The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,199

one gulp and refilled both their cups with wine. “But now let us speak of more worldly things. I’ve got a suggestion for you, Doctor Faustus. You tell me about yourself, and I tell you about the world behind the eighth sphere. If only every second story about you is true, we are going to have a few merry and stimulating weeks.”

Agrippa was right. The following weeks were the most stimulating Johann had ever experienced.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, famous Cologne scholar, was the first person Johann had ever considered an equal. Their conversations were like duels, fought not with the sword but with wit and sharp tongues. The two men came from very different backgrounds. Agrippa was an offspring of Cologne nobility, and his father had been a diplomat in the service of the House of Hapsburg. Agrippa had grown up as a fortunate child, loved by his parents, surrounded by books, and boasting many talents. Johann, on the other hand, was a bastard who’d had to work hard for everything in his life, a juggler, and a fraud.

Even though Agrippa probably knew that most of the stories about Faust weren’t true, he was happily entertained by them. A small adventure quickly turned into a scientific discourse, and the two men often sat up late into the night.

“My students told me you can make thunder and lightning,” said Agrippa with a smile one evening in the stove room. “So? Can you?”

Johann shrugged. “Let’s say I possess enough gunpowder to make the heavens rumble—for the simple folk, at least. The scope of this devilish mixture of sulfur, coal, and saltpeter is truly astonishing. I fear we’re far from finished developing and refining this powder, however.”

“And how is the real thunder in the sky created?” asked Agrippa, sipping his wine. “In his Meteorologica, Aristotle claims that it is the wind colliding with the clouds. What do you think?”

“Do you know Albertus Magnus’s rainbow experiment?” replied Johann after some consideration. “An octagonal crystal that is partly placed into the sunlight projects the colors of the rainbow against a wall. Maybe it’s a similar story with thunder. Thunder might be created by something we can’t see. It is just the consequence, not the cause.”

Agrippa rocked his head from side to side. “An interesting thought, dear colleague. I might use it in one of my lectures.”

Agrippa mostly spent the mornings at the university, where the students flocked to his lectures to hear the scholar’s thoughts, some finding them heretical while others believed they were forward thinking. Johann used the time to browse Agrippa’s home library until delicious cooking smells called him to the kitchen. He took lunch with Agrippa’s sister and Karl. Satan stayed in the garden by the wagon.

Thus the weeks passed, and soon it was October. The temperatures turned cooler, and rain lashed through the lanes of Cologne. Every now and then Johann still thought he was being watched, but the urge to learn more about the stars on his day of birth and about whatever lay beyond the eighth sphere was so strong that he forgot everything else around him. He and Karl slept at the Golden Crown Inn, one of the city’s best taverns. Johann slept deeply and without dreams—better than he had in years. The intellectual exchange with Agrippa made him feel as satisfied as a freshly fed baby. He barely ever thought of Margarethe during that time.

They didn’t give any shows with the laterna magica for fear of being accused of heresy. Johann wasn’t a particularly popular man in the streets of Cologne; people gossiped about the sorcerer at the house of the controversial scholar, and a few times dung was thrown at him. But he didn’t deny himself the pleasure of demonstrating the laterna in the stove room for Agrippa.

“Truly amazing,” said his host once the last image—the white woman—had faded and Johann had lit the candles in the room again. “Imagine the possibilities if those images could move like real people.”

“And speak,” said Johann with a smile. “Who knows—perhaps that day will come, even if you or I won’t be there to see it.”

Johann gradually learned more about Agrippa’s thoughts on the stars. The scholar thought it was possible that there were other suns in the universe—other worlds, even. The universe might be endlessly great, and planet Earth nothing but a speck of dust.

“Consider the comets,” Agrippa said to Johann one day. “Where do they come from? From a distant world behind the eighth sphere? How