Part 3
The men of Prague fled and we pressed on up the steep path. Those above us stretched out their tired hands to us from the battlements. We saw them kneeling and we saw them dancing in their watchtowers, those brave guardians of Charlemagne's crown. We pressed on up the steep and narrow path, each of us in harness lifted and shoved by those climbing up behind. We climbed up to the bronze gate, which had stood up so long and so well to the attack by the Hussites. Prince Friedrich, who had led us so ably to the imperial crown, let his bloody battleaxe dangle and took his helmet from his head. The bronze gate opened to him and to us. The first of us fell back now to join those behind them in sudden shyness and holy dread. Our army came to a standstill having redeemed Charlemagne's orb and sceptre. We saw the first inner courtyard full of sick and wounded guardians. We saw the healthy with battle fatigue and weakened by hunger. We had arrived with our leader, the electoral prince of Brandenburg, at the right time. May that always be true in all the centuries to come till the world really does come to an end!
They called down health and blessings on us as they stretched out to us their drooping arms and embraced the vanguard of our relieving army with heaving chests.
Health and blessings, yes. For us that was a truly blessed and elevated moment. A great silence fell yet again in close proximity to us, so that only the light clink of armour and the jingling of weapons could be heard and out of the valley ascended the never ending victory roar of thousands of German men who had accompanied us on this journey, but could not share the honour of being the first to enter the citadel.
Now we saw with amazement all around us the walls reaching up to heaven behind which the Luxemburger had hidden the treasure he had borrowed as his own property. We saw the three inner courtyards, one upon the other, stretching up to the clouds. We saw the royal residence in all its splendour before us and the clergy that served it, the deacon, the four canons and the castle chaplains. We strode from gate to gate, from one resounding drawbridge to another, as far as the church of St Catherine where we all, pushed up close to one another, knelt with the electoral prince in silent prayer before we dared to approach the even greater inner sanctum, the chapel of the Holy Cross.
Now all courtyards and passageways, all halls and rooms in the castle were filled with German helmets, storm hoods, spears and swords. Where formerly only the foremost men and noblest lords in Bohemia were allowed to set foot, where even the king himself trod lightly, today the least of men who had come out for the crown had more right to be. In the king's private chambers Nurembergers laid their pikes against the brightly painted walls or hung their axes on hooks on richly gilded wainscoting.
There was still a drawbridge that had not been lowered, still a gate barred with nine locks. This was the drawbridge that led to the Church of the Cross. These were the nine locks that guarded the crown of a Holy Roman Emperor. This drawbridge was lowered and these locks were opened for no-one else normally apart from the king and the guardians of the crown. Men in armour with drawn swords kept watch here day and night.
But who today had a greater right to be admitted to this treasure, King Sigismund or us?
At a signal from the electoral prince all our banners were lowered and the raised drawbridge, which was still barring our way, now came down. Then the nine locks on the gate were heard to clatter open and we entered the sacred space in deep silence. From the ceiling and the walls and pillars a red, green and blue fire shone towards us. The place shone everywhere with the adornment of the most precious stones and now only a high, artful golden grille still separated us from the Holy of Holies.
Then I felt a heavy hand upon my shoulder. It was the armoured hand and arm of my friend who had come up behind me.
We had supported each other whenever one of us had stumbled on the way. We had covered each other with our shields and the weapon of one had a hundred times turned away death from the other, but what more can I say of myself and Michael Groland other than that we were in the imperial army's procession to Karlstein? Both of us were merely two drops in the stream and all that we were able to experience on the way the whole army likewise learned with pain or with pleasure, in glory or in ignominy.
Suddenly here on the turret of Charles the Fourth's castle, in the church of the Holy Cross, before the shrine in which the imperial crown jewels were kept, we got our own lives back.
My friend and brother, Michael Groland, bent his mouth to my ear and spoke softly: "Pray for my happiness. Here in this place, after so much effort on our part to attain it, here before the inner sanctum of the German people, pray for me that I might win a crowning glory for myself one day!"
A lightning flash did not come out of the golden niche from the lance of Saint Maurice or from the sword of Charlemagne to strike my wild friend for his strange and daring words. But a deep down shudder, a cold feeling and a fiery flame went through my legs.
At that moment however the castle deacon with his chaplains and canons intoned a Gloria. All those present joined in the singing and the pictures on the walls, the painted images set in precious stones of all the stars of heaven in the lofty vault, the nobles of the Empire swayed in the flaming red light that the evening sun threw through the gaudy windows. Everything swayed around me and never did the noise of the greatest battle ever amaze me as much as this moment did. I said the prayer for my friend and for the love of him before the imperial crown itself.
Tolle! Lege! Listen to the cries of the people from the churchyard of Saint Sebaldus. The whole of the rest of the town is as silent as the grave. All of Nuremberg's sins and vanities have gathered together and fled to one spot. Listen how thousands are addressed about their misery! That monk there in the pulpit is really going deep into their hearts! They might well cry out, they might well beat their breasts as the grim Franciscan calls them to penitence, but what are the words he is shrieking in comparison to the sweet, soft voice that spoke to me? Of what importance is what the monk says in comparison with the warning I received in the days of my youth?
The scribes in towns and monasteries have outlined the story of the German people's collective grief such as they must have experienced it subsequent to the disgrace perpetrated in Constance, have put it down on parchment and paper outstandingly year by year, day by day so that in future happier generations will be able to leaf through the blood-spattered pages. Everyone knows how things were then in the Empire, how a place for human happiness and peace of mind was nowhere to be found other than behind the highest walls of the most fortified towns, and even there only under the gravestones in churches or the grass of churchyards. Everyone knows how the Hussites victoriously and ever more victoriously came and went and how the fiery glow that had risen from Lake Constance was not for many long and dreadful years extinguished among the people of Germany. And as it was for the citizens of the Empire, so also was it for the imperial crown that found no resting place anywhere on its native earth. The sword of Charlemagne had lost its power, the lance of Saint Maurice no longer moved in its sheath to defend the splendour of the Holy Germanic Roman Empire. Emperor Sigismund now had to spirit away the crown jewels to Blindenburg in Hungary, to hide them among the Huns. It was to Hungary then that my dear friend and brother, the good knight Michael Groland of Laufenholz, was obliged to escort them on behalf of the town of Nuremberg and he could not refuse to render this service, even though, before the altar in the Church of the Cross at the heart of the Luxemburger's Bohemian citadel, he had just dedicated himself, in the joy of victory, to the service of seeking another crown for himself.
By order of the electoral prince he was prevented from riding home with us. His way took him to Hungary--for the sake of the Empire's crown jewels he worked his way through ruin. Only in the year 1423 did he come back from Ofen in the depths of despair. But never have greater honours been bestowed on a man by a woman than those bestowed on him after he had sunk into misery and all the waves of earthly wretchedness had swallowed him up. Truly he had won for himself the crown as he called the highest virtue attainable!
As only a tiny group of healthy and fighting-fit men did we come back from the army's journey to Bohemia and came once again to the Laufer Gate in Nuremberg after Castle Karlstein and our town was also glad of the few who came home and a civic reception was made ready for us in the highest of spirits. As the councillors, the citizens and the fairest damsels had escorted us as far as that gate on our outward journey, so now they waited for us there and I called out from my horse on reaching the gate to Mechthilde, pale with fright at the absence of our friend, the good news that Michael Groland had not been killed in the battle with the Hussites but that he was still alive, as happy and courageous as ever, and had only been called away to reap new honours.
The young lady bowed to us, hand on heart. We rode on through the streets past St Egidia to the Herrenmarkt. And on the way a hundred people at least reached out their hands to me while I was still on the horse including Theodoros Antoniades the Greek. Our army's journey lay like a bad dream behind us and well might we enjoy our homecoming, for who was there in this throng of people who had not forgotten on what poor and shaky grounds the splendour of Nuremberg had been founded! Had the Greek from Chios not been there on hand, even I might have forgotten that these strong men and these high walls had not been thought strong or high enough to trust them with the imperial crown jewels that we had rescued at so high a cost.
Once we had reached the Herrenmarkt we each sought the comfort of our own homes. I found on Banner Mountain all my friends and relatives gathered and all most eager to hear what I had to tell them of my struggle against the Hussites. The members of the Grosse family too came to see us from the neighbouring house and among them was Mechthild. Then I talked as if I were speaking to the whole wide circle of devout men and women but, ultimately, I was only talking to Mechthild and she understood that very well. But I could not make known to her in that crowd of the curious the most intimate thing that had been confided in me before the crown of the great emperor Charlemagne in the Church of the Cross in Castle Karlstein. I would have to save that up for a quieter time when none of our friends and relations were turning round to look at us. This time also came and then the white roses on the cheeks of Mechthilde blushed red. Red they remained at the oath Michael Groland had sworn before the crown and red they remained through winter, spring and summer and they were a gift from God to the pride and joy of the young, loving maid. Now there were no more mysteries between myself and her and nor could there be. But the fact that we knew of this mystery and the rest of the world did not bound us to each other with chains of gold and in the middle of that grey and devastated world we knew that our greatest treasures were safe.
Truly that bold utterance, which the brave knight Michael had whispered in my ear before the sanctuary of the German people in Castle Karlstein, produced a fine and splendid resonance in the breast of a certain quiet young lady that Michael Groland had called his highest crown of all!
Now we lived again together as good neighbours through the winter of 1422 and the spring and summer of 1423. And no fairy tale, no golden legend was more full of wonders than that realm of bliss that the young lady built up in silence. She was not in the least anxious about her beloved. A wonderful unshakeable trust in the fulfillment of all sweet hopes held her in its arms.
How could it have been wrong before God to have spoken proudly and certain of victory those words that had been in the shimmering light of the prize possessions of the German people? This love was now well and truly covered by an imperial mantle, illuminated by the crown of Charlemagne himself. There was no doubt in the mind of Mechthilde Grossin that Charlemagne's sword and the holy lance of St Maurice could not but lead her love safe and sound through all dangers and that the solemn promise that had been made in that high fortified place in Bohemia had made this love holy and impossible to damage, beyond space and time.
Beyond space and time! There were no two ways about it! That oath made in the Church of the Cross in Castle Karlstein defied both space and time. That oath made before the holiest holy of holies of the the Holy Roman Empire had borne bloom and fruit, but, as far as this poor world went, the fruit had been lost in misery and shame.
We later learned how the imperial crown jewels arrived with great pomp and circumstance at the castle of Blindenburg, five miles from the town of Ofen. Eberhard von Windek wrote how, on the Wednesday before Christmas in the year 1422, the jewels had been received with great delight there and installed. And our friend and brother, the good knight Michael Groland of Laufenholz, was present at the beginning of this new two-year stay for the jewels abroad and we thought of him without a care in the world through winter storms and snowfalls and also when spring arrived.
Spring was lovely that year. I pondered once more the Greek texts of Master Theodoros Antoniades and the trust and happiness of Mechthilde rubbed off on me. The hard work of learning the noble language of the ancient Greeks was easier than ever to me. Having said that, however, we no longer read Anacreon.
Bent over Homer's Iliad, the story of that epic war with Troy, I fought once again in my head the battles I had fought with the belligerent Hussites, and my old teacher, who had even more hurt and atrocities to forget than I did, modestly praised me for my aptitude. When summer came we once more had our desk in that fair rose-filled bower up against Nuremberg's protective city wall. We, that is to say the refugee from Chios and myself, and now the maid came too, as in the days of her childhood, no more shy and reserved, from the flowers, the sunshine and the greenery of her own garden and sat there quietly all ears to Homer's account of the various doings of noble Hector, fearless Achilles and worthy Ajax and thought of the knight her friend with music in her heart and awaited his homecoming from his latest military expedition with love and fidelity.
The trees shed their blossoms over our writings. I cast my parchment to one side in order to run after a multi-coloured butterfly with Mechthild and even our master, the now grey haired teacher, the old Greek banished and driven from his homeland by a pagan foe, the homeless person, whose last ideal abode, the glorious city of Constantinople, was now even more at risk of violent assault and destruction than our German homeland, laughed at our indiscipline and was able to smile at our light and happy hearts.
Never had each blossom been so dear to me, each ray of sunlight in the green foliage appeared so wonderfully bright as it did that summer. My life drifted gently by between forgetfulness and hope, through Homer's epic poem and Mechthild's happiness. I no longer thought of that iron-clad time when I had fought for a dream of gold.
Tolle! Lege! Tolle! Lege! Take and read. I heard these words in the blowing of the autumn wind and, as with Saint Augustine, I grew pale and "I wondered if these words were part of a children's game, and I could not remember ever having heard them before. Tears sprang in me and I got up and took it to be a voice from God."
That autumn, in October of the year of Our Lord 1423, my friend and good knight Michael Groland of Laufenholz came back to the town of Nuremberg from Hungary as a poor, sick, lost soul, who could now only use his sword as a staff to support himself and the following relates how he came to arrive in this way.
It was a gloomy afternoon and I had sat on the window seat in a curiously melancholic frame of mind, but not in my own room, rather in the main room that connected with the street. I sat there quietly, disinclined to work or study. Over the rooftops and gable ends a strong wind blew, quickly driving grey clouds through the sky, and people too were in a hurry in the streets, for everyone wanted to be home. And yet I felt strangely ill at ease in mine.
The walls pressed in on me, the ceiling sank and the wind that was moving the embroidered pictures on the wall hangings and making the weapons of my forebears hung on columns clink slightly took my breath away more than the pear-shaped gag that a torturer uses to stop the mouths of felons in a torture chamber. Then a messenger came, a boy who looked in a hurry sent by my cousin, Cecilia Stollhoferin. He caught his breath with difficulty and delivered and spoke out a greeting from her in the name of God and told me that, outside the New Gate, in the hospice for the sick of Saint John, someone was waiting to speak to me. My cousin was at that time what was termed the mother to the lepers--Mater Leprosorum, the oldest of those do-gooding women of patrician descent who, as a result of the edifying sermons of Master Nicholas in the church of the Holy Ghost, had been the first to reach out to these poor sick people for the sake of God as I have already written in a previous sheet of this chronicle. This hasty summons surprised me somewhat, yet I responded to it immediately with a right good will and would, as any good person in Nuremberg would, have done the same at any hour of day or night, irrespective of whether the leper mother had summoned me from a wedding feast, a baptism or a morgue to her higher service.
While I was despondent like this, my cousin's summons seemed to me of all things the most bearable that could happen to me. The pressure weighing down on my soul lifted at the seriousness of this call for assistance. A grey sky and a bad mood no longer had power to oppress me. I sent the messenger back with a warm greeting to my cousin, put on a mantle as quickly as possible over my dappled tunic and went out on that dark autumn day.
The human turmoil, into which I was straightaway admitted outside in the street, released me completely from the attacks of my bad demons. From the bay window of the Grossen house Mechthild waved me a greeting with a friendly smile. I could well have marvelled at myself being now quite a different person from the one I had been only an hour before, but that I did not do, but berated myself as a fool and walked on and on, past the ruins of Leininger's citadel, to the New Gate.
On the way many a good friend greeted me and stopped me with a "Where are you off to then?" When I told them where I was going, they shrugged their shoulders and looked at the threatening clouds and one or another of them invited me to this pub or that pub for the night. As I knew that Master Theodoros would have no more need of me that day, I accepted an invitation and promised myself a lively evening for long after the night bell had sounded.
In this way I arrived before the gate and intended, despite all that my cousin might present me with, to hold on to my good mood come what may. But that day, which had failed to please me at home, pleased me even less outside in front of the city wall. The field there was bare and the trees stood stripped of leaves and the wind, which had already been having its own way in the streets, had no longer anything to cage it and tame it. It romped about and went from place to place as it willed and scared dry dust into violent swirls in the air and laughed disdainfully at the oncoming dusk. I pulled my cloak more tightly around me and walked on in a sprightly fashion to the Hospice of Saint John.
At that time there was only a sort of shed for the sick, erected in 1323 next to the church by the Lords of Tezeln, out in the open. The great Churchyard of the Holy Grave was not yet available. At present anyone can go there and reflect upon the first gravestone that shows Saint Sebastian bound to a tree trunk with an inscription dating back to 1427:
This day there was an awful and piteous moaning; Thirteen died including me in the house I was alone in.
Truly the great churchyard was not set up in vain at the time that it was.
In the year 1423 the house of the sick stood next to the church, both on their own in the middle of a field, surrounded by scant undergrowth. The former of these two buildings was a low, long drawn out edifice, away from which a wanderer was glad to turn his face if he ever took the road that far into the country. The place was, even in glorious summer, not a welcoming sight. Even the year's fairest blossoms were impotent to ward off a shiver. But today the sky was grey and black clouds were moving in over the roof of the sick bay and black ravens flapped their wings around it as on a high place where there were gallows. No living soul could have pictured a worse ossuary.
There was also a hedge that stretched for a long way round the house and where the Roman road came into it a door. A stone cross had been put up near it and under the cross was a bench also made of stone.
As I came nearer I saw two forms under the cross. On the bench sat a man wearing a long brown habit like a Capuchin monk with his head deeply bowed and completely covered with a hood. A few steps away from him stood my cousin. She too had bowed her head and was wringing her hands as if in some great grief. And four steps in front of them, back in the direction of the road, a sword had been stuck in the ground as a warning not to come any nearer.
Already I knew now from a distance the likely meaning of all this and why my cousin Cecilia had bid me come. But who the hooded man was I had no idea. I stood still near the sword and said: "Good day to you, cousin. I am at your service. For mercy's sake, who is it?"
A sudden shudder shook me to the core, but I still did not know what I was about to learn.
"Who is it, cousin," I asked for the second time. The old woman sobbed and raised her hands up to the glowering sky. The man in the monk's habit supported his hooded head on his left hand and gestured with the other to the sword sticking upright in the ground.
Then I had another shock--a shock to end all shocks--that shook me body and soul. I looked at the sword and reeled backwards as if hit by a battle hammer. The world I looked on grew confused before my very eyes. I staggered and cried out, loudly I cried out.
This was the sword, the trusty sword, which had so often and so merrily made the old house on Banner Mountain shake. This was the sword that had shone next to me in the pitched battle against the Hussites, the trusty weapon that had helped to deliver the imperial crown out of enemy hands! This was the sword of my friend, my blood brother's sword! The bent hooded man on the stone bench in the brown habit of a pilgrim was the proud knight Michael Groland of Laufenholz, my brother, more than my brother, my friend, my joyful classmate and comrade in arms, poor Michael Groland!