The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,66
with deep ruts. Tree roots reached out of the ground like fingers of subterranean ghosts and forced them to take many small detours. Twice they had to cross a small stream swollen with meltwater rushing down the valley. The master was silent, pulling on the old nag’s bridle when it didn’t want to walk through muddy puddles.
Before driving off, they had nailed the windows and door shut and buried a large crate behind the tower. Johann had managed to see that the crate was mostly filled with books, but he’d also seen the copper tube. Apparently, Tonio had disassembled the strange apparatus and hidden it in the crate. After they’d filled the hole, the master made some strange gestures with his hands and laid out five white stones in a circle. “In case we ever come back,” he growled. “No one will dare to dig for treasure here. Not if they value their immortal soul.” With soot, he painted a black pentagram on the door and secured it with a heavy beam.
Finally, after two hours of pushing and pulling, they reached the bottom of the valley. They turned west, away from the village. After another half hour, the church bells started chiming wildly, as if there was a fire somewhere or an impending storm.
As if the villagers are gathering for a hunt, Johann thought. A witch hunt.
The bells grew fainter until Johann could no longer hear them at all, and the journey passed quietly for a while. Johann sat beside the master on the box seat, like he’d done so many times before the winter. Tonio still hadn’t spoken. He ground his teeth grimly, as if imagining eating every one of those slow-witted, superstitious peasants alive.
You eat our children . . .
Johann now had time to reflect on what he’d discovered at the tower. Had he actually seen children’s garments in Tonio’s chamber? Suddenly he wasn’t so sure. It had just been a pile of clothes, after all, and there was probably a rational explanation for the pentagram, too. Johann knew that alchemy worked with symbols and a wide variety of substances, including blood. Most likely, what he’d seen on the floor was pigs’ blood—disgusting, yes, but nothing to be afraid of. What if his imagination was running away with him? What if he was being just as narrow minded and hysterical as the villagers? Children had gone missing—it happened all the time, everywhere. And there’d be an explanation for Tonio’s nightly excursions, too.
Suddenly, Johann felt bad. Hadn’t the master been very kind to him in the last few weeks? Hadn’t he taught him much? Johann had been blind for so long, and finally someone showed him the light. And there was so much left to learn. About the strange tube he’d found on the roof of the tower, for example, or the legendary field of alchemy the master had just begun to teach him about. Tonio might not have owned a library as large as the one at Maulbronn Monastery, but he seemed to be something of a walking library himself. Sometimes Johann thought the master’s knowledge was ancient and infinite, reaching back to the very first knowledge of man. How much Johann could still learn from him! Johann cleared his throat. Perhaps the time had come to ask where their journey was headed.
“Now that the snow is melting, the road across the Alps should be clear, right?” he asked.
The master nodded but didn’t reply, holding on tightly to the reins.
“Are we going to travel across the Alps?” asked Johann in another attempt. “Perhaps to . . . to Venice?”
“Our plans have changed,” Tonio replied curtly. “We’re heading east, to the Kingdom of Poland.”
“But why?” Johann couldn’t hide his disappointment. He’d been very much looking forward to Venice and Rome, to the warm lands beyond the Alps. He’d wanted to see the ocean, and now they were headed to a country he’d never even heard of before. “Why Poland?”
Now the master turned his haggard, falcon-like face to look at him, eyeing Johann intently, making him feel like Tonio was reading his every thought.
“Have you never wondered where I gained all my knowledge?” asked Tonio. “Do you think it all fell from the sky like a dead star?”
“You . . . you studied,” Johann replied. “In Paris, Heidelberg—”
“Yes, yes,” Tonio said impatiently. “I visited many universities, a traveling scholar, always on the search for new knowledge. But you can only learn the dark arts at one particular university—Krakow.”