The Master's Apprentice, page 16
part #1 of Faust Series
Johann took the sack without comment, stood up, and walked to the door. He had barely made it outside when he sensed that he was being followed. Slowly, he turned around. There were three young men, two of them holding gnarly sticks. The third one grasped a knife and approached Johann menacingly.
“What have you done with my little sister?” shouted the young man suddenly, his face contorted with anger. “Did you eat her like a wolf? Are you a werewolf?”
Johann was stiff with fright. “I . . . I’m just a plain tinker,” he stammered. “I’m traveling with my master . . . We’d never—”
“You steal our children!” shouted the second man, cutting him off. He swung his cudgel. “Admit it! Our little Elsbeth and all the others. You steal them at night and you eat them!”
“But . . . that’s nonsense!” Johann started walking backward. He raised his hands defensively. “We are no—”
A rock struck his head. A boy standing by the well had thrown it. The giggling maids were long gone. Instead, Johann was facing a growing number of angry young men.
“Grab him!” shouted one of them. “We’ll beat the truth out of him. And then let’s burn him like a Judas puppet so his black soul can’t harm us any longer!”
Another stone hit Johann on the head. He turned around and a cudgel came down hard on his back. The pain made him gag.
“Club him to death like a dog!” screamed someone. “Just look at him! With his black hair and evil eyes. He’s Satan’s henchman! He killed our children!”
“Satan, Satan!” shouted the others.
Johann stumbled and fell, then got back on his feet before more blows struck him. Another rock whirred past his head. He started running down the road as fast as he could, the mob screaming and yelling behind him. The sack over his shoulder felt like it was filled with rocks. He dropped it into the ditch and ran, stones and clumps of ice raining down on him. For a while he still heard steps behind him, but they faded until he couldn’t hear them at all. None of the villagers seemed to pursue him any longer, but he kept running as if the devil were after him. Finally, he reached the part of the woods that led up the hill to the tower. He turned off the road, followed the muddy path, and, panting heavily, arrived at the tower.
“Master!” he called out and rapped at the door. “Something . . . something happened! We must leave, now!”
But there was no answer. When Johann opened the door, the room on the other side was empty. The fire had gone out.
There was no sign of the master.
For a while, Johann stood in the middle of the chamber, breathing heavily and listening for any sound. But everything was silent. The books were still lying on the table, next to the abbot’s birth chart. Red embers still glowed in the ashes, and the room smelled of smoke and faintly of sulfur. There was also another smell, but Johann couldn’t place it.
His heart still racing, Johann thought about how narrowly he’d escaped death. There was no doubt in his mind that the villagers would have stoned or beaten him to death if he hadn’t managed to run away.
He particularly remembered one thing they’d said.
You steal our children . . . You steal them at night and you eat them . . .
It would seem that here, too, children had been going missing, just like in Knittlingen all those months ago. In both cases, the master had been staying nearby. Johann thought about how satisfied and fleshy Tonio looked every time he returned from his nightly excursions. He thought about the clay jugs and the wet sacks—especially the wet sacks.
You eat them . . .
Johann shook himself as though waking from an evil nightmare. What a load of nonsense. Tonio del Moravia may have been a gloomy-looking fellow, a conjurer, an astrologer, and a chiromancer, but he was no man-eating monster. He was a wise and stern mentor, a man who could teach him a lot.
You eat them . . .
Johann’s eyes turned to the stairs. What in God’s name was his master up to in his chamber? Tonio had strictly forbidden him to enter the third floor. But now doubts gnawed at Johann like a thousand tiny rats. He needed to find out what went on upstairs. He’d never stop worrying about it otherwise. He wondered about his chances of getting caught. Tonio had probably gone out for a while, not expecting Johann home before afternoon. He still had time.
Provided the villagers didn’t get here first to smoke out the alleged sorcerers.
Quietly, Johann sneaked up to his chamber and farther up the stairs to the trapdoor, which was usually bolted shut. Whenever the master left the house, he locked the bolt with a heavy padlock, and the key was always on his belt. But to Johann’s surprise the bolt wasn’t even pushed shut. Had the master forgotten to lock it? Or was he asleep upstairs?
Johann listened. On many occasions he had heard Tonio muttering until late at night, heavy footsteps thumping back and forth, and a dragging noise, as if something heavy was being pulled across the chamber floor. But now everything was silent: no footsteps, no muttering, no snoring, not even breathing.
For some reason Johann couldn’t explain, he made the sign of the cross. Then he pushed against the trapdoor. It opened with a soft creak. Johann paused, waiting for an angry scream, but nothing happened. So he opened the door completely and climbed the remaining stairs until he stood inside the master’s room.
Like in his own chamber, there was a bed and a table covered in books. A pile of clothes sat next to a chest in one corner, the windows were covered in cobwebs moving in the wind, and nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary.
Except for the floor.
A huge pentagram had been painted on the floor, taking up almost the entire room. At each tip of the five-pointed star stood a burned-out candle, each candle surrounded by a pool of half-cooled wax. Johann knelt down and studied the rust-colored pentagram more closely. The paint was dry and exuded a faintly sweet smell—the same smell Johann had noticed downstairs. Johann sniffed again. It was just how it used to smell at home in Knittlingen when his stepfather butchered a pig to make sausage and ham.
It was the smell of blood.
You eat them . . .
A ladder led up to a square opening in the ceiling. In a daze, Johann climbed the few rungs until his head was outside, overlooking the platform that formed the tower’s roof. A cold wind blew into his face. He spotted a strange construction set up on the roof: a large tube about as long as his arm resting on a stand. Johann guessed it must have been in one of the heavy crates he’d had to lift off the wagon and carry up the tower. He couldn’t figure out what the apparatus might be. Was that the master’s secret? But why wasn’t Johann allowed to know about it? And what was the pentagram about?
Johann couldn’t resist the temptation. He walked over to the tube; it was made of copper and shaped like a narrow funnel. Each end was covered with a pane of glass, reminding Johann of the eye glasses Father Antonius used to wear occasionally. The monk had told him they helped him to better decipher the tiny writing in books. Could this mysterious construction also be for reading books? Then he’d probably have to look through it.
He reached for the tube with trembling hands and brought his eye down to the skinny end. At first he saw nothing, just blurred blackness. Then he noticed that he could move the tube up and down and left and right. He played around for a bit—and started with fright.
The mountains that had been so far away a moment ago suddenly stood right before him, as if he could touch them with his hand. He clearly saw the snow glistening in the sun, the rugged rocks, and an eagle circling the mountaintops, just as though they were right there in front of him. When he stepped back, everything was far away again. What a wondrous toy this was! Johann thought of the printing press in the Maulbronn monastery. This tube, too, seemed like an invention capable of changing the world. Was it powerful enough to let him see the stars up close? Would it be possible to see beyond the eighth sphere?
More confident now, Johann spun the tube in the other direction, toward the forest. Again, everything was blurry at first, but after a while he could make out details. The village church looked as if it were directly in front of him, then the road, and the path winding its way up through the woods to the tower.
And the master.
Johann screamed and let go of the tube as if he’d burned his fingers. He had seen the master’s sinister-looking face and his thin black hair blowing in the wind. Tonio had appeared so close—and he seemed to have looked right into Johann’s eyes. Without the tube, Johann saw only a black dot, but it steadily grew larger as the master rushed up the path.
Johann prayed that Tonio hadn’t seen him on the platform. He climbed down the ladder as fast as he could, raced through the master’s chamber past the pentagram and the pile of clothes, down the stairs into his own room, and finally down to the first floor, where he quickly sat in front of the cold fireplace with a book in his hands, pretending he’d been reading it all along.
Soon enough he heard the master’s footsteps outside. The door was pushed open and Tonio entered. He had apparently been walking fast; sweat gleamed on his forehead, and he breathed heavily. He gave Johann a long, hard look with his piercing pitch-black eyes, and the young man suddenly felt certain Tonio had seen him on the platform. Then the master spoke with a sense of urgency.
“We must leave. I spoke with a merchant on the road. He said the village folk believe sorcerers are staying at the tower. Apparently, there was an incident in the village. Pack your things if you don’t want to get burned alive! If we’re lucky, they won’t come until the morning. They’re probably too drunk on a Sunday.”
He didn’t ask what Johann had been up to and why he was already back from the village. Instead, he went upstairs to his chamber, and Johann heard him packing in a hurry.
While Johann gathered his own belongings, he thought about the clothes he’d seen in the master’s chamber. He hadn’t paid them much attention earlier, but now, thinking about it, he remembered that there had been a lot of clothes. Many more than the master owned. And he could have sworn that they’d looked small.
Like children’s clothes.
Upstairs, he could hear Tonio’s footsteps, heavy and ominous, like those of a dark sea captain pacing the deck while their ship slowly sank to the bottom of the ocean.
7
THEY DROVE DOWN to the road in silence. At the Master’s command, Johann had hitched the horse to the wagon and loaded their bags, sacks, and crates. The cage with the birds was back in its old place, dangling from the ceiling of the wagon.
One last time Johann turned to look at the tower that had been his home for the last few months, where he had learned so much. Then Tonio cracked his whip, and the tower was soon out of sight. It wasn’t long before they had to climb down from the wagon and lead the horse. The snow had gone, but the track was riddled with deep ruts. Tree roots reached out of the ground like fingers of subterranean ghosts and forced them to take many small detours. Twice they had to cross a small stream swollen with meltwater rushing down the valley. The master was silent, pulling on the old nag’s bridle when it didn’t want to walk through muddy puddles.
Before driving off, they had nailed the windows and door shut and buried a large crate behind the tower. Johann had managed to see that the crate was mostly filled with books, but he’d also seen the copper tube. Apparently, Tonio had disassembled the strange apparatus and hidden it in the crate. After they’d filled the hole, the master made some strange gestures with his hands and laid out five white stones in a circle. “In case we ever come back,” he growled. “No one will dare to dig for treasure here. Not if they value their immortal soul.” With soot, he painted a black pentagram on the door and secured it with a heavy beam.
Finally, after two hours of pushing and pulling, they reached the bottom of the valley. They turned west, away from the village. After another half hour, the church bells started chiming wildly, as if there was a fire somewhere or an impending storm.
As if the villagers are gathering for a hunt, Johann thought. A witch hunt.
The bells grew fainter until Johann could no longer hear them at all, and the journey passed quietly for a while. Johann sat beside the master on the box seat, like he’d done so many times before the winter. Tonio still hadn’t spoken. He ground his teeth grimly, as if imagining eating every one of those slow-witted, superstitious peasants alive.
You eat our children . . .
Johann now had time to reflect on what he’d discovered at the tower. Had he actually seen children’s garments in Tonio’s chamber? Suddenly he wasn’t so sure. It had just been a pile of clothes, after all, and there was probably a rational explanation for the pentagram, too. Johann knew that alchemy worked with symbols and a wide variety of substances, including blood. Most likely, what he’d seen on the floor was pigs’ blood—disgusting, yes, but nothing to be afraid of. What if his imagination was running away with him? What if he was being just as narrow minded and hysterical as the villagers? Children had gone missing—it happened all the time, everywhere. And there’d be an explanation for Tonio’s nightly excursions, too.
Suddenly, Johann felt bad. Hadn’t the master been very kind to him in the last few weeks? Hadn’t he taught him much? Johann had been blind for so long, and finally someone showed him the light. And there was so much left to learn. About the strange tube he’d found on the roof of the tower, for example, or the legendary field of alchemy the master had just begun to teach him about. Tonio might not have owned a library as large as the one at Maulbronn Monastery, but he seemed to be something of a walking library himself. Sometimes Johann thought the master’s knowledge was ancient and infinite, reaching back to the very first knowledge of man. How much Johann could still learn from him! Johann cleared his throat. Perhaps the time had come to ask where their journey was headed.
“Now that the snow is melting, the road across the Alps should be clear, right?” he asked.
The master nodded but didn’t reply, holding on tightly to the reins.
“Are we going to travel across the Alps?” asked Johann in another attempt. “Perhaps to . . . to Venice?”
“Our plans have changed,” Tonio replied curtly. “We’re heading east, to the Kingdom of Poland.”
“But why?” Johann couldn’t hide his disappointment. He’d been very much looking forward to Venice and Rome, to the warm lands beyond the Alps. He’d wanted to see the ocean, and now they were headed to a country he’d never even heard of before. “Why Poland?”
Now the master turned his haggard, falcon-like face to look at him, eyeing Johann intently, making him feel like Tonio was reading his every thought.
“Have you never wondered where I gained all my knowledge?” asked Tonio. “Do you think it all fell from the sky like a dead star?”
“You . . . you studied,” Johann replied. “In Paris, Heidelberg—”
“Yes, yes,” Tonio said impatiently. “I visited many universities, a traveling scholar, always on the search for new knowledge. But you can only learn the dark arts at one particular university—Krakow.”
Johann remembered the master mentioning Krakow—in Knittlingen he had introduced himself with those words.
Tonio del Moravia. Krakow magister of the seven arts and keeper of the seven times seven seals.
“Once upon a time there were other universities that taught the arcane arts,” Tonio continued while the old horse pulled them along the bumpy road. “But the accursed church banned them, even though those arts are much older than the church. Now there’s only Krakow left. There’s no other place if you want to learn about the seven times seven seals!”
“What are the seven times seven seals?” asked Johann.
“Be patient, young Faustus.” The master grinned. “You’ll learn about them soon enough. I’ve sent out a messenger to announce your arrival at Krakow.”
“My arrival?” Johann stared at his teacher with disbelief. “But why—”
“Did you never wonder what I was doing when I stayed out all night?” asked Tonio, cutting him off. “I was waiting for news, week after week! When none arrived, I went out myself this morning and gave a letter to a merchant. Our friends need to know that you’re coming. The stars are extremely favorable.”
“That I’m coming?” Johann’s astonishment grew. “But . . . but why should they know about me?”
The master opened his mouth to reply, but then shook his head. “It’s too soon. We’ve been disappointed many times, even though I’m quite certain this time.” He smiled. “Wait a little longer, young Faustus. I’m sure we’ll run into some friends on the way to Krakow. There are many of us, and our numbers are growing. It can’t be long now. Giddyup, you lazy old nag, pull!”
He cracked the whip, and the old horse lifted its head and whinnied, almost as if it were laughing. Then it pulled them steadily eastward toward this legendary Krakow. Johann sat on the box seat, brooding. Now he had some sort of explanation for why the master had been out so many nights, but one mystery had been replaced with another, much bigger one. Johann had thought he was nothing but an apprentice, a plain assistant who helped Tonio del Moravia, the great magician, during his performances in the German empire.
But it seemed the master had bigger plans for him.
The following morning, they reached a larger road busy with merchants and pilgrims. It led south toward the mountains, but Tonio turned the wagon north.
“The old Roman road,” he explained. “Once upon a time these roads covered the empire like a finely woven net spanning many hundreds of miles. They were paved so the Roman soldiers could travel fast. Each road was wide enough for two carts to pass each other. Watchtowers and forts guaranteed safety for travelers.” He pointed out some overgrown cobblestones, remains of a footpath on the side of the road, and a crooked milestone with withered Roman numerals that stuck out of the mud. “Hundreds of years have gone by since, and not much is left. But the little that remains is still better than anything the German kings and emperors have managed since.”
