The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,95

taverns, tempting as they were with their warm rooms and hot mulled wine. Just like the pilgrims, they slept in flea-infested, drafty hostels where monks served watery gruel. When there was no hostel, they slept underneath the wagon, tortured by wind, hail, and Archibaldus’s snoring and farting, which drove Johann to the brink of insanity.

But worse still was the fact that Salome ignored him completely.

Had she only been toying with him? Sometimes, while Johann trudged through the snow and fog, she walked ahead of him like an apparition from another world. He could make out her curves even under her warm coat; her swaying walk, the way she tossed back her hair, and how she shook the snow off her shoulders caused him to think of nothing but her naked body. He became quiet and withdrawn. He felt Peter’s hard looks on him from time to time—the troupe’s leader had noticed his changed mood. Johann held back in the evenings when the other jugglers entertained the travelers, contributing to the shows only when Peter asked him explicitly. He practiced with the knife in silence, throwing it at tree trunks again and again. Sometimes he imagined Tonio’s grinning face in the bark, and other times it was Emilio, his mouth open in a lustful moan.

By now they were following the Inn River, wider than the Lech. They’d been crossing the Alps for nearly two weeks, and the mountains weren’t coming to an end—on the contrary, they seemed to rise up higher than ever. The river roared and twisted in its bed between cliffs as high as cathedral towers. At the narrowest point, when Johann thought the path must have ended, a fortification jutted out from the rock face on the opposite bank like a wart on the nose of a giant. A wooden bridge led across the raging river, and in its middle stood a fortified tower with a bretèche, the water foaming up at the tower’s base. A wall with a walkway ran along the rock face, although Johann struggled to make out details of the river’s far bank through the rain and the sleet.

“Fort Finstermünz,” said Archibaldus glumly. “From here, the path winds its way up to the Reschen Pass. Last year a bunch of wagons fell into the river not far from here.” He gave a dry laugh. “Of course, our dear Peter Nachtigall didn’t tell you that part of the story—nor about the massacres at the hands of Swiss mercenaries nearby.”

In the bridge tower they were received by a group of surly Tyrolean soldiers dressed in tattered clothes and rusty armor, whose job it was to collect the toll. Some wagon hands were also stationed there, ready to offer services like additional draft animals for the pass. They spoke in a language that sounded strangely old, like an ancient precursor to Latin.

“See how low the gate is?” Archibaldus asked Johann, gesturing toward the dark passage in the tower. “Those bastards built it that way on purpose. If a wagon can’t fit through it, smaller wheels must be fitted. The guards charge three kreuzers for the service—per wheel, that is. And on the other side, when the wheels get changed back, they charge as much again. Damn Tyrolean thieves! They’ll never change.”

The water below them gurgled, and the bridge quivered and swayed slightly as the wagons drove across it one by one. A few of them indeed had to change their wheels, and oxen and strong draft horses were hitched in front of the merchants’ own animals on the other bank to help pull their wagons up the pass. The jugglers waited for their turn to cross. Emilio made to wave over one of the wagon hands, but Peter stopped him.

“We don’t need those cutthroats,” he said with a growl.

“But our wagon—” began Emilio.

“Isn’t nearly as heavy as those of the merchants. We’ll get up the pass just fine.” Peter grinned. “And we’ve got Mustafa, remember?”

“If you say so.” Emilio didn’t seem convinced. He looked over to Archibaldus, who was watching the clouds.

“It looks rather dark in the west,” said the old man. “If we don’t take extra draft animals, we should at least wait until tomorrow for the weather to settle.”

“And pay a fortune for accommodation at the fort?” Peter waved dismissively. “That’s precisely what those thieves want us to do. We’re leaving now. Everything going well, we’ll be up the pass in just a few hours.”

“Everything going well,” muttered Archibaldus. But he had given up trying