Read The Sword Brothers Online
Authors: Peter Darman
Tags: #Historical, #War, #Crusades, #Military, #Action, #1200s, #Adventure
The Sword Brothers
Peter Darman
Copyright © 2013 Pete Darman
Published by Peter Darman at Smashwords
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without
written permission of the author.
Formatted by
Jo
Harrison
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the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. The names,
characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s
imagination or have been used fictiously and are not to be
construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead,
actual events, locales or organizations is entirely
coincidental.
Contents
List of principal characters and maps
Those marked with an asterisk * are known to
history.
The Order of Sword Brothers
Aldous: Master of Lennewarden Castle
Anton: novice at Wenden Castle
Berthold: Master of Wenden Castle*
Bertram: Master of Segewold Castle
Bruno: novice at Wenden Castle
Conrad Wolff: novice at Wenden Castle
Friedhelm: Master of Uexkull Castle
Gerhard: Master of Holm Castle
Griswold: Master of Kokenhusen Castle
Hans: novice at Wenden Castle
Henke: brother knight at Wenden Castle
Jacob: Master of Gersika Castle
Johann: novice at Wenden Castle
Lukas: brother knight at Wenden Castle
Mathias: Master of Kremon Castle
Rudolf: brother knight at Wenden Castle and
deputy to Master Berthold*
Thaddeus: chief engineer at Wenden
Castle
Volquin: Grand Master of the Order of Sword
Brothers*
Walter: brother knight at Wenden Castle
Livs
Caupo: king of the Livs and ally of Bishop
Albert*
Daina: daughter of Thalibald
Rameke: youngest son of Thalibald*
Thalibald: Caupo’s chief warlord*
Vetseke: prince, former ruler of
Kokenhusen*
Waribule: eldest son of Thalibald*
Germans
Albert: Bishop of Riga*
Albert, Count: crusader*
Helmold of Plesse: crusader*
Stefan: archdeacon, Governor of Riga
Theodoric: Bishop of Estonia*
Estonians
Alva: Chief of the Harrien
Edvin: Chief of the Wierlanders
Eha: wife of Kalju
Jaak: Chief of the Jerwen
Kalju: Chief of the Ungannians
Lembit: Chief of the Saccalians, Grand
Warlord of all Estonia*
Nigul: Chief of the Rotalians
Rusticus: Lembit’s deputy
Russians
Domash Tverdislavich: Mayor of Pskov*
Gleb:
Skomorokh
, follower of the old
religion
Mstislav: Prince of Novgorod*
Vsevolod: Prince of Gerzika*
Lithuanians
Arturus: Duke of the Northern Kurs
Butantas: Duke of the Samogitians
Daugerutis: Duke of the Selonians and
Nalsen, grand duke of the Lithuanian tribes*
Gedvilas: Duke of the Southern Kurs
Kitenis: Duke of the Aukstaitijans
Mindaugas: son of Prince Stecse*
Rasa: daughter of Daugerutis and wife of
Prince Vsevolod
Stecse: prince, chief warlord of Duke
Daugerutis*
Ykintas: Duke of the Semgallians
Maps
The following maps relating to the lands and
peoples described in ‘The Sword Brothers’:
1) Livonia in 1210
2) The Estonian tribal kingdoms
3) The Lithuanian tribal kingdoms
can all be found on the maps page on my
website:
Lübeck, 1210.
Now that it was spring
the city seemed a much more agreeable place, the weather warmer,
the streets less muddy and the people happier. Not that Conrad saw
much of it or them each day, save for the customers who came into
his father’s bakery to purchase his bread. It had been a hard
winter but pray God the spring and summer would be better for him
and his family. His father was reckoned one of the best bakers in
Lübeck, not only among his customers who tasted his produce but
also within the guild that controlled the city’s bakeries. But life
for him and his family was still hard. For all of them the working
day began before dawn and did not end until the evening. Hours
spent making dough and baking bread to fill the bellies of the
city’s increasing population, should have meant an increase in the
family’s income. But Lübeck’s laws regarding the production of
bread were numerous and strict, chief among them being that such a
vital food source should not be over-priced. The price of flour was
also strictly controlled, at least in theory, but the bakers’ guild
was forever complaining that unscrupulous millers were always
over-charging for their goods.
‘Conrad, make sure the
mark is on every loaf.’
Dietmar Wolff was
pointing at a row of loaves in front of his son that had yet to be
branded.
Conrad smiled and
shook his head. ‘Yes, father, of course.’
His father was not
smiling. ‘Make sure you do. I don’t want to pay any more fines for
selling unmarked bread.’
It had been a cause of
great celebration when Dietmar Wolff had first been issued with his
own baker’s mark by the city authorities, for it meant that his
bakery was considered to be one of Lübeck’s finest. The mark itself
was a simple wooden die that was used to stamp the underside of
loaves before they were cooked, Dietmar’s bearing the letter ‘W’
for Wolff to indicate where the loaf came from. Marks were also
used to identify bakers who sold underweight loaves or those made
from inferior flour, but those bearing Dietmar’s brand were fast
becoming known for their taste and quality, something that he was
keen to encourage. Loaves bearing no mark were not only lost
opportunities to advertise his talents as a baker, they also
incurred fines imposed by the authorities. It was no exaggeration
to state that the wooden die was the family’s most prized
possession.
Conrad had served his
father for nearly seven years as an apprentice and regarded himself
as a talented baker in the making, notwithstanding that he
sometimes forgot to mark the loaves before they were placed in the
oven.
His mother stopped
kneading dough on the table in front of her.
‘Leave him alone,
Dietmar. This summer will be a good one, I can sense it.’
Dietmar ran a hand
over his balding crown. ‘It needs to be. The price of flour keeps
going up and I cannot pass on the increase to my customers because
of the ridiculous city laws.’
Conrad began pressing
the die into the underside of each loaf. ‘Your brand is becoming
well known in the city, father. Soon we will be able to move to a
larger house in the west of the city.’
His mother smiled at
him but his father’s forehead creased into a frown.
‘A larger house? Four
mouths to feed, increasing flour prices, not allowed to work on a
Sunday and a further fifty saints’ days each year? I think
not.’
‘It is important to
give thanks to God for our good fortune,’ his wife rebuked him.
Dietmar ran a hand
over his head once more and went back to his work. He did not need
to go to church to thank God for giving him such a wife, and the
truth was that he praised the Lord each and every day for blessing
him with his wife. Eight years his junior, Agnete Wolff was a
beautiful woman who should have been married to a rich merchant or
perhaps even a richer knight. That she had somehow ended up
marrying a stocky baker shorter than she was a mystery that he had
never been able to fathom.
Agnete’s father was a
miller who supplied Dietmar with flour and that is how he had first
met his bride, the tall, slender beauty who trapped him with her
blue eyes and soft smile. He had fallen in love with her on sight
but it had taken a while for Agnete to reciprocate the sentiment.
But over time she came to respect the hard-working, stubborn baker
who presented a stony exterior to the world but who underneath was
kind and loyal. And so they married and Agnete bore him two
children – Conrad and Marie – and never complained about the days
of unceasing toil that filled their lives. God was good and would
ensure that their piety and hard work would be rewarded, of that
she was certain.
Their home was a small
two-storey half-timbered house with a thatched roof in the eastern
side of the city: one of a myriad of tiny abodes positioned either
side of the warren of narrow streets that made up the poorer
quarter of the city, a home to Lübeck’s small traders and artisans.
They all slept in one room above the ground-floor shop where the
oven was located, to the rear of which was a dirt patch where the
pigs were kept. Many kept pigs. They were released in the daylight
hours to consume the rubbish that was thrown into the streets by
householders – human and animal excrement, animal entrails and
rotting food. That was the theory at least. The reality was that
the earth streets were always full of filth that a traveller had to
pick a path through. The pigs just added to the general noise and
unpleasantness of the streets, which today were more crowded than
usual.
The city authorities
sometimes attempted to clean the streets, hiring muck-rakers to
clear away the filth, especially when the cankerous smell reached
the rich houses in the city’s western quarter. But hiring
muck-rakers meant expenditure and Lübeck’s city fathers were
notoriously parsimonious. And so as the temperature rose the stench
increased so that by high summer everyone was praying for the
cooler air of autumn.
But today the smell
was hardly noticeable as the bakery that fronted the shop was
filled to bursting as Conrad and his father toiled to produce the
loaves that everyone wanted to buy. Agnete served the customers
with a smile as Marie ferried fresh loaves from the oven. Two years
younger than Conrad, she had inherited her father’s frame. A
happy-go-lucky, cheerful child, her round face always wore a smile,
especially when she was rounding up her beloved pigs at the end of
the day, to be confined in the pen that she called their home.
Conrad often thought
that he could produce bread in his sleep so adept had he become at
it. He could create all the varieties produced in his father’s
bakery – white bread, brown bread, black bread and horse – with
ease, and in their two main types: trenchers and table bread. The
former were long, flat loaves turned over and over in the oven
until hard, flat crusts were formed on both sides. They were
usually cut horizontally and filled with cooked meat whose juices
soaked into the bread, a delicacy largely denied to Conrad and his
family who could rarely afford meat – save if Dietmar slaughtered
one of Marie’s beloved pigs. The most common type of loaf consumed
by Conrad’s family and indeed most of the city was table bread: a
simple round loaf.
Conrad loved his
parents and looked forward to the day when he would follow in his
father’s footsteps and become a master baker, producing white bread
for the rich, brown bread that was sold for half the price of
white, black bread that was cheaper still, though hopefully not
horse bread, made from the lowest quality flour and not fit for
human consumption, though it was eaten by the poor when times were
hard. This then was his life: working from dawn till dusk to help
his father feed his family with the expectation, God permitting,
that he would eventually work in his own bakery to feed his own
family. Every working day was the same, year in, year out.
