The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,37

would end well! She’d describe the men who abducted Martin. They’d search for them across the whole Kraichgau, find them, and break them on the wheel or draw and quarter them. Martin would be brought home safely and Margarethe would love him again, just like she’d told him inside the cave.

He ran over to the prefecture, where the prefect awaited him in the courtyard. In the last few weeks, the once strong, tall man seemed to have aged by years. His hair had turned gray, and deep furrows lined his face.

“She’s in the back chamber,” he said to Johann, gesturing toward his house. “Try your best, boy. I’m just not sure what else to do. The devil knows what she saw in the forest. It seems to me the dear Lord has turned his back on our family.”

Johann walked past Margarethe’s father like a whipped dog, crossed the courtyard, and entered the house.

In the chamber, Margarethe lay still on her bed, her eyes wide open. Johann came closer, his heart thumping loudly. But she didn’t stir, even when he touched her cautiously. Her skin was as white as chalk, with blue veins showing underneath, and even now, in this sad moment, her beauty mesmerized Johann. He thought about their time together in the cave. That seemed like a lifetime ago. He had fantasized about becoming her husband then, and now she lay in front of him like a corpse.

“Margarethe,” he whispered and took her hand. “Can you hear me?”

Her gaze remained blank, her lips unmoving. Only her calm breathing showed that she was still alive.

“Margarethe,” Johann continued and knelt beside her. “I . . . I’m so sorry! I should have been there for you, for both of you. Please, talk to me! Just one word, so I know you can hear me. I . . . I love you!”

He squeezed her hand, which was cold and limp, like wet bread. Just when he thought she’d never speak again, her lips began to tremble. The words she breathed were so low that Johann couldn’t understand them at first. He had to lean down close to Margarethe’s face before he finally understood what she was whispering to him.

It was just two words, and they hit him like a blow to the stomach.

“Go . . . away.”

It was the same words she had screamed in the forest when he’d abandoned her—and now they were addressed to him. And then her lips formed a phrase that would forever be etched into Johann’s memory.

“Go . . . away . . . You . . . are . . . the . . . devil!”

Johann began to tremble, and everything around him suddenly seemed black and gray. The world was drained of all color. With tears in his eyes, he stood up.

“Goodbye, Margarethe,” he whispered. “I will never forget you.”

He ran his hand over Margarethe’s flaxen hair one last time, then he turned around and walked to the door. Who did she think she saw in him? Or what?

You are the devil . . .

Johann stumbled through the lanes like a ghost, without direction, without aim. His true love—his only love—had cursed him.

The following morning, his father called him before breakfast. Like so often in the last few months, Jörg Gerlach was sitting at the kitchen table with a jug of wine, his face red from the alcohol. But unlike other times when he called upon his son, he asked Johann to sit. He stared at his son in silence for a long while before addressing him.

“Your brother Martin still hasn’t been found,” he said slowly. “And I don’t think he will be found. The ravens are probably pecking away at his crooked bones by now.”

His father’s coldness sent shivers down Johann’s spine.

“I want to be honest with you, boy. You’re not welcome here any longer. Folks have never thought very highly of you—your tricks, your nosy questions, your fancy ways, acting like you’re better than them—but now you’ve gone too far. Because of you, your brother died in the wilderness and the prefect’s daughter is bedridden, more dead than alive.” His father looked at him with contempt. “You’ve brought shame to my family, and I don’t want you under my roof any longer.”

Johann was dumbstruck. Margarethe had cursed him, and now his father was doing the same. Strangely, his father’s words didn’t affect him very much; it was as if they couldn’t touch him deep down inside. The shock of Margarethe’s rejection was too