The Sword Brothers (4 page)

‘Nothing to do with
you,’ spat the brute holding Conrad.

‘Everything that
happens within sight of the house of God concerns me,’ replied one
of the white-clad men. Conrad estimated his height to be around six
feet.

‘Be on your way,’
sneered the man holding Marie, who was still sobbing.

‘Did you hear that,
Henke?’ said the mailed man again, ‘we are to be on our way.’

The man called Henke
was shorter than the one who was speaking, but only marginally. But
he was certainly more broad shouldered and powerful in appearance.
He now stepped forward and held out his hand to the man who was
restraining Conrad.

‘My apologies,
brother. Will you take my hand by way of atonement?’

The man twisted
Conrad’s arm once again, causing the youth to wince, and then
extended his hand to Henke, who smiled, took it and then
head-butted him, splintering his nose. He groaned and collapsed to
the ground, releasing Conrad. The other man released Marie and went
for the dagger tucked into his belt, but before he could reach it
Henke’s companion drew the sword that was hanging from his belt and
had the point against his neck.

‘Pull that dagger and
I will spill your blood on these cobbles.’

Henke walked forward
and kicked the prostrate man hard under the chin, sending him
sprawling.

‘I suggest you depart
immediately,’ said Henke’s companion, ‘lest Henke becomes
angry.’

The man with the sword
at his throat raised his arms in a sign of submission and backed
away slowly, hauling his bloodied companion to his feet as he did
so. They slowly ambled away as Henke watched them impassively, arms
folded across his broad chest. His friend sheathed his sword and
made the sign of the cross.

‘Go with God,
brothers.’

Conrad, his face and
nightshirt covered with blood, put an arm around his weeping sister
and attempted to smile at his saviours.

‘Thank you, sirs.
Those men attacked my family and I beg for your help.’

The man whose name
Conrad did not yet know smiled at him.

‘We are here to assist
pilgrims in need of help, but first I think that we should get you
both more suitable clothing and dress your wound, as well as
calming the young girl.’

‘My sister, sir,’ said
Conrad, ‘Marie.’

Henke’s associate
smiled, walked forward and knelt before Marie, who was still
terrified.

‘Do not be alarmed,
Marie. My name is Rudolf and I am your friend,’ his voice was calm
and soft. ‘Will you come with me so that we can get you cleaned
up?’

She half-nodded, still
clutching Conrad’s hand. ‘My mother is dead.’

Rudolf continued to
smile. ‘We will wash your face and get you some clothes and then we
will go and find her.’

He turned to look at
Conrad. ‘What is your name, boy?’

‘Conrad Wolff,
sir.’

The next hour was a
like a dream to Conrad. He remembered being taken to the monastery
sited next to the cathedral where monks washed his face and gave
him a clean shirt, tunic and leggings. Black-robed nuns calmed
Marie and took her way. She returned dressed in a long gown and
black headdress, and all the while the men who had rescued them
stood and watched Conrad, the one named Rudolf occasionally nodding
and smiling, Henke staring impassively. Conrad noticed that the
monks addressed them as ‘brother’, leading him to believe that they
too were monks. But their dress, weapons and demeanour led him to
think they were unlike any monks he had ever seen.

After further pleading
Conrad convinced the two monks armed with swords to return with him
and his sister to their father’s bakery. Rudolf and Henke followed
Conrad and his sister as they retraced their steps and headed back
to the city’s eastern quarter. Accompanying them were half a dozen
soldiers of Theodoric, Bishop of Lübeck, who was currently away on
a tour of southern Germany. They were dressed in mail hauberks,
helmets and carried blue shields bearing the arms of the bishop: a
gold mitre over a gold cross. Four of the men carried spears and
two held torches to provide illumination.

No one spoke during
the journey and as they neared his home a sense of dread began to
engulf Conrad. He had a terrible foreboding that his parents were
both dead and his dread was soon consumed by an even more tortuous
emotion: guilt. He had abandoned his parents in their hour of need
to save his own skin. He would forever be known as a base coward
who had betrayed his parents, who had laboured hard to provide for
him and Marie. What would his sister say when she learned the
truth? With these thoughts swirling in his mind he led the small
group down his street and halted in front of the bakery, the
shutters up and the shop open.

‘We are here,’ he said
to Rudolf.

‘Perhaps you should
stay here, Conrad,’ Rudolf suggested.

Conrad’s nose still
hurt and he could sense tears coming to his eyes.

‘No,’ he said.

Rudolf took a torch
from one of the bishop’s soldiers.

‘Well then, let us
proceed.’

He nodded to Henke who
instructed the guards to wait outside while he, Henke and Conrad
entered the shop. Marie made to accompany them but he took her hand
and placed it in the grasp of one of the other soldiers.

‘Keep her here.’

Conrad followed Rudolf
into the shop, the torch illuminating the empty shelves and oven.
He had lived here all his life but it suddenly felt cold and alien
to him, the violation it had suffered having snuffed out all the
happy memories he had of his home. He placed a hand on Rudolf’s
arm.

‘They might still be
here, sir.’

Rudolf turned his face
to the youth.

‘I think they have
long gone.’

The three walked
slowly up the stairs, Rudolf and Henke having drawn their swords
just in case anyone was still loitering on the first floor. But
they sheathed their weapons when they entered the bedroom and saw
the lifeless body of Agnete lying on the bloody mattress. Conrad
cried out in anguish and rushed forward to cradle his dead mother,
sobbing as he held her head to his, kissing her forehead and
rocking to and fro in anguish. Henke looked at Rudolf and shrugged.
Rudolf made the sign of the cross as Conrad Wolff sank into black
despair.

Rudolf left the boy to
his grief as he went back downstairs and informed the young girl
that her mother had been taken to heaven and was now with God.

Marie looked up into
the night sky. ‘Will she be able to see me?’

Rudolf smiled. ‘She is
looking at you right now, child.’

Marie began waving at
the sky. Rudolf was glad that her childish innocence protected her
from the brutal reality he had just seen.

Minutes later Conrad
joined them in the street, his face ashen and haunted.

‘Where is my father?’
he asked forlornly.

Rudolf ordered that
the body of the children’s mother be taken back to the nunnery to
be washed and dressed in a white gown. The next morning he stood
with Conrad and Marie as an abbot recited prayers at the graveside
and they said farewell to their mother. Rudolf had reported the
murder to the church authorities that had in turn relayed it to the
vogt
, the judge who administered the city’s laws. Because
Lübeck was a commercial centre of great importance it had been
granted the right to administer itself through a city council. This
was made up of thirty burghers drawn from the most powerful and
influential members of the citizenry and which was responsible for
the daily government of the city.

Conrad and Marie were
taken back to the monastery as a gravedigger began shovelling earth
on Agnete’s corpse. But the question remained: where was her
husband? The answer came that afternoon when a messenger sent by a
city councillor to the monastery brought news that Dietmar Wolff
had been arrested for the murder of his wife and attempted murder
of one of the city council: Adolfus Braune. His trial was set for
the next day, as Rudolf told Conrad.

This made no sense,
and as Conrad filed into the packed courtroom located in the city’s
town hall, an imposing structure constructed from black bricks, he
was certain that his father would be found innocent of this
preposterous charge. The guards standing at the entrance to the
large, spacious hall carried shields that bore an eagle motif – the
symbol of Lübeck – for this was a city rather than a church court.
They looked bored as Conrad passed them and tried to squeeze
through the press of people who stood near the entrance. Rudolf and
Henke had brought him here after learning of the crimes levied
against his father. He was confident that he would be back home
with his father by the day’s end but they knew differently.

The hall may have been
spacious but it soon became hot from the heat of dozens of bodies.
A clerk called for silence as the judge entered the hall via a door
at the far end and took his place in his ceremonial chair, which
was placed on a dais next to the hall’s end wall. Conrad was three
rows back from the front of the crowd and had to continually crane
his neck to see what was taking place. As the spectators fell
silent the black-robed judge sat in the chair and nodded to a
sombre-looking priest standing to the side of the dais. The latter
said ‘let us pray’ and everyone bowed their heads as he called upon
God to bless the city of Lübeck, these proceedings and to ensure
that justice was done.

Directly in front of
the judge was a desk where his notaries and clerks were sitting on
a bench. The ‘advocates learned in law’, those representing the
accused and those prosecuting, sat to the right and left of the
judge on elevated benches in their order of seniority. Expected to
dress in a way that befitted their social status and the dignity of
the court, they were all attired in dark-blue sleeved robes. The
hall itself, as befitting an official building in Lübeck, was
decorated with tapestries, shields and banners, with wood panelling
lining all the walls.

A clerk began the
proceedings by reading a list of those accused of minor crimes, the
defendants being escorted from a holding pen located to the rear of
the building. Guards ushered them roughly into the hall where their
crimes were read out and they gave their plea. If they were wealthy
enough they had an advocate, who rose from his seat and descended
to the floor of the courtroom where he stood facing the judge and
stated his client’s case. A young man pleaded guilty to being drunk
in public – a day in the stocks; an overweight middle-aged woman
with rosy cheeks was convicted of idle gossip – two days wearing
the brank, a metal cage that fitted over the head that placed a
metal curb in the mouth to prevent the sufferer from speaking; and
so it went on. Not everyone had a lawyer and so those who had no
one to plead their case tended to receive harsher sentences,
including being branded and losing fingers. Once convicted the
punishments were carried out immediately.

They were bundled out
of the court to where men with whips and branding irons were
standing ready to tear and cut flesh. Those who were sentenced to
the stocks at first appeared to have got off lightly, but once
confined people were free to pelt them with rotten vegetables, rub
excrement in their hair and faces and, if they were particularly
disliked, hurl stones of varying sizes at them. A few hours in the
stocks could be a potentially lethal experience.

The next group of
prisoners to be brought before the court were those accused of more
serious crimes. Conrad saw his father and waved at him, Dietmar
catching the eye of his son and smiling faintly. Conrad thought he
looked terrible: unshaven, his shirt torn and his shoulders sunken.
He looked visibly drained, his eyes red and puffy, his face
bruised.

‘That is my father,’
Conrad said to Rudolf, who placed a reassuring hand on the boy’s
shoulders.

Henke looked at Rudolf
and shook his head for he knew that, barring a miracle, the boy’s
father was a dead man. Trials were rarely a venue to decide guilt
or innocence, more a forum whereby justice could be publicly served
upon the convicted. And so it was now as the judge pronounced
sentence upon the unfortunates brought before him. A wife found
guilty of petty treason, the murder of her husband: death; an old
woman who poisoned her younger and more attractive niece: death; a
talented young smith revealed to have indulged in coining, the
manufacture of counterfeit money: death; and a terrified teenage
girl found guilty of strangling her newborn baby: death. And then
Dietmar Wolff was standing before the judge with head bowed while
the prosecutor revealed what he was accused of: the murder of his
own wife and the attempted murder of Adolfus Braune, one of
Lübeck’s most esteemed residents.

‘That is a lie!’
shouted Conrad, who pushed his way through those standing before
him to reach the front of the crowd.

The advocates looked
at each in disbelief and the judge sat open mouthed at this severe
breach of etiquette.

‘Silence!’ he
bellowed, pointing at Conrad. ‘Whose child is this?’

Dietmar looked at the
judge. ‘He is my son, sir.’

The judge smiled
savagely. ‘He will be flogged for his insolence.’

Rudolf came forward
and grabbed Conrad’s arm to force him behind where Henke could keep
an eye on him.

‘My humble apologies,
lord,’ said Rudolf, ‘the boy’s wits have temporarily deserted him.
I beg the court’s mercy.’

The judge saw Rudolf’s
white surcoat and the sword and cross motif. ‘A Sword Brother. You
speak for this disrespectful boy?’

Rudolf nodded. ‘I do,
lord. I would ask you to show mercy towards him.’

The judge leaned back
in his chair and stroked his pointed chin. ‘You are in Lübeck on
what purpose, brother?’