The Master's Apprentice, page 41
part #1 of Faust Series
“Yes, Margarethe, I would. That’s why I traveled all the way from Venice—to be with you.” He gently pulled her toward the cave entrance. “Who knows, maybe the angel will appear to us again. Maybe he knows where our path will take us.”
Margarethe gave him an intent look, and for a brief moment Johann thought she’d seen right through him.
“I thought about it again last night. Why did the archangel choose us, of all people? Why does he speak to us? There are so many young couples who can’t be together despite their love.”
“Because you’re someone very special, Margarethe. The angel wants to help you—help us—return to the path of love.” Johann made a sweeping gesture at the woods around them. “And who knows? Maybe he appears to other couples in the area. This is Heiligenberg Mountain, after all. They built a monastery in the name of Michael the archangel up here. It’s his realm.”
They entered the cave. The temperature dropped drastically, and small clouds rose from their mouths. Margarethe tightened the scarf around her shoulders.
Johann loved the sudden darkness inside the cave. In here, the world outside, with all its noise and all that striving for glory and knowledge, seemed completely unimportant.
Only the two of them existed.
A torch that Johann had lit earlier burned from a crack in the rock. The light showed them to their bed, which they’d made over the weeks from moss and dead leaves. As they went past, Johann put out the torch, and there was a soft hissing noise that he hoped Margarethe wouldn’t hear. Now it was completely dark.
They sank onto their bed and embraced like two children seeking comfort. Johann closed his eyes and inhaled the damp scent of the cave, of soil, fungi, and mossy rocks. But most of all he breathed in Margarethe’s smell, which couldn’t be compared to anything. He felt so close to her body, it was as if it were his own. In the same moment, he realized that he was happier than ever before.
He could have stayed like this forever.
But he knew he couldn’t wait any longer. When he’d put out the torch before, he had also lit the fuse that was burning its way slowly and quietly toward the laterna. By now Johann knew exactly how long it took to get there.
“We should pray,” said Johann quietly. “Perhaps the angel will return. I wish he knew the answers to all our questions.”
Margarethe nodded and folded her hands in prayer.
“Oh, Saint Michael,” she muttered, “I beg you, hear us sinners on earth. Deliver us from evil and show us the path to paradise.”
“Deliver us from evil,” repeated Johann.
As he’d expected, the fuse reached the oil lamp at that very moment. A bright speck of light appeared on the opposite wall, and inside it was the figure of Archangel Michael with his sword raised. Margarethe gave a small cry. Even though Johann knew the angel was just an image, he shivered. It was as if God was speaking to him through the apparatus.
“He has come down one more time indeed,” whispered Margarethe. “Oh gracious Lord!”
“Rejoice and be merry,” sounded the strange, unearthly voice of the angel. “For I bring happy tidings!”
As on the other occasions before, Johann turned his head to the side so that his voice was thrown back from the wall. He had seen jugglers use a similar technique for puppets, and for the last several weeks he’d been practicing the trick in the large halls of the library and at the Church of the Holy Spirit. The key was to avoid any sounds that required movement of the lips, or to form them using the tongue and the palate instead of the jaw. It was an ancient technique that had been used by the old Greeks.
“Don’t be afraid,” whispered the angel. “Loving hearts have nothing to fear. What the dear Lord put together, the world can’t tear asunder.”
The image changed, and Michael’s sword arm pointed downward now. It was just a small movement, but the effect made the figure on the wall seem so much more real.
“Follow the call of love,” the angel continued, the voice echoing through the vaulted space. “Follow the call to Vienna . . . Vienna . . . Vienna . . .” The last word echoed several times. Margarethe looked up from her prayers.
“To Vienna? But—”
“I think I know what he means,” said Johann in his normal voice. “There is a university in Vienna, too. We could move there, far away from the nunnery, far away from anything preventing us from being together.”
“Oh, Johann! Is that really true? Tell me I’m not dreaming!” She threw herself into his arms, and Johann once again inhaled the scent of her hair. Her bonnet slipped backward, and he covered her face with kisses. He thought he could see her cornflower-blue eyes beam in the dark.
He was so happy! There was nothing stopping them now. They would move to Vienna as part of Conrad Celtis’s household, he would study, and at some point they’d marry and—
There was a jangling sound followed by the stomping of many boots.
Johann spun around with fright and saw the glow of several torches approaching from the cave entrance. Margarethe screamed. She clung to him, but Johann was paralyzed by shock. He knew right away that this was the end.
A troop of men had entered the cave.
At its front strode Hans Altmayer and Jakob Kohlschreiber, Margarethe’s husband.
“Damned witch!” shouted Kohlschreiber, his bloated face glowing red in the light of the torch. “What do you think you’re doing? Wallowing in the dirt like a sow with her paramour. But we saw right through you!”
“It’s just like I told you,” said Hans next to him. He tried to sound calm, but his voice trembled with malicious glee. “I’ve been watching them for a long time. They always meet in this cave. The devil knows what they’re doing in here.”
“Look!” cried one of the men behind them. Like the others, he was carrying a short pike and was clad in the garb of a city guard. Evidently Kohlschreiber had gathered support from the Heidelberg city watch before making his way to the cave. With a shaking hand, the guard pointed at the wall behind the altar, where the quivering image of Archangel Michael was still displayed. “By all the saints . . . an angel!”
The others also cried out in surprise. Only Hans remained calm.
“Don’t worry, it’s not an angel. I’m certain the apparition is somehow connected to the devilish apparatus Faustus always lugs here. He built some sort of thing with Valentin Brander. The image is a deception!”
Hans searched the cave with his torch until he discovered the hidden box beneath the blanket. “Ha! There it is, the devilish machine!”
Hans gave the laterna magica a kick, and with an ugly sound of cracking and shattering, the image of the angel disappeared forever.
Margarethe screamed again. This time the scream was high pitched and mournful, as if it came from a fallen angel.
“What were you up to with that thing, huh?” snarled Jakob Kohlschreiber, stepping toward Johann and Margarethe. “Were you trying to invoke the devil? Is it Lucifer you’re praying to in this cave?”
“It . . . it’s just an apparatus,” replied Johann quietly. Each word came out slowly and with great difficulty, as if he’d forgotten how to speak. “Nothing but an apparatus.”
“The Inquisition must learn of this,” said Kohlschreiber. Trembling with fury, he pointed at Margarethe, who was covering her face with her hands. Johann wrapped his arms around her and noticed that she was as cold as the cave’s rock wall. He didn’t know whether she understood what he’d just said.
Nothing but an apparatus . . .
“I never trusted that woman. Cursed be the day her father gave her to me as a wife!” cried Kohlschreiber, nodding grimly. “She’s possessed by the devil—he spoke from her mouth every night she lay with me. By God, I tried everything. I found her a place at a nunnery, but clearly, evil can’t be driven from her. Only the fire can purge her now.”
“And concerning you . . .” Jakob Kohlschreiber glared at Johann, who was still holding Margarethe tightly, as if he could protect her from all evil. “I know you! You sounded me out that time at the tavern. Tried to find out about my wife, you lecherous bastard!”
Hans grinned. “Our rector will be extremely interested to learn what kind of devilish apparatuses his favorite student has been working on—and what kind of a girl he’s been dallying with. A nun!” He shook his head in mock sadness. “I believe this is the end of your time at the university, Faustus—at the very least. What did you tell me once? Many an itinerant scholar ends up in the gutter, where he dies like a mangy dog.”
“Enough talk,” growled Kohlschreiber. “Take them!”
The last words had been addressed to the guards, who stepped toward Johann and Margarethe with lowered pikes. Two of them grabbed Margarethe, who didn’t seem to notice what was going on around her. She had started to hum a soft tune. Johann winced when he recognized the melody.
Growing in our garden are parsley and thyme; our Gretchen is the bride, she’s looking so fine . . .
It was the song he and Margarethe used to sing as children.
“Take your hands off her!” he screamed. He rushed at the guards and started wrestling with them.
“Don’t make it any worse!” shouted Jakob Kohlschreiber. He stepped in and grabbed Johann by the collar like a rabbit. “Or do you want to burn together with the witch? Is that what you want? Burn for this piece of trash?”
He kicked Margarethe, who whimpered and cowered on the ground. Rage swept over Johann like a dark wave. He felt angrier than ever before in his life—angrier even than the time he killed the French mercenary. Reason was blocked out, and an all-consuming hatred burned inside him. Suddenly he was holding his knife in his hand, although he had no idea how it got there. He raised his arm and stabbed wildly into the man in front of him. It felt good, and for a brief moment relief spread through his body, the sweet flavor of revenge trickling down his throat. Johann remembered Tonio’s words back when he’d gifted the knife to him.
I’m giving this to you . . . It cuts skin and sinews like butter.
Gasping for breath, Kohlschreiber collapsed in front of him, blood spurting from several wounds in his stomach.
“You . . . you bloody fool,” wheezed the vintner, writhing on the floor.
The guards froze with shock when they saw the seriously wounded man. They sensed that the young man with the knife wasn’t entirely in control of himself, that something dark had grasped hold of him. For a few moments, the only sound was Kohlschreiber’s groaning. Even Hans had taken a step back, but his eyes were flashing deviously.
“Congratulations, Faustus,” he spat. “You just dug your own grave.”
Johann stared at the bloodied knife in his hand with horror. He suddenly realized what he’d done. His eyes turned to Margarethe, who was holding her arms crossed in front of her chest, rocking back and forth and still humming the children’s tune.
Red wine, white wine, tomorrow morn you shall be mine . . .
“Margarethe, I . . . I’m so sorry,” he burst out. “I . . . I only wanted us to be happy.”
Still none of the other men stirred. They stared with fright at the knife in Johann’s hand. Kohlschreiber no longer made any sound, and a pool of blood grew around his plump body. Finally the guards raised their pikes again.
“Take him!” shouted Hans.
And Johann ran.
“Your grave!” rang out Hans’s triumphant voice, echoing through the cave. “Your grave!”
Johann ran outside, where night had fallen in the meantime. Saint John’s fires were burning on the hills all around, gleaming like eyes behind a dark mask.
“Your grave!” was the last thing Johann heard.
Then the forest swallowed him up.
Johann raced uphill for a long time, panicked like an animal in flight and unable to form a clear thought. It was just like the time he fled from Tonio del Moravia and his companions in the woods near Nördlingen. From one moment to the next he’d lost everything. But this time the shock went much deeper.
He had lost what he loved most.
Margarethe.
He noticed that he’d been running uphill only when the trees ended and he saw the sparkling lights of the Heidelberg watchtowers beneath him, with the castle above the city. He sensed he was looking back on a life he was leaving behind for good.
His life’s joy had stayed behind in the cave.
Johann tore at his hair, screamed and raved, cried and whined. Eventually he cowered in a hollow of damp, foul-smelling leaves and repeated the same words over and over.
“I . . . didn’t . . . want . . . this . . .”
And at the same time he knew that he alone was to blame. He had played with high stakes and lost everything. It had been his idea to win Margarethe over with the image of the archangel. He should have expected to be followed—he’d always suspected something. Every time he’d returned from the monastery or arrived at the cave, he thought he felt eyes on his back. Sobs racked his body once more.
Margarethe.
He should have stayed with her, defended her with his life. Instead he had run away and left her to the guards. Margarethe’s husband had already announced that he’d hand her over to the Inquisition. She wasn’t just a nun fooling around with a young student—no, she was suspected of being in league with the devil. And all that just because of the damned laterna magica! He should never have used the apparatus for his own desires. But now it was too late.
So what could he do?
Hans was right—his academic career in Heidelberg was over. And he wouldn’t be going to Vienna with Conrad Celtis. Altmayer would make sure the story of Faustus, defiler of nuns and devil worshipper, would make the rounds at the taverns and university. And worse: he had stabbed Jakob Kohlschreiber—probably to death. Not that Johann regretted the man’s death, but now he was a murderer and had to flee.
But then he would abandon Margarethe.
Johann swallowed hard. He’d reached a decision.
He would have to go to Heidelberg and hand himself in.
He would explain to the authorities that it was all his fault. He had led Margarethe astray and he had built the laterna magica. No devilish machine, just a simple apparatus. They’d understand, and Margarethe would be saved. At least they wouldn’t condemn her as a witch. But he’d need help, and most of all he’d need a witness to confirm his story.
Johann decided to wait until the morning and then find the one person he had left.
Valentin.
He spent the night on the hilltop, gazing down at the Neckar, which wound its way through the valley like a giant black snake. The lights of Heidelberg gleamed beyond, and above them flickered the flames of the Saint John’s fires. Johann occasionally thought he could hear screams, presumably from the youth dancing around the fires.
Long before dawn, he went on his way. He entered the city with the first peddlers and farmers carrying their wares to market in their packs. Johann looked like a beggar in his filthy, torn clothes, and the guards didn’t recognize him. No one tried to stop him as he slipped through the gate.
He rushed to his residence as fast as he could, climbed across the low wall at the back, and knocked on the window of the room he shared with Valentin—softly at first, but then louder and louder. No one opened. Had his friend already left for the lectures? But it was much too early.
A sense of foreboding overcame Johann.
A damp mist hung in the lanes, and hardly anyone was about. Johann cautiously sneaked over to the western city fortifications. He was headed for one building in particular. The Diebsturm Tower, which served as Heidelberg’s prison.
The tower was a bulky construct about ten paces high and built from massive blocks of stone. A few barred windows way up high and a narrow wrought-iron door were the only openings. In front of the tower stood a cart, enveloped in fog. On top of the cart stood a crate about as high as a man, like a mobile prison cell. Two skinny nags were hitched to the wagon.
As Johann approached the tower, the door opened with a squeak, and two guards with halberds emerged. They were followed by two other guards, who were carrying a man in torn clothes. The man’s head flopped to one side like that of a ragdoll, and blood was pouring from a wound on his temple.
Johann clasped one hand to his mouth to stop himself from crying out.
The prisoner was Valentin.
Evidently, Hans had made good on his threat and reported Valentin to the authorities. Johann guessed his friend was being accused of helping to build an apparatus that was used to invoke the devil. But why hadn’t the university intervened? Why hadn’t Rector Gallus been called upon? He would know that the laterna was a scientific invention, not witchcraft. Johann had told the rector all about their plans, and the university had its own jurisdiction.
But then Johann realized that in this case, the city would be responsible. With the accusation of witchcraft, the authorities wasted no time. Johann guessed Valentin was about to be taken to Worms, where the bishop had his seat and where all interrogations of this type took place. Was Margarethe also on her way to Worms?
Had he come too late?
Now the guards opened the door with the barred window at the back of the large crate and shoved the prisoner inside. Johann couldn’t tell whether Valentin was conscious or not—or whether he was still alive at all. Still, Johann needed to try to speak with him. Even if he risked being arrested. He waited until the cart began to move, and then he followed it quietly, using the twilight of dawn and the fog to dart from one corner to the next.
His opportunity arrived at the city gate.
The guards driving the wagon stopped to talk to the watchman. Soon the men were hooting with laughter, and it seemed as though a jug of wine was handed around. The street was still relatively empty at this hour, and the fog was thick.
Johann sneaked up to the wagon and tried to catch a glimpse through the barred window. But it was pitch black on the other side, and it smelled of rotten straw and excrement. Then Johann heard a soft groaning.
“Valentin!” he whispered. “Can you hear me? It’s me, Johann!”
