The Devil's Pawn Read online

  The journey to the master demands a sacrifice.

  What sacrifice? Was the priest talking about Karl, standing in front of him? Johann remembered that Karl had confessed his love to him a few minutes or hours ago, and Johann had told Karl that he loved him, too, because in that moment he had loved all men, had felt at one with the world. But that moment had flown away like a silly, youthful crush, and instead the sight of Karl now filled him with pity—with disgust, even. Karl’s closed eyes, his slightly dumb, enraptured expression, like a mutt that drooled because someone was holding out a bone. Johann thought that for the first time he saw his assistant for who he truly was: a lesser mind, limited and incapable of rising up to the heights only few were chosen to ascend. Karl was nothing more than a creeping insect—like most people. They burrowed in the dirt, stuffed their mouths, drank, mated, but the crucial matters remained obscure to them. Knowledge, insight, eternal life, and most of all, meeting the master.

  The journey to the master demands a sacrifice.

  Johann had forgotten his reason for coming to Tiffauges. The monotonous organ music filled him completely. The people standing in a circle around him sang and hummed like bees; they clapped and gazed at him expectantly. Father Jerome was still smiling, signaling toward Karl. Yes, he was the sacrifice! And what difference was there between his assistant and a dumb, bleating lamb? The fact that Karl had professed his love to him made him even less than an animal. Karl lived against nature, and it was only right that he, Johann, should kill this heretic sodomite—and therewith travel to the lord. To Tonio del Moravia, his master! How could he ever have thought of him as an enemy? He was the only one who had ever understood Johann. Johann would do anything for him. Anything!

  “O Mephistopheles, receive your sacrifice,” chanted the immortals. “Sheitan, Satan, Zhoool.”

  “Tonio, I’m coming,” muttered Johann.

  With a smile on his face, he brought down the dagger.

  “Nooooo!”

  A shrill cry rang out, made by a voice that sounded familiar to Johann, like a distant memory. The voice painfully pierced his consciousness.

  “No, Father, don’t do it! Oh God, don’t!”

  He knew this voice—it was the voice of his daughter. Did he have a daughter? Even if he did, she wasn’t important now. All that mattered was his journey to the master. And yet Johann hesitated, lowering the hand holding the dagger. More screams rang out, sounding to him like the waves of a distant ocean.

  Karl opened his eyes and gave him a startled look. For a brief moment, the young man’s mind seemed to be alert and clear.

  “What in God’s name?”

  Johann raised his blade again.

  But then someone grabbed his arm and yanked him back. Johann cried out with indignation. Had he struck Karl? He didn’t know. Because now there was this other man wrestling with him. The attacker was big and strong, and he seemed to know Johann. His hair was red and he was shouting.

  “Stop it, Doctor! You’re crazy! Give me the dagger!”

  Johann hissed like a cat. All those dirty little worms trying to stop him from traveling to the master! But he wouldn’t let them, not this close to the goal. He thought of a ruse. He paused his raging as if he had calmed down. He held his head lowered so they wouldn’t see the glint in his eyes. The knife was pointing down.

  “That’s better, Doctor,” the other man said. “It’s not too late. I gave you my word that no harm would come to Greta. But I’m not going to stand by and watch as her father murders his friend.”

  Now Johann recognized him. It was that awful fellow who was trying to steal his daughter from him. It was John Reed, the traitor, fraud, and liar. Like a festering sore he had eaten his way into Johann’s and Greta’s lives, destroying everything that had ever existed between them.

  John Reed, you bastard! You will never again touch my Greta with your filthy hands. You won’t take her away from me.

  Boundless hatred filled Johann, creeping from his heart into his fingers and the ends of his hair.

  “Give me the dagger, Doctor,” said John. He smiled reassuringly and held out his hand. “All will be well.”

  Johann stabbed him.

  Not once, not twice—it was a frenzy. The blade drove deeply into the guts of this cocky, red-haired fellow, jabbing into his intestines, again and again. It felt so good! John screamed and it was music to Johann’s ears. Another thrust, and another one.

  When will you finally shut up! Die, vermin!

  Johann was like a butcher at work. The blade rose and fell. At the end, there was just a faint wheezing. John clung to him with both hands and stared at him from wide eyes. Finally the impertinent wide grin that had tortured Johann for so long was extinguished. For good.

  “Why?” gasped John. “You . . . evil . . . old . . . man . . .” A shudder went through his body and his grip loosened, but still he clung to Johann.

  Greta’s screams rang out again. Now Johann saw her, too. She was standing by a side entrance to the crypt, her face drained of all color. She was shivering, crying, and wailing like an injured animal. What was the matter with her? He had done her and everyone a favor. He had cut out the sore.

  “Father, what have you done?” cried Greta. “For heaven’s sake, what have you done? Oh God! You . . . you murderer! You killed John!” She tore at her hair, swayed, and finally collapsed into a tiny bundle on the doorstep.

  Johann thought of Tonio del Moravia and how much they could achieve together. Johann was very close to the master now—and far, far away from everyone else.

  “O lord, receive your sacrifice,” said Johann.

  One more time he thrust the blade into the lifeless body. John finally let go of Johann and slid into the pool amid a cloud of blood.

  And somewhere deep down inside, Johann could hear Tonio laugh.

  Greta no longer screamed. Until a few moments ago, she had thought all this was nothing but a nasty dream. That she would wake up and John would be beside her, that they would kiss and embrace to forget all this evil.

  But it wasn’t a dream. She was lying on the floor of the crypt and the man she loved was dead.

  It was the end of the world.

  When John had seen that her father was about to stab Karl, he had thrown caution to the wind. He had rushed through the crypt, past the strange people with their strange clothes, and had climbed into the basin to take the dagger from her raging father. But then everything had gone terribly wrong. John, the royal bodyguard, the seasoned elite fighter from the Scottish Highlands who had seen and done it all, had refused to believe that the father of his intended would actually attack him. In his profoundly good-natured way, he hadn’t spotted the danger.

  And it had cost him his life.

  John’s body was floating facedown in the water, his fiery-red hair streaming around his head. Johann was standing next to him, the dagger still in his hand, his face turned toward the ceiling, muttering something incomprehensible. Obviously, he had gone insane. Or had his true self finally broken to the surface? Greta was too deep in shock to hate her father in that moment. Emptiness reigned inside her, and she felt like she was tumbling through black space, incapable of feeling pain.

  Next to Johann in the water stood Karl, looking like a puppet that was held upright by invisible strings. Greta closed her eyes and opened them again, but the scene was the same. It seemed like complete madness, like a painting by that creepy Dutch painter Karl had shown her—paintings of the apocalypse, and yet this was reality.

  The people in the crypt had stopped singing, and the organ music had also ceased. A man with a pockmarked face and the robe of a priest looked at Greta.

  “Who are you?” he hissed hatefully. “How dare you disturb our ceremony? You useless . . .” Then he seemed to see something in her, as if he recognized her. His lips twisted into a malicious grin, and then he laughed out loud. “This is good. Great, even. Who would have thought that both of you—”

  Greta heard a whirrin
g sound, and the man broke off. Surprised, his eyes turned to his belly, from which, Greta saw now, a crossbow bolt protruded. A dark bloodstain spread on the man’s robe. The priest shook his head slowly as if he didn’t want to believe that he was fatally wounded. He swayed, then he fell forward and remained lying there, his hands clutching the shaft of the bolt.

  For a few heartbeats, the crypt was eerily silent. Then panic broke out among the guests and they began to scream and run, calling for a lord whose name Greta didn’t understand.

  A strong hand jerked her up by the hair.

  “Devil’s brood,” someone grumbled behind her in a harsh voice. “About time we smoked out this nest.”

  Greta recognized the man even before she turned to look at him. It was Hagen, who tossed her aside like a sack of flour and stormed the crypt, followed by a bunch of soldiers. Evidently, the Swiss guard had managed to invade the unprotected castle. The wailing and screaming devil worshippers were thrown to the ground or cut down. Hagen drew his mighty longsword and leaped toward the man closest to him, an older nobleman with a silver cuirass and a cape, who glowered at the giant and muttered something in a strange language, his arms raised in a gesture of conjuring. Hagen severed the man’s head from his body with one single stroke and turned to his next victim, a younger man in a feminine dress who tried to crawl away from Hagen on all fours, screaming.

  “By the Virgin Mary, leave those heretics alive!” shouted Viktor von Lahnstein, who had entered the crypt after Hagen and his men. He wore a snow-white robe with a large hood that concealed the upper part of his face, but Greta recognized him immediately. His lips bore an expression of eternal triumph.

  “They don’t deserve such an easy death. They shall burn before entering hell to meet their master,” he told the soldiers. “But first they will tell us everything they know about Gilles de Rais. By God, I want to learn every little detail, even if I have to pull off their skin in strips!”

  Greta was still incapable of movement. She kept staring at John, floating facedown in his own blood. Next to him stood the man she had only recently thought to call “Father” and who had now become the murderer of her love.

  “Get the doctor and his assistant out of the water,” ordered Lahnstein. “By Christ, this is disgusting. Sodomy is almost as repulsive as Satanism. Thank God this farce is coming to an end now.”

  Soldiers dragged Johann and Karl out of the basin and over to Lahnstein. The two men still seemed caught up in their own worlds and were barely able to stand. Foam stood in the corners of their mouths as if they were rabid dogs, and their eyes were like dead caves. Lahnstein took a step back with fright.

  “My God, look! The devil is possessing them! Pray that our almighty Lord—”

  Suddenly, one of the guards groaned and slumped to the ground. Behind him, the pockmarked priest staggered to his feet, the bolt still in his stomach. But it would seem he hadn’t given up the fight yet. He stumbled forward, grabbed Johann, and lifted the bloodied dagger to his throat—the same dagger that had been used to stab John. The priest’s face was deathly pale but he stood upright, as if evil was breathing new life into him. The soldier at his feet gave one last twitch before he died.

  “Get back!” shouted the pockmarked man. “Everyone, get back!”

  Lahnstein made a signal, and the soldiers moved back.

  “I know you need the doctor alive,” said the priest with clenched teeth, holding the numbly staring Johann in front of him like a human shield. “He is of no use to you dead. So let me pass!”

  Without taking the dagger off Johann’s throat, he made his way through the ranks of soldiers.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” jeered Lahnstein. “You won’t get far with your injury. You’re a dead man. My men are posted by the gate. There is no way out of this castle.”

  “Oh yes, there is. Believe me—I know this castle well. I have had many years to study it.” The priest was now walking backward with Johann in his arm until he stood at the crypt’s back wall. Holding the inert doctor tightly with one arm, he reached behind himself with the other. Only then did Greta notice an embellishment in the rock, an old, weathered wolf head that was no larger than a child’s fist. The priest turned the knob and a hidden door swung open behind him.

  “My dear Gilles always made sure he had a way out,” said the priest with a smile. “We sometimes brought children in this way before we amused ourselves with them. Au revoir! ”

  He slipped into the darkness beyond and pulled the doctor along. The heavy door slammed shut behind them.

  “After him!” roared Lahnstein.

  Hagen hurled himself against the door, twisting and turning the wolf head, pushing it, rattling it, but nothing happened. Swords and pikes didn’t achieve anything because the slit was much too tight. Evidently, the door could be barred from the other side.

  Johann and the priest had vanished, as if the stony monster of Tiffauges had swallowed them up.

  And Greta was alone with her grief and her horror.

  17

  FOR A LONG WHILE, JOHANN WAS TRAPPED IN A STATE between reality and insanity. Every now and then he wondered if he was still alive or if this was hell—if Tonio had finally taken him. It was a not-entirely-unpleasant sensation of hovering in a space without time, where memories raced past him as colorful images.

  Bathing in the well. Father Jerome, smiling, handing me the dagger. Karl beside me, naked like me, stroking my manhood. A red-haired scoundrel who turns into John Reed and then back into a scoundrel. I stab him down. Greta screams. “Murderer, murderer, murderer.”

  He couldn’t tell which memories were real and which were figments of his imagination. But whatever the case, they didn’t concern him. They were the concerns of another man he didn’t know.

  The first thing he recognized as real was the hard stone floor he was lying upon. And the cold. He felt so cold. He was shivering all over, moving his hands through the darkness, feeling the dust on the ground. Then he heard heavy breathing.

  Someone was with him.

  Was it Karl? John? Or perhaps . . .?

  “Greta?” he whispered. “Is that you? My . . . my daughter?”

  Someone chuckled. It was a man’s rattling laughter that turned into a coughing fit.

  “You . . . you fool,” said a hoarse voice. “Your daughter is going to burn. You might see her again soon—in hell.”

  The man laughed more of his creepy laughter. Johann opened his good eye and looked at the ceiling of a square chamber built of stone. Pale morning light streamed in through narrow slits in the wall. He turned his head and saw Father Jerome, his face white as a sheet. He was pressing his hands against his stomach, where his robe was wet with blood. A broken piece of wood stuck out from the fabric.

  Johann wondered if he was responsible for the priest’s injury; he didn’t know.

  “You don’t remember what’s happened, do you?” Father Jerome laughed once more with a throaty, rattling sound. “Do you want to know?”

  “I . . . I am at Tiffauges,” said Johann quietly as the memories returned. He realized that he was completely naked. “I wanted to find Tonio del Moravia, whom you call Gilles de Rais, your master. He cursed me with this disease and I finally wanted to face him. But he wasn’t at Tiffauges.”

  “No, he wasn’t, damn it! But we would have taken you to him. The black potion, the bath, the sacrifice—all was ready.”

  “The sacrifice!” Johann sat up, forgetting all about the cold. “Oh God, Karl! I was supposed to kill Karl.”

  “Once you’d had your fun with him, yes. Gilles would have enjoyed that.” The priest giggled. “You never know what the black potion is going to do to someone—what sort of well-concealed tendencies it’s going to bring out.”

  Johann felt ashamed when the images returned to him—the kissing, the stroking, the pleasant moans. But then he remembered how he had viewed Karl afterward, what he had thought of him, and shame about those thoughts outweighed everythi
ng else.

  “You nearly traveled to the master,” said Father Jerome. He, too, sat up slowly now and leaned against the stone wall. He was still pressing his hands to his wound, trying in vain to stop the bleeding. “But then that red-haired fellow appeared out of nowhere, and the ritual was cut short. You butchered the boy like a pig, then those accursed soldiers turned up and I was shot with a crossbow, and—”

  “I . . . I killed John?”

  “You must have rammed the dagger into him at least a dozen times—the bath was red with his blood.” Father Jerome gave a cackling laugh until his face twisted into a grimace of pain. “Your eyes while you were doing it . . . reminded me of Gilles when he used to kill the little ones. But no surprise.”

  “I killed John,” said Johann again in a flat voice. “And Greta?”

  “Your daughter was there, too, yes. No idea how the two of them got in. Perhaps it was a mistake to knock out all the guards.”

  Johann cried out, his nails digging into the stone floor as if the stinging pain in his fingertips could erase what had happened. In his drugged stupor he had killed John Reed, and his daughter had watched. How would she ever forgive him? And Karl? How could Karl forgive him? Johann had almost stabbed him like a sacrificial lamb!

  How could Johann ever forgive himself?

  Father Jerome eyed him with curiosity. “Ah, I see! The young man was her sweetheart. Well, you won’t be your daughter’s favorite person. But who cares? She is going to burn as a witch along with all the others. Your sweet assistant will burn, too. Such a shame—I would have loved to spend a night here at the castle with him. But there’ll be plenty of time for that in hell.”

  “You . . . you devil!” screamed Faust, attacking him.

  The priest laughed as Faust pummeled him with his fists. “You honor me, but no—the devil is my master; I am but his humble servant. If anyone deserves to be called the devil, then it is you, Johann Georg Faustus. The master loves you. I wish he loved me as he loves you. He has given you so much—and how do you repay him? By running away!”