The Master's Apprentice, page 50
part #1 of Faust Series
Too late.
The only thing that puzzled Johann was the fact that Karl had taken neither provisions nor blankets. And the horse was still there. How did the boy think he was going to get by in the mountains?
Johann remained sitting in front of the cold fireplace for hours while a blizzard raged outside. He considered ending his life. He would simply have to go out into the snow, lie down, and go to sleep. Although it would be more appropriate to cut his wrists with the knife Tonio had given him.
The master seemed to pursue him right until death, just like Gilles de Rais, this foreign-sounding name that had never left him in peace. The mystery about that man remained unsolved. Once again Johann asked himself whether Agrippa may have known something about Gilles de Rais after all. But now it was too late to ask him.
It was too late for everything.
A raven cawed outside. Three times, like a knock on the door.
Johann stood up abruptly, hesitated for a moment, then walked over to one of the chests.
You damned beast! You won’t get me!
Never again would Tonio have any power over him! There was only one way to get away from him, and Johann was ready to choose that way. The knife with the strange initials sat at the very bottom of the chest. Johann lifted it out and ran his thumb over the razor-sharp blade. It looked like it was as old as the world, forged from the molten lava of volcanoes.
One cut and all his searching would come to an end.
Then he would finally join Margarethe, Valentin, Martin, his mother—everyone he had left and disappointed.
Only one cut.
Johann gripped the knife hard and raised it as if he were performing a ritualistic sacrifice.
You won’t get me.
Just then, he heard a noise. A soft creaking of the door. Johann felt certain that it was Tonio. The master had come to get him.
But it wasn’t Tonio. It was Karl. He was covered in snow from head to toe like a white monster, and his cheeks glowed red. Water dripped to the ground and formed a small puddle.
Johann lowered the blade with a trembling hand. He fought back tears. For the first time in a long while he was deeply touched. Something had burst through the cold armor of his heart, and it hadn’t been a knife. The boy hadn’t left him! Karl was standing in the door with a shy smile on his lips and a dirty rag in his hands that seemed to be wrapped around something woolly. The bundle whimpered and squirmed. Karl gently set it down and unwrapped it.
It was a puppy with wiry pitch-black fur. It wagged its tail and started to explore the room on unsteady paws.
“I couldn’t bear your gloomy face any longer,” said Karl. “So I went out to look for something that would make you happy again.” He gestured at the little dog, which was awkwardly making its way toward Johann. “I found it with a shepherd not far from the village. It’s a wolfhound. I know—it doesn’t look like much now. But apparently it’s going to grow to be an enormous beast. You could name him Satan.” Karl winked. “It’s a boy this time. I checked.”
“Little Satan,” said Johann softly, leaning down to the puppy and holding out his hand. The animal cautiously walked up to him and licked his palm. It tickled, and Johann couldn’t help but smile.
“Thank you,” he said to Karl. “I . . . I’ll never forget this.” He cleared his throat, which felt awfully dry. He realized that he hadn’t uttered a word in days.
Karl shrugged, his eyes flickered, and he looked down. “To be honest, I don’t like dogs very much. But I was looking for a gift for you, and the pup seemed like a sign from God.”
Johann picked up the little creature and patted it. “A sign from God?”
“Don’t you know, Master?” Karl said with a grin. “It’s Christmas Eve. I wish you a merry Christmas!”
Outside, the snow continued to fall.
In hindsight, Johann thought that Karl’s return had also been a sign from God. He had been only a second away from ending his life—on the day of Christ’s birth. But the little puppy and Karl’s return gave him renewed hope. Johann remembered how sad it had been to spend Christmas at the tower alone with Tonio while the church bells of the village tolled in the distance. This time, the two men were drinking sweet Rhenish wine and eating pickled eggs and ham. Even the pup got a few mouthfuls.
Johann liked the idea of calling him Little Satan, just as if the old Satan was living on inside this pup. And the young dog lived up to its name: it destroyed pillows, chewed on chair legs, and ruined the fabric of the valuable four-poster bed. It was clear he’d be a very vivacious dog. During the days following Christmas, he and Johann formed a strong bond. Little Satan would lie on his lap while Johann once more studied books for answers to his questions; the dog played around Johann’s feet when he gazed at the stars from atop the tower. Johann now allowed Karl on the platform, too. Together they watched the constellations of the winter sky.
“The stars are much brighter in the winter,” explained Johann on New Year’s Eve. “Do you see the winter hexagon over there? Sirius, Pollux, and Procyon in Canis Minor. If you look through the tube, you’ll see more constellations behind it—constellations we would never see with our bare eyes.”
Karl stared through the tube into the night sky; his jaw dropped with amazement. “There are so many,” he muttered. “And there are more and more behind them. The sky is endless.”
“Yes. It’s enough to make you dizzy.”
“Ha!” Karl cried out with surprise. “I saw a shooting star! My mother—God rest her soul—always used to say I could make a wish if I saw one.”
“Well, then, make a wish,” said Johann with a smile. “But don’t tell me—that would bring misfortune.”
Karl shot a quick look at him before shaking his head with a sigh. “What I wish for won’t come true anyhow.” He turned back to the tube. “The shooting star has already disappeared. I wonder where it is now?”
“I heard that some of them fall down onto the Earth. Sometimes people find remains of strange rocks. Apparently a shooting star fell to the ground somewhere in the Alsace years ago. The emperor himself owns pieces of it—so they say. As for the others . . .” He gave a shrug. “Perhaps they simply burn out.”
“Couldn’t it be possible that they return? Like the stars and constellations that travel across the sky?”
“The scholars say that shooting stars—like comets—are merely evaporations in the sky, like gases that sometimes come out of the ground and start to burn. Agrippa doesn’t agree, but—” Suddenly Johann broke off. Karl’s questions had set off something inside him; thoughts that had hitherto been as unyielding as rocks suddenly began to flow like a river.
That they return . . .
“I must check something,” he said curtly. He rushed down the stairs to the bookshelf in the bottom chamber. He pulled out the books with Tonio’s notes and feverishly leafed through them. Suddenly all the numbers and formulas that had posed such a riddle to him were beginning to make sense. Johann closed his eyes and pictured the starry winter sky he’d just seen from the rooftop. He tried to visualize a grid against it. When he opened his eyes again and studied the numbers, it became obvious. The numbers and letters were coordinates. They described positions, but apparently not of stars. Dates and times were written down, and even today’s date was among them. The positions on the paper changed much faster than would be the case with stars. And finally Johann realized what Tonio’s coded records were about. He sat down as the weight of the realization sank in.
They described the paths of comets.
Johann spent the next few hours bent over the books in deep concentration, completely unaware of anything else around him, while Little Satan played and frolicked at his feet. Karl had gone to bed.
Johann went through the numbers row by row. What Tonio had done here was incredible! Comets were considered messengers of ill omens, warnings of wars or epidemics, or signs of good fortune. But it was impossible to predict when they would come. Tonio, however, had written down countless paths of comets spanning decades. Most of them couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, but it was Tonio’s theory that they returned, just like the moon and stars, which also had their regular paths. But the time spans between each visit were so great that no one had ever noticed. Some comets came every seventy years, others every ten, thirty, or forty. Johann wondered whether the star of Bethlehem from the day of Jesus Christ’s birth also returned in a certain rhythm.
With great excitement, Johann leafed back through the tattered pages to the beginning. The first entries were dated so far back that they couldn’t be from Tonio—unless they were based on more-recent calculations. They went back centuries—back to the conquest of England by the Normans; back to the times of the Romans, when Vesuvius broke out in Italy and swallowed a whole city. And indeed, the star of Bethlehem was also recorded and even marked with red. Tonio had written the word Messiah above it. Johann couldn’t remember ever seeing any records like the ones he was looking at. He took notes, compared entries to books on astronomy, and finally, when dawn was already breaking, he came across the one entry he’d been looking for all along. The secret of his day of birth.
There had been a comet in the heavens on the day he was born. And Tonio had given it a name.
Larua.
Johann shuddered. Larua was an Old Latin word for an evil spirit. A comet that brought evil. When Johann followed the rows of numbers with trembling fingers, he found that Larua returned in regular intervals, namely every sixteen years and eleven months—every seventeen years, roughly speaking.
Every seventeen years.
Johann counted. If he was born in April 1478, the comet must have next appeared in late March of 1495. A shiver ran down his spine. That was precisely when he’d been at Nördlingen and Tonio had given him the black potion. He remembered Tonio telling Poitou that they couldn’t wait any longer because the stars were favorable. Johann continued to count with a thumping heart. He wrote down the date and stared at it.
End of February 1512.
That was in two months! Was that the explanation for the feeling of being watched all the time? The tense expectation that something was about to happen? But what?
Larua . . . evil spirit . . .
Johann remembered Margarethe talking about the boogeyman in Heidelberg.
He will return, she’d said. He will return and change the world.
Johann had always assumed that she’d only imagined this boogeyman, or perhaps that it was some sort of scoundrel—a rogue in the woods.
But he’d never have guessed it was a comet.
He put down his quill and leaned back. His eyes hurt from all the reading. Could it be possible? And if so, what did he have to do with it all? What was the meaning of being born on Larua’s day, on the day of the prophet, and why had Tonio given him the black potion on the day of the comet’s return?
And most importantly, what was going to happen in two months’ time?
Johann spent the following days and weeks pondering the matter and consulting the books. He found no further answers, but at least he knew now that he had to wait. Something was going to happen. His will to live had returned. During the day, he often went for walks with Little Satan and Karl and spent time atop the platform. He enjoyed the fresh air stimulating his thoughts and the easy conversations with Karl as they roamed through the woods. He still spotted crows in the branches of trees, and one time even a raven, but they no longer frightened him. They were envoys of an event that would inevitably arrive, and he would be prepared—for whatever might happen.
And then something really did happen. It was a day in early February, and Johann was standing atop the tower, wrapped in his warm coat and wearing his floppy hat, gazing at the mountains through the tube. An ice-cold wind was blowing hard into Johann’s face, but there could be no doubt.
A horseman was approaching from the edge of the woods.
At first it was just a dark spot, as if a fly had landed on the front of the tube. But the spot was growing as it moved along the road. Then the figure turned off the main road and took the narrow dirt track that led to the tower.
Johann was still standing on the rooftop. Now he watched the rider’s approach with his bare eyes. He was a tall man wearing a coat and a sparkling cuirass underneath. A longsword was fastened to a bag behind the saddle. The horse was black and powerful, no cheap nag but a destrier that probably cost as much as a whole tavern.
Now the man had spotted Johann. He raised his hand in greeting, galloped the last few yards up the hill, and climbed off his horse.
Then he waited.
Pensively, Johann climbed down the stairs. He didn’t know who the stranger was or what had brought him to the tower. At least the man had come alone—so clearly this wasn’t about arresting him and taking him to jail. Could he be a delegate from the bishop of Cologne? Johann doubted the power of the Cologne Inquisition reached this far. And the horseman looked not like a man of the church but more like a knight.
Could he be the first messenger of what was to come? A first sign of Larua’s return?
“What’s happened?” asked Karl, who was sitting at the chess table with a book. He looked up with confusion as Johann strode past him toward the door.
“We have a visitor. And it isn’t anyone from the village.”
He took one last deep breath before opening the door and stepping outside. The man awaiting him indeed seemed to be a knight. He was wearing armor, and now Johann also saw the black cross on his coat. It was the cross of the Teutonic Knights—an ancient order that had been formed in the times of the Crusades and that still wielded a lot of influence at courts throughout the empire. Johann was startled.
What in God’s name could the Teutonic Knights want from him?
“Are you Doctor Johann Georg Faustus?” asked the knight, who looked like an old battle-axe with countless scars on his face. He was at least six feet tall and of impressive stature. Johann nodded and said nothing.
“I’ve been sent by Wolfgang von Eisenhofen,” said the knight, his harness creaking in the cold. “The commander of the Nuremberg Teutonic Knights. He asks you to come to Nuremberg. An old friend is waiting for you there.”
“An old friend?” Johann raised an eyebrow. “His name?”
“I’m not permitted to say. You will be told everything else at Nuremberg.”
Johann watched the man closely, but his expression gave away nothing. An icy gust swept across the hilltop and rattled the shutters. Karl had come up next to Johann and was studying the knight with curiosity. Behind them, Little Satan growled almost like a grown dog sensing danger.
“And you think that just because some mysterious friend wants to see me I’m going to follow you all the way to Nuremberg?” asked Johann sharply. “You’ll have to give me a little more.”
The knight nodded. “Your friend anticipated you would say something along those lines. That’s why I have another message for you.”
“Which is?”
“He said he could tell you more about Gilles de Rais.”
Johann felt as though he had been struck by lightning. He stood rooted to the spot as the name echoed through his head. The name that had been pursuing him for more than fifteen years.
Gilles de Rais.
Now he was certain that the man from Nuremberg was the first sign of Larua.
The game had begun.
It took quite a while for Johann to regain the power of speech. Finally he cleared his throat.
“Give us an hour,” he told the knight. “We’re coming with you.”
24
THE KNIGHT’S NAME was Eberhart von Streithagen, but they wouldn’t learn much more about him in the following days. With Little Satan in the wagon, they followed him to the north, having packed the laterna magica, the stargazing tube, and some of the books on astrology. At first Karl had tried to ask Johann about the reason for their hasty departure, but he’d received only vague answers. Eventually, Johann said no more on the subject at all.
Johann had no idea what to expect in Nuremberg. The only people who knew about his interest in Gilles de Rais were Agrippa and Conrad Celtis, but the latter had died a few years ago, and Johann hadn’t seen him since their last conversation at the castle in Heidelberg. Who else might know about it? The mysterious person knew that Gilles de Rais preoccupied Johann—and he’d sent for Johann just when a very special comet was about to return after seventeen years.
They traveled easily with Eberhart von Streithagen by their side. No highwayman was stupid enough to challenge an armored knight with a longsword on a warhorse. And even the robber knights, who had multiplied in recent years, steered clear of them. Streithagen didn’t talk much, but from the little he told them, they learned that the Nuremberg command of the Teutonic Knights was one of the emperor’s last strongholds inside the city. The free imperial city of Nuremberg, which answered only to the emperor, had increasingly turned away from its former benefactor in the last few years. But the Teutonic Knights stood firmly behind the regent, and their grounds within the city were untouchable.
Johann smiled grimly. At least he’d be safe from persecution by the Cologne Inquisition there. But what might the emperor or the Teutonic Knights want from him? And who was this strange old friend?
After ten very quiet days of traveling, and with terribly sore behinds from getting bounced around on the box seat, they finally arrived in Nuremberg around noon.
From afar, they could see the mighty castle rising like a crown above the double ring of the wall, as well as churches and many neat half-timbered houses. Johann gazed at the massive city wall; it was three miles long and contained over eighty towers, and Johann was filled with awe. He had visited so many cities, and during the last year he and Karl had crisscrossed the country—from the east to the north to the west to the south—but Nuremberg was something special. Augsburg might have been the wealthiest city in the empire, and Cologne the holiest; Erfurt was the most studious and Hamburg the most adventurous, but Nuremberg was the most inventive of all, with the most intelligent, witty, and resourceful citizens. The city was both the soul and the head of the empire at once—the unofficial capital in a country that didn’t have a fixed political center. Not long ago a Nuremberg man named Peter Henlein had built a spring-driven clock small enough that it could be carried in the pocket of a vest. A certain Martin Behaim had ordered the construction of a globe here that showed the world as a ball and not as a flat disc. Many other technical inventions also came from Nuremberg, and many outstanding artists called this city home, including the famous Albrecht Dürer—one more reason for Karl to be excited about Nuremberg.
