The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,189

intently, as if trying to tell him something.

“Sheel . . . draay . . .”

With one last hoarse croak he spread his wings and flew off to the north. The crows followed.

Johann’s gaze followed them for a long time. He could hardly believe it, but he thought he knew what the raven had just said to him.

Sheel . . . draay . . . Gilles de Rais . . .

Once more he stared out into the night. The birds had gone. But now he thought he could see someone standing in the field.

A man dressed in black with glowing red eyes.

Gilles de Rais . . . the devil . . . Tonio del Moravia . . .

Johann rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again, there was nothing but a scarecrow with a tattered coat. But still he knew that evil had returned to his life. He’d tried to run away for fourteen years, but nowhere was safe for him.

Not until he figured out how everything was connected.

The raven and the obscure figure had reminded Johann that there was a dark spot in his life, as black as the soul of the devil. It didn’t matter whether he’d imagined everything or whether the birds had indeed been Tonio’s—he had to face up to his past, or he’d never find peace. He had to find out why Tonio had called him the chosen one and why he was allegedly born beneath a special star. Everything that had happened since his first encounter with Tonio—the horror in Schillingswald Forest, the eerie events in Venice, the gruesome death of Magister Archibaldus, the stories about Gilles de Rais—they all were stones of a large mosaic that he didn’t yet understand.

Johann knew deep down that the day of his birth must be the key to everything. He had to calculate his own nativity, and more accurately than any other horoscope he’d ever drawn up.

Filled with anger and a fierce determination, Johann slammed the shutters closed. Satan shot up from her sleep and looked at her master inquisitively. Johann stroked the dog and muttered some reassuring words.

And then he sat down to think.

By the time dawn broke, he knew what he had to do. Without really knowing why, he had traveled north, as if fate had led his way. And now the birds had shown him where to go next.

Hamburg.

The name of the city flashed through his mind, a tiny scrap of a memory about something Magister Archibaldus had told him many years ago. Yes—maybe he would find what he was looking for in Hamburg. There was one place he hadn’t told Karl Wagner about.

A place he should have visited a long time ago.

21

THE THOUGHT OF the raven and the mysterious figure in black didn’t let go of Johann during the following days and weeks as they made their way toward Hamburg. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched. He often looked up at the sky or studied the trees by the wayside, where crows sat in the branches, watching him. He kept his sword and pistol within easy reach behind the box seat now, and sometimes he considered shooting at the crows. But there were too many.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Karl. “It’s almost like you’re seeing robbers and vagabonds behind every corner.”

“More like ghosts of the past,” grumbled Johann.

The dark figure, at least, hadn’t returned, but crows always seemed to circle above him like birds of prey. A few times Johann thought he could see the raven among them.

Hamburg welcomed them with a ghastly stench. Summer had made a late comeback, and the trash and excrement in the streets reeked to the high heavens. The Hanseatic city was situated between the wide Elbe River and a tributary called Alster, which had been dammed to form a lake. Cadavers and garbage floated in the many canals crisscrossing the city. Like in all other cities of the empire, people dumped their muck directly into the gutter, where it mixed with rotten vegetables and the blood from the butchers and got washed into the city streams and canals. Rats scurried across dark corners and along alleyways; on the squares, market women and peddlers proffered their wares for sale right next to dunghills behind which people relieved themselves. Only down by the Elbe did the air seem a little better, and that was where Johann and Karl parked their wagon, set up a few benches, and welcomed the countless seamen to their shows.

Their spectators were