The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,36

his mother had called him, the lucky one. The name had never seemed more wrong to him as in this dark hour. All his cleverness, his wit, his thirst for knowledge had led him not to the top, but into this abyss with no way out.

Time passed very slowly. Every now and then he could hear shouts and the barking of dogs in the distance. Half of Knittlingen was probably out in the forest, while he, the coward, the loser, was sitting in the hole.

When the first twilight broke through the dark of night, the shouts and barking suddenly became louder. The men were coming back. Soon afterward, heavy footsteps approached the door to his cell, then the bolt was pushed back and the door opened. The gray rectangle was filled by the bailiff, his coat ripped and muddy at the hem, his face damp with sweat and dew. But the man smiled as he lifted a lantern to illuminate Johann’s face.

“Good news, boy,” he said. “At least the prefect won’t bite off your head now. They found Margarethe.”

It would be a whole week before Johann was allowed to see Margarethe.

During that time, the people of Knittlingen—adults as well as children—acted as though he weren’t there. When he returned to the grape harvest in the vineyards, they avoided him. He worked by himself among the almost-bare vines, and when he carried his full basket to the carts, the farmers stared at him in silence and spat on the ground. As soon as he walked away, they whispered behind his back. Johann was too ashamed to go to Maulbronn. Surely Father Antonius would shake his head at a boy who first lost the medicine for his deathly ill mother and then failed to help his little brother and his friend.

Martin remained missing, and the hope of finding him alive dwindled with every passing day.

The fair came to an end, and the jugglers and merchants left Knittlingen. Tonio the magician must have departed earlier—his wagon hadn’t been parked outside the Lion for a while now. Hans Harschauber, the innkeeper and one of the few people who still talked to Johann, told him that the itinerant astrologer had indeed left town the morning of the first day of the fair.

Meanwhile, a group of men led by Jörg Gerlach and the prefect continued to search for Martin. They combed the forest with dogs almost as far as the Black Forest and past Bruchsal. They sent messengers to villages and towns near and far, but it was as if the earth had swallowed the boy. All that was found of Martin was a small, crudely carved wooden shoe lying near the clearing.

The worst were the evenings and nights at home. Neither his father nor his brothers, not even the maids, spoke with Johann. His bowl with soup or barley porridge was put in front of him in silence, and he wasn’t included in the mealtime prayers. For many hours Johann would lie in his chamber upstairs, staring at Martin’s empty bed beside him. What had happened to his little brother? Was he still alive? And if so, how was he doing? Was he sitting locked up in some stable or cage, crying, cursing his older brother who hadn’t protected him? Was he lying in chains in the belly of a ship traveling down the Rhine, in the hands of slave traders who treated him like livestock?

Johann also worried about Margarethe. He’d gathered from a few whispered remarks made by the servants that she hadn’t spoken since the incident in the woods. She merely lay in her bed in silence, getting spoon-fed, staring at the ceiling with wide eyes. She seemed to have been frightened out of her wits. Johann’s heart ached with concern for Margarethe. If only he could see her! But the house of the prefect—the entire prefecture, in fact—remained barred to him. Whenever he approached the entrance, two or three servants appeared and made it clear that he wasn’t welcome.

On the eighth day, the prefect visited the Gerlachs’ house and spoke with Johann’s father behind closed doors. Afterward, Gerlach addressed his son for the first time in a week.

“The prefect wants you to talk to Margarethe,” he said frostily. “He reckons you might get through to her, help her get better. And maybe she knows something about Martin. Although I doubt she’ll talk to the boy who abandoned her.”

Johann was filled with renewed hope. If he could bring Margarethe to speak again, all