The Devil's Pawn Read online

  Johann paused, his arm poised to strike. With amazement he gazed at his hands. The paralysis was gone. As if the bath in the font had healed him. Cautiously, he moved his legs, his back, his shoulders—he felt reborn, as if he had never been ill at all. But the sensation brought him no joy.

  He knew what price he had paid.

  Father Jerome smiled thinly, almost wistfully. “See how much the master loves you? The disease was a gift from him, to remind you of him. He wants you to return to him.”

  “That’s what I came to Tiffauges for, to face up to him.”

  “You fool! What made you think the master still resides here? For all the happy memories? Ha! He . . .” Father Jerome’s upper body slumped forward for a moment, but then he caught himself again and straightened up. “No, the master has far greater plans. He left us here so that we would keep his legacy alive.”

  “Us?” asked Johann. “I know you. You’re Prelati, the priest who helped the dark marshal to invoke the devil all those years ago. But where are the others?”

  “You know what happened to Poitou. You sent him to hell back in Nuremberg. La Meffraye and Henriet, however.” The father giggled again, and it sounded like the giggling of a nasty old woman. “Oh, you’ve met them. Not at this castle, however. They serve the master at another important place.”

  “Where?” urged Johann. “Where are they? Are they with Tonio?”

  “Think, Doctor. You’re so clever. The master doesn’t shower many people with gifts the way he has done with you—money, fortune, wit, among other talents. But one good turn deserves another, right? When the day comes that the chosen ones must pay with their soul, they often show reluctance. But the master comes for them all. Every single one of them.”

  Father Jerome fell silent and closed his eyes. Johann saw that the man’s end was near. But he was likely the only one who knew where to find Tonio. He couldn’t die yet. The priest’s words seemed to become more and more confused. Was he still making sense?

  The master doesn’t shower many people with gifts the way he has done with you—money, fortune, wit, among other talents.

  Among other talents.

  “Leonardo da Vinci!” Johann exclaimed. “His gifts, his drawing skills, his curiosity, his inventiveness . . . it all came from Tonio, didn’t it?”

  He had been right all along. And Leonardo must have had a hunch that he and Johann shared a dark common bond.

  “I was with him,” he said softly, more to himself. “I only wish I had—”

  “Leonardo possessed something the master would have liked to have for himself,” said Father Jerome hastily, as if he knew that his time was running out. “As a token of appreciation for all . . . all his services. But the old fool didn’t want to give it to him. The master had asked him for it once before, in Rome, but Leonardo remained stubborn. So the dark marshal ordered his servants La Meffraye and Henriet to go to Cloux and search for it.”

  “La Meffraye and Henriet? But—”

  “Oh yes. They wrote me about you. They said the old codger was crazy about you and your handsome assistant. Especially your assistant.” Father Jerome gave a pained grin, waving effeminately and chuckling nastily. “Leonardo liked handsome young men—everyone knew that. La Meffraye and Henriet hoped that the senile fool would pour out his heart to at least one of you and give away his little secret. They watched you and eavesdropped on you the whole time. But then that stupid Melzi insisted you leave. Apparently he was envious of you and your assistant.”

  “My God,” Johann whispered, finally understanding. “How could I be so blind?”

  “You aren’t the first one who didn’t see them,” Father Jerome said. “I know. They are good at making themselves invisible. That’s how they used to get the children in the villages, too. They are like shadows—no one really notices them, but they are always there.”

  “The servants.”

  Johann couldn’t even recall their names, but they had always been near Leonardo. Just like Tonio’s crows and the raven. They had watched him all along, him and Leonardo.

  “La Meffraye and Henriet searched for that which the master has wanted for a long time, but they just couldn’t find it. We thought you two might be able to help—without knowing you were, of course. We hoped he might tell you where he’d hid it. They spied on you the entire time—even at da Vinci’s deathbed.”

  Johann’s thoughts were racing. He felt as though a familiar story suddenly took on an entirely new meaning now that he knew its ending. Leonardo had tried to tell him something, and he must have had an inkling that he was being watched. Maybe he had even known that the servants who were with him day and night were in fact Tonio’s, not his own. How long had La Meffraye and Henriet worked for him? Or had they somehow managed to slip into the bodies of the former servants?

  But another thought was even more unsettling to Johann.

  “Does that mean I only traveled to Cloux because . . . because Tonio wanted me to?” he asked, confused. “The long journey from Bamberg to France—it was his plan? That I visit Leonardo da Vinci and find something for Tonio? That I help him without even knowing?”

  Johann thought about the raven and the crows. He had thought they were following him, but it had been the other way around: they had shown him the way—he had followed them! Once again, like in Nuremberg, Johann had walked into Tonio’s trap.

  “The lord is everywhere and nowhere,” wheezed Father Jerome. “Everywhere and nowhere! Mark those words.”

  Johann remembered that the midwife they’d met on their way to Tiffauges had said something very similar.

  Everywhere and nowhere.

  “Where is he?” asked Johann. He grabbed Father Jerome and shook him hard until the wounded man seethed with pain. “Speak up! Where is Tonio? Where is Gilles de Rais?”

  “You’ll never know. The two of us are going to remain here until the devil comes to fetch us.” Father Jerome laughed like a lunatic. “Ha, until the devil comes to fetch us! There is no way out. Just look around you, Doctor.”

  Johann let go of Father Jerome. For the first time he noticed that while the chamber possessed a few thin arrow slits, it was missing something. Something very important.

  A door.

  How on earth had they gotten in here?

  And how was he supposed to get back out?

  “I . . . I am going to leave you alone now,” whispered the priest, resting his hand on his robe, thick blood seeping through his fingers. “Alone with all your questions, clever, omniscient Doctor Faustus. You must think quickly. When thirst and, later, hunger plague you, thinking is going to become harder and harder. Until your brain is dried up like an old chestnut and your nails break as you try in vain to dig your way out of here. Fare . . . well, Faustus . . . We will meet again before the master. On the other side.”

  With one last malicious chuckle, Father Jerome collapsed fully, twitched once more, and then was still.

  Johann had never before felt so alone. Even in the underground room below Nuremberg following the gruesome ceremony, when he had woken up with one finger and one eye missing, he hadn’t been this lonely. His old friend Valentin had stood by him and then Karl had, too. But now he had lost all his friends. He had been tricked into despising Karl and almost stabbed him, fueled by the drugs; he had killed John, and so Greta would now regard him as a murderer, and she would most likely burn at the stake soon. Even his dog was dead.

  He had no one left.

  The chamber that held him was like an allegory for his life—cold, confined, with no way out. The only company he had was a dead priest loyal to the devil. Johann was naked. The last card had been played.

  Johann, stretched out on the cold ground, stared at the smooth squares of stone on the ceiling. He had been so obsessed by the thought of finding Tonio here at Tiffauges that he had been blind to everything else. As usual, he had stormed ahead without considering anyone else, raising the stakes higher and higher.

  And then he had lo
st.

  Rien ne va plus.

  Tiffauges had been a dead end. Everything Johann had believed until then had collapsed like a house of cards. Could it be true that he had only ever done whatever Tonio wanted him to do? Johann had met him at the cemetery in Knittlingen, and he guessed that Tonio had also been at Altenburg Castle. Then Johann had run from Viktor von Lahnstein, who was supposed to take him to the pope because of this accursed philosopher’s stone whose secret Johann didn’t know. Then, in Metz, his friend Agrippa had finally told him about Leonardo da Vinci.

  Agrippa, my old friend, could it be possible?

  Agrippa had been the first to tell him about Leonardo’s illness. In hindsight, Johann thought Agrippa’s sudden flash of inspiration had seemed a little forced. His friend had always been a better scholar than actor. Had he played a part in this conspiracy? Had Tonio offered him a pact, too? Anything seemed possible. If Johann could turn murderer, then why not his friend a traitor? Only one question remained.

  What was the secret Leonardo possessed and Tonio wanted so badly? Could it perhaps be the art of making gold—the philosopher’s stone? The same secret the pope hoped to learn from Johann? It must have been something extremely valuable if Tonio sent him halfway across Europe for it. Where had Leonardo hidden it?

  Where?

  For the first time, Johann saw a tiny speck of light in the darkness. Tonio wanted something, urgently. If Johann found it before Tonio, he had something to barter with. The world had always worked this way.

  You can’t defeat the devil, but you can offer him a bargain.

  Perhaps, if Johann presented Tonio with the secret, his former master could ensure that Greta was spared the stake. And that she forgave him—that he won back his old life.

  But first he needed to get out of here.

  Johann scrutinized the walls around him. He and Father Jerome had gotten in, so there had to be a way out. Only, where? Still shivering with cold, he stood up. He needed some clothes or else he would freeze before he thought of anything. Repulsed, he looked at the bent corpse of the priest in the corner. The bloodstain wasn’t as big as Johann expected; evidently, Father Jerome had died of internal injuries. And so, after some hesitation, Johann undressed the dead body and slipped on the woolen robe. He tried to force aside the thought that it was the blood-soaked robe of a dead man—at least he was beginning to feel warmer.

  Then he examined the walls.

  There were no slits or cracks anywhere that might have suggested the existence of a hidden door. The narrow windows were high above ground and far too small to squeeze through. Johann thought with horror that this chamber had probably served as a prison for the children Poitou, Henriet, and La Meffraye hunted and caught like rabbits. Their cries had probably echoed all the way down to the township. But no one had come to help them.

  After the walls, Johann examined the floor; like the ceiling, it was made of large flagstones. But he searched in vain. Increasingly desperate, he returned to the walls. He noticed that, unlike the ceiling and floor, each wall was made of one huge piece of rock. There were no individual squares. Only in the corners, where the walls met, were there lines of mortar. An idea sprouted in Johann’s head, but it required scraping the mortar from the joints. How could he do it? He had no knife, not even a stick, nothing. Except . . .

  Johann hesitated only briefly. He returned to the priest’s body. The broken-off crossbow bolt still protruded from the wound, and Johann pulled it out with one quick movement. The bolt was a little longer than his index finger and bore a sharp metal point. A parting gift from Father Jerome.

  Carefully, trying not to break the tip, Johann began scraping the old mortar out of the joints. He decided on the wall opposite the arrow slits, and indeed—behind the mortar was a gap about as wide as a finger. It was much too dark in the room to see anything in the gap. Johann knelt down, pushed the tip of the bolt into the gap, and slowly pulled it upward.

  At about hip height, the tip caught on something. Johann pushed harder.

  Something clicked.

  “Please, please,” he whispered. “Not for me—for Greta.”

  He pushed against the wall and it swung open.

  On the other side he found a small, dark room and some stairs leading down. The construction was as simple as it was ingenious. Despite his desperate situation, Johann couldn’t help but admire the probably long-since-deceased architect. A metal rod had been inserted down the center of the thin stone wall, allowing the wall to swivel like a revolving door. A snap lock ensured that once it fell shut, it couldn’t be moved from the inside.

  Unless one removed the camouflage of mortar and pushed the bolt back up by force.

  Johann left the door open so that a little light streamed into the room beyond. Cautiously, he climbed down the stairs, which ended in a corridor. The priest must have come from here. After deliberating for a few moments, Johann turned left. The corridor was low and smelled faintly of blackpowder. Soon he passed an old cannon, its rusty barrel pointed outside through an embrasure. More embrasures and cannons followed. When Johann dared a glance through one of the small windows, he saw the moat on the castle’s southern side, and beyond, still shrouded in morning mist, the small town of Tiffauges. He walked faster, then started to run. Evidently he was inside the casemates, the fortified defensive corridors underneath the castle walls. He only hoped he wasn’t running toward a dead end. After a while he came to a small, very sturdy-looking door. It was barred with a thick, rusty bolt that looked like it hadn’t been moved in a long time. Groaning with effort, he pushed against it. The bolt broke free with a crunching sound, and the door creaked open.

  Mist rose from the moat directly in front of him.

  A narrow ledge led from the door along the wall toward the bridge that he and Karl had used to enter the castle a few days ago. Johann didn’t see anyone, only a handful of horses grazing peacefully in the shadow of the projecting bastion. They weren’t tied up, and Johann guessed they belonged to the troop of mercenaries traveling with Viktor von Lahnstein. Johann couldn’t see any guards and thought that most of the soldiers were probably inside the castle they had invaded the night before.

  He decided to try his luck.

  He moved toward the horses, most of which were saddled. Perhaps the soldiers responsible for looking after the animals were busy catching them one by one and leading them into the castle. There was a good chance that someone would return soon.

  Johann ran the last few yards as fast as he could. He decided on a young-looking mare who struck him as strong enough for a long ride. She was black, with a long mane and flashing eyes—the perfect mount for a vassal of the devil. A full saddlebag hung at her side. Without another look around, Johann jumped into the saddle and kicked his heels into the horse’s sides, making it bound forward with a neigh. He raced across the bridge toward town, and no one stopped him. Then he pulled the mare hard to the right and galloped toward the woods, which were bathed in a milky fog this early in the morning.

  Johann didn’t know where Tonio was, but he did know that his former master wanted something particular. Something that Johann would be able to use as a pawn in exchange for the life of his daughter.

  And, by God, he would find that pawn.

  Meanwhile, Greta waited for death.

  She didn’t know the exact time of its arrival, but it would certainly be soon. Probably in the shape of that huge Swiss mercenary who would torture her before his men would burn her at the stake in the castle’s courtyard.

  Like my mother, she thought.

  Contrary to her expectations, she hadn’t been thrown into some dark dungeon but had been brought to a comfortable chamber in one of the northern towers. There was a green tiled stove, tapestries on the freshly plastered walls, and in the corner, beneath a barred window, stood a chair and a table with an embroidery frame holding a half-finished pattern. It was a stag surrounded by fluttering birds and small rabbits—probably the work of some dusty, long-dead n
oblewoman. Did those fellows seriously believe she would do some needlework while she calmly waited to be put to death?

  But then again, there was nothing left worth living for. John, the father of her unborn child, was dead—murdered by her own father. The only man she had ever felt true love for and with whom she’d wanted to spend the rest of her life had been stabbed to death like an animal. Greta had no more tears left. She was empty, spent, nothing more than a shell. She didn’t know where Karl was. When the guards had dragged them out of the crypt, he hadn’t been in his right mind. He had only smiled a stupid smile, as if he had no idea what was going on around him—unlike the other men and women, who had been dragged away kicking and screaming. They knew what was coming for them. Greta was aware that they were heretics—worse, Satanists, who prayed to the devil. Evil people. But still she shuddered at the thought of them all burning at the stake.

  Along with me.

  But then she remembered something that might be worth living for. She was carrying John’s child under her heart. She gently placed her hand on her belly and thought she could feel the baby growing. Pregnant women usually weren’t executed, or at least not right away. They were spared until the child was born. That’s how it had been with her mother when she was pregnant with Greta. Greta might die, but her child—John’s child—would live! She had to tell the guards about her pregnancy and maybe they would even refrain from torturing her.

  A key was slid into the lock, and Greta stood up promptly. The time had come—they were fetching her for questioning! She clenched her fists and jutted out her chin. The guards would not catch her trembling.

  But no guards entered, nor Hagen the giant. It was Viktor von Lahnstein. He wore a fresh snow-white robe and, instead of the leather belt, a scapular in cardinal red that gave him a dignified look—an effect that had certainly been intended. But it stood in stark contrast to his face. Down in the crypt, Lahnstein had worn a hood. Now Greta saw for the first time what a mess Little Satan had made of the man’s face back in Bamberg. In the place of a nose was a fleshy, pink stump with two gaping holes, almost like a pig’s snout.