The Lady of the Castle (The Marie Series Book 2) Page 5

  Gunter von Losen gasped. “You can’t do that! The wine belongs to the count palatine.”

  Michel brought his hand down so heavily on the man’s shoulder that his knees buckled. “You’re wrong, my friend. The wine was paid for with my money, as were all the provisions, and I’m done sharing them with people like you. So eat what you brought and don’t even think about pillaging farmers along the way. You’d come out the worse for it.”

  The Frankish knight glared angrily at Michel. “What do you think we are, traveling shopkeepers dragging cartloads of provisions around with us? Either you provide for us, or we take what we need from the peasants—whether you like it or not.”

  This presented Michel with a dilemma. On the one hand, he didn’t want to give even a stale crust of bread to this arrogant pack of knights. But as the group leader, he had been given responsibility for the palatine knights, and so he tried to find a compromise.

  “The knights and their followers who have come with me from Rheinsobern will receive enough provisions so they won’t go hungry. But you, your friend, and your people have nothing to do with me. Either you get out, or you beg for crumbs from the Palatinates.” His face turning crimson, the knight opened and closed his mouth without being able to speak a word. Enraged, he grabbed at the cup, but Michel held it high above his head. “Three pennies, or you can go thirsty.”

  “Go to hell, innkeeper’s brat!” The knight bared his teeth but didn’t dare grab Michel’s arm, so instead turned and left.

  “Here, you forgot something.” Michel poured the wine out of the cup with exaggerated regret and threw the man his empty cup. Losen caught it, then walked back to his peers, swearing and grumbling. As he loudly reported what Michel had said, the other knights and their men stared at Michel with murderous looks and made threatening gestures.

  Unintimidated, Michel told the cook and his kitchen hands to allot smaller portions to the noble lords and their men and to start charging for wine. His men, who had been angered more than once by their arrogant companions, grinned approvingly and laughed at the noble lords’ followers, who now had to content themselves with water while they still enjoyed Michel’s wine. This didn’t particularly help lighten the mood of the troops, however, and Michel breathed a sigh of relief when he spotted the city of Nuremberg in the distance.

  Half a mile from the fortified gate with its two massive towers, an imperial provost marshal approached the procession and directed them to a campsite at the Pegnitz River. When Michel asked him why they were made to camp so far from town, the man bared his teeth. “It’s because of the women. The men are supposed to stick to the camp prostitutes instead of molesting honorable townswomen.”

  The provost marshal pointed upriver, where several colorful tents were visible among the green alder trees in the wetlands. “Their tents are over there: those for the gentlemen of rank on the right, and those to the left for the foot soldiers.”

  Since Michel wasn’t interested in their services, he asked which troops had already arrived. The sour expression on the provost marshal’s face told Michel that fewer soldiers had arrived than he and his imperial master had expected. Michel was surprised, because he’d imagined counts and knights would come streaming from all directions when their kaiser called. But when he walked through the camp a short while later, he realized that the response had been a trickle at most. Barely more than five hundred armed knights had come to join Sigismund’s crusade, and the rest of the army consisted of only around a thousand lightly armed horsemen, bowmen, and pikemen, almost none of whom was as well equipped as his foot soldiers. Most of them were still wearing their peasant shirts and looked as though they had no idea what to do with the pikes they’d been given.

  Timo roused Michel from his gloomy premonitions. “Forgive me, master, but the tents are all pitched and the men are asking about the prostitutes.”

  Michel thought for a moment, then nodded. “Give each of them enough money for a woman and two cups of wine at the taverns, but no more. I don’t want the men to get drunk.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on them, master.” Timo smiled awkwardly, knowing that by nightfall some of his comrades would be lying drunk in a corner. But as long as the rest were behaving, he’d make sure those few wouldn’t even be noticed.

  “And what about the knights? Should we still provide for them? I don’t really think we need to give them food anymore, as they chose to make camp with other people.” Timo looked at his master pleadingly because he despised those arrogant leeches.

  Michel put his hand on his servant’s shoulder. “We don’t owe those knights anything, and since they want nothing to do with us, someone else can take care of them.”

  “My sentiments exactly, master.” With a pleased smile on his face, Timo walked back to his men anxiously awaiting his return, and they gave three cheers for their captain before lining up to collect their coins. Michel was relieved when he heard the cheers, as it meant that his disagreements with the knights had increased his standing with his people instead of lowering it. Now, the men would follow him anywhere.

  When the sun stood low above the horizon, a stir went through the camp because the kaiser had come from Nuremberg to welcome the new arrivals, and soldiers came running to gaze at him. Riding at Sigismund’s side was Friedrich, the burgrave of Nuremberg, who had good reason for his loyalty since the kaiser had enfeoffed him with the Mark of Brandenburg. To the disappointment of the soldiers, however, none of the other important lords made an appearance. Michel was sorely let down because he’d expected to meet the count palatine here and, like the others, he had hoped to meet more of the powerful nobles here. Yet during the previous few years, many of those lords had under various pretexts refused to support the kaiser to force concessions from him, and it looked as though they were again playing that same game.

  Michel was still deep in thought when a long shadow fell over him.

  “I know you from somewhere!” Sigismund von Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, king of Hungary, Duke of Brabant, Duke of Silesia, margrave of Moravia, and kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, was standing in front of him and looking at him expectantly.

  At first glance, Michel noticed that the kaiser had aged far more than the ten years since their last encounter. Reaching down to his chest, the kaiser’s long beard was now streaked with gray and appeared as disheveled and unkempt as the hair on his head. His face was more haggard, and expressions flitted quickly across his face, ranging from deep exhaustion, and even hopelessness, to boundless optimism, then back to a somber pensiveness. Grim lines around his mouth told of various disappointments, for many of which, Michel assumed, Sigismund had only himself to blame for his gruff demeanor and indecisiveness. On top of his light armor, the kaiser wore a red surcoat reaching almost to the ground, embroidered with black and golden eagles, lions, and other blazonries, as was appropriate for this important dignitary and ruler of many countries. Yet time had taken its toll even on the kaiser’s clothes, although they were still made from magnificent and finely worked cloth.

  Michel quickly bent his knee. “Michel Adler at your service, Your Majesty. I was one of the palatine captains at the Council of Constance.”

  “Oh yes, I remember. You’re the lad who married the merchant’s daughter who had been wrongly convicted.” The kaiser nodded with satisfaction, affably patted Michel’s shoulder, and followed him to the palatine pikemen. Some of the men were still in the women’s tents or at the taverns, but the kaiser liked what he saw.

  “Lightly armored, flexible infantry is precisely what we need in the fight against the Hussites, Michel. If you’d brought a thousand of them, I’d make you a knight of the Reich and give you a nice fiefdom.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s only a hundred and twenty, my lord.” Michel smiled in surprise at the kaiser’s exuberance.

  “Very well,” the kaiser muttered, and took his leave with another
friendly pat. Michel was rather bewildered. The odds must truly be against Sigismund’s cause if he was this excited by the arrival of a hundred foot soldiers and greeted their untitled leader like an old friend.

  Michel’s eyes followed the kaiser, so he didn’t see the dark looks the palatine knights were sending his way from their camp farther downstream. Falko von Hettenheim would have given half of everything he owned for a single glance from the kaiser, and he was boiling with rage at the attention Sigismund had lavished on Michel.

  Godewin von Berg stepped to Hettenheim’s side and shrugged. “I hope our attitude during the march won’t get us in trouble, since apparently Michel Adler has influential friends.”

  The comment didn’t do much to soothe Falko’s anger. Turning away without saying a word, Falko walked over to Gunter von Losen, who despised the innkeeper’s son almost as much as he did.

  6.

  Sigismund had originally intended to wait until a sufficiently large army had gathered in Nuremberg, but just over a week after Michel’s arrival, messengers on horses covered in white froth raced into town, bearing terrible news. Several Hussite columns had attacked the Meissen district, Austria, and the Upper Palatinate, and one of their armies was headed straight for Nuremberg.

  When Michel heard the news, he began to understand why the kingdom’s great men weren’t here. For the kaiser’s son-in-law, Albrecht V of Austria, his own cities were more important than Sigismund’s Bohemian crown; likewise, the elector of Saxony also chose to defend his territory rather than leaving it exposed to the enemy. But because they were each putting their own interests first, the lords were dividing their forces instead of crushing the Bohemians with their combined power.

  Michel had little time to worry about the muddled situation, however, because soldiers started assembling in the meadows along the Pegnitz over the following two days, indicating an imminent departure. As a result, he told Timo to keep his men away from wine and to prepare for a hasty decampment, which was just as well because the very next morning bugles and trumpets announced their departure, and the kaiser rode through the castle gates at the head of his men.

  In contrast to his previous camp appearance, this time the kaiser was dressed in great splendor. His plate armor was a marvel and fitted him perfectly. The gold inlay on his arm and leg guards sparkled in the light of the morning sun, as did his helmet topped with a golden crown, and his coat displayed a large leaping lion that had been stitched underneath the Reich’s eagle in gold thread, indicating that Sigismund was marching first and foremost as king of Bohemia.

  Burgrave Friedrich and the other nobles were also armored as if battle were nigh. But they didn’t seem to know whether to be glad the army was finally on the move, or regret the small number of soldiers accompanying them into war. Following the kaiser were just over five hundred armored knights and fifteen hundred horsemen and foot soldiers. Joining them was a baggage train of several dozen large oxcarts and their drivers, along with cooks, army surgeons, craftsmen, and hundreds of servants, camp prostitutes, and itinerant merchants, all of whom fell in line behind Michel’s troops.

  The kaiser had made the Frankish knight Heribald von Seibelstorff captain of the foot soldiers. A thickset, middle-aged man with a round face framed by a red beard, he seemed a brave warrior with great experience in his plain but perfectly fitting black armor. So far, however, he’d only glanced at the kaiser’s mercenaries and the rest of the foot soldiers while uttering a few insulting remarks. To him, war was only war when it was a knightly combat of two armored forces; serfs and mercenaries had no place in it.

  The knight continued to ignore the men. He hadn’t even bothered organizing a march formation, but instead let Provost Marshal Gisbert Pauer bring order to the ragtag infantry of which no more than a dozen came from the same place, except for Michel’s Palatinates. Pauer, too, gave few and brief orders to the often self-proclaimed leaders of the individual groups, then rode back to the head of the procession to be close to the kaiser. As a result, there was no officer keeping an eye on the people.

  Timo, marching next to Michel’s horse, furiously twisted his hands around his pike and stared ahead in disbelief. Finally, he shook his head. “Please tell me, master, how is the kaiser planning on winning a war with this mob of chickens? They’ll make a run for it at the first Bohemian’s fart.”

  “Now, now, Timo! This army isn’t that bad. I’m sure the ranks will tighten during the long march.”

  His servant cleared his throat and spat on the side of the road. “Forgive me, master, but while in Nuremberg, I heard many stories about the Hussites, and apparently, those blasphemous bastards have won every battle thus far. Would you like me to list the skirmishes and battles in which they routed proud and noble knights?”

  Michel waved dismissively, but Timo wasn’t to be stopped, showering his master in a stream of names; battles the Hussites won, cities pillaged and burned to the ground, and the knights from old, well-known houses who met an inglorious fate under the spears and spiked maces of the rebels.

  “Just last year they flattened the town of Pretz in Austria and butchered everyone who couldn’t flee in time, and apparently hundreds of other towns throughout Austria, Bavaria, and Franconia have shared this fate.” Timo looked up at Michel as if expecting praise for his report, but his master only glared back at him angrily.

  “Keep your old wives’ tales to yourself, man. Not a word to our people.” The guilty look on his servant’s face told him that these exaggerated rumors and horror stories were already on everyone’s lips. Though Timo was only repeating what others had said, the gossip flowing through the army was turning a breeze into a firestorm threatening to destroy the Reich.

  Two days later, the imperial army had moved eastward from Nuremberg toward the Bohemian Forest, marching between long, densely wooded ridges. They weren’t moving even half as fast as Michel’s troops had traveled on their way to Nuremberg, due mostly to the awkwardness of the wagon train and shoddy materials. At least once every mile, there was an incident. Most often it was just a torn rope needing repair, but then a wheel would come off its axle, and twice they had to load the freight from one broken-down cart to another. On the third day, it became clear that the provisions wouldn’t last until they reached Bohemia, and Michel wondered how the kaiser planned to feed an army of around three thousand souls, including noblemen, soldiers, camp followers, and prostitutes. According to Timo’s stories, the Hussites were like locusts, leaving behind such devastation in their wake that not even the survivors of their massacres could find anything to eat.

  Before long, Michel had cause to wonder whether Timo’s rumors really were as unfounded as he’d assumed. On the fourth day, the procession came to a standstill, and when Michel stopped his men and hurried to the front to find out the cause, his heart sank with pity at the sight of the miserable characters blocking the road. The horror was still fresh on the faces of the men, women, and children, none of whom was wearing more than a shirt, making their terrible injuries visible to all.

  Pleading, they raised their arms. “The Hussites are right behind us! They’ve killed everyone else and burned down our villages. We’re the only ones who got away, thanks to God’s grace.”

  This wasn’t entirely true, because the slow-moving procession soon came upon several more groups of fugitives, though their reports unsettled even the hardiest warriors. The Hussites had to be devils straight from hell, because they killed their captives in the cruelest ways possible but appeared to be invulnerable themselves through some kind of black magic.

  In the early afternoon of the fifth day, smoke columns rose up in the air not far in front of them, most certainly coming from a village that had just been burned down by the Hussites. Shortly thereafter, more peasants came toward them, telling of new atrocities, and the kaiser promptly ordered his commanders to him. Among the men asked to the meeting were Michel and the leader of the Swi
ss mercenaries, Urs Sprüngli, who had entered the kaiser’s service with a good dozen of his men and was visibly apologetic about the lack of a substantial contingent of troops from his Appenzeller countrymen. Falko von Hettenheim and a few other knights who hadn’t been called rudely pushed past the others until they were right in front of the kaiser.

  Sigismund kneaded the pommel of his long sword and repeatedly glanced at the refugees who’d settled down beside the road, considering themselves safe in the protection of the imperial army. “Men, we’ve reached our first destination. The enemy is busy pillaging a village less than an hour in front of us. With God’s help we can surprise these godless Bohemian heretics and destroy them. Let’s leave a small group to protect the wagons and go prepare for battle. We’ll advance as soon as possible.”

  Most of the men looked as though they would have preferred to boast of their heroic wartime deeds against the Hussites from the safety of their castles rather than actually meeting them in battle, and so the cheers for the kaiser weren’t overly enthusiastic. Even Michel caught himself wishing he were back at Rheinsobern with his wife.

  The army moved barely any faster without the wagons, and by the time they finally reached the village on the banks of a small river, every building was already burned down to its foundations. The Hussites, whose scouts must have been better than their own, had retreated to a flat, bare hilltop not far from the village where their wagons formed an almost impregnable defensive position. Several dozen carts, all of them smaller and more maneuverable than the kaiser’s, had been pushed together to form a barricade, and the rebels had even had time to stuff the gaps with twigs and thorny branches.

  The hill’s flanks were too steep for horses in most places, and dense thickets provided the enemy with additional protection. The kaiser reined in his horse, glared at the enemy, and helplessly opened and closed his fists.

  Forgetting he was wearing a helmet, Timo tried to scratch his head. “It doesn’t look good, master. We should surround them up there and besiege them, because if we try to take their wagon fort by storm, we’ll lose half of our men just on the way up.”