The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,202

made the moonless night even darker than it already was. It was unlikely that they’d find him now.

At first, a wave of relief washed through him. He had actually managed to shake off the soldiers. But then fear returned, doubly powerful. He was a wanted sodomite—torture and the stake awaited him. The memory of smoke and the smell of burning flesh returned. Karl started to tremble uncontrollably while he feverishly tried to figure out what to do next. Someone must have betrayed him. There was no other explanation for the fact that the fellow at the gate called him by his name.

And if they knew who he was, they’d also know whose assistant he was.

Exhausted and close to tears, Karl leaned against the wall of a house. All was lost! He couldn’t return to the inn. Worse still: the doctor himself was in danger of being arrested as a sodomite. Maybe that was the real reason his bribe did no good: they were looking for a reason to arrest the sorcerer and necromancer Doctor Faustus. Karl had to warn him. That was the least he could do.

Still breathing heavily, he sneaked along the dark lane toward the cathedral. The Golden Crown Inn, a freshly whitewashed half-timbered house with crown-glass windows, stood just a stone’s throw away. When Karl had a good view of the front door, he cowered in a niche between houses and piles of foul-smelling waste and waited. If he was lucky, Faust was still with Agrippa.

Rats scurried around his feet, and a night watchman walked past very closely without seeing him. After about half an hour, when Karl was soaked to the skin, a man wearing a blue-and-black cloak and a floppy hat approached the inn from the cathedral. Karl breathed a sigh of relief. It was the doctor. With Satan by his side, Faust walked with a spring in his step; Karl guessed the conversation with Agrippa had left the doctor in high spirits. Jealousy flared up in the young assistant, but only for a moment. Then he cautiously stepped out into the street and waved.

Faust took a few moments to recognize him, and even then he approached only reluctantly. When the doctor came closer to Karl, he wrinkled his nose. Satan growled and sniffed at Karl’s filthy trousers.

“What happened to you?” asked Faust gruffly. “Did you wallow in the muck?”

“Something . . . something dreadful has happened, Master,” burst out Karl. “By God, I . . . I’m so sorry.”

Faust immediately turned serious. “What is it? Speak up!”

“May heaven forgive me. I am wanted as a sodomite and I . . . I fear so are you.”

As quickly as he could, Karl told the doctor about his visit to the Black Whale, the events at the Franken Tower, and his escape. To his surprise, the doctor remained calm.

“You said they knew your name. That’s bad—very bad,” he muttered. “You’re right. We can’t go back to the inn. Nor to Agrippa if we don’t want to drag him into this. But where can we go? Where . . . ?” Faust closed his eyes and rubbed his nose.

“Maybe if I hand myself in,” whimpered Karl. “If I tell them that you have nothing to do with any of this—”

“Shut up!” barked Faust. “They will try to use it against me one way or another. I should never have—” He broke off and shook his head. “Whatever has happened, we must look ahead now. This running away must come to an end.”

“What do you mean?” Karl looked at his master expectantly. “What are you thinking?”

“Listen closely to what I tell you,” replied Faust quietly. “We’ll only get out of this if we don’t make any mistakes now.”

“Where . . . where do you want to go?” asked Karl. “The power of the Cologne Inquisition reaches far.”

The doctor nodded resolutely as if he’d just made an important decision. The rain was still beating down on them, and small waterfalls ran off Faust’s hat.

“I think I know a place where we can stay awhile,” said Faust eventually. “I haven’t been there in a long time, but it’s an ideal place to hide out for a winter—or for as long as it takes until they’ve forgotten about us again. I should have gone back there much sooner. There is something that might help to answer my questions.” His gaze turned into the distance before he spoke again.

“It is a tower.”

From a window on the second floor of the inn, a