The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,192

it.”

Johann closed his eyes for a moment. For the first time in a long while he had the feeling he wasn’t running in circles.

“I’m buying these pages,” he said. “How much?”

“They aren’t for sale. I’d have to make a copy—”

“I don’t have time for that.” Johann placed a gold ducat on the desk. It was the most valuable coin he owned. A fat Erfurt merchant had given it to him for a favorable nativity chart.

The librarian’s eyes widened. “You could buy two dozen books for that!”

“I only want this one manuscript. And now excuse me.”

Clutching the pages in his hand, Johann hurried outside and ran across the square and through the city gate toward the Elbe.

He was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice the figure that entered the Ratsbibliothek the moment he had left it.

At the end of his shift, the librarian had earned three gold ducats: one from that strange Doctor Faustus everyone was talking about, and two more from a man who wanted answers to a few questions and whom the librarian tried to forget as quickly as possible.

By the end of the day all the little man could say about the strange visitor was that his coat—his whole appearance, in fact—had been as black as the night.

Only his eyes seemed to have glowed eerily.

Down by the port, Karl Wagner sat at a wobbly table inside the wagon and painted the beard of a pirate. Not much light came in through the curtain behind the box seat, and the tallow candles smoked terribly, so that Karl was forced to lean closely over the glass plate. He was working with very fine brushes and had to consider each stroke carefully, since the paintings on the glass plates were so small. Karl thought about the famous Nuremberg painter Albrecht Dürer, who probably let his creativity run wild on canvases as tall as a man, while he himself was painting pirate beards the size of a fingernail.

Satan was lying at his feet and growled at every little movement. Karl was increasingly under the impression that the dog wasn’t guarding the wagon but him. If he tried to leave the wagon, Satan would probably tear him to pieces. Karl hated the mastiff, but he knew that his master loved her more than anything—and more than anyone. Just then Satan bared her teeth at him again, and Karl gave a strained smile.

“Lousy old mutt,” he said and kept smiling. “I guess you love me about as much as I love you. We must get along, though, whether we like it or not. So you better sit like a good dog or there won’t be any treats.”

He tossed the tip of a sausage to Satan, appeasing the dog for the moment.

Karl tiredly rubbed his eyes and stretched his back. Outside he could hear the sounds of the river: the shouts of the seamen, the ringing of ship bells, the mocking cries of the gulls that had flown inland from the ocean shores.

Karl painted inside the wagon to avoid curious gossips, and for that purpose he’d had a little table made in Wittenberge. He’d grown tired of getting hardly any work done because of all the questions people badgered him with. The pirate he was painting today was Klaus Störtebeker, a bloodthirsty villain who was executed a long time ago. Folks were still telling ghost stories about him. According to legend, after Störtebeker was decapitated he walked past eleven of his men before the hangman tripped him.

Karl sighed and continued his work. Starting tomorrow, the doctor had rented a hall in town where they were going to show the famous Störtebeker with the laterna magica. He hoped he’d manage to capture this accursed pirate on the glass plate by then. He’d spent half the afternoon brewing that stinking theriac. Part of the job was to get up early in the morning and head to Grasbrook Island to pick mint, wormwood, and wild fennel.

Once again doubts crept into Karl’s mind as to whether he had chosen the right path. Of course, Doctor Faustus had saved his life, and Karl owed him gratitude. And the man was famous—across the entire empire and beyond. But by now they’d been traveling together for almost a whole year, and the doctor was becoming more frightening by the day. Karl had found many strange books in one of the chests and begun to read them in his lonely hours, even though he didn’t fully understand them. The doctor had