Mother?

In the dream, she had not seen who was singing to her and stroking her hair. Had it been her mother? Katharina von Erfenstein had died when Agnes was about six years old. Could this have been a first, early memory? Agnes stared at the cover of the cart above her and brooded. Had the other people in the dream not been imaginary at all, but real? Then who was the woman she had taken for a witch, and who was the driver? Why had the cart been attacked?

Finally she shook her head and stretched her stiff limbs. It was much more likely that she had simply had a wild dream. No wonder, with all the killing around her, the cruelty that she saw every day. She must concentrate on the here and now. She must find a way to escape.