He hated his father beyond words. His father, a rapist, a thief, progenitor of a thousand empty stomachs. Every moment he spent with his father tested the endurance of his albeit advanced civility. If his father had lands of his own in cultivation Siegfried would salt the earth so that nothing would ever again grow. The way his father's eyes grew soft when looking at him sickened him. He feared his father's touch as though the man had dipped his fingers in poison. When his father tried to touch him lovingly, place a hand on his head or his shoulder, Siegfried backed away, his face wrinkled with disgust. Nothing could persuade the boy to feel otherwise. Neither gifts nor dinners, reason nor kindness. Ermenrich came to the stables many times with Walther, made many appeals. "Siegfried," he said, "You are a child, and a child needs his father. You have lived long enough in the stables with men who are, to speak honestly, bad influences on you. You cannot raise yourself. A child that grows up alone becomes feral and strange. You have done well for your circumstances, you have endured a great deal of suffering. Your lord sees that, as does your Lord in Heaven. Why be so stubborn, boy? Why cling on to such stupid pride?" But Siegfried would not heed these words, and he did not want to reveal to Ermenrich the details as to why, the truth about his father, that which he knew the marshal, having long been friends with the steward, would deny. If he knew, Ermenrich would cast aspersions on Siegfried for being a slanderer, and this Siegfried could not bear.
The matter changed, however, when Frederick came to the stables, sword on his hip, helm tucked under his arm, two men by his side.
"Siegfried," he said from below the hayloft. Siegfried did not move. This was becoming his signature tactic, pretending not to exist. It was the only tactic his mother taught him. A woman's tactic, but he didn't care.
"Siegfried, I know you're up there. I can hear you rustling. Dress yourself, gather your things, and then climb down. You're coming with me to live in my house with your father. It can no longer be otherwise."
Hate torched Siegfried then, made him flicker with anger, burned that barrier between himself and the future, what we call self-preservation. So it begins, so it begins, the falsity of noble people. I gave you my promise and in doing so I thought you would respect my wishes, not treat me as a child. All those kind words you gave me, for what? When I want something for myself, I quickly become just another subject. What you wish to do to me is no better than torture. How could you force me out of this place of warmth and safety, how could you ruin the happiness of my freedom? When it costs you less than nothing to leave me be? Frederick, you liar.
"Siegfried!"
"No!" Siegfried shouted then, so consumed he was by these circling thoughts. "No, I won't go!"
Frederick handed his helm to his companion, and when Siegfried heard him clanking his way up the ladder in all that armor, he began to desperately bury into the hay, trying to cover himself, knowing all the while that it was stupid, yes, but maybe by some miracle, it would work. He wasn't quick enough. Frederick's black hair popped into view, and then the rest of him.
"Perhaps I was wrong about you," he said, climbing into the loft. "I'm rarely wrong, but there is a first time for everything. Perhaps you are actually stupid. A stupid peasant boy able to get around in this world by way of little tricks, a fool derived from some backwards folk tale. Is that what you are?" Frederick was not teasing, and didn't smile. Siegfried, supine, stared at him with wild eyes, all white and no pupil.
"Maybe I am, what then?"
"From shit you were born, to shit you will return," Frederick muttered as he grabbed the boy by his legs and began to pull.
Siegfried yelped, turned to wrest himself away, but in doing so he gave Frederick an opening, and soon his lord had him by the neck of his shirt, which he gathered in his hand until the fabric pressed hard against Siegfried's windpipe. Then Frederick did something unexpected, and therefore even more frightening. Instead of thrashing the boy or throwing him down from the hayloft, he leaned in close and gave his charge a soft, fraternal kiss on the cheek. Terribly afraid, Seigfried knew Frederick was choking him just lightly enough to let him live. Were it not for the lord's grip on him, the world would have heard him whimper like the little boy he was.
"You don't really want this to happen, Siegfried," said Frederick quietly, just between them. "I understand you better than you think. You crave annihilation because it gives you an answer to the question of who you are. There are many men like you, and they all die in wars. You are indecisive, neither here nor there, but indecision is not possible for long, and so you secretly want the choice to be made for you. You like stories, you want the nobler ending. You fancy yourself a martyr. However, I know better than to give you what you want." Frederick let him go, and Siegfried gasped for air. The young man continued calmly: "Now, your committment to me was incomplete. I should be angrier than I am. But I know how you see things. You made a promise to me, and not to your father. But your father is an extension of myself. And therefore, you made a promise to him also. I should have been more forthright in the beginning, you'll have to forgive me. But if you want to be steward, Siegfried, and I think you do because it appeals to that same instinct in you, the instinct to walk on walls instead of on either side of them, which, it should be said, can lead towards cowardice, you will have to learn from the steward."
"Must I?" Siegfried asked, still catching his breath. "Where did he learn how to be steward?"
"The old steward. And so it goes."
"But is this not your estate, my lord? Do you not know best how to govern it?"
"He tries flattery now," laughed Frederick. "I do know best. Which is why you will go and live with your father."
Of course.
"Now, I have known Sigismund my whole life. I would like you to tell me what's so awful about him. What makes you so averse to living with him, even though it comes with luxuries for which people of your ilk would gnaw an arm off? You are a child of reason, and once you live with us, you will see why it is we who God designated as those who govern. If there is something wrong about Sigismund, perhaps it is something I, too, should be aware of?"
Siegfried, unprepared for this turn in the conversation, said nothing.
"Siegfried."
"No, my lord," he said.
"Then get your things. My will is final. Do you understand?"
"Yes, my lord," answered Siegfried bitterly.
And so Siegfried came to live at the castle, where the Sunday mantle and the sword with rubies were waiting for him. And the hearth and the bed he had to share with his father in the same way all sons and fathers did except the richest of the rich, and even then, in winter the furnace of a body was worth more than twenty furs. Siegfried sat on that bed, which was stuffed with goosefeathers, cloudlike to the touch. Scarlet coverlets enveloped his hands, and above his head, a canopy, with floral shapes carved into it. He took a closer look at his surroundings than he did previously. The walls were limed, and a single column pierced the middle of the room. The cloudy sky in the clerestory windows made for a treacly, white light. Sigismund kept his room sparse, which surprised the boy because the steward once had a rich wife. Maybe even he had to pay the death tax.
The door opened without a knock, and Sigismund appeared, bowl in hand.
"Bread baked with honey," he said, with what Siegfried thought was a hint of nervousness. "From the lady. The little one. She asked me to give it to you along with her regards."
Siegfried took the plate from his father. It was still warm. He looked at the bread, and also at Sigismund. He thought of Benedicta, smiling, her lips curled and eyes bright, and smiled himself. She was clever, interceding during such a tense and unhappy situation. If women like her ran the world, there would be no wars, only armies of messengers, no lords, only poets singing sweet songs of diplomacy.
"I'm glad you've finally come to live with me," said Sigismund, sitting beside his son. Like their last encounter in this room, he tried very hard to hide his sentimentality, his insecurity, and it worked. The boy thought he sounded uptight. He put the bowl on the bedside table and folded his arms.
"Why? Why does it matter so much?"
"You are my son," answered Sigismund, this time with calculated gentleness. But it did not soften the boy who, in his cleverness, anticipated such tricks.
"Yes, but I shouldn't exist," Siegfried said pointedly. This was the subtle way he'd decided to finally make his formal accusation. "In a just world, I wouldn't be here."
His father said nothing. Perhaps the steward was too stupid to get the implication, so the boy clarified. "You shouldn't have done what you did to my mother."
Sigismund, as wrong as he had been in life, wanted his son to love him. He wanted his son, the only family remaining to him, to come and be with him. And that his son hated him, renounced him, even though he was only a boy of soon-to-be eleven, made the steward smart with a pain even he acknowledged as being punishment for what he'd done. Hence, for some time, he accepted these circumstances, secretly thankful for the distance between boy and man imposed by his late wife. It was understandable, a boy raised as a peasant hating his father, the steward, and all of Siegfried's past ugly words Sigismund attributed to that central conflict which was, to the steward's relief, bigger than two people. Yet, contrary to Sigismund's hopes, time passed and passed, and the boy never seemed to understand. How much longer, he thought, exasperated, would Siegfried continue to choose having no father over having him? Choose to be half raised by garrison men and horses? And now these accusations?
Often Sigismund wondered what Ajda said to the boy, how she told her own story, and therefore the truth of her experience, unmediated by his presence. And now he knew: this was how she had portrayed him, as a violent, selfish man who inflicted unmentionable harm upon her. Nothing hurt him more than the boy saying he wished he had never been born so as to spare his mother. If Siegfried truly felt such things, what could Sigismund do now to possibly ameliorate the situation? What could he say that would carry the same weight as a dead woman's confession to her little boy? And so, being who he was, his pain materialized as anger, struck hot like an iron in the form of protest: "What I did to your mother? No, what your mother told you I did. You are a child, Siegfried, and children are stupid about some elements of the world, about men and women, and the only people more stupid than children on this topic are women themselves. Your mother may have told you one story. I doubt she told you more. I doubt she told you that, after she saw me the first time, she came back."
"No," the boy replied, firmer now, "You made her come back. You knew she had no choice."
Neither realized that they were arguing like adults. Two men bickering over the woman each felt was theirs. Sigismund wanted to strike the boy for talking back, but this would only make matters worse. What else was left but to tell his son what he felt was the truth? Sigismund loathed vulnerability, and wore it badly. And yet, desperation forced him to be calm. He took several deep breaths. He persisted.
"Perhaps the first few times, because I wanted to see her at any cost. But there was no real threat. And when she was through with me, when she was carrying you in her belly, she told me she wanted nothing to do with me, and I left her alone. I left you alone, too. I owed her that. She has been gone for some time now, and I still often feel that I owe her."
"Yes. After what you did, you still feel guilty."
The fucking mouth on you! No, no, look at him. He wants you to strike him. He wants you to confirm what he believes even though it comes at his expense. He is a child, children behave that way - provocatively. They don't know better, especially him, being raised by the lower half of society. Sigismund wiped the frustration off his face and tried again.
"My God, Siegfried," he pleaded. "I didn't do what you think I've done. If I did, you wouldn't be here, as a baby is only ensouled when a woman...oh you're too young to know about that. Let me tell you this instead: women will call something one thing and men another. Women are full of shame and don't like to make love, and so out of shame they call it something it isn't after the fact. It is true, I hurt your mother during our first encounter, and like any good man, I apologized, I sent her gifts, I won back her trust by merely sitting with her and talking to her and being kind to her - chastely, mind you - and do you know why? Because I loved her. I told you before, the last time you were in this room, she knew that. And she grew close to loving me also. Regardless of what you believe, she was often the one who came to be in my arms, and for a long time there was something strong between us, a bond. It may seem impossible, but there exist things between people that are both good and bad, happy and sad, love and not love. You are at the age where girls do not interest you, and so this is hard to comprehend, but one day, a woman will come into your life and will unmake it, and it is very possible that this woman, you cannot have. Or perhaps you can have her for a little while but life will separate you and after you will never be the same. I was and still am not the same after your mother." Sigismund paused. He hadn't intended to be so honest. But why stop now? He looked at the boy. Perhaps it was working.
"You should know one last thing, Siegfried. Consider it my last attempt to reach you. I say it out of love. You should know that I wanted a son and a son by your mother despite her status. You were not the unhappy consequence of an affair. I wanted you to be in the world. Your mother did not, but I knew she would never hurt you. And once you were born you made her happy in a way I could never and I always envied that. But you exist because the world is just, not because it isn't. And things in that world happened as I made them."
"You lie," Siegfried accused, and it took every bit of restraint to not lash out further. It could not be, those things he said. His father wanting him against the will of his mother.
"If only lies were invariably tied to pain and truths to pleasure," said Sigismund. "I have no reason to lie to you. And if I did, it would be to curry favor with you. Yet I choose the truth and here you are, upset. Your hatred and fear of me is unwarranted. Your mother would never want me to be cruel to you or to hate you, and so I don't hate you and I am not cruel. You are my son. I told Ajda I would give you this better life. I promised her. In this, she is still with me, and still with you. But mostly, she is with God. Your hatred of me hurts me, Siegfried," Sigismund said, rising from the bed. "Please try and see the truth in my words. And forgive me for not really knowing how to talk to children."
But Siegfried continued to hate his father, in part because now he knew with certainty that his hate caused his father pain. And more than he hated Sigismund, he feared him. He neither trusted nor believed anything the steward said. Those first months in the castle, he did not sleep. He could not bear the weight on the other side of the bed, no matter how luxuriant and comfortable that bed was. Every time the boy dozed off, he jolted right awake when Sigismund shifted or sighed. Siegfried kept thinking of what Frederick said during their chess meeting, about Faroald and his suspicions. Perhaps this was all a lure so that one of them - steward or chamberlain - could smother him, eliminate the threat. Even though this wasn't rational - Frederick seemed very invested in him and his progress - Siegfried could not shake his anxiety, an anxiety that overcame his body like a sickness. Living in the castle made him feel as though a million eyes were on him, always watching, searching for signs of betrayal, incompetence, impropriety. At least in the stables, he could leave training and be surrounded by familiar scents, the warm security of animals. Now, all of a sudden, he had to speak only German, walk upright, exorcise vulgarity, pretend to be someone he was not, always aware of his difference from these people which was a far greater difference than the one that separated him and the other village children.
Anxiety bound him ropelike, sapped his energy and made him incapable of rest. He never used to experience such totalizing fear, even when he was living in poverty, where there were many things worth losing sleep over. During the worst winters, people killed their very young children so as to spare them the extended pain of starvation, and this was always used as a warning to work harder. But there was also something about reaching the age of eleven, the threshold of adolescence, which brought about subtle changes that made him more suceptible to strong emotions. The end of a certain childhood boldness, the awareness of a past worth continuing by way of the same, constantly growing body, the first sense of one's accumulation of selfhood - these things incited him, like all childen of his age, to fear. Children do not believe in endings, endings are forced upon them, by self-exhaustion or by the will of others. Yet Siegfried had already suffered the profound cessations that usually befell people well into adulthood - exile, the death of a parent. Any reasonable person would look at his situation and bemoan whoever let him live without care during such a vulnerable time, as though he weren't at the mercy of forces far greater than any singular pity or compassion. Surviving kept reckoning with so much change and loss at bay, buried grief shallowly beneath the well-trodden surface of continuing life. And now he had arrived at a place of rest and security, even if against his will; the river of the world no longer tossed him to and fro like a branch or pebble, but parted around him as it does an island. Time itself seemed to slow, as life in the castle had its own predictable and often dull rhythm. Yet a boy with Siegfried's past could not believe or trust in stability. Something else would surely uproot everything once more. This, too, contributed to his fear.
Being a child still, despite how people treated him because he was intelligent, he cried when afraid. Being a boy, he hid his tears. He didn't want his father to see him weak. No one here could see him weak. The people who tolerated his weakness were lost to him. When he thought this, he buried his face in his pillow, smeared his tears and muffled all sound until he could not breathe anymore, then gasped quietly for air, breath hot against the fabric. He felt the most alone and afraid at night. In the dark, the whole world teemed with enemies, and in what dreams he had, he saw them as shadows, dragging him towards the river. Often he screamed in his sleep, his father shaking him awake. And Siegfried, terrified, would cling to his father, damp with sweat, just because his father was from the world of the living. The night terrors frightened Sigismund too, who prayed fervently to God that his son was merely feverish instead of mad or possessed by the unholy. Upon first meeting him, Siegfried seemed such a confident child. How, in private, could he suddenly be so fragile? In the darkness, the steward comforted his son, each time selfishly thankful for the opportunity to do so. "No one is here other than us. There is a guard by both staircases and outside the lord's chambers. Even if someone comes, I have my sword right next to the bed. I've been in wars, I've slept through worse. In tents, and these are solid walls. This is the most fortified castle in all of lower Styria. Try and get some sleep." And sometimes, Sigismund reached out and brushed the hair from Siegfried's forehead, first to check if he had a fever, and then repetitively, as he imagined his mother would.
However, the longer this went on, the more Sigismund began to recognize the behavior. There had always been a strange air in Pettau, he thought. Isolation made it so, in combination with its pagan past, for which the residents still, perhaps, suffered God's wrath. The town was built upon the graves of Romans, and when the Archbishop put up the castle, he embedded their little ornamental ruins into its walls, like trophies attesting to the superiority of Christendom. And a warning - who knew what the Slavs still believed. Everyone there in some way sensed that God watched Pettau more closely than other places. Sometimes, He chose certain people to remind them that even on the periphery, His will was inescapable. It wasn't just Siegfried who suffered like this, though he was the most recent case. When the young lord was the boy's age, he, too, became possessed by fear, by fantasies of falling off the watchtower to his death. It didn't matter that the crenellations came up to his chest, that there was no risk of falling unless he himself chose to jump, the lord continued to have these terrible dreams, would shout in his sleep and wake up the whole household. Clothilde had them too, a few years ago. Heavy nightmares of intruders coming into her room and ripping her clothes off. Panicked, the lady used to send Sigismund on patrol, torch in hand, to make sure nothing was there and nothing ever was. Once even the doctor was summoned because when the lady woke her daughter up from one of her dreams, Clothilde could not stand. She collapsed like a heap of rags. Mysteriously, by the time the doctor arrived, she had fully recovered. A doctor could do nothing anyway - such matters were the domain of priests. Ewald, as he had done with the others before him, gave Siegfried a lengthy litany of prayers to be said from when the sun made a line the width of his thumb in the sky until when it disappeared into darkness, and a wooden cross to be kept in bed with him so as to ward off evil.
One night, at the height of all this, Siegfried tossed and turned, and his father, who usually ignored him to spare them both embarrassment, could not stop himself from intervening. After all, the lack of rest affected him, too, made him sluggish and slow. The boy's training was languishing, and he often could be found fast asleep, leaning against the wall in the courtyard. Or at the dinner table. But mostly, Sigismund wanted to do something, anything, to ameliorate the strange terror that had begun to grip him, too.
"Siegfried," he murmured into the dark. Siegfried froze, as though caught being disobedient.
"Oh, don't go all stiff like that. Why are you afraid? There is nothing to fear. You are safer here than anywhere in the world."
Siegfried didn't agree at all, and so he lied, "It's only these nightmares. I don't wish to have them anymore." Tersely, he added, "I'm sorry for waking you."
"I don't believe you," said Sigismund, turning to face the boy. "Besides, people have dreams because God is trying to tell them something. If you change your ways, perhaps the dreams will stop. Why not tell me what happens in them?"
At first, Siegfried resisted out of embarrassment. "I don't know," he said.
"Siegfried."
"Fine. It's a stupid dream. But I'll tell you. I dream that people I cannot see come into my room and drag me down to the river where they drown me like my mother."
"It's not stupid," Sigismund said, with real compassion. He figured it would be something along those lines. "It's an awful dream, I concede you that. But did you know that other people here had dreams like yours? Frederick did, and Clothilde. They both used to scream and shout in the middle of the night."
Now Siegfried was curious, and slightly reassured of his sanity. "What were their dreams about?"
"Frederick used to dream of falling from the watchtower. But when I look back on it now, they were dreams of cowardice, and when he became more competent in his training, when he began behaving less like a child, the dreams stopped. And the girl dreamed of intruders coming in her room at night, tearing her clothes off. Later, she confessed to experiencing romantic interests for the first time. One of the garrison men's sons. They were dreams of lust, as is so common among women, and after she made right with God and reaffirmed her chastity, the dreams ended for her too."
"And what of my dreams?" Asked Siegfried, unsure if he even wanted to know, and skeptical whether the steward could really tell him.
"Your dreams, however, seem to me as though God is punishing you for distrust. If I had to guess, you think ill of people who have offered you kindness, which is a sin. But perhaps this is because, having lived as you have lived, you cannot recognize kindness. Or perhaps there was an un-kindness that is making you afraid, and if that is true, you should tell me so that I can hold whoever was unkind to you accountable."
Siegfried, who in his distress remained oblivious to Sigismund's clever parental sleight of hand, didn't realize his father could be so perceptive. True or untrue, the implications of what he said were grave. But the urge to either apologize for his behavior, or reveal to his father what Frederick had said about the chamberlain weighed on Siegfried. Would his father really believe him over Faroald, a man of Sigismund's rank? Over Frederick, his lord? Maybe such a confession would only make matters worse, make his father accuse him of meddling and intrigue? At some point in his weary deliberations, Siegfried thought indignantly to himself, Why must I think like this? I am only a child. It is absurd to be treated this way, as though I am a grown man. My world should be simple and easy. I wasn't meant to be involved in all these problems. I can't stand it, I really can't stand it. I need to sleep. None of this is worth not sleeping. And so, it was out of exhausted helplessness, rather than gamesmanship or compassion, that Siegfried decided to tell the truth to his father.
"Frederick offered to teach me chess," he said. "And when he was teaching me, he made me swear fealty to him because the chamberlain told him that I would betray him out of loyalty to my family. They think I am a spy, they don't trust me, but what can I do? Everyone here is watching me, even though I've done nothing wrong." These were among his deepest feelings, and speaking them into the world after having repressed them for so long whittled him, sentence by sentence, down to tears. "I am only a boy. Can't they see that? Can't they see that I have lost everything? My mother is gone, my family...I don't know what to do. I don't belong anywhere now. All I want is to be left alone. All I want is to sleep. Please," he cried, "I want everything to stop."
Sigismund, as he had long wanted to do, gathered his son in his arms, and after a moment's fidgety stiffness, Siegfried acquiesced, too tired to resist, too desperate for comfort. Beyond the guilty relief of having won, if through guile, his son over, it still wounded Sigismund to see that boy weep. Siegfried was so much like him, had always been so strong for him, always defiant, always hiding pain, crying only when pulled from the depths of a nightmare. And this matter with Faroald, already meddling in business that wasn't his, and Frederick, not even yet knighted, wreaking a teenager's havoc on the household, pretending to be his father.
"It's not as though you could have known otherwise, but when things like this happen, you should tell me at once. They are more my concern than yours. As for where you belong, it is with me, and, contrary to what you believe, for the better. When you look at and speak to these people, do not ever forget that you are still the steward's son, with all that entails, regardless of your mother," the steward said. He said it firmly, giving it the air of absolute truth. "And don't worry. I will deal with the chamberlain, who is acting dishonestly and outside his status, planting such ideas in Frederick's head like that. Luckily he can be put in his place. He is good for some things, Faroald, but don't ever trust him. He is loyal only to himself. All men are, to some degree but he, absolutely. There is no kindness in him, and if rumor is to believed, you are not the only bastard among this castle's household. As for Frederick, do not heed his bluster. The way things are, he still answers to his mother. He is clever beyond belief, but he thinks everything is a game. Benedicta is lady and I am her castellan. Frederick can talk all he wants at dinner but I am the one running the estate."
Siegfried looked up at his father, wiped his eyes on his sleeve. He was thankful. He wasn't in trouble. They weren't going to hurt him. After what Sigismund said, the world shrank, became more manageable, albeit pathetic. Faroald a meddler, Frederick a boy. The right people would be punished, things would be sorted out, the chamberlain in the dungeon, if there was one, Frederick no longer angry with him...And in having comforted his son, Sigismund was awash with pride. It was a new kind of pride to him. A pride that softened rather than toughened him.
"Siegfried?"
"Mm?"
"Can I give you some advice?"
Siegfried nodded sleepily.
"Stay awake just a moment, before I forget. Listen, my power can only get you so far. You have already gotten a taste of castle politics, and they are rotten, aren't they? Young as you may be, you cannot let your heart be swayed this way and that. You must be secure in your power and what you wish to use it for. Distasteful as it is, this is your world now. Tread carefully but with confidence. Fear is for battle and even there it benefits no one. You may not love me, but by blood I have an obligation to guide and protect you, an obligation no one else has. You can rest easy in that."
Satisfied by having said such noble words, Sigismund waited for Siegfried to answer. And he did, to his father's chagrin - with the steady rise and fall of his breath.
