The Devil's Pawn

by Oliver Pötzsch

  Are you finally ready to pay your price, Doctor Faustus?

  It could have been coincidence. Word of Johann’s shows in Bretten must have gotten around, and he was no longer a complete stranger around here. The fellow might have been a little odd, but he was a grave digger, after all—a dishonorable person who lived on the outskirts of society. People like that sometimes were odd.

  And yet Johann felt almost certain, even though everything inside him tried to fight the thought: the man at the cemetery had been Tonio del Moravia, his former master.

  More than twenty years ago, Tonio had picked up Johann on the road after his stepfather had thrown him out. He had traveled the empire at Tonio’s side and learned much from him. But then the man had revealed his true face.

  To this day Johann didn’t know the real identity of his former master. Tonio was an expert in deception, a Satanist, and possibly something worse—yes, maybe he was the devil himself. He never seemed to age, unlike Johann, who felt every single one of his years in his bones.

  Another bout of shaking overcame him; it shot into his hand and from there spread through the entire left side of his body. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he tried to gain control over his body. It had been going like this for six months now. At first, it had been nothing but a slight twitching of his fingers. Johann had suspected it was a late aftereffect of the amputation back in Nuremberg, when Tonio had cut off Johann’s little finger of his right hand and then taken out his eye. But the trembling had become worse, spreading inside Johann like a fever or paralysis. Sometimes, at night, his body became as hard as a shell and he struggled to breathe.

  This must be what it feels like to be buried alive.

  He dug his fingers into the tabletop and the shaking subsided, slunk back into its hiding hole like an old reptile waiting to pounce on him again another day.

  “Damned disease! What . . . what are you?” gasped Johann.

  The grave digger had spoken about a price that every man had to pay. Could this disease be the price he meant?

  During the last few months, Johann had reached the conclusion that it wasn’t so much an illness as a curse—yet another part of the pact he had entered with Tonio all those years ago, a handshake on the highway between Maulbronn and Ulm. He had succeeded at much in life since then, had gained glory and wealth, but everything had its price. And now Tonio—or whoever the master was—was reaching out for him and demanding his share.

  How much time had he left?

  At that moment there was a knock on the door, and Johann started. Had the devil arrived to fetch him already? But then he heard Greta’s voice and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I can see light under your door, Uncle. May I come in?”

  Johann closed his eyes for a moment, trying to calm down. Then, attempting to sound preoccupied and impatient at once, as if she had disturbed him in deep thought, he called out, “Well, if it’s important. I’m still at work.”

  The door opened and Greta came in. As always upon seeing her, Johann felt as though someone had lit a light in the darkness. Greta’s merry face brightened his darkest hours, and when she laughed, all was well. But he knew that even she could be melancholy at times, that even for her the world was framed in black.

  Just like it was for her mother, may she rest in peace. A peace that I’m not granted.

  Sometimes when he secretly observed Greta, he almost thought he was looking at Margarethe. The same poise, the same movements, the same ringing laughter. Several times he had reached out to stroke Greta lovingly just to pull back his hand as if he’d been bitten by a snake, and Greta would look at him with surprise.

  “Karl and I were worried about you,” Greta said reproachfully as she walked to his table. “Where have you been? What was it that you needed to do so urgently before we leave for Bamberg?”

  “An . . . an old story,” he replied. “Something from before your time. Nothing important.”

  How could he explain to her that he had paid a visit to his past in Knittlingen?

  A past that includes your mother, my darling.

  Johann was Greta’s father. Her mother was Margarethe, his first and only love, who had been strangled and burned at the stake as a witch because of him. His guilt ran so deeply that he couldn’t bring himself to tell Greta the truth about her origins. He’d been waiting for the right moment for more than six years now, but it never seemed to arrive. Several times he had come very close to telling her, but something always happened. By now he believed that he’d never be able to tell her—perhaps it was simply too late.

  Everything was fine the way it was.

  Greta watched him closely. For a brief moment, Johann thought he saw fear flashing in her eyes—a fear he couldn’t explain. Greta was hardly ever afraid of anything. Sometimes he wished she were a little more cautious. The incident that afternoon was typical for the forward demeanor she displayed during her performances. Men truly believed in the act she put on—while Johann still saw the small, timid girl he’d rescued from the Nuremberg catacombs when she was still playing with dolls, even if he knew that she had grown up.

  “Something is wrong, isn’t it?” asked Greta. “You’re as pale as a corpse.” She paused for a moment. “Karl is worried, too. You’ve been getting gloomier for months, and a few times you didn’t even turn up for a show. You’re always hiding in the wagon with your books.” She gestured at the open tomes in front of him. “What are you doing with them? It’s like those books have put you—the great magician—under a spell.”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “Is that so? Reasons?” Greta folded her arms on her chest and glared at him. “You might be a powerful magician to the people, but I think we ought to drop the secrecy behind closed doors. You never told us about the letter from Bamberg! I am twenty years old—sometimes I feel like you forget that.”

  “I don’t forget it, because I can see what’s happening. Earlier, in the tent—”

  “I was handling it,” said Greta, cutting him off. “I know how to defend myself.” She smiled grimly. “That fellow is going to remember me for the rest of his life whenever he sees his reflection.”

  “That may be, but I still don’t like the way you flirt with the boys.” Johann sighed. “What about that dandyish fop you met at the fair in Frankfurt? You were gone for two nights. Anything could have happened to you.”

  “And what if! It’s none of your business. Just because you live like a monk doesn’t mean I must live as a nun.”

  “Insolent brat!” Johann rose angrily. “Watch your fresh mouth. You forget who pulled you out of the gutter!”

  He raised his hand but lowered it again immediately. Greta was right. She was old enough to make her own decisions. She was a grown woman who would probably soon go her own way. A woman who turned men’s heads. Whenever she got talking with good-looking minstrels or jugglers, Johann would glower and snarl. No one had been good enough for him so far, and he was glad Greta hadn’t found the one for her yet. But he expected that sometime soon Greta would leave him and Karl, that she would meet a man who measured up to her and she’d join a different troupe.

  That day will be the saddest of my life.

  He himself hadn’t loved another woman since his decisions had cost Margarethe her life back in Heidelberg. He had visited whores a few times, but even that he’d gradually given up. He loved his daughter and his books—he didn’t need anything else.

  And I’m probably going to lose one of those two things soon.

  “Let’s not argue,” he said. “You’re right. I should have told you as soon as I received the letter from Bamberg. It’s time we found winter quarters. The rain earlier on was the first messenger—from now on it is only going to get colder.” He tapped on a map of the German Empire that lay rolled up between the books. It was one of the best that had ever been drawn, part of the map of Europe by the well-known cartographer Martin Waldseemüller and worth as much as three destriers. The map went fro
m the North and Baltic Seas down to Italy, and from the lands east of the Elbe River all the way to Burgundy and Brabant. They had traveled many of those regions together in recent years. They had been at home everywhere and nowhere at once.

  “I am looking for a safe route to Bamberg,” Johann explained. “Just like I’ve always done. You know how dangerous the roads are at the moment.” He attempted a smile. “Even for the famous Doctor Faustus.”

  Greta suddenly stepped up to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I love you, Uncle,” she said softly. “Whatever happens. I just wanted you to know that.”

  “I . . . I love you, too,” he replied, surprised by Greta’s sudden show of affection. He liked it when she called him Uncle, but this time the word had sounded anxious.

  “I love you more than anything, Greta. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you.”

  The last words had just slipped out, but they came from the bottom of Johann’s heart. He had a feeling that Tonio had returned in order to drag him into the abyss with him—for good this time. This accursed disease had a firm grip on Johann, and he sensed that the good life on the road was coming to an end. He hadn’t much time left. But most of all, he was afraid for Greta. If evil had come back to his life, it wouldn’t shy away from his daughter. The grave digger and his wolfish grin took shape in Johann’s mind.

  Are you finally ready to pay your price, Doctor Faustus?

  “And I wouldn’t forgive myself if anything were to happen to you.” Greta squeezed his hand. “Good night, Uncle.” She gave him one last nod and left the chamber.

  The room immediately seemed much darker. The candle flickered, and then a gust of wind blew it out. The redoubtable Doctor Johann Georg Faustus was alone with his books and his fears.

  2

  THE MAN FLAILED HIS ARMS AS HE TUMBLED. FOR A BRIEF moment he seemed to be suspended in the air, then he screamed as he fell off the scaffolding onto the cobblestones, where he shattered like a puppet. The dozens of Roman citizens who’d gathered among the blocks of stone and sacks of lime on Saint Peter’s Square groaned and whispered among themselves. It wasn’t long before a handful of guards appeared to take away the lifeless body, and so people turned their attention to more exciting things. Only a puddle of blood remained, which soon dried in the late-autumn sun.

  Pope Leo X turned away with disgust. Such accidents reflected badly on the construction of Saint Peter’s Basilica, especially on the day he visited the site personally. Servants had set down his litter opposite the cathedral so that he might watch the progress. Standing to his right was his personal architect and painter, the young master builder Raffaello Santi, who had just launched into a monologue about his new plans for the barrel vault. The laborer’s fatal accident—he appeared to have slipped and tumbled to his demise—had cut Raffaello off midsentence.

  “An unfortunate accident,” muttered Raffaello. “The fellow was probably drunk.”

  “Not the first accident of its kind,” Leo remarked smugly. He was in a bad mood because he had been in pain for days. Not even the plentiful silk cushions and fur rugs could change the fact that he was once more tortured by his old familiar affliction, which sometimes drove him to the brink of madness. Leo restlessly shuffled his broad rear end back and forth in an attempt to find a more comfortable sitting position; the inflamed fistulas flared up like the fires of hell. “By the devil! You truly ought to pick your workers more carefully, Raffaello.”

  The master builder, a fine-boned, somewhat feminine-looking man, was considered the best painter in Rome, if not in the whole world—but even he wasn’t safe from Leo’s fits of temper. Raffaello had already decorated the papal apartments for Leo’s predecessor, Julius II, and created unforgettable masterpieces. He was one of the few people who dared to contradict Leo publicly.

  “With all due respect, Holy Father,” he said coolly, “we have to work our men extremely hard if we want to complete the construction within the time frame. And now that payments are in arrears again, morale is down.”

  “You’ll get your money,” hissed Leo. “Don’t you worry about that. You’ve been paid well so far, haven’t you, Master Raffaello? So you’d better focus on speeding up this building!”

  The rebuilding of Saint Peter’s Basilica was Leo’s most ambitious project. The previous pope had started it, and construction had already been going for fifteen years. The dome was going to be the biggest and most beautiful in Christendom, no matter the cost. After all, the disciple Saint Peter himself had been buried here, following his martyr’s death head-down on the cross—the first pope in a long succession whose most recent member was now Leo.

  And I will be the one who leads the church back to its former glory. A second Saint Peter!

  Every year, thousands of pilgrims from all over the world came to Saint Peter’s. To finance the construction, money from sales of indulgences was brought to Rome, collected by Leo’s loyal assistant Johann Tetzel and many other helpers, from Naples in the south up to the Hanse region in the north. Basically, it was a trade from which everyone benefited. The good Christians shortened their time in purgatory, and the church shone in a new, brighter light. The trade in indulgences financed not only the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s but also the wealth of paintings, altars, and frescoes that prettied the face of the old whore that was Rome. Leo thought back to the day he had ascended the papal throne. The procession alone had cost a hundred thousand ducats—a seventh of the pope’s possessions. But it had been worth it.

  The pope sat up in his litter, with its red velvet canopy, and gritted his teeth as another wave of pain rolled through him. His plan was to enter history as the regenerator of the church, and now, of all times, some silly little monk from a German backwater had to pop up and interfere with his life, railing against the letters of indulgence, writing provocative theses, and nailing them most theatrically onto a church door. The last part was probably nothing but gossip to make the story sound more interesting. Whatever the case, the stream of money was becoming noticeably thinner, and maybe someday soon it would dry up altogether. It was enough to drive a man up the wall!

  But hopefully all that would soon come to an end—very soon.

  “Tell me about the progress with the southern columns,” he said to Raffaello.

  The master builder nodded dutifully and started another monologue, allowing Leo to let his thoughts drift. Why had he even agreed to this boring site visit? What he needed was distraction! But his favorite jester was ill at the moment, and his cardinals tortured him with irritating reports from the German province, where, on top of everything else, the peasants were growing increasingly discontented. The smell of uprising and change was everywhere—it was as if a powerful autumn wind were blowing through the country, rattling it to the core.

  Where are these times going to lead us? To paradise ahead or back into the darkness?

  He would ensure that the church, at least, was on the right track. But to do so, he urgently needed the one man he’d been waiting for so desperately. The only man who, after all these setbacks, actually knew the secret that would solve all of Leo’s problems.

  “. . . particularly spectacular are the crossing pillars, which, with the aid of a new roof construction . . . ,” said Raffaello, and Leo heard it as if through fog as his gaze traveled across the many scaffolds.

  It’s all been taking too long.

  And then the pain in his backside—he could hardly bear it.

  He was greatly relieved when a messenger appeared next to his litter, bowing low. Leo’s heart beat faster when he saw that the man carried a letter. The pope had demanded to stay informed about certain occurrences in the empire at all times. Raffaello ceased his explanations once more, unable to suppress a scowl. Leo took the letter and broke the seal, trying to stop his hands from trembling. His eyes darted across the lines. They’d been written by one of his best men—the only man he could trust with this mission and the only one who possessed the necessary discr
etion.

  Leo’s mouth twisted into a smile when he finished the letter.

  Lord in heaven, praised be thy goodness.

  Everything was ready. All he had to do now was wait.

  He would pass the time with a few interesting experiments, deep down below Castel Sant’Angelo.

  “Thank you for your illuminating updates, Master,” he said, turning to the dumbfounded Raffaello. “Important commitments force me to take my leave. I expect you will ensure that your men work more and fall off the scaffold less. If you complete the barrel vaults this year, I will pay your weight in gold. If you don’t . . .” He paused and studied dainty Raffaello as if studying a pretty, shimmering bug. “Well, the dungeons of Castel Sant’Angelo are in need of some renovations. If you know what I mean.”

  He clapped his hands, and the four litter carriers rose. Swaying like a fat old camel, Pope Leo X hovered away above the heads of his flock.

  It took Johann, Greta, and Karl ten days to travel to Bamberg, and unlike normally, they spent the nights not at warm inns but in the drafty wagon. The people of Franconia were particularly superstitious and fond of beer, and following the incident in Bretten, Faust was more wary than usual of the danger of drunken mobs. Besides, they traveled faster that way.

  Greta sat next to Faust on the box seat and enjoyed the gentle swaying that was always part of their journey. She held the reins loosely; the horse knew how to find its way. The road wound endlessly through the Franconian hills, which were speckled with tufts of autumnal fog. Their wagon was in fact a carriage, a terribly expensive vehicle invented in the kingdom of Hungary. On this new type of transport, the compartment was suspended, making for a much smoother ride. The inside of their wagon was a chaos of chests, crates, and colorful clothes that hung from the ceiling alongside fragrant bunches of dried herbs. It smelled of mint, chamomile, and the cheap, potent theriac brandy. The small clay bottles jingled like little bells when the carriage moved. At nights, the wind swept through the thin timber walls.