I know I died then. Nothing else would have been possible. So where was I? Purgatory? It had to be that. How could it be anything other than that? I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t see. Utter despair filled my being. If I were in Purgatory how would I ever see my beloved Johanna again? But then as if to calm my fears a golden haze appeared before me and within it an image took shape. A face. My vision was too blurry for me to make out its details, but I knew it was a face. Of God? Who else could it be? As quickly as the despair had earlier come, so too now the joy and rapture that lifted me.
Words were spoken. The voice, though, was too soft for me to understand, and the words blurred together as if they were a hum intoned from far away.
And then I was in darkness again. Time crept intolerably slowly after that. It was agony as I waited to know what had happened to me. Worse even than what the executioner’s skillful cudgel had been able to inflict. Was that truly the face of God I’d seen before? And if it was, would I be reunited with my Johanna, or was I to spend eternity in Purgatory, or worse?
My agony was suspended when once again the golden light filled my vision, and once again I was able to make out a face within its hazy glow, this time its features more distinct. The face appeared angelic, and my heart soared. And once more a voice spoke to me. While severely muffled, as if the speaker were underwater, I could make out the words.
“How are we now, my magnificent creation? Still unable to move? Not to worry. That will pass as you grow stronger. You can see me, can you? Oh how I wish you could answer me!”
Although his words confused me, his angelic countenance soothed my fears. If I were indeed in Purgatory, I would not be there for long. Darkness came quickly again, but this time I did not despair, although the loneliness I suffered had a heaviness to it that made me feel as if I were drowning. I concentrated to break this loneliness by picturing Johanna. Her soft hazel eyes, the rosiness of her cheeks, her golden flowing hair, the way her face would light up when she smiled at me. I tried to remember the way her hand fitted so perfectly in mine as we would walk along the woods outside of town, and the warmth against my lips when I would steal a kiss from her cheek.
Something strange happened while I pictured my Johanna. I once again saw the same yellowish glow from before, but this time it was because I realized I had developed the strength to open my eyes. I let my eyes close and once again I descended into darkness. I forced my eyes open and once more saw the glow.
I had believed the angelic face that earlier had appeared and the darkness that followed were caused by heavenly forces, but I realized that instead my eyelids earlier had been forcibly opened. That was why I saw that face peering into mine. It was only a man who had pushed my eyelids open, not God giving me a vision.
As this knowledge became irrefutable within my mind, a horrible dread seized me. I had survived the executioner’s wheel. I wasn’t in Purgatory, but instead still of this world. My body presumably lay wherever my host had brought me. Of course my body must be completely broken. But how was that possible? The executioner had shattered my bones, and yet I felt nothing. I knew the reason for this. My spine must have been broken as well as my limbs, so I could open my eyes, but otherwise I was in a state of paralysis. But still, it made no sense. It was not possible to survive the injuries that the executioner had inflicted on me. I was a chemist, a man of science, and I understood that as well as anyone. And yet I was alive.
The glow that I had believed was the breath of God was in fact sunlight filtering in through a window. I struggled to keep my eyes open, and when the room later fell into darkness, I knew it was because night had arrived.
My host returned again that night. From the faint flickers of light that showed, I surmised that he had lighted candles and had placed them around me. My senses were growing stronger for although the odor was faint to me, I could smell something foul and wretched. Possibly it was a salve that my host had placed over my wounds. As a chemist I was familiar with many compounds and I tried to detect what this one could have been made from, but the odor came from substances I was unfamiliar with. While I tried to solve this vexing puzzle, I heard my host chanting. His voice was too low for me to understand his words or even the language being used, but the rhythmic chanting felt as if it were something thick and oppressive. There was something unholy about it.
After the candles were snuffed out and my host had departed, I understood the truth. That I was in the dwelling of a sorcerer.
CHAPTER
2
I last saw Johanna the Sunday before my execution. She was the niece of my employer, Herr Klemmen, who owned the Ingolstadt apothecary where I was employed as a chemist. The beautiful Johanna was originally from Leipzig, but both her parents had died tragically from scarlet fever and she was sent to live with her uncle. From the first moment I saw her I was enraptured, and from the way she had blushed, as well as the smile that had escaped onto her lips, I knew that to some degree she shared my feelings. It wasn’t long after our introduction that I began to court her, and with Herr Klemmen’s blessing, Johanna consented to marry me.
Johanna and I shared so many of the same sentiments that are important for a joyful union. On most Sundays I would rent a carriage so that we could take it outside the city’s walls and to the woods beyond. There we would walk along a path that I had discovered years earlier when I had first arrived in Ingolstadt. During our walks together we would collect wildflowers, mushrooms, and berries and enjoy the pleasant sights and sounds of nature. That last Sunday the gates to the city were to be locked and not to be opened until the next morning, so instead we strolled arm and arm through the main avenue of Ingolstadt, and I knew I was the envy of every young man who spied upon us. When we reached a grassy knoll near the city hall, I spread a blanket that I had brought, and Johanna and I sat together and talked about our upcoming wedding and the life that we were to share. I don’t know if I ever knew more happiness than I did that afternoon. When I turned to steal a kiss, Johanna anticipated my intended theft and moved so that my lips pressed against her own instead of her cheek. She blushed deeply from this, but stayed positioned as she was so that our kiss would continue. A fever overtook me as our lips touched, and it was I who pulled away, afraid that I would burn up with ecstasy if I didn’t.
After that we sat together quietly with her small delicate hand resting on top of my much coarser and larger hand. It was Johanna who spoke first, sighing with melancholy, and saying how she wished our wedding day had already come so that we wouldn’t have to separate later. When I brought her back to Herr Klemmen’s home, little could I have suspected that those would be our last moments together.
The next day started off ordinary enough. I woke at six, and performed my duties at the apothecary as usual from seven in the morning until seven that same evening. Once I left work, I stopped at the beer hall. This had been my custom, to relax and have a single pint of ale after my day’s labor. But as I walked from the beer hall, a great and unexplained tiredness overtook me. I must have lain down in an alley to rest, though I don’t remember doing it. My next memory was that of being violently awoken by a mob that had surrounded me. They demanded to know why I was sleeping in an alley, and as I struggled to come up with an explanation, one of them pointed toward my coat and exclaimed that it had my victim’s blood marked upon it. With a great surprise I saw that the sleeves of my coat were stained with blood, and I could not answer where the blood had come from or how it had come to happen. They held me down and searched my person before pulling a gold locket from out of my trouser pocket.
“Why do you have this?” one of them demanded.
The locket was held in front of my eyes and I recognized it as belonging to Johanna. Inside the locket was a cameo of her beloved mother that had been carved in ivory. Johanna always wore that locket around her neck.
“I do not know,” I said, too confused to understand the events that were transpiring, or the evil meaning of them. I couldn’t fathom why I would have Johanna’s prized locket in my possession, or why that fact would inspire such belligerence and hatred among this mob.
The one who held the locket opened it. When he saw the cameo within it he proclaimed me a murderer. I was still too confused to understand what he meant or to offer any defense of my innocence. The other members of the mob descended on me with their fists and beat me into near senselessness. I was then dragged to the city’s jail, where I was locked behind iron bars.
Of course, I should have pieced together from what had happened that my dear Johanna had been cruelly murdered and that I was being accused as the fiend responsible, but my mind stayed lost in a cloud of confusion
