The Devil's Pawn

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “Very difficult to come by these days, very difficult. But you’re in luck. Here it is, freshly harvested from below the swaying remains of a hanged man. And I also managed to find everything else.”

  “That’s good,” said Hagen.

  “And my payment?” asked the other man. “I had high expenses.”

  “Oh yes, payment.” Hagen laughed softly. “Of course you shall have your payment. The heavens will reward you.”

  The following sounds made Karl’s blood curdle. A blade swooshed out of its scabbard, fabric ripped, then someone gargled and groaned.

  “Gesù e Maria,” gasped the man.

  “You shall meet them shortly. Give them my regards.”

  A dull crash followed as something heavy fell to the ground. Then something clanked, something shattered, and heavy footsteps crossed the room.

  And neared the door.

  Karl almost reacted too late. He was running back toward the steps when he realized that he would never make it to the top. Hagen would see him in the light of the moon! At the end of the corridor, near the foot of the stairs, lay a pile of fallen, moss-covered stone blocks. Karl darted behind them and, seconds later, heard Hagen storming up the stairs beside him, and then there was another crashing sound.

  God in heaven, please make sure that he hasn’t seen me.

  Karl’s heart was beating in his throat. But the steps faded without slowing, and eventually there was silence. He slowly counted to a hundred before rising and sneaking over to the door, which now stood wide open.

  He stepped inside and froze.

  A bearded man wearing a black cape was lying in his own blood, his arms stretched out to the sides as if he was crucified. All around him was utter chaos: broken glass, shards of clay, torn scrolls of parchment. This room evidently was an alchemist laboratory, as Karl could tell by the many glass flasks, mortars, and stills that were lined up on the tables and shelves. Once upon a time this room was probably one of the heating rooms for the thermal baths. The walls were black with soot, and a fire flickered in an ancient wall stove.

  But that wasn’t the only fire.

  In oily puddles on the ground, dancing bluish flames were spreading fast, reaching some of the tables and parchment scrolls. Clearly, Hagen wanted to destroy any evidence of his deed. Now the man’s cape was catching on fire. Black smoke began to fill the room, making Karl cough.

  He quickly stumbled into the room and leaned over the lifeless body. He saw immediately that there was nothing he could do for the stranger. Hagen had slit the man’s abdomen from the bottom to the top as if gutting a fish. Puzzled eyes stared at the ceiling of the room. The man was older; broken eye glasses were lying next to him on the ground, and his right hand was clutching a scrap of paper.

  Without thinking much about it, Karl wrested the piece of paper from the dead man’s fingers. Karl’s eyes were watering, and the seam of his own coat was beginning to smolder. It was as hot as inside hell itself! Coughing hard, Karl stormed out into the corridor, which had also filled with smoke, and hurried up the stairs. Behind him one of the larger still flasks exploded with a bang.

  When he turned around one last time, he saw a column of fire shooting out of the ground, followed by thick black plumes. It was as if the devil was reaching for him from hell.

  Nearly blind and with a smoking coat Karl raced toward the hills of Rome, where solitary lights burned in the darkness like red eyes. His hands clutched the piece of paper as tightly as the dead man had.

  Not even half an hour later, Johann and Karl stood together by the dim light of a candle and gazed at the scrap of paper. Karl had run so fast that his heart was still beating heavily, and there was a taste of iron in his mouth. He’d kept looking back the entire time, fearing Hagen might have spotted him. But there hadn’t been anyone—only his fears spurring him on. The doctor beside him held his fists clenched and his lips pressed together as he tried to decipher the words on the paper, which was partly burned. Blood spatters told of the terrible crime down in the old Roman thermal bath.

  “Mandragora,” murmured Johann.

  Karl nodded. “I heard that word mentioned.”

  “Mandragora is the Italian word for mandrake,” said Johann. “Specifically, it is the root of the mandrake. Infernal stuff, that.”

  Karl remembered mandrake from lectures at the university. The root often looked like a little man and was therefore associated with witchcraft. It was also highly poisonous and used for abortions. Possession of such roots was punishable by death.

  “The stranger was also talking about something called a bezoar,” said Karl.

  “I’ve used that before. It’s a solidified mass from the stomach of goats and looks like a smooth egg. Bezoar allegedly helps against poisoning, but it’s also used in other areas.” Johann pointed at the smudged letters with growing agitation, his fingers shaking. “Mandragora, bezoar, amber, Salamandra salamandra, sulfur, dens pistris.”

  “Alchemy ingredients,” said Karl. “The room below the bath was definitely an alchemist’s laboratory. I’m guessing the fellow was conducting some experiments that weren’t exactly lawful. There’s always someone willing to pay good money for those things. Just like hangmen’s ropes or the blood of decapitated people, which is supposed to cure the falling sickness. Perhaps we should have tried it on you back then.”

  “Salamandra salamandra, sulfur, dens pistris,” repeated Johann. “Salamandra . . . Damn it, I know this recipe.” He gazed into the distance. “Back at the tower, a long time ago.”

  “You mean the tower where we once spent a winter?” asked Karl.

  “And where I spent a winter as Tonio’s apprentice. I read about invocations, some of which Tonio practiced back then. I . . . I remember a pentagram on the floor. Painted with the blood of children.” He shook his head as if trying to rid himself of the memory. “In The Sworn Book of Honorius is a ritual that requires these ingredients.”

  “And what ritual is that?” asked Karl warily.

  The doctor gave him a grave look and paused for a few heartbeats. “It is one of the most powerful rituals—the ritual to summon the devil.”

  Karl thought he heard the cawing of a raven outside. A door slammed shut in the distance, a gust of wind swept through the room, and the flame of the candle flickered wildly. Then all was silent.

  “Are . . . are you saying that . . . ,” stammered Karl.

  Johann nodded. “Hagen collected those ingredients for Lahnstein because the dog wants to invoke the devil. This paper is proof.” He held the scrap to his eye and squinted. “Unfortunately the bottom part has burned away, or we could see the rest of the list. But even so, I’m fairly certain that I know what’s next. I remember it well.”

  “Which is?” asked Karl, although he had a hunch. He, too, had leafed through The Sworn Book of Honorius back at the tower before quickly closing the book again in horror.

  “First there follow a few uninteresting ingredients. Ground gold, certain herbs that must be picked under a full moon, the ashes of a cross. But there is one ingredient that is crucial for the success of the ritual. A peculiar juice.”

  Karl closed his eyes. He remembered what had been written at the bottom of the page in The Sworn Book. Merely reading it had made him feel sick.

  Quite a peculiar juice is blood.

  “A cup filled with the blood of an innocent child,” he whispered.

  “Have we ever truly asked ourselves who Viktor von Lahnstein really is?” said Johann. “What if Tonio managed to infiltrate the highest echelons of the Vatican? What if the devil is going to be summoned right in the center of his greatest enemy?”

  “At . . . at Castel Sant’Angelo?” breathed Karl. “You think Lahnstein might actually be Tonio?”

  Back in Nuremberg Karl had met this frightening man once, but there had never been any evidence that he was still at large.

  Until the moment Karl had found the piece of paper in the dead alchemist’s hand.

 
Karl no longer knew what to believe, but he had to concede that it was more than strange if Lahnstein’s closest confidant murdered an alchemist for a bunch of mysterious sorcery ingredients. Was Lahnstein perhaps more than just a papal delegate?

  “This is about the blood of my grandson,” said Johann with a trembling voice. “He is supposed to die, and soon. Question is, Where and when precisely? For the ritual, they’ll need room for a large pentagram, and there’ll be much smoke and noise, but it can’t be too conspicuous.”

  Karl flinched.

  Smoke and noise.

  “The fireworks,” he murmured.

  Faust stared at him. “What?”

  “There is going to be a fireworks display! Up on the terrace of Castel Sant’Angelo. I heard people talk about it in the streets. The pope is celebrating the victory over France with fire and smoke and spectacle, just the way Leo loves it. Apparently he holds such feasts on a regular basis.”

  Johann grew pale. “Fireworks would provide the perfect setting. They could conduct the ritual beneath the starry sky and no one would suspect a thing. With the right constellation . . .”

  “What is it?” asked Karl.

  Johann shook his head. “Something doesn’t fit the picture, but I don’t have time to mull it over now. I must warn Greta.” He was already walking to the door. “She can help us get into Castel Sant’Angelo. Lahnstein trusts her and gave her the keys so she can visit the child whenever she likes.”

  “It’s night,” said Karl. “The hospital is closed. Like it or not, we’ll have to wait until morning.”

  “Damn it, you’re right.” Johann stopped dead, his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll use the night to think. We need a plan to stop Lahnstein, and with him, Tonio.” Faust’s eye gleamed, and Karl thought it looked like it was filled with joyous anticipation.

  “The end is near,” said Johann. “Finally! I can feel it.”

  24

  JOHANN LEFT FOR THE HOSPITAL BEFORE SUNRISE.

  He hadn’t slept a wink. Instead, he had sat by the window the whole night and gazed into the fog. He had hardly seen any stars, but even if he’d seen any, it wouldn’t have been much good. The stargazing tube he used to own had stayed behind in Bamberg, along with his astronomical notes. But even so, he knew something was wrong.

  Back in Nuremberg, Tonio’s followers had waited for the arrival of a certain star before attempting to summon the devil. The star had been called Larua, the harbinger of ill fortune, and it returned every seventeen years. But only nine years had passed since its last appearance. And that time, the ritual had been different from the one in The Sworn Book of Honorius. If Viktor von Lahnstein truly was Tonio del Moravia, then what was his plan?

  Whatever it was, they had to act fast. There was no time—Johann had to save his grandson. And the only way to get inside Castel Sant’Angelo was with the help of Greta.

  An icy north wind swept through the lanes, but Johann didn’t feel it. He hurried on until he reached the gate of Santo Spirito in the first reddish light of day. Down by the river, beggars huddled around a smoldering fire, but no one was lining up outside the hospital yet. The gatekeeper was just unlocking his little hut. He knew Johann by now and waved him through.

  “The good German pilgrim,” he droned. “Eager to wipe some more asses. Must have a good deal to atone for.”

  “More than you can imagine,” muttered Johann too quietly for the gatekeeper to hear.

  He hurried on and walked through the wealth of corridors and courtyards, which, after all these weeks, were nearly as familiar to him as the halls of Heidelberg University. The few nuns and physicians he passed in the dim light didn’t take much notice of him; a deceased man was carried out on a stretcher. Johann searched for his daughter.

  He found Greta outside the spezieria, where the apothecary was just handing her a bowl with freshly made pills.

  “I must speak with you,” said Johann in a low voice behind her.

  Greta jumped and almost dropped the bowl.

  “Didn’t I make it clear that I do not want to speak with you again?” she whispered, trying not to attract the apothecary’s attention. “It’s bad enough that you’re still sneaking about here, frightening me.”

  “Believe me, if this wasn’t about life and death, I wouldn’t be here.”

  She gave him a quizzical look. “Life and death—whose? Yours?”

  “It’s about the life of Sebastian.”

  He pulled Greta aside and told her what had happened the night before. He told her about the brutal murder Hagen committed and the list of alchemy ingredients. “It is just as I feared,” he finished, waving the scorched piece of paper in front of her face. “Lahnstein is planning something with little Sebastian. There’s going to be a ritual, in two days, during the fireworks. They are going to invoke the devil—with the blood of your child.”

  “And you actually thought I’d believe you?” mocked Greta. “A half-burned scrap of paper? What a pathetic attempt to drive a wedge between me and Lahnstein.”

  “Please, believe me, Greta.” Johann gave her a pleading look. “I didn’t make all this up. Karl can confirm it—he saw it with his own eyes.”

  “Then why isn’t Karl here?”

  Johann regretted not having brought Karl. But he’d had his reasons. He stepped up close to Greta, touched her shoulders, and suddenly wrapped his arms around her. “Greta, I’m begging you—”

  “Don’t touch me!” she hissed, and as she recoiled from him, the bowl of pills slipped out of her hands and crashed to the ground, the pills scattering in all directions.

  Johann squatted down and started to pick up the pills alongside Greta, under the curious looks of the apothecary. When they were finished, Johann handed her the bowl.

  “You will see that I’m right,” he said. “Hopefully before it’s too late. I love you, Greta. You and my grandson. I won’t allow him to fall into Tonio’s hands.”

  Without another word he turned away and walked out of the courtyard, trying his best not to shake.

  In his pocket, his fingers clutched cool metal.

  She’ll notice, he thought. She must. She’ll call for the mother superior at any moment.

  But nothing happened.

  Johann hadn’t really expected Greta to believe him. He had racked his brain for hours about how he might get into Castel Sant’Angelo without Greta’s help. His plan had been nothing but a faint hope, but it had just come true. A long time ago, before Johann became the famous Doctor Faustus, he had been a talented juggler and trickster. Among many other things, Tonio had taught him sleight of hand.

  A brief tug at the leather string around Greta’s neck was all it had taken. She hadn’t noticed because in the same instant, the bowl had slipped out of her hands. Now the ring of keys was safely hidden in Johann’s pocket—the same keys Greta had shown him as proof of Lahnstein’s trust in her.

  The keys that would get him and Karl inside Castel Sant’Angelo.

  Greta remained standing in the courtyard for a while, clutching the bowl of pills tightly. Tears streamed down her face, tears of anger and confusion. She cursed her father for coming to Rome, for coming and stirring up everything when she had finally found peace—peace with God and with herself. Even with the fact that her son was growing up with a mother who only visited him occasionally because she’d dedicated her life to God. And then her own father appeared and wrecked everything. He sowed doubts. That was how the devil worked. Hadn’t he whispered in Jesus’s ear, when he was in the desert, that he would make Jesus the ruler of the world?

  One had to resist. Pray. Confess.

  Nonetheless, Greta could feel her wall of confidence cracking. Partly because of the strange premonitions that continued to hit her out of the blue. Only this morning she’d had another one. She had dreamed of her son, his tiny body pinned to the ground by needles, like a butterfly being studied. Inside a pentagram painted with blood-red paint. He had cried for his mother, but she hadn’t been able
to hear him. His cries had been silent.

  The devil sows doubts. Don’t listen to him. Pray, Greta, pray!

  Still shaking all over, she wiped the tears from her face and carried the bowl of pills to the treatment hall.

  She was deep in thought and didn’t notice that there was no leather string around her neck.

  Johann placed the key ring on the table in their room at the inn, and Karl stared at him in bewilderment.

  “How did you come by these so quickly?”

  “Once I realized that Greta wasn’t going to help us, I spent the morning loitering outside Castel Sant’Angelo. Servants and clerics come and go all day. It wasn’t difficult.” He grinned. “One nudge, one garbled apology. The keys were on the belt of a papal scribe. He’s probably in a cold sweat as we speak, searching for them everywhere.”

  Johann had thought long and hard about whether to tell Karl where he got the keys from but decided against it. Greta and Karl were close, and Johann didn’t know how Karl would take the news. All that mattered now was that they made it inside the castle in time, and to that end he had been gathering information all morning. It felt good to use his mind again. Damn it, he was Doctor Faustus, the cleverest and most cunning wizard in all the lands! How could doors stop him when he needed to save his grandson?

  Karl picked up the bunch and studied the individual keys. They were of varying sizes and manufactured with complicated patterns, true masterpieces of blacksmithing. “And you really believe these will get us into the fortress?”

  “Of course not! None of those are for the main portal. That is always guarded, and there are bolts, trapdoors, iron gates, and a drawbridge inside. These keys merely unlock a few chambers inside. But which ones, I don’t know.”

  “Then I don’t see how your theft helps us at all.”

  Johann sighed. He hated it when others were slow on the uptake, especially when it was a matter of life and death. Karl was a gifted painter and an intelligent scientist, but sometimes he lacked shrewdness.