The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,216

arms in a placating gesture. “A walk in the fresh air would do us both good.”

Eisenhofen hesitated, but then he nodded. He turned to Valentin. “Go into the garden and tell him the rest—everything. It might change his mind. I’m expecting an answer when the bells strike one o’clock.” He raised a finger and gave Johann a stern look. “And don’t forget, Herr Magician: it’s only a week’s ride to Cologne.”

A short while later, Johann and Valentin were alone in a large, tidy garden that reached from behind the knights’ hall to the western wall. Paths led in a star-shaped pattern past bushes, withered roses, and pruned young fruit trees. Little Satan ran about happily, lifting his leg against a bush occasionally. The plants and trees were covered in a thin layer of frost. Their footsteps made a crunching sound as the two former friends walked along the narrow paths. They said nothing for a long while, each lost in his own memories. Eventually Johann stopped.

“Believe me, Valentin, if I could turn back time—”

“Not even God can do that.” Valentin stared straight ahead. “It took me a long time to understand. But now I know that love can sometimes be destructive.”

“My love for Margarethe, you mean?” asked Johann quietly.

“Do you still love her?” Valentin asked and turned toward him.

Johann hesitated. “She . . . she visits me in my dreams. But unlike years ago, they aren’t happy dreams.”

Valentin nodded slowly. “I understand why you can’t forget her. I would have loved to paint her.” With a grimace of pain, he lifted up his crippled right hand. “I took a long time to learn to draw with my left. I’m not too bad at it now.”

“You still draw?”

Valentin smiled, looking at the garden, at the trees and bushes and the stone benches that would make lovely places to rest awhile in spring and summer. “I spend a lot of time here in the garden. The light is excellent.” He tilted his head and studied Johann. “Perhaps I should draw you, too. You’re famous now, after all.”

“Why did you want to speak with me alone?” asked Johann. “The commander said you ought to tell me everything. What did he mean?”

Valentin’s face darkened. “I’m sure you wonder why I asked the commander to have you of all people brought here. It is true that I believe you’re the only one who might be able to help. And you owe me a favor.”

Johann nodded. “Any favor in the world. I would do anything to atone for my guilt.”

“Then help me to free a child.”

“A child?” Johann was confused. He thought perhaps he’d misheard. “How do you mean?”

Valentin swallowed hard. “Now we come to the real reason you’re here. The reason Eisenhofen hasn’t told you about.”

He gestured for Johann to sit on a bench in the garden’s center. Blackbirds were singing all around them, and sparrows argued in the branches. It seemed like spring had already arrived here, while outside the walls winter still reigned.

“Eisenhofen said that I had my own reasons for asking you to Nuremberg,” said Valentin bitterly. “And it is true. There is a girl I’ve grown very fond of. A child from the gutter whom I took in a few years ago. I named her Greta.”

“Greta?” whispered Johann. “You named her after—”

“It seemed appropriate,” said Valentin gruffly. “Maybe because I love the girl just as much as you used to love Margarethe. But not as a man. I love Gretchen—that’s my nickname for her—like a father loves his child. I raised her, and she’s just turned fourteen. Don’t they say the love for one’s children is the most powerful of all? She calls me uncle. She has no one else in this world, and . . .” He paused. “And she is in grave danger.”

“What do you mean?”

“She has never enjoyed a particularly good reputation in town. Since we’ve moved in at the command, she’s been known as a bit of a tramp, and she’s even stolen the odd apple or egg at the market. When they found her near one of the dead children by the Pegnitz one night a few weeks ago, the authorities made short shrift of her. They”—Valentin’s voice trembled—“they put her in Loch Prison. Not least because they found something from the devil on her—a ram’s horn with some sort of strange symbols. Someone must have slipped it in her pocket.”

“And now the authorities believe the child has something to do with those devilish murders?” asked