The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,130

the mainland at this time of the evening.

As the boat glided through the night like a blade, the lights of Venice sparkled behind him.

“Margarethe,” said Johann softly, pushing Archibaldus’s letter deep into the pocket of his jerkin, where he also kept his knife. “I’m coming, Margarethe. I’m coming to find you. Everything is going to change.”

His words sounded like a magical spell more powerful than any other spell in any other book in any other library anywhere in the world.

Act IV

The Student and the Girl

14

JOHANN ARRIVED IN Heidelberg on a sunny day in june in the year of the Lord 1496.

His coat was dusty and full of holes, his jerkin and shirt had been patched up half a dozen times, and his toes stuck out from gaps in his shoes. With pinched lips and grim determination in his eyes, he clutched his crudely carved staff as he walked toward the large wooden bridge spanning the Neckar River. On the other side stood the city gate, the houses and churches, and an imposing castle on a hill.

Many times during the last few months when Johann thought he couldn’t go on, he had invoked two images in his mind: the moment when his eyes would first behold Heidelberg, and Margarethe’s look of surprise when she recognized him and embraced him joyously. Those daydreams had carried him through the boiling heat of the Po Valley and Lombardy, across the Brenner Pass, and through the many counties, duchies, and principalities beyond. He had fallen ill on the pass, struck down by a strong fever that kept him bedridden for several weeks. Kindhearted pilgrims had found him unconscious and bathed in sweat by the wayside and carried him to a hostel. In his fever dreams Johann had seen Magister Archibaldus time and time again, nailed to a cross and always muttering the same words.

You’re guilty . . .

Yes, he had loaded an enormous guilt upon himself. Archibaldus had been murdered because of something he’d wanted to tell Johann, because the old man had wanted to help him. He’d wanted to protect Johann from something unspeakably evil—and from the darkness that slumbered within Johann like a small animal and that broke out from time to time.

As Johann gradually and very slowly recovered—a gentle old monk spoon-feeding him soup three times daily, like a small child—he often thought about the name Archibaldus had written on the church wall at Torcello with his own blood.

Gilles de Rais.

Johann still didn’t know what that name meant. He studied the initials on his knife repeatedly but still couldn’t figure it out. Perhaps it was just coincidence that the name bore the same initials as his knife—although Johann didn’t really believe in coincidence anymore.

He’d matured in the last few months like a good, earthy wine in the barrel. He was eighteen years old now, with wiry muscles tough as hemp ropes. He’d cut his curly black hair and beard with a knife the day before, making him look almost like a monk. His face had become haggard and angular, his eyes gleamed dark and mysteriously, and there had been more than a few maidservants and daughters of innkeepers who had made sheep’s eyes at him along the way. He had ignored them all, as if he really were a monk. He was urged on by his love for Margarethe and the hope that everything would be different from now on. Sometimes he thought of Salome, and of Emilio, Mustafa, and poor Peter. He had enjoyed his time with the jugglers, but that journey hadn’t shown him where his path was leading, what his goal was supposed to be.

Perhaps he was finally looking at his goal.

With long strides he paced across the bridge that now, around noon, was busy with peddlers carrying their willow packs and farmers steering their oxcarts toward town. Armored horsemen vociferously demanded room, and a troop of grim-looking mercenaries with slit shirtsleeves and polished cuirasses marched past Johann.

These were the days leading up to Saint John’s Eve, the feast when the longest day of the year was celebrated across the Palatinate with burning wheels of straw and hill fires. Finally summer had arrived—although it wouldn’t be long before fall and winter would replace the lengthy, warm days again.

Johann watched laughing children running across the bridge and holding sticks decorated with colorful ribbons, painted eggshells, or sweet yeast pretzels. Johann could hear music coming from the city and smelled delicious wafts of fried food. He realized he’d eaten nothing but