The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,211

Nuremberg.”

Johann watched the man closely, but his expression gave away nothing. An icy gust swept across the hilltop and rattled the shutters. Karl had come up next to Johann and was studying the knight with curiosity. Behind them, Little Satan growled almost like a grown dog sensing danger.

“And you think that just because some mysterious friend wants to see me I’m going to follow you all the way to Nuremberg?” asked Johann sharply. “You’ll have to give me a little more.”

The knight nodded. “Your friend anticipated you would say something along those lines. That’s why I have another message for you.”

“Which is?”

“He said he could tell you more about Gilles de Rais.”

Johann felt as though he had been struck by lightning. He stood rooted to the spot as the name echoed through his head. The name that had been pursuing him for more than fifteen years.

Gilles de Rais.

Now he was certain that the man from Nuremberg was the first sign of Larua.

The game had begun.

It took quite a while for Johann to regain the power of speech. Finally he cleared his throat.

“Give us an hour,” he told the knight. “We’re coming with you.”

24

THE KNIGHT’S NAME was Eberhart von Streithagen, but they wouldn’t learn much more about him in the following days. With Little Satan in the wagon, they followed him to the north, having packed the laterna magica, the stargazing tube, and some of the books on astrology. At first Karl had tried to ask Johann about the reason for their hasty departure, but he’d received only vague answers. Eventually, Johann said no more on the subject at all.

Johann had no idea what to expect in Nuremberg. The only people who knew about his interest in Gilles de Rais were Agrippa and Conrad Celtis, but the latter had died a few years ago, and Johann hadn’t seen him since their last conversation at the castle in Heidelberg. Who else might know about it? The mysterious person knew that Gilles de Rais preoccupied Johann—and he’d sent for Johann just when a very special comet was about to return after seventeen years.

They traveled easily with Eberhart von Streithagen by their side. No highwayman was stupid enough to challenge an armored knight with a longsword on a warhorse. And even the robber knights, who had multiplied in recent years, steered clear of them. Streithagen didn’t talk much, but from the little he told them, they learned that the Nuremberg command of the Teutonic Knights was one of the emperor’s last strongholds inside the city. The free imperial city of Nuremberg, which answered only to the emperor, had increasingly turned away from its former benefactor in the last few years. But the Teutonic Knights stood firmly behind the regent, and their grounds within the city were untouchable.

Johann smiled grimly. At least he’d be safe from persecution by the Cologne Inquisition there. But what might the emperor or the Teutonic Knights want from him? And who was this strange old friend?

After ten very quiet days of traveling, and with terribly sore behinds from getting bounced around on the box seat, they finally arrived in Nuremberg around noon.

From afar, they could see the mighty castle rising like a crown above the double ring of the wall, as well as churches and many neat half-timbered houses. Johann gazed at the massive city wall; it was three miles long and contained over eighty towers, and Johann was filled with awe. He had visited so many cities, and during the last year he and Karl had crisscrossed the country—from the east to the north to the west to the south—but Nuremberg was something special. Augsburg might have been the wealthiest city in the empire, and Cologne the holiest; Erfurt was the most studious and Hamburg the most adventurous, but Nuremberg was the most inventive of all, with the most intelligent, witty, and resourceful citizens. The city was both the soul and the head of the empire at once—the unofficial capital in a country that didn’t have a fixed political center. Not long ago a Nuremberg man named Peter Henlein had built a spring-driven clock small enough that it could be carried in the pocket of a vest. A certain Martin Behaim had ordered the construction of a globe here that showed the world as a ball and not as a flat disc. Many other technical inventions also came from Nuremberg, and many outstanding artists called this city home, including the famous Albrecht Dürer—one more reason for Karl to be