The Master's Apprentice, page 61
part #1 of Faust Series
Johann jutted out his chin with determination. This life—their life together—couldn’t be over yet.
It had only just begun. And he would fight for it.
The noises of the spectacle on the main square blew over to them on the breeze—the crashing of a cannon, shouting, the metallic ringing of a bell. Johann guessed the people of Nuremberg had put out the fire by now. The feast was over and folks would go home.
Johann dozed and soon nodded off, soothed by the feeling of having saved his daughter—for the moment, at least. Soft music caressed his ears, heavenly fanfares, angelic, almost . . .
So tired . . . so awfully tired . . .
“Wake up, Doctor!” Karl’s voice tore him out of his dreams.
“Leave me . . . ,” he said weakly. “So warm, the music . . .”
But Karl wouldn’t give up. He pulled at the doctor’s robe like an irritating mutt, and finally he gathered the few handfuls of snow left under the shrubs and rubbed them on Johann’s chest.
“How dare you, you insolent . . .” Johann shot up, his good hand ready to strike, but as soon as he saw Karl he knew where he was. His daughter was sleeping beside him, her chest rising and falling steadily. He shook himself to dispel the fatigue.
“Those madmen are going to search for us,” said Karl imploringly. “We can’t stay here forever.”
“Forgive me. You . . . you’re right.” Johann brushed the snow off his robe and felt awake again. “We need to get out of Nuremberg as fast as we can.”
“Only question is, How?” Karl looked around skeptically. He shivered underneath his thin robe. The sun had moved on and stood low above the nearby city wall. The icy waters of the Pegnitz flowed past them lazily. “If it’s true what you say and Tonio has men everywhere, then he’s probably watching the city gates. We won’t get out of town the way we look. Most likely, not even the regular city guards would let us pass. We look like outlaws.”
“We must at least try. We can’t stay in Nuremberg—it’s much too . . .”
Johann faltered when he heard the music again. When he was half-asleep, he’d thought he was imagining it, but now he realized it was real. Flutes, drums, tambourines—soft, but clearly there. Even the quaking sound of a bagpipe was among the instruments. The music was coming not from the main square but from somewhere to the northeast, where the Laufer Gate led onto the road to Prague.
A quiet suspicion sprouted in Johann’s mind.
“Quickly—follow me,” he ordered.
“What’s your plan?”
But instead of replying, Johann shook Greta awake. “Child, wake up! You must try to walk—just for a short while!”
“What . . . what . . . ?” she murmured. She opened her eyes and looked around with confusion.
“Pick her up and run!” said Johann to Karl. “Before it’s too late!”
Without another word he hurried back to the bridge. Breathing hard, Karl lugged Greta up the narrow, steep stairs. Staggering along slowly, they headed northeast, past wells, taverns, and smaller markets that gradually filled with people again. They walked around a corner by the old Egidienkirche Church and finally reached the wide, cobblestoned street that led to the Laufer Gate. The music had steadily grown louder and sounded very close now.
And then Johann saw them.
There were about a dozen flautists, several drummers, and a short fellow playing an ancient march on the bagpipe. Never before had the quaking, mind-numbing noise sounded so sweet to Johann’s ears. The musicians were followed by jesters in red-and-blue costumes doing cartwheels and juggling balls, a real camel, and a series of colorfully painted wagons hung with all sorts of household items. Striding with self-important expressions between the wagons were several itinerant preachers who probably made a living as traveling scribes and relic traders. They all headed toward the Laufer Gate like one big, glittering snake. There was no sign of any Schembart runners.
“The jugglers from the square!” cried Karl. He and Johann were holding Greta between them now, and she managed to stumble along in small steps. She was still very sluggish. “That’s where the music was coming from!”
Johann nodded. “The Schembartlauf parade is over, and the jugglers move on to the next city, like they always do.” He sighed. “I saw them earlier but forgot all about them.”
Karl watched the bright, noisy train passing by. One of the jugglers, wearing a red fool’s cap, took a mock bow and showed them his backside, making an unappetizing sound. Karl turned away in disgust.
“What are we doing here?” he asked. “I’ve truly had enough of jesters and masks.”
“Well, I’m going to ask them if we can come along.” Johann gestured at the traveling preachers in their worn-out robes. “No one is going to notice us among all those quacks and fraudsters. And I’m sure we can find a spot in one of the wagons for Greta. Wait here.”
He limped toward a wagon and soon returned with a smile on his face.
“They said we can come. All the way to Prague, if we like. There’s going to be a huge feast in the summer, apparently.”
“Just like that?” Karl gaped at him. “How did you wrangle that so quickly? You don’t have any money, so how on—?”
“I speak their language. A few words in thieves’ cant, a few old tales, and the usual coin trick.” Johann grinned. “We jugglers know one another.”
“The great Doctor Johann Georg Faustus, a dishonorable juggler?” Karl laughed in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
Johann winked at his assistant with his one eye. “I’ve had many lives, my boy. You don’t even know the half of it, and I’ll never tell you which half is true. Now come before they move on without us.”
Johann led them to one of the colorful wagons, and Greta was allowed to lie down inside. Karl joined the itinerant priests walking ahead of the wagon, while Johann sat down on the box seat with his hood pulled over his face. The driver, a young lad with red curls and a red gugel, gave him a cheeky grin.
“Got into some trouble, old man?” he jeered. “Wouldn’t be the first to join the traveling folk. What do you know?”
“Oh, a few things.” Johann smiled and gazed at the road that led through the Laufer Gate. The gates stood wide open, and the guards watched the lively train with dark expressions, pleased the dishonorable folks were leaving town.
When the jugglers danced through the gate, the musicians played their farewell tune and the wagons rattled across the drawbridge. Johann looked back one last time. Next to the gate stood a small boy, watching the noisy procession with his mouth open.
He looked spellbound, and Johann knew why.
Epilogue
SOMEWHERE IN THE BREISGAU, NEAR SWITZERLAND MAY AD 1513
BEHOLD THIS DRINK and be amazed! It is the same drink the Greek king Mithridates used, once upon a time, to protect himself from snakebites, and which Heracles used to capture Cerberus, the hound of hell. Thanks to this drink, Emperor Friedrich lived for more than a hundred years! The bottle is yours for just two hellers. And for three more I’ll read your future in your palm. Come and learn what fate holds in store for you with the great Doctor Johann Georg Faustus!”
The people on the small market square pointed and stared. Standing in front of them on the box seat of a wagon was a man wearing a blue-and-black star-spangled cloak, watching them from beneath his floppy hat with a pair of piercing black eyes. The left eye in particular seemed to fix on the crowd ominously, gleaming like a black diamond from the depths of hell.
“The first of you to buy a bottle of the drink receives a horoscope for the whole year!” the doctor promised. He raised his hands, and the crowd saw that he wore a black leather glove on the right. “Come closer! Don’t be afraid. What I foretell always comes true—the good things, at least,” he added with a wink.
The people whispered and nudged one another. They knew this uncanny man from tales and from tattered, cheaply printed leaflets that made the rounds at taverns. Apparently, not long ago, the doctor flew upon a swan that he’d fed with his theriac in Basel. In Braunschweig, he made the wheels on the cart of a wealthy farmer disappear, and in the faraway Orient, he conjured deer antlers on the helmet of an imperial knight, whereupon the heathens fled in droves.
And now this widely traveled man had actually come to their small town, like a messenger from a distant world. The famous Doctor Johann Georg Faustus. He was real!
Johann stifled a smile as he gazed at the gawking crowd from atop his wagon. Here in the Breisgau region, near the Alps, the audience was especially grateful. Maybe that was because they were so far away from the big cities—from Cologne, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, and Augsburg, where the world was changing more rapidly than ever before.
“We only have a few bottles of the miracle potion left,” declared Johann, making a sweeping gesture toward his wagon. “My loyal assistant, a widely traveled scholar from the University of Paris, will fetch them for you.”
Ducking out of the wagon came Karl Wagner, carrying a heavy crate full of corked bottles of theriac in his arms. Karl had perfected the recipe with a mix of juniper, gentian root, a pinch of henbane, and a lot of strong brandy. People loved the brew, just like they loved Karl’s painted canvases that hung down the sides of the wagon like flags. They showed fire-spitting dragons, monstrous creatures with long snouts, people with wolf heads, and a lion with the tail of a scorpion. Doctor Faustus had encountered all those creatures in the course of his travels, and there was a story to tell about each one. Karl was rightly proud of his artworks. They might not have been as perfect as those of Albrecht Dürer or the great Leonardo da Vinci, but they amazed people and transported them to another world. What more could an artist wish for?
While Karl handed out the bottles of theriac and pocketed the money, Johann invited individual spectators up onto the box seat, where he read their palms. Mostly he spoke in flowery words about happy events, like a good harvest or an impending marriage. He never foretold someone’s death—even if he saw it. And he never read his own future.
All that mattered was the present.
“Good day, Herr . . . Herr Doctor. Um, may I call you ‘Doctor’?” The voice of the fat farmer’s wife who’d just taken a seat beside him trembled with awe. The hand she held out to him was marked by hard work, wrinkled, and covered in lines and craters like a barren field. “My dear Hans died last year,” she said quietly. “All I’ve left is my daughter, Else. How are we going to fare in the coming years?”
“Hmm. Let me see.” Johann leaned over the hand and squinted. His eyesight wasn’t as good as it used to be, and the glass eye itched. It had been custom made by a Venetian craftsman and had cost him a fortune. With the false eye, his gaze appeared even more piercing and eerie. Thanks to Karl’s bandaging, Johann’s eye socket had healed well, as had his right hand, on which he wore a glove with an artificial finger. Following their escape from Nuremberg, Johann had remained in the grip of fever for three long weeks and only just managed to cheat death. Every now and then, a dull pressure reminded him of his little finger—the finger he’d lost in Nuremberg over a year ago.
The first sacrifice.
“I see a good summer and a rich harvest,” he muttered and tapped a spot on the woman’s palm. “Your Life line is as deep and wide as the Rhine.”
As he continued to study the hand of the worried farmer’s wife, his thoughts returned to Nuremberg. Tonio del Moravia had vanished from his life once more; Johann had never heard anything about him again. He still didn’t know what exactly had happened that night in the crypt below the Sebaldus Church. His memories were sketchy—probably because of the black potion as well as the fever.
Or because he didn’t want to remember what Tonio and his followers had tried to invoke in the underground hall and what role he had played in it.
Had Nuremberg patricians actually been involved in the madness? Had they really believed they could bring the devil to earth?
Or was the devil already among them?
“Your Head line is as straight as an arrow,” said Johann in a mysterious-sounding voice. “It shows that you pitch in on your late husband’s farm and that you know how to assert yourself.”
“It’s true!” The woman nodded. “You’re incredible!”
Johann smiled inwardly. These days he knew right from the beginning what people wanted to hear. He prattled on and on while his thoughts were miles away.
The horrific child murders had stopped following their departure from Nuremberg, or so travelers had told them. He’d felt relieved, even though he still didn’t know what he’d had to do with it all. Why had Tonio chosen him? Why did the sorcerer believe that Johann was special? Just because of a comet that appeared every seventeen years? Sometimes, during the long nights on his travels through the empire, Johann woke up screaming because he’d dreamed of a beautiful knight—a knight whose French name he no longer spoke out loud.
On those nights, he thought about a phrase that Tonio the sorcerer had voiced down in the crypt and that, when he remembered it later on, struck him as deeply disturbing. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Because you’re the son of a great sorcerer yourself.
His mother had never told him who his father was. His stepfather had spoken about a traveling scholar and juggler, and that was all he knew. What did Tonio know about his father?
The son of a great sorcerer.
“Karl has finished setting up the booth stage and people are waiting for the puppet show. Are you coming, Uncle?”
Johann started up from his palm reading. It still felt strange when Greta called him by that title. He looked up and saw her cheerful face with the ever-smiling lips of her mother and the dark, mysterious eyes of her father. Greta was fifteen years old now and almost a woman. She was strong and nimble with full blonde hair to her shoulders and a constellation of freckles on her face that gave her a slightly impertinent look.
The traumatic events from a year ago didn’t seem to have left a lasting effect on her—probably helped by the fact that she hardly remembered anything about them. Johann had told Greta that she’d been given a potion at the Loch Prison back then to make her docile for torture and questioning. He, Karl, and Valentin had rescued her. Whatever had happened in between was nothing but a bad dream for Greta.
And he hadn’t told her about Valentin’s sacrifice.
“Are you all right?” asked Greta, still smiling.
“Of course,” he replied after a few moments. “I’m just focused on a particularly difficult chiromancy, that’s all.”
The farmer’s wife nodded gravely.
In his stories by the evening campfires, Valentin was an old friend and nothing more. He had been stabbed to death while freeing Greta. The girl had cried for many nights, but now she had gotten over it. And she’d called Johann “Uncle” ever since.
One day he would tell her the truth—he just didn’t know when.
“Um, you’re going to get a grandson.” He concluded the reading abruptly and gave the corpulent woman a pat on the back. “A healthy boy who will carry on the farm.”
“When?” asked the woman, trembling with excitement.
“Oh, certainly this fall—”
“But my daughter isn’t even expecting!”
“Are you absolutely sure?” Johann grinned and left the dumbfounded woman where she was.
He jumped down from the box seat and let Little Satan lick his hand. The huge wolfhound had waited patiently for his master and trotted alongside him now. Little Satan was fully grown, a giant of a dog standing more than three feet at the shoulder. Superstitious folk truly believed he was the devil.
When the commander Wolfgang von Eisenhofen had found out that Johann had left Nuremberg, he’d sent his knight Eberhart von Streithagen after him. “A gift from the commander,” Streithagen had growled and, with an expression of disgust, handed him the squirming puppy as well as the box with the stargazing tube and Johann’s books. “His Excellency believes that it is bad luck to keep the possessions of a wizard, most of all his dog. His only request is that you never set foot in Nuremberg again.”
Johann had nodded and held Little Satan tightly. Even without the commander’s request he would have given Nuremberg a wide berth in the future.
He walked around the wagon, where Karl had set up a wooden booth. There was no laterna magica—times had become too dangerous for that. People were burning at stakes far and wide as the church tried to defend itself against false preachers but also rebels with honest intentions. Johann sometimes thought the world was sitting on a powder keg that might blow up at any moment. And he wasn’t planning on ending his life prematurely as a black magician and necromancer. Besides, he preferred the puppet theater to the laterna magica—there was more room for dreams.
And it didn’t remind him of Margarethe.
He hadn’t returned to the tower by the Alps. He feared Tonio might be there. In his dreams, the sorcerer was standing atop the platform, the strange stargazing tube that was now in Johann’s possession pointed at some distant object. Tonio’s eye was as big as a whale’s.
I can see you, Johann . . . Always, every day . . . You can’t escape me . . . Only seventeen years . . .
“Gather around!” shouted Greta to the people on the market square. She used the booming, praising tone Johann had taught her. “Be amazed at Doctor Faustus’s fantastic journeys that took him to faraway lands!” cried the girl in a rhythm that seemed to entrance people. “Prepare to experience miracles you’ve never seen before!”
Greta called the booth her little theater, and she loved it. Karl had painted the crate with colorful exotic depictions. There was a little red curtain, along with several different backdrops and even an oil lamp that acted as the sun in the desert. With admiration Johann studied Karl’s paintings of the scorching desert in the East and the distant lands they called America, named after a Florentine seafarer and explorer who believed he’d discovered a new continent. Karl had painted a green jungle and small people with spears who rode on dragons.
