The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,168

the boogeyman and Satan now.

All would be well. He no longer needed the lies—at least not with Margarethe.

On the day of Saint John’s Eve, children ran through the streets, holding sticks adorned with colorful paper ribbons. On the surrounding hills, the young lads were piling up pyres, which they’d set alight after sunset. Fires would also be lit on Heiligenberg Mountain. Margarethe had told Johann that all nuns had to gather at the convent on the feast day of Saint John the Baptist, but not before the late mass. Until then, the sisters enjoyed one of their few days off. And with a hushed voice Margarethe had also told him that the river liked to help itself to an offering on Saint John’s night. Many times in the past, dead girls had been fished out of the Neckar the following day.

Carrying the laterna in a pack covered with cloths on his back, dressed like a plain peddler, Johann headed toward their hiding place late in the afternoon. He’d walked this way so many times now that he knew every tree and every bush. The basketlike pack on his back was bulky and heavy, holding not just the laterna but also a long fuse, the oil for the lamp, and another apparatus.

Johann had told Valentin that he was going to the library to study. But instead, he’d waited for Valentin to leave, then gone to the shed to put on his disguise and load his pack. Johann’s heart was beating fast, and he kept looking back to check that he wasn’t being followed. A few times, as he walked through the woods, he thought he could hear branches snapping behind him, but he guessed his nerves were playing tricks on him. He couldn’t wait for all this to be over.

Once Johann arrived at the cave, he lit a torch before setting up the laterna behind the altar, like he’d done so many times before. He took the fuse out of the pack and laid it along the cave wall. The most time-consuming part of the process was setting up the water clock at the laterna. It had taken him a while to figure out how he might change the images in the laterna without having to operate the apparatus himself. Finally he’d found something in old drawings by Hero of Alexandria. The Greek mathematician had constructed machines that used the power of water to move levers. Large levers required a large quantity of water, but for Johann’s mechanism, a few gallons sufficed. The water slowly dripped from one container into another, and once it reached a certain weight, the lever was pushed and the image of Saint Michael with his sword raised fell into the slot. After a while, when enough water had dripped back into the first container, the image with the lowered sword appeared. Johann had experimented until the intervals were roughly the same length. The result was a fluid movement that made the archangel appear almost real.

After about two hours, he was finished with his preparations. He covered the apparatus with a gray cloth, making it practically invisible in the dark cave. Then he went outside and waited for Margarethe.

Afternoon had turned to evening, and the first Saint John’s fires had been lit on Heiligenberg Mountain. Johann thought he could hear the laughter of young folks from afar. They were probably leaping across the flames, celebrating the shortest night of the year like people had done since time immemorial. Sometimes straw puppets were burned to chase away sickness and demons. Johann had read in old books that they even used to burn real people on that night, and he thought of the alleged witches the bishop had condemned to fire only a few weeks ago—a sacrifice like the heathens used to offer to their dark deities.

A sudden noise made Johann jump, and he breathed a sigh of relief when Margarethe emerged from between the trees. As always, she wore her black nun’s habit and a thin woolen scarf around her shoulders. The nights could still be chilly in June, and the cave never warmed up at all. Margarethe shivered and rushed into his arms.

“We can’t go on like this for much longer,” she whispered. “Living with a lie like this . . . I can’t take it anymore. Would you really go away with me?”

“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.