the cave.
Then the angel was gone.
Darkness spread through the cave once more, along with a faint smell of lamp oil.
Johann hoped Margarethe wouldn’t notice.
“That was the angel from my dreams!” he exclaimed after a few moments. “He is real and he spoke to us!”
Margarethe nodded. She was still on her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks, and she was trembling all over.
“The devil has no power when love prevails,” she repeated. “That’s what he said. The devil has no power . . .”
Johann knelt down beside her and held her tightly like he used to do when they were children and she felt cold. After a while, he gently lowered her to the ground and kissed her mouth, then her neck. His fingers slid down her black habit.
“When love prevails,” he whispered.
Archangel Michael appeared to Margarethe and Johann every week now, and sometimes even more often.
Whenever Margarethe took the oxcart from the convent to Heidelberg, Johann waited for her beneath the chestnut trees. Then they would enter the cave and pray. After a while, the angel would appear on the opposite wall and speak to them, preaching about love among men and God’s victory over the devil. Sometimes Margarethe spun around in fright because she thought the voice came from right next to her, but the echo in the cave made it seem like the words came from all sides at once, reinforcing the divine effect.
And every time the angel disappeared, they made love.
It wasn’t the animalistic ravishing Johann knew from Salome, but more of a tentative discovering. They’d known each other since the days of their childhood and seen each other naked before when swimming in forest lakes or playing in the hay. The last time had been in the cave at Schillingswald Forest, but Johann’s memories of that afternoon were hazy. They both enjoyed seeing and feeling how the body of the other had developed, how it had grown and matured. Johann’s fingers playfully caressed Margarethe’s white breasts and explored between her legs. With tongue and lips he tasted her juices, and Margarethe also became more adventurous with every meeting. The only reason they stopped was because the mother cellarer was waiting—and because it was so cold inside the cave that they both had goose pimples, despite the fires burning inside their bodies.
If Margarethe sometimes cried, it was out of a mixture of shame, fear, and joy.
“Would you really go away with me?” she whispered as she pressed her shivering, naked body against his. They were lying atop an old bearskin and used their coats for blankets. “Away from Heidelberg?”
“I would go to the end of the world with you,” replied Johann softly. At the same time he realized that taking Margarethe away wouldn’t be as easy as he’d first thought. Her husband would search for her if she left the nunnery, and Johann had started to prepare for his magister degree, which he was determined to complete in Heidelberg. Once he had the magister, he’d be able to take Margarethe to any town he liked and find work as a scribe, teacher, or lecturer. He’d be able to get his doctorate and become a famous scholar—as famous as Conrad Celtis, perhaps. Doctor Faustus, known far and wide!
Maybe I should have waited a little longer with the angel, he sometimes thought. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep up the farce. Valentin was growing suspicious, Johann could tell. And it wasn’t an easy feat, smuggling the laterna out of the shed each time and reassembling it inside the cave. Sooner or later, Valentin would find out.
“What is it?” asked Margarethe, tracing his lips with her finger. “You’re brooding, admit it. Even if I can’t see you in this darkness, I can tell when you’re brooding.”
Johann laughed. “I’m Johann Faustus, remember? I always brood.” He sighed theatrically and hoped Margarethe wouldn’t notice the uncertainty in his voice.
She sat up, her eyes gleaming like stars in the night. “So you even brood while you’re with me?”
Johann greedily kissed her, virtually drinking her in. “The brooding is fading, Margarethe. With every kiss, with every sip. You’re my medicine, don’t forget. Better than any quack’s theriac.”
She laughed. “I very much hope so!”
He kissed her again and they made love passionately.
It was the best time in Johann’s life, and even though he refused to listen to it, an inkling told him that it wouldn’t last forever.
It was mid-June when Conrad Celtis asked him up to the castle once again. It had