Ten-year-old Angela watched her father’s funeral feast through a chink the curtain. Motherless, now fatherless, she didn’t know who would look after her now. Angela was scared.
An unknown voice was saying, ‘Many winters past, I, Von Sterrenberg and my beloved comrade in arms, Bromser von Rudesheim, whom we have buried today in deep sadness, each made a vow before God, to defend the other’s kindred. So, therefore, I will care for his daughter.’
This was the age of chivalry, when a knight’s honour was worth more to him than life itself.
So, Herr Werner von Sterrenberg took Angela with him on his horse and rode back to his castle, Burg Sterrenberg, perched atop a steep ravine beside the River Rhine. A widower, Herr Werner was gentle, kind and fair, and Angela was happy again. In summer she and Herr Werner’s sons, Hendrik and Konrad, played on the beach, jumping over the ‘waves’ caused by the wash of boats and barges. In winter they jousted with wooden horses and wooden swords in the great hall, getting in the way of the servants. ‘I’m a better swordsman than either of you,’ she told them, many times.
Konrad always rose to this challenge. ‘I won’t be beaten by a girl.’ Sometimes he would win and sometimes she. On the few occasions she sparred with the older brother, Henrik, he always let her beat her. No fun in that.
So Angela was happy, until she started to grow up. She expected she would marry one of the brothers. That they both admired her in their different ways, she was well aware. Hendrik, devout in faith, home-loving and solicitous with his increasingly frail father, broke into a smile which lit up his rather plain face whenever she entered the room but he said little. Once she asked him to tie a ribbon in her hair but he claimed he didn’t know how and she had to do it herself.
Konrad talked and talked. He sat with Angela as she stitched in the castle keep, regaling her with tales of knightly valour, gleaned from his frequent visits to the tavern, some true, others more embroidered than her needlework. When he sat himself down on the stool beside her, it was as if the room suddenly brightened. ‘Maybe these tales are not for a pure and beautiful lady.’ He laughed as he said this.
‘Go on, Konrad, go on.’
In 1146 Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux sailed up the River Rhine on a grand barge, seeking recruits to fight on a Crusade in the Holy Land. Herr Werner forbade his heir, Hendrik, from joining the Abbott, even though Hendrik pleaded that it was his sacred duty. Konrad wanted to go because he was bored and his father let him.
‘Will I ever see you again?’ Angela asked him as he made preparations to leave.
‘If you promise to wait for me, yes, indeed.’
‘And will you keep my heart free for me,’ she asked.
‘Heart and hand. By the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, I swear.’
After Konrad’s departure, Hendrik, urged by his father, attempted to woo Angela again, but she made it clear that her heart was promised elsewhere. Hendrik loved Angela, but, in those gallant times, a lady’s troth was sacred. Herr Werner also wished things were otherwise but he missed his younger son and longed for his safe return, so he built another castle on his land, naming it ‘Liebenstein’ because it was for two people in love.
Many years passed and news of the Crusades in the Holy Land trickled in to Rhineland, patchy and slow. Knowing he had little time left on this earth, Herr Werner, with Angela, spent many hours and days by the banks of the river, willing one of the passing ships to bear Konrad back home.
But this was not to be.
The day after the funeral, Angela sat in her usual position by the river bank without him and it was then, in the early evening, she spotted what their hearts had burned to see – a ship, still distant, making its way upstream, its sails adorned with Crusader pennants. As it came closer, her eyes made out a knight in black armour. It could be… So many times she had thought… hoped… imagined… but this time…. Yes, it was. Yes, yes, it really was.
The heavy, white overcast skies of the funeral yesterday, and the long days of poor Herr Werner’s sickness, had lifted. The sun, hidden for so long, shone into the clear water of the river and the clouds broke apart for the fresh blue sky. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she stood and waited.
She became aware of Hendrik scrambling down the cliff path behind her. She started to say to him, ‘Konrad… Konrad… he’s here, I’m so happy… happy… happ…’ She grabbed Hendrik’s elbow. ‘Oh. Oh, I don’t understand.’
Hendrik had seen what she’d seen. Without speaking, they watched the ship draw up at the Burg Sterrenberg landing stage. Neither felt able to speak.
Yet Konrad was smiling his cheeky smile which they both knew so well, and surveying his home surroundings, confident of his welcome. Beside him, holding his arm, stood a black-eyed, olive-skinned beauty, with glistening baubles around her neck and more in her loose black hair, tumbling around her face.
Angela froze, not just her body, but her brain and her heart. How dared the sun continue shining.
Konrad’s smile faded suddenly when he spotted the black flags fluttering on both castles. ‘I think my dear father has died?’
Hendrik inclined his head.
Konrad made the sign of the Cross over his gleaming armour. ‘I am grieved,’ He didn’t sound it. ‘But I must introduce you to my wife, Helen. Helen, this is my brother, Hendik, and his wife, Angela.’
‘I am not Hendrik’s wife,’ said Angela. ‘I gave my troth to you,’ she wanted to say. The words were pressing against lips, but she had her dignity.
In silence, the four of them climbed up the steep cliff path, the bride, Helen, stumbling in her flimsy sandals. Wearing shimmering silk, she shivered in the cool Germanic evening.
At the top at last, Konrad shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand. ‘I see two castles now.’
‘Yes. Because our blessed father built Burg Leibenstein for you and Angela,’ said Hendrik.
Konrad’s face, coarsened in the harsh sun of the Holy Land, creased into a frown. ‘But I assumed Angela would marry you, Hendrik.’
‘Having given her troth to you?’ Hendrik stepped forward, his fists clenched by his sides. ‘You, mein Herr, insult the honour of a lady, the lady I loved - seemingly more than you did. For three years, she has waited, refusing all other suitors, believing herself bound to you. I also held my distance, out of respect for…’ He spit out his last words. ‘For you.’
Beautiful Helen swung around to her husband. Her dark eyes bore into him like cold arrows, but he ignored her.
‘So…’ Konrad unsheathed his sword. ‘I will pay my respects to my father. Where does he lie?’
Angela heard what Konrad said, but Hendrik, appearing not to, whipped out his own sword and pointed it at Konrad. ‘You want to fight me?’ The two eyed each other, side-stepping in a circle.
‘Is this what you want, brother?’ asked Konrad. ‘You, my only flesh and blood? With my father – to whom, as you must realise, I wished to pay the customary respects with my sword – hardly cold in his grave?’
‘Don’t bring our father into this. He was a good man.’
‘Brother, you have so much. You are now Herr von Sterrenberg, lord of this castle. Make Angela Frau von Sterrenberg.’
Hendrik pointed his sword at Konrad’s throat. ‘Come on, you who fought the Infidel.’
Helen screamed. She raised her eyes to Angela in a desperate wordless appeal.
‘No.’ Angela leapt in between them. Her glare passed from one brother to the other. Then she seized Hendrik’s sword - he is too surprised to resist - and brandished at her once betrothed. ‘We used to spar with wooden toys so let us see who is the better swordsman now.’
Konrad lowered his weapon at once. ‘I cannot fight a woman.’
‘Nor can you fight your kindred. Wars and pestilence may destroy us, but we must not do this to each other.’
A minute passed. The rasping, panting breaths of the two men mocked the gentle evening.
Picking up her skirts with both hands, Angela spun around and strode back to Burg Sterrenberg, ran up to her chamber and threw herself on to her bed. Burg Leibenstein was hers no longer. Hendrik, just steps behind her, banged on her door. She didn’t open it.
‘Marry me, Angela. You know I love you.’
‘No. I thank you, Hendrik, but I cannot. I do love you, and I always will, as a brother.’
‘I don’t deserve this.’
‘No, you don’t.’
For three days, Angela remained in her chamber, speaking not even to the servants. At dawn on the fourth day, she crept back down the spiral staircase. As she opened the main door, she cast one look back into the familiar rooms where she had loved and been loved, then scrambled down the cliff path to the river and walked… and walked… and walked.
Outside the abbey walls of the convent of Bornhofen, she stopped and watched the River Rhine, her constant companion for so many years, flowing on and on to the sea. It was time for her to move on also.
‘Mother, please let me join you and the sisters,’ she begged the abbess.
‘You come to us with a troubled heart, I think, my child.’
‘Yes.’ Now Angela told her whole story and the wise abbess listened.
‘Anyone who enters this blessed order must come with a full heart of love,’ she said, ‘but yours is brim-full with anger.’
‘What can I do?’
‘Go back down to the river, and wash away your hurt. This River Rhine is wide enough and long enough for all of it.’
So she returned to the river and stood by its bank again, and wept, for her spoiled love for Konrad, for Hendrik’s wrecked love for her, for the love and care in which Herr Werner had carried her as a little girl. She cried even for black-eyed Helen, confused and cold in the German summer. When she looked into the river again, she saw brown dirt – the poison of her pain. In an instant, it was gone, washed downstream. Her heart lighter, she made her way back to the abbey.
Back at Sterrenberg, the poison of anger and hate hovered around the inhabitants like a cloud of angry bees, festering in their hearts, rotting their souls. Konrad built a wall between the two castles, Sterrenberg and Liebenstein, but the brown muck seeped through the stones.
