Chapter II: Part 2

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!

I swayed on my feet, staggered and fell. I fell head first into soft sand and heard a great thunder in my ear and a sound like whistling, like the whistle of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, in my chest. And when I got back up the awful spectre had vanished from the bench and so had the sword from the ground. But my cousin, the leper mother, was still standing next to me, wrapped in her black cloak. But I had knelt down, grasped the hem of her garment and shouted:

"Mother, it isn't so! Tell me it isn't so, mother!"

My cousin took one of her hands out of the folds of her cloak as if she wanted to pull my hands away, but she only covered her eyes with it and said with a deep sigh: "It is so! Who can fight against God's will?"

Then she pulled me up and laid her arm on my shoulder and turned round back in the direction of the town. I pulled myself away from her and pushed her back brutally and ran to the door of Saint John's Church sick bay. She ran after me, held me back and shouted over the wind:

"Come, my son. I won't let you and neither will he let you. Let it be. He has taken an oath on it. No-one must come near him from the land of the living. My heart bleeds like yours, my son. But he's right and we must act in accordance with his will."

I called out: "Michael! Michael!"

My only answer was the sound of the sharp, hissing wind through the dry grass. My old, grey-haired cousin had to support me, the strong young man, and lead me like a child back to the road leading to the town. My feet were like a weight of iron and my knees like broken reeds. My eyes beheld chaos.

Woe is me, what had become of the world? There loomed the hundred ramparts and battlements, gables and towers of the great dear town of Nuremberg and over there on the left the ruin of the citadel, which the brave knight Michael had also helped to conquer for our beloved community. Never had my eye other than with joy and hope rested thereon, whatever the way I chose to take to get there. Now there was nothing left of it. Had flames with a thousand red tongues suddenly licked the roofs, surrounded the towers and, as in a rush of wind born of an apocalypse, swallowed the town whole, my view of what was there could not have witnessed greater annihilation.

I was horrified by Nuremberg, how it looked, how it lay there darkly under the dark evening sky. Flames had already licked the citadel. There it lay, already blackened by torches, with burst roofs, broken towers, demolished walls! What did I care now if the town around it still stood upright?

Everything mocked and laughed at me. No green leaf, no flower, no ray of light had been left intact to comfort suffering humanity. It was laughable that we had gone out to rescue a crown for an empire that was no longer there. The Greek from Chios, my clever teacher, Theodoros Antoniades, had done the right thing. He had fled from his homeland before the last pillars and columns shattered and, in this bad moment, I derived comfort from one thing only and that was in the thought that I should do as he had and set off into the unknown devoid of property, homeland, wishes and hopes.

It degraded me that I did not think once then of Mechthild Grossin, but that too would come by and by.

We walked slowly and the Mater Leprosorum talked to me constantly, but I heard little in my state of dizziness. But the little I did hear was each time like a bolt of lightning on a thundery night. The leper mother told me how the poor man had spoken to her softly out of the blue before the sick bay of St John's Church.

In Ofen in Hungary leprosy fell on the German contingent that had gone there with the crown. Many soldiers in the detachment had died there, many others had simply stayed. Some had died on the way. Only Michael Groland had got back home, supporting himself on his knight's sword.

"Nobody knows him here in St John's hospice," said the cousin. "Even his own mother would not know him any more. I did not recognize him. You would not recognize him. God's hand has smitten him horribly. Your friend has descended into hell, misery has buried him alive. Today he has lost all the vanity of earthly desires. Tell me what we should do, my son! His will is to remain missing. Will you comply with it? Will you take upon yourself the burden of silence when it comes to Mechthild?"

Mechthilde! Mechthilde! That was the name that pushed me even deeper into the abyss and yet alone had the potential to redeem me. I began to remember her name again.

I asked my cousin a direct question. "You did not recognize him, cousin Cecilia, but you saw him. You are a mother to these lepers. You have the answer. Is there any hope of him recovering? Is there any hope that we can have him back again if we wait a year, two years, ten years?"

Cousin Stollhoferin lowered her head and thought about this for a long time. We stood on the bridge at the New Gate and those who guarded it had already uncovered their heads before the leper mother. My cousin bowed to me and said: "God's will be done and He is wholly good as He is wholly awesome. I will not mention the homecoming of her betrothed to Mechthild."

Then I remembered that night, that sleepless night, that followed this day of horrors and I weighed my strength to bear with discretion the fate of my two friends through years to come.

"He can bear it!" said my cousin as if she could read the innermost thoughts of my heart as from a slate. "He can bear it. He is a true knight. He has fought for the crown of life and will attain it."

I too was able to bear it.

The summer air is still full of the wails that are buzzing about in the churchyard of Saint Sebaldus. How this same air would tremble if that wild and fiery Franciscan there could speak as urgently as the drops of black ink now flowing from my quill pen down onto a white sheet of parchment. From leaving my room to go to the hospice of Saint John to coming back to it again my life had changed. Nothing was left of the person who had gone out only two hours before. Everything now seemed strange to me and when I lay there on my bed that night the darkness was like a tombstone in a crypt. I lay awake all night without being able to move. In the sick bay of Saint John my friend and brother also lay awake among the legion of the lost and waited, as did I, for a new day to dawn in abject misery.

And dawn broke, it was day and I could not understand how people went back to their daily work. It came as a shock to me that people in Banner Street did not stop and point to my house quite grief-stricken. I thought that even my worst enemy would have done as much.

I only understood that people were going about the hard business of earning a living when I saw my friend's poor betrothed, having stepped through the narrow door of her house into the garden, wander calmly amid the autumnal trees, over fallen branches through brown bushes. My teacher of Greek Theodoros came and saw at a glance that I was ill and asked after me most anxiously. He took leave of me shaking his head. Then a messenger came from Konrad Senior and Peter Junior with a document. It demanded legal support and advice from me because of a charitable foundation of these gentlemen for an enclosed order of nuns, and this was a good thing, for the act of doing this plunged me once more into the hurly-burly of a working day and did not leave me without anything to do as my grief would have wished. Other people whose futile needs and disputes I had to settle and decide according to the rule of law in Nuremberg, came and went and I was obliged to converse with them till evening and then night came round again. This was a very good thing, but it did not save me from the dread inspired by darkness.

On the second day after my meeting at the stone cross at the gate to Saint John's Church I eventually came to the attention of my fair female next door neighbour for the first time since then. I took it as good fortune that Master Theodoros Antoniades had already been there before me and had had misgivings about me being threatened by a serious illness. Mechthilde was most understanding towards me and I had to laugh even with a broken heart and I replied in a light tone that no bodily fragility oppressed me and no hidden torment of love and no mean rejection had made my cheeks pale so fast and furrowed my brow with such rapidity.

This was a time of change for me. These were days to make my bones rot and crumble and the blood run thicker in my veins. By night and by day I wandered through fields, gnashing my teeth as I did so in my struggles with a gruesome ghost. The shadow of the hooded leper never once left my side.

"If you force your way into his lostness, he will kill himself. He has sworn he will!" said my cousin Cecilia. "He is a true knight. He wants to bear his fate alone. His message to you through me is that you should be happy, my son. You should think that he fell in battle or died in Hungary. You should remember him amicably in the circle of your comrades and not grieve for him."

"And what about Mechthild?" I asked. And cousin Cecilia waved me aside and silently left me.

Friends and relations made more of me then than at other times of year, but the hardest obstacle I had to overcome was Mechthilde's tender loving care. November came and with it the first snow of winter. They danced and feasted a lot and made a big thing of it in Nuremberg and pulled me out of every hiding place and dragged me forcibly with threats to their junketings to rid me of my fancies and to make my viscous blood flow soundly and freely again. They had no idea what I saw in their banqueting halls nor of what I was not permitted to talk about. Michael Groland's sword, the sword of my friend and brother stood everywhere stuck in the ground before me, stood to ward off every joy and every pleasure. How could I reach out my own hand to the pretty, smiling girl who so friendlily offered me hers so that I could dance with her? The sword stood everywhere in my way, not just in the banqueting hall, but also in church, in lawyers' chambers, in my own quiet room. I could not get past it--it stood there on the defensive and all lust for life deserted me. There was no getting away from that sword that my dear friend had once so happily and bravely wielded.

The living corpse's bride to be was further transformed in her sweet trust in God's goodness during November and December of that ill-fated year. She too, in obedience to time-honoured custom, was not allowed to miss youthful festivals and dances. Even she, a happy prisoner of hope, who would have much preferred to stay behind in the peace and solitude of her little room, had had to socialize and so we were always bumping into each other and her fine trust and confidence made the frightful burden on my soul even heavier from one day to the next. When she suddenly broke away from me, it was like when a crossbow bolt is pulled from a wound in one's side and in the red flow of blood that then spurts out the rubble and corpse-strewn waste of the battlefield sinks around one, all is eclipsed and the whole world vanishes before one's eyes.

Just before Christmas Mechthild came home beaming in all the fullness of her happiness from the house of Sigmund Stromer where Barbara Stromerin had made ready a festivity. Mysteriously and out of breath one of the Grosse family maids summoned me that very same night to meet with her young mistress. With her finger to her lips, half way between laughter and tears, Mechthildis whispered to me that a great and precious piece of news had gone from ear to ear in Herr Stromer's house among the female guests. It was still a mystery, but still a truth for all that--the Holy Roman Empire's crown, the sword and the mantle of Charlemagne was coming back to Nuremberg; all the imperial treasures were returning to Nuremberg as of right. There was no doubt about it. The Emperor wanted it, the council knew about it and Barbara Stromerin had also known about it and because of the good knight Michael Groland the great and splendid mystery had circulated among the young women in the mayor's house, but without his knowledge.

"It's the return of summer, my friend!" cried Mechthild. "Blessed be the Emperor for returning the crown to our safekeeping. All my companions kissed me and we females were more pleased about it than the mayor and his aldermen. You be pleased about it too, dear friend, and shake off the grief that oppresses you and which I should like to redeem you from with my own heart's blood. Why do you not wish to be happy with your brother and myself now that the good old days will soon be with us again and twice the good fortune?"

The friends of Barbara Stromer really were the first ones in Nuremberg to know of the planned return of the imperial crown jewels, for they, the mayor and the Collegium Triumvirorum, the three most highly placed people in the town, had held the key to these treasures formerly and the key to the gate of the town and its banners.

Mechthild had brought the news home from the mayor's wife's get-together as a great mystery and made me swear not to divulge it, although it had spread from the party already throughout the town and was arousing the highest degree of jubilation in every heart.

There it was then! What I had borne alone in deference to my unhappy friend and the leper mother as long as I could keep it secret, had now to come out and there were no dams to throw up against it. The great honour that had fallen to my native town was the straw that broke the camel's back of our misfortune and on the same night on which Mechthild had returned in such bliss from Sigmund Stromer's house, I confided my fear and my suffering to Master Theodoros Antoniades. Of the hundreds of people that I knew and interacted with, he was the only one to whom I wanted to and could disclose all the misery in my soul.

The homeless Greek listened to me silently and with a deeply furrowed brow. Then he said this to me: "On the island of Chios, under the burning rubble of my home town, I left behind the corpses of my wife and my young sons and daughters. My homeland is perishing, has perished. The imperial eagle of the Eastern Roman Empire circles the old walls of great emperors with weary wings. There is no salvation for the great city of Constantinople. I carry a dead language among foreigners and when they are pleased with its beauty, the pain of loss I feel is that much greater. I carry my pain in silence, my son, and wait to see what God will do. The world is coming to an end not only for the ancient might and splendour of Byzantium. Who will care much for the time of its fall when it finally comes? The youngest of the young are prematurely old. Why should they care? Who still wants to defend himself against the inevitable Day of Judgement? I remember that day when the fair maid came to us and drove you two young men out to fight in that futile struggle. If you want me to, my son, I'll tell Mechthild what fate has had in store for her."

I led my Greek schoolmaster to my cousin Cecilia Stollhoferin, the leper mother, and the following morning all three of us went to see the betrothed of Michael Groland, opened up for her the Book of the Dead and pointed to the entry in letters of flame that determined her fate.

There comes to my ear a sound of trumpets and trombones which does not accompany the shouting coming from the churchyard of Saint Sebaldus. Hark to the bells once again, Saint Benedicta first and foremost! Yes, now the Preacher Johannes has said what he had to say. The people of Nuremberg process through the streets with psalms and litanies strewing ashes on their heads in the darkest corners of their houses and tomorrow they will resume their life of old. The noise of trumpets and trombones that imbues the story of my own life comes from the day after the Feast of Our Blessed Lady's Annunciation during Lent of the year 1424, for on this day the German imperial crown came back to Nuremberg.

Sigmund Stromer and Sebaldus Pfinzing had been sent by the town council to Ofen, to King Sigismund, and, in total confidentiality and secrecy the King of Rome had handed over to them the regalia. So secret was this transaction that no more than six people knew about it. And a week after Candlemas the great regalia were loaded by Nuremberg's twin envoys onto a waggon whose drivers thought they were carrying a load of the fish they call sturgeon. It was only when they were a mile from Nuremberg that the drivers learned just what an honour they had been found worthy of and, getting off their horses with fearful reverence, they humbled themselves in the dust and venerated the imperial regalia on their knees.

Bells and people singing! Woodwinds and trumpets! We all turned out when the approach of the envoys and the treasure they were bringing with them was rumoured. By the thousand and ten thousand--men and women, greybeards and children, we went to meet the crown. A greater day since records began has not been listed in the town's chronicles. Before all others though the heavy laden came as they did every year on the feast of the Arms of Christ, as long as the regalia were kept in the town's care, to lay their sorrows down in front of Our Lord's weapons and to pray for redemption. All sick people who could walk knelt with others at the roadside and all those who suffered from anguish of mind threw themselves down next to those who had only bodily ailments. There were no distinctions made between people. No class of people was allowed to take precedence over any other class. Before the crown, sceptre, sword and orb of the holy German race, before the holy iron of the lance that opened Christ's side, before the five thorns of his crown of thorns all were accounted equal, all brothers and sisters in this vale of tears we call the world. In the ranks of the young women went the saddest of them, Mechthilde, to the Church of the Holy Ghost, where, in the middle of the institution founded by her ancestor, Konrad Grossen, in the garden frequented by the lepers, the holy regalia had their dwelling formerly and where they were now to be housed again.

A hundred years before one slept there--a rich man, a poor man, a leper himself, Konrad, one of the Hainzen, there in the spot where today the imperial regalia of the German people rest safely. He was sleeping in his garden under a linden tree and there came to him in sleep a dream of a great treasure that lay in the ground owned by his forebears. And the place where the treasure was was also shown to him and the leper went there in his dream and followed a bright light leading him on. In order to mark the spot that had been indicated to him he grabbed a handful of leaves from the linden tree and put them where the treasure was buried. Then he woke up and remembered. When he wandered round the garden full of doubt and did not know if he should take things at face value, he found there the little heap of linden leaves and recovered with it a belief in the truth of his dream. His family came to visit him and listened to his wonderful story with astonishment. Then they started to help him dig up the ground. Konrad the leper made a promise to God that he would use anything he found in the service of the poor and sick, and behold: a great treasure really was excavated from the garden of the Hainzen of Pegnitz and Konrad kept to his vow. The hospice and the Church of the Holy Ghost were founded and built on the strength of the subterranean treasure, and now the imperial crown reposes in the place where the leper's hand and will pointed out to architect and stone masons the site they were about to build on. The man stricken with leprosy, as I have already mentioned elsewhere in this chronicle, was henceforth known as Konrad the Great and, by way of an eternal memorial to him, Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian gave him in his coat of arms the twenty-four linden leaves together with the hill to which he took them in his dream.

While Mechthild Grossin has made her way to the porch of the Holy Ghost Church to wait for the crown, I too have gone with my companions and others to the door of this church. Half a mile from the town we caught sight of the waggon and its escort.

The horses were indeed imposing in their harnesses and went with heads bowed as if they knew what they were pulling. And Sigismund Stromer and Sebaldus Pfinzing walked bareheaded on the right and the left of the waggon respectively. The armed escort rode in silence and it was quiet too in the crowd coming out of the town. The people's songs of praise fell silent and one could only still hear in the distance the bells ring out from all the towers of Nuremberg. Those who were on horseback got down and knelt at the roadside still holding on to the reins. Everyone knelt down and we watched as the waggon that was laden with so great a treasure and had come here all the way from Blindenburg in Hungary slowly moved towards us. And when it had gone past each of us got up off our knees once more, joined the procession and once again intoned songs of praise. In the town all the bells rang more and more brightly and joyfully and from its walls and towers too thousands rejoiced. Then we saw quite clearly how great a passion play old Nuremberg was playing host to within its noble walls. There was a throng from the gates of the town through all the streets and market places like a raging sea, but even where the throng was thickest that day no harsh words or blows were proffered. No knife or sword was loosened from its sheath. Each person felt a restraining hand on their heart and the wildest among them let themselves be pushed into corners and dead ends without complaint.

Thus we moved on with the crown through the streets to the square in front of the Church of the Holy Ghost. How I felt in that great swell of people pushing and shoving me willy nilly I cannot put into words. I was in a tearful and yet sweet state of ecstasy. My soul was trapped and earthbound and yet hovered high up over things of earth and there was in me a feeling of a splendid pardon I was torn away from. And then we arrived in the square in front of the Church of the Holy Ghost where with a legion of young women, councillors and clergy the town's most unfortunate inhabitants awaited the coming of the regalia.

No barrier had been erected. All the sick and suffering who wanted to go had been allowed to go. And there they all were--the unclean from Saint John's hospice, the homeless of Saint Martha's parish, the poor of every charitable foundation. They are all permitted to touch the casket of the living presence with their hands and to implore for help, for no sanctuary is held to be more gracious than this one that contains the crown of the German people and the trappings of Christ!

Tolle! Lege! The restraining hand that all of us felt on their hearts suddenly glowed in mine like fire then froze like ice. With outstretched arms the leper mother was making a way through the crowd for a hooded man and, on the steps of the church, I caught a brief glimpse of Master Theodoros near a pale female face. With beating heart I now set down what happened next.

The people were like a wall separating me from the two lovers and holding me upright. I had now lost sight of Master Theodoros, the hooded Michael Groland and my cousin Cecilia. But I could still see over the heads of the crowd the fair pale virgin on the steps in the last rays of the setting sun standing in the middle of her family and looking down at the waggon with the holy casket and the bad, horrific legion of the lost and sick. A memory came back to me then of that time when, in the Church of the Holy Cross in Karlstein castle, the good knight Michael Groland had knelt down next to me in front of the imperial crown and swore that he would gain the Empire's other crown, the best wife from the best town in the Empire. And as this thought came to me there was a cry of amazement and the crowd drew back and in the evening light I saw Mechthilde smiling over the heads of the people and waving at the lepers. I felt myself shiver with fright and watched the maid climb down and vanish from under the red light that stained the portal of the Church of the Holy Ghost, but a sudden racket moved the people mightily. Under the porch the other young women raised their arms and cried out. The councillors too rushed forward and climbed down. I was dragged forward by a human surge and an arm grabbed me just in time and pulled me away from horses' hooves just as the imperial regalia were passing. The horses had reared and kicked out, but Master Theodoros Antoniades had saved me from their hooves and the feet of the crowd. And behold, and I saw before the shrine that concealed the most holy relics of the German nation that love truly is stronger than death, yes, even a fate worse than death.

In vain my friend and brother tried to draw back to the gruesome crush of his co-sufferers. The sword that had stood between him and the world outside the hospice of Saint John had no power here to protect him. In vain the grey-haired leper mother threw herself in Mechthild's way and tried to push her back with outstretched arms. In vain her relatives, her parents and her brothers rushed up to her. No-one was able to hold Mechthild back. She advanced with a firm step and placed both her arms on the shoulders of the lost one and laid her fair pale cheek against the hair shirt covering his chest. Healthy people drew back in fear whereas the lepers of Saint John's sick bay pushed forward. Deep silence descended.