"It's not for us. Let him be with his family. He hasn’t seen them since he was your age."
"What are they like," Siegfried asked Walther the following day, "the Pettaus?"
"You spend too much time in the garrison's stables. If you stuck around the courtyard after training, you’d see them more."
"You know I’m not allowed."
"Who’s going to beat you? It’s been enough time now, Siegfried. Maybe you can’t go into the castle proper, but the courtyard is outside and the men at gate know you well since you clean the shit off their horses."
"What if my father catches sight of me? Or his wife?"
They won’t say anything to spare a fight among themselves. Besides, Hilda has been ill and your father is out in Holermus dealing with the wine situation. At least that’s what I heard at dinner last week."
"Yes, Audowin said something about that. What is the wine situation?"
"The Pettaus planted their vineyards too close to the border because the soil is better for it there. That’s the situation."
"It’s amazing," remarked Siegfried, "He’s my father and I never see him. Not that I ever want to."
"I think he watches you," said Walther uncomfortably. "He talks to my father at dinner every night. They’ve known one another since boyhood. Besides, you’ve definitely seen all these people before, especially the cup-bearer, the chamberlain, the younger son, you just don’t recognize them because they have their horses brought to them, not the other way around, and by the time they leave they’re armed. But the women, you’ll never see unless you spend all day in the courtyard."
"What about Frederick? Sometimes in the morning I see a well-dressed boy milling about in that part of the castle, you know the second floor with all the columns that open up to the courtyard. Guarded all the time. Not a hallway but –"
"The mezzanine."
"Yes, whatever that is. Anyway, the boy has black hair…but I think he was here before."
"Really curly hair?"
"Yeah."
"That’s Otto, the younger brother. His uncle is exchanging Frederick for him. At least father says so. He’s supposed to leave soon, I think."
Siegfried kicked around a pebble, half listening.
"Why are they so damn elusive?"
Walther folded his arms. "It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter and stinks of shit and piss outside. If you lived in the castle, you’d never leave either. And Otto does go out, usually hunting. Your head is just so far up your own ass you couldn’t tell a nobleman from the broad side of a barn."
Siegfried laughed. He took the insult as a point of pride. Why should he care? "Well, how many are there?"
"The lady, four boys and two girls. Three if you count the older sister but she was married off before I was born. Stay in the courtyard with me tomorrow. Frederick and my father have practice."
Hidden among the columns of the ground floor colonnade, Walther and Siegfried waited for the marshal to arrive from the west tower where the armory was, and for Frederick to come out of the castle.
"Pay attention," whispered Walther, as the door opened.
"It’s not him," said Siegfried.
"No, you're right - it’s the lady’s attendant, which means the lady is coming." A few other figures appeared too, all men dressed in well-made clothing.
"Who are they?"
"I don’t know. They came with Frederick. I think they’re his uncle’s men."
"Who’s his uncle?"
"Otto of Ehrnegg. You wouldn’t know who that is anyway. The last free member of the Ehrneggs, nobles who live in the Lungau near Austria."
"What do you mean by free?"
"They ran out of equally noble people to marry and now they have to marry ministerials like the Pettaus, who aren’t free by birth."
Siegfried smiled, more of a snarl. "This is news to me, about the Pettaus."
"From your perspective. Anyway, I don’t know a whit more," conceded Walther. "It’s something I hear talked about at dinner. But I think the difference is the Pettaus have to answer to the Archbishop of Salzburg while the Ehrneggs had to answer to no one but themselves."
"Like counts?"
"I guess. But less rich. Look, there’s Lady Benedicta."
When the lady walked into the courtyard, her attendant followed her so as to carry the train of her patterned, yellow-dyed shift. As she walked, a coin purse tied to the girdle cinched high on her slender waist moved with her like a pendulum. Her sleeves, too, nearly touched the ground. All that fabric, fabric with a luster Siegfried had never seen before, made sumptuous shapes as she walked. Being a widow, she kept her hair hidden in a barbette, though Frederick could tell it was dark by the color of her eyebrows. The white of the barbette gave Benedicta an unusual pallor against which her pert mouth seemed especially dark. Upon seeing the party waiting for her, she smiled, revealing both dimpled cheeks and crow’s feet. Pretty was not a word Siegfried would use to describe her. She was something else, the thing that older women were.
Standing beside her was a boy a little older than Siegfried. The gentle way she touched him meant that he was another of her sons, one who, by way of his difference from her, must have looked more like their father. Blond, double-chinned.
"Who is that?"
"Heinrich. The third oldest."
"And why doesn’t Heinrich train with us?" Asked Siegfried, sizing the boy up.
"Because he’s going into the clergy," said Walther. "All the sons after the second always do. And besides, look at him. Pillowy as a dove."
"How old is Frederick?"
"Seventeen, I reckon. And Otto is fifteen. Heinrich is thirteen. At least I think. I could have it all wrong. They were all born one after the other. It's a miracle the lady kept her figure."
All of a sudden, everyone’s heads turned, and there was Ermenrich, walking across the courtyard in full armor, minus a helm. Siegfried’s pupils widened. He’d never seen the marshal in all his finery. The metal moved together in a mesh, shining like a thousand coins. And the sharpness of his sword - definitely different than the one he used at practice. Benedicta walked over and kissed the marshal on the cheek.
"I hope he’s learned something in Graz, my lady," Ermenrich said. "Besides poetry."
The lady nodded demurely and returned to her place in the shade.
"Here comes Frederick now," Walther said, pointing at the castle door. "Otto’s with him." Siegfried picked up on Otto first, whose hair resembled a hedge. When he smiled at the crowd, a gap appeared between his two front teeth. Walter joked that when Otto laughed, that gap made a whistle. Otto looked bigger up close. Broad as a bridge. In fact, he looked bigger and broader than his older brother, who finally came into view beside him.
This was the first time Siegfried ever saw Frederick, who stood tall, whose teeth were white in his wide mouth, whose hair was dark as pitch. Confident, arrogant. Already handsome, which only slightly abetted the other two attributes. An immediately alluring, powerful figure. Dressed in his silk Pettau surcoat, he pulled the coif of mail over his head.
"We will all have time to talk at dinner," he joked loudly, resting his hand on the pommel of his sword. Its hilt was embellished with a big, round onyx. Like the hair, Siegfried reckoned, trying his best not to be captivated by everything he saw.
"My lord," Ermenrich addressed him, bowing deeply.
"I’m surprised you held back this long, Ermenrich. I thought to myself, right when I get off the horse, the marshal will be waiting for me."
"A man needs his rest."
Siegfried had never seen the marshal grin like that before, so happy to see someone. It made the boy a little jealous. Frederick and Ermenrich stood at attention and saluted one another.
It was one thing for Siegfried to practice swordsmanship every day. To spar with the marshal within the confines of his ability, the marshal taking care to hold his pupil accountable to a certain level of prowess. Sometimes, the garrison men would pick spats with each other outside the stables, but the usually drunken nature of this fighting rendered it inelegant and taught the boy nothing. From afar, sometimes the guards could be seen tilting at one another in the practice field, with spears, on horseback. The boy knew real fighting happened out of sight, and was not pretty to watch. Hence, nothing had prepared Siegfried for the full force of two men at the height of their skill locked in total, committed combat.
The sheer sound of it. Strikes pinging off the walls of the courtyard, armor jangling and shirking, the heavy steps, the grunting, the shearing of metal on metal. Watching them, Siegfried realized he’d never landed an unflinching blow in his life and neither had Walther or any of the other boys. And the way they moved with that armor, despite its heaviness. Running and turning and ducking and swinging, and fast, too, because if you weren’t fast, you made mistakes. Could the marshal make mistakes? Siegfried never thought to ask such a question before. The steward was real to him, the steward’s violence he understood. But the marshal and the lord and all the others seemed no more real to him than characters from stories. It occurred to the boy only then that Ermenrich, his teacher, could kill and probably already had killed countless people. In battle or otherwise. And that he was training Siegfried and Walther and the others for the same life.
Ermenrich may have been slower than his young partner, but half a life of wartime kept him clever and agile. Prepared for anything. A rasher man would constantly be moving, always on the offensive, cutting and cutting, but Ermenrich knew he’d save energy by parrying as long as possible until an opening presented itself. The way marshal and pupil watched one another conveyed years and years of mutual knowledge. Frederick, on the other hand, was utter perfection, every step as though carved out for him. When Frederick’s sword struck, sparks flew, just like in the stories. And when he fought, his eyes were not so different from the sparks. Everyone could tell he loved fighting for what it was, something spectacular that could be done with the body, his body. The more-ness of it. Again, he shouted, again, again.
"When does it end?" Siegfried asked. "When they kill one another?"
"A tap will suffice."
But minutes upon minutes passed and neither man seemed to be able to get a tap in, that is, until Ermenrich’s foot slid out a little too far, he adjusted a little too slowly, and sure enough Frederick’s sword made contact with the marshal’s arm. Judging by the gasps of the other spectators, this was not the expected result.
"Yes," Frederick shouted, cackling, "Yes! Oh God. Oh, God, finally..." He threw the coif backwards, his black hair slick with sweat, looked up at the sky, opened his arms, sword still in hand. Ermenrich frowned, more at the lack of manners than the inevitable result of the pupil reigning victorious over the master. He stamped his foot in the dirt, and Frederick, remembering himself, bowed and saluted. Suddenly a boy again.
"Forgive me, marshal."
"Always," said Ermenrich, who embraced him, his face splitting into a grin.
A few days later, when Otto set off on his journey into the courtly world, the whole town came by to watch him leave. He looked beautiful like that, Otto. On a white horse, his family’s strange, barbed escutcheon emblazoned across silk “as white as swan feathers” (said Walther, no poet); his horse caparisoned and armored. Each man in his party holding his helm in the crook of his elbow. Otto’s black hair against blue sky.
"Those Pettaus would look like Saracens were it not for the pale skin," remarked Siegfried. "Where on earth do they get that hair from?"
"Who cares," answered Walther. "You saw Frederick fight. If he came at you, you wouldn’t be able to tell black from blond, how quick he’d have you on the ground."
"Well they shit the same as you and me."
"You’re in a bad mood, Siegfried."
As Otto passed, he saw Walther and Siegfried standing at the side of the road and, recognizing the marshal’s son, waved to them. Only Walther waved back.
