The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,194

Not as long as I keep feeding it my dinner, anyhow. Come on in—you have nothing to fear.”

The boy did as he was asked. He climbed inside the wagon and looked at everything with curiosity: the dried herbs dangling from the ceiling, and the many crates and chests, some of which stood open, revealing their mysterious contents. When his gaze fell upon the glass plate on the table, he giggled like a girl.

“Oh, that must be Störtebeker. Am I right? You’ve captured him well!”

“Thank you.” Karl was also smiling now. “We’re going to show him with our laterna magica.”

“With your laterna what?” The youth’s eyes grew wide.

“Well, it’s an apparatus that allows us to make images appear against a wall,” explained Karl patronizingly. “And I paint the pictures. I’ve even drawn the pope and the emperor. I’m a painter,” he added unnecessarily. “Just like Leonardo da Vinci or Albrecht Dürer. Do you know Dürer?”

The youth shook his head.

“I copied his horsemen of the apocalypse,” said Karl. “Well, to be honest, I reinterpreted the work. I don’t think I’ve done too badly. Some even say it is better than the original.”

The young lad continued to stare at the glass plate. He reverently ran his finger along the edge of the miniature painting. “These must be very valuable.”

“What’s your name, boy?” asked Karl, trying to change the subject.

The youth took a bow. “Sebastian, sir.”

Karl laughed. “You don’t need to call me sir—I’m not much older than you. Sebastian is a beautiful name.” He winked at him. “And Saint Sebastian was a beautiful man. As handsome as you,” he added softly.

By now he felt certain that the boy was here for a particular reason. Karl couldn’t say whether it was the boy’s own desire or whether he was hoping for money, but at the end of the day it didn’t matter. Several times over the last few months he’d met with young men, and while Faust probably had his suspicions, Karl didn’t think he noticed anything. Mostly they’d been hasty encounters beneath bridges or in the bushes. There were boys like this one in every town—one only had to find them. They were all connected by their fear of discovery. Good, upright citizens had almost less sympathy for sodomites than they had for heretics, Jews, and well poisoners.

The dainty young man turned away and started to rummage through the chests. “Those are juggling balls, right?” He pulled out one red and one golden leather ball and tried to juggle them. The balls fell to the ground and he laughed.

“Leave it,” replied Karl. Suddenly he got the bad feeling that it hadn’t been such a good idea to invite the handsome youth into the wagon. His demeanor seemed very experienced—calculated, even. Karl suspected this wasn’t the first wagon he had sifted through.

“Leave it, I said!” he repeated more loudly. But the boy didn’t listen. He continued to rummage through the chest, lifting out a black hat, red scarves, and a white wooden egg. Then he turned to the chest with the books and carelessly picked up and dropped several volumes.

“Watch out—you’re damaging them!” shouted Karl.

Suddenly the youth snorted with surprise. He dropped the books he was holding, bent down, and lifted a knife from the chest. He studied it with awe in his eyes, and Karl also gazed at it with wonder. He had never seen the knife before; it must have been buried underneath all those books. The handle appeared to be carved from some kind of bone and was decorated with black patterns and lines. It looked very old and precious. The boy ran his thumb along the blade with a smile.

“It’s so beautiful,” he said. “Will you give it to me as a gift?”

Karl cleared his throat. This whole situation was taking a direction he didn’t like at all. He gave an awkward laugh. “You’re not serious, are you? That knife belongs to the doctor, and he—”

“And now it belongs to me,” the boy said decisively. He eyed Karl with a cold stare and pointed the tip of the knife at him. “Or do you want to take it off me?”

Karl nervously glanced at Satan, who was happily chewing on her bone. He couldn’t believe it. For once the mutt could have been useful, but she was behaving as gentle as a lamb.

The youth grinned and his eyes flashed wolfishly. “Then we have an understanding. I’m going to take this knife and—”

Suddenly, the curtain was yanked open behind him. To Karl’s