The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,255

very sluggish. “That’s where the music was coming from!”

Johann nodded. “The Schembartlauf parade is over, and the jugglers move on to the next city, like they always do.” He sighed. “I saw them earlier but forgot all about them.”

Karl watched the bright, noisy train passing by. One of the jugglers, wearing a red fool’s cap, took a mock bow and showed them his backside, making an unappetizing sound. Karl turned away in disgust.

“What are we doing here?” he asked. “I’ve truly had enough of jesters and masks.”

“Well, I’m going to ask them if we can come along.” Johann gestured at the traveling preachers in their worn-out robes. “No one is going to notice us among all those quacks and fraudsters. And I’m sure we can find a spot in one of the wagons for Greta. Wait here.”

He limped toward a wagon and soon returned with a smile on his face.

“They said we can come. All the way to Prague, if we like. There’s going to be a huge feast in the summer, apparently.”

“Just like that?” Karl gaped at him. “How did you wrangle that so quickly? You don’t have any money, so how on—?”

“I speak their language. A few words in thieves’ cant, a few old tales, and the usual coin trick.” Johann grinned. “We jugglers know one another.”

“The great Doctor Johann Georg Faustus, a dishonorable juggler?” Karl laughed in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

Johann winked at his assistant with his one eye. “I’ve had many lives, my boy. You don’t even know the half of it, and I’ll never tell you which half is true. Now come before they move on without us.”

Johann led them to one of the colorful wagons, and Greta was allowed to lie down inside. Karl joined the itinerant priests walking ahead of the wagon, while Johann sat down on the box seat with his hood pulled over his face. The driver, a young lad with red curls and a red gugel, gave him a cheeky grin.

“Got into some trouble, old man?” he jeered. “Wouldn’t be the first to join the traveling folk. What do you know?”

“Oh, a few things.” Johann smiled and gazed at the road that led through the Laufer Gate. The gates stood wide open, and the guards watched the lively train with dark expressions, pleased the dishonorable folks were leaving town.

When the jugglers danced through the gate, the musicians played their farewell tune and the wagons rattled across the drawbridge. Johann looked back one last time. Next to the gate stood a small boy, watching the noisy procession with his mouth open.

He looked spellbound, and Johann knew why.

Epilogue

SOMEWHERE IN THE BREISGAU, NEAR SWITZERLAND MAY AD 1513

BEHOLD THIS DRINK and be amazed! It is the same drink the Greek king Mithridates used, once upon a time, to protect himself from snakebites, and which Heracles used to capture Cerberus, the hound of hell. Thanks to this drink, Emperor Friedrich lived for more than a hundred years! The bottle is yours for just two hellers. And for three more I’ll read your future in your palm. Come and learn what fate holds in store for you with the great Doctor Johann Georg Faustus!”

The people on the small market square pointed and stared. Standing in front of them on the box seat of a wagon was a man wearing a blue-and-black star-spangled cloak, watching them from beneath his floppy hat with a pair of piercing black eyes. The left eye in particular seemed to fix on the crowd ominously, gleaming like a black diamond from the depths of hell.

“The first of you to buy a bottle of the drink receives a horoscope for the whole year!” the doctor promised. He raised his hands, and the crowd saw that he wore a black leather glove on the right. “Come closer! Don’t be afraid. What I foretell always comes true—the good things, at least,” he added with a wink.

The people whispered and nudged one another. They knew this uncanny man from tales and from tattered, cheaply printed leaflets that made the rounds at taverns. Apparently, not long ago, the doctor flew upon a swan that he’d fed with his theriac in Basel. In Braunschweig, he made the wheels on the cart of a wealthy farmer disappear, and in the faraway Orient, he conjured deer antlers on the helmet of an imperial knight, whereupon the heathens fled in droves.

And now this widely traveled man had actually come to their small town, like a messenger from a distant world. The