The Devil's Pawn Page 33

  “She wants to give you a cream,” said John. “She says she can’t stop your disease but she can slow it down.”

  Karl rolled his eyes. “How? Ground snails mixed with crumbled wood lice?” He stood up. “Let’s go before she gives you something that worsens your illness.”

  “Tell her I will gladly accept her cream,” said Johann to John.

  The old woman understood. She opened one of the small wooden boxes and reached inside with her gouty fingers. When she pulled them out, on the tip of her index finger sat a viscous, resinous lump that didn’t smell bad at first—somewhat sweet, like beeswax—but beneath it lay the scent of decay.

  Karl wrinkled his nose. “You can’t be serious. This defies any sort of science. Don’t do it—the salve might be poisonous.”

  “I’m afraid science can’t help me any longer,” replied Johann.

  He didn’t resist when the old woman leaned over him, took off his shirt, and rubbed his back, arms, and legs with the pungent ointment. She sang and murmured something that sounded like a nursery rhyme. When she was finished, a smile spread across her face, and for a brief moment Johann could imagine what she must have looked like as a young girl.

  “Bennozh warnoc’h,” she said, squeezing Johann’s hand. “Bennozh warnoc’h!”

  “She blesses you and wishes you good luck,” said John.

  “Thank you.” Johann bowed. “God knows I can use this blessing.”

  He was about to head for the exit when the old woman signaled for him to wait. She opened another small box and retrieved a pendant attached to a simple leather string. It was a small winged angel, whittled from a piece of alabaster, and it looked very old. She spoke to John.

  “She says it’s a protective amulet,” he translated. “Apparently it helped her mother back then when the henchmen of the dark marshal were after her, and she wants—” He broke off in surprise. Then he looked at Greta. “She wants you to wear it. No idea why.”

  “My own little guardian angel.” Greta smiled and allowed the old woman to put the necklace over her head. “Thank you. I appreciate this gift. Merci.”

  The old woman nodded and squeezed her hand. When the woman smiled, Greta could see her last two remaining teeth.

  “Bennozh warnoc’h!”

  Johann stepped through the cloth covering the entrance. On a crippled birch nearby sat an old raven that seemed to be watching him. It flapped its wings and then took off, cawing.

  “Tell your master I’m on my way,” said Johann softly, his gaze following the bird.

  14

  ABOUT THREE WEEKS AFTER THEIR DEPARTURE FROM Seuilly, the group finally reached Tiffauges.

  The noontime sky was blue and cloudless, and a pleasant breeze carried the salty air of the Atlantic, even though the sea was forty miles away. It was as if the devil tried to mock Johann by painting the site of his gruesome doings in the brightest colors God’s earth had to offer. During the last few days they had passed through several villages that were clearly affected by the horrors of this area, their streets deserted, with no sign of any children. Johann had felt eyes staring at them from dark windows. In one of the villages, the inhabitants had thrown rocks at them and shouted angry words in Breton. The inns had been boarded up; no one wanted to accommodate strangers who might make off with the most precious thing these people had.

  Their children.

  The village of Tiffauges was situated on a small rise above a dammed-up river. Along with a smaller tributary, this long lake served as a protective moat to the castle that lay opposite the small town on the other side of the road. From afar, Château de Tiffauges looked like any other castle, albeit a rather large one. A bastion at the front protected the entrance, and the defensive fortifications stretched across a plateau upon which sat the burly keep, numerous outbuildings, and a manor house. Farther back, Johann could make out two large towers that secured the northern wing. He reminded himself that Tiffauges used to belong to a marshal of France and close friend to the French king. Gilles de Rais used to host extravagant feasts here until he ran out of money and turned to alchemy and, finally, devil worship.

  The road led out of an oak forest full of rooting boars and through a deep valley, and eventually toward the small town and the castle. The landscape was scattered with sweet-smelling gorse hedges. Johann stopped his horse behind a crumbling watchman’s hut and waited for Karl to help him dismount. The old midwife had been right. The cream eased the trembling and convulsions, and some of his muscles seemed revived. But Johann feared this relief wouldn’t last long. Supported by Karl, he sat down on a low stone wall.

  “What now?” asked Greta, scooping water from a stream with both hands to wash her sweaty face. The little angel the midwife had gifted to her dangled from her neck. She shook her hair and gave her father an intent look. “What is your plan?”

  Johann said nothing. He’d been racking his brain for days about how to proceed from here. After traveling so far, they were finally at their destination—only a stone’s throw away resided the devil, or at least the man who was responsible for Johann’s curse. Tonio, whom he’d finally have to face. But Johann hadn’t come up with any plan about what to do next—not even the first spark of an idea.

  The learned Doctor Faustus had reached his wit’s end.

  “It is possible that someone followed us,” said John into the silence. “The French, that Swiss giant, or perhaps the Habsburgs. It’s not inconceivable that they learned of our destination and are lying in wait here, ready to snatch the doctor.” He nodded at Karl. “The young scholar and I will go into town with our ears peeled. I think the two of us are the least conspicuous.”

  Johann nodded reluctantly. It was a sensible suggestion. Viktor von Lahnstein might have a hunch where Johann was headed. Just like the French king, the papal delegate assumed that Johann knew how to make gold and that he had learned the secret from Gilles de Rais. Johann scanned the sky for any sign of the old raven but saw nothing.

  Either way, the master knows I’m coming.

  “Be careful,” he said to John and Karl. “At the slightest sign that someone might be following you, you must throw them off the scent and return here. We can’t take any risks.”

  “Don’t worry, old man.” John grinned. “This isn’t the first time I’m scouting.”

  Johann inhaled sharply and glowered at John in silence.

  I’m only glad he doesn’t call me father-in-law yet.

  Once John and Karl had left, father and daughter sat down in a meadow that was humming with bees. Greta chewed on a blade of straw and gazed at the castle towering above them.

  “Doesn’t look very evil,” she said after a while.

  Johann smiled. “The castle isn’t evil, but the man living inside it is. Maybe those old walls will see better times one day.”

  “After everything that happened there?” Greta shook her head. “I wouldn’t think so. Those walls are drenched with the blood of many innocent children. And now . . .” She broke off. “Well, what now? I still don’t understand what exactly you intend on doing. If Tonio really is the devil, then you can’t defeat him. The devil is invincible.”

  Johann nodded. “That is true. But you can barter with him, or perhaps even play a trick on him. Maybe a healthy Doctor Faustus is much more useful to him than a mortally ill one. Maybe there is a secret that I know and that he is interested in.”

  “Well, we know it’s not the secret of how to make gold.” Greta gave a little laugh. “I wonder who fed the pope such nonsense?”

  “I’d love to know that, too.”

  No one said anything for a while, and Johann moved a little closer to Greta. The sun shone down warmly on his cold limbs, but something else warmed him from the inside. Greta was his daughter, and he sensed it and smelled it with every breath. She was the only creature in the world he truly loved. Of course, he used to love Little Satan’s company, and also that of Karl, who had been at his side for many years. But those feelings wer
e nothing compared to the love he felt for his daughter. He had never read her palms. Too great was his fear of foreseeing her death in them, the fear she might die before him and leave him behind. Johann opened his own creased hands and stared at them. He had done so repeatedly in the last few weeks, but to no avail. He couldn’t make out anything in his own palms.

  Only Greta could read them.

  “I haven’t looked at them in a long time,” she said gently, as if she had heard his thoughts. “I no longer want to know. God alone should know when a person’s end arrives.”

  “God or the devil.”

  He looked up and studied his daughter’s face. She was so beautiful. He remembered the first time he saw her, back in the prison below Nuremberg. She had only been fourteen then, still a child, so dainty and fragile. And now she would go her own way, and he would be left behind. Whether dead or alive—he would be left behind.

  “I should never have brought you here,” he said. “It was pure selfishness. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. I wanted to hang on to you until the last moment.”

  “What are you talking about?” Greta gave a sad smile. “You’re Doctor Faustus, remember? You’ve cheated the devil once before and you will do so again. And then the four of us will go back to the German Empire. You, me, Karl—”

  “And John.” Johann sighed. “You really do love him.”

  “More than that.” Greta’s face turned serious. “He is the man I will . . .” She gave a wave as if she’d changed her mind. “One thing after the other. First we confront whoever is living inside that castle.”

  When Johann looked at the castle again, he noticed that the fortress wasn’t as imposing as he’d first thought. Some of the battlements had crumbled like rotten teeth, some of the windows were boarded shut, and ivy and gorse climbed up the walls like poisonous snakes. A cloud pushed in front of the sun, and the air grew chilly.

  Up in one of the towers, a light flared up. To Johann it looked like a huge, watchful eye that gazed down at him hungrily.

  Meanwhile, Karl and John were walking through a ghost town.

  It had taken Karl a while to figure out what it was that gave Tiffauges such an eerie atmosphere. It was a small place with no wall or gates, and so they had been able to walk into town without causing a stir. Low half-timbered houses huddled along the edges of the few shady lanes. There were two churches, one enclosed market hall, and a square where several aging market wives sat behind their stalls like brooding hens. Some skinny dogs roamed the alleys, and everything was much like in any other French town. Yet something was different.

  It was the quiet, Karl realized. And then it dawned on him.

  There were no children.

  In any village or town, small boys and girls raced through the lanes, shouting, making a racket, playing with their spinning tops and marbles, jumping in puddles, and rattling the nerves of the grown-ups. But not here. Just like at the other villages they had passed through in recent days, it looked as though the earth had swallowed up any and all children. As if some kind of creepy pied piper had lured them away, stolen them and left behind only the old folks. Where were they all? Karl looked around searchingly. He couldn’t believe that every single child had been snatched and killed by Tonio. He thought it was more likely that parents no longer allowed their children out of the house.

  Because they knew what could happen.

  Karl still didn’t believe that the devil himself lived in Tiffauges. But he had to admit—the place was creepy. His and John’s footfalls sounded too loud, and soon Karl could feel eyes on his back, following their progress from behind dark windows. John felt them, too.

  “I wouldn’t say we’re particularly welcome here.” John pointed at the many shutters that were closed despite the fine weather.

  The houses seemed to Karl as if they were sick, their paint weathered or flaked off, their beams black and rotting. During their short round of the village, they didn’t encounter anyone except the market women and a group of old men who had glowered at them from bench perches.

  “The tavern’s open,” John said, pointing at a tin sign with a wild boar painted on it that swayed above the entrance with an awful screeching sound.

  John was about to head toward it when Karl held him back. “We don’t know if Lahnstein or someone else has taken up lodgings there. Let’s look through the window first.”

  John nodded. They entered a narrow alleyway beside the building, but all the windows were barred with heavy shutters. John pulled out his knife and levered at one of the shutters until it opened a tiny crack. Karl kept his eyes out for passersby.

  As John peered through the gap, Karl scrutinized his companion from the corner of his eye. He could understand why Greta liked that red-haired Scotsman so much. John was funny and smart, even if he wasn’t particularly learned, and he was handsome and would one day make an excellent father. Once again Karl grew painfully aware that he would never be blessed with such fortune. In the last few days he had often thought that it was time to leave the doctor and try his luck elsewhere, just like Greta was bound to do soon. But he just couldn’t do it. He still loved Faust, even if the doctor was becoming stranger by the week.

  Meanwhile, John had turned away from the shutter again. “I think it’s the back room,” he said in a low voice. “Some men are sitting there by candlelight even though it’s the middle of the day. They’re drinking and playing dice, as if they’re waiting for something. I can’t make them out very well, but I think some of them are wearing the colorful garb of soldiers.”

  “Which colors?” asked Karl.

  “I think it was blue, yellow, and . . .” John paused and cast another glance through the crack. “And red.”

  “The Swiss guard,” hissed Karl. “That means some of them made it out of Chinon alive. But how the hell do they know we’re here?”

  “They might have eavesdropped on us somewhere.” John shrugged. “Maybe as far back as Amboise. Or that Lahnstein figured it out himself. This castle is the former residence of Gilles de Rais, after all.”

  “Did you see anyone who looked like the papal representative in there?” asked Karl. “You should recognize him by his face. Little Satan bit off his nose at Bamberg.”

  “No wonder he doesn’t like you very much.” John grinned and brushed his hair out of his face. “No, I would have—”

  A noise made them both spin around. A long shadow darkened the alleyway, reaching for them as if with long claws.

  A very large shadow.

  “Jesus Christ,” croaked Karl, the blood draining from his face.

  Hagen stood between them and the main road.

  Evidently, the Swiss mercenary had noticed that someone was watching the tavern. With a deliberately slow movement, the giant drew his longsword and started to walk toward them. Karl looked around in panic. Stacked up behind them stood rotting barrels and trash, and behind that was a wall. The alley was a dead end!

  “You and I have a score to settle,” said Hagen to John in his harsh Swiss accent. “I forgot to finish you off last time.”

  Karl instinctively took a step back. He and John had left their swords behind so they wouldn’t attract attention in town. That had been a mistake. But Karl had something else—something cool and smooth inside the pocket of his vest: the hand cannon from Albert MacSully, a brand-new wheel-lock pistol, and this time it was loaded and cocked.

  Karl pulled it out and trembled as he pointed it at Hagen. “Let us pass,” he said, trying to sound calmer than he felt. “Or your dumb skull is going to explode like a rotten apple.”

  Hagen hesitated for a moment. Then he moved with a speed that Karl would never have thought the giant capable of. He leaped toward them, dodging from side to side like a dancing dervish.

  Karl pulled the trigger.

  The bang was so loud that he thought he would go deaf. The recoil made him stumble backward and fall. He couldn’t see if he had hit Hagen; the narrow alley was filled with powder fumes. Joh
n pulled him to his feet.

  “Out of here!” John shouted and dragged Karl toward the road. Karl didn’t stop to look around but ran past the tavern, where more soldiers came streaming out the door. John turned sharply and Karl followed. They ran along another narrow alleyway and came to a small square. Two old women were standing by a well and stared at them as if they were child-eating ogres. John and Karl hurried on, climbed over a low wall, crossed an overgrown orchard, and suddenly found themselves at the edge of a sheer drop.

  Below them lay the dammed river.

  “Jump!” called out John.

  There were shouts behind them; a shot was fired and a bullet whistled past Karl. He looked back and saw Hagen storming toward them through the garden with his sword raised, more men behind him. John yanked Karl forward with a pull of his hand and then let go. Karl stumbled and saw John below him, elegantly diving into the water. Then he lost his footing and fell like a stone.

  As he saw the black depths race toward him, Karl realized with horror that he’d never learned how to swim.

  A few moments or an eternity later, Karl opened his eyes. He coughed and spat water, but he appeared to be alive. He saw John leaning over him, wiping his lips. Karl tasted salty saliva on his own lips and felt a pang of sweet wistfulness mix in with the mortal fear he had just experienced.

  “Did you—?” he gasped.

  “Kiss you awake like an enchanted prince? Indeed I did.” John gave him a wink, his red hair hanging from his face like seaweed and his wet clothes clinging to his body. “But it didn’t work—you’re still the same slimy frog. But at least you’re alive.”

  Shaking all over, Karl sat up. They were on the other side of the moat, not far from the spot where the derelict watchman’s house stood and where Johann and Greta awaited their return. Karl looked across the black waters that stretched for several hundred feet toward the west. Some mill wheels turned slowly in the lazy current.