Endymion Spring

felt betrayed. I didn't want it to end this way. Slowly, shouldering my burden, I began to pick my way through the crowd. Tears blinded my path.

As if sensing my mood, the revelers suddenly fell quiet. A hush shifted through the crowd like a snake. The musicians' frantic playing faded.

Fust had arrived.

He stood barely a stone's throw away, prowling through a mass of spectators, hunting me down. I crouched by the wall, trying to make myself invisible. He had not been fooled by Peter's ploy. He must have seen me escape. He was coming for the book…

I held my breath.

The crowd opened before him in a quivering circle, surprised by the vehemence of his actions, which were no longer those of an innocent bystander. His eyes had narrowed to dark slits and his nostrils flared, like a wild animal sniffing me out.

Fortunately, a brave horn-player broke the silence with an untimely belch and a nervous ripple of laughter passed through the crowd. Fust paused to glare at the ring of offending faces.

'Fools,' he spat. 'You laugh now, but you have no idean what will come!'

The few titters stopped. Peter, dressed as Adam, strode into the arena. Bare-chested and brave, he faced his Master. To a chorus of approval, Christina the walked up behind him and, like Eve, coiled her arm seductively around his waist.

Fust, as the Pope, pointed at them accusingly.

'You!' he hissed, barely able to contain his fury. 'You two are to blame for all this!  It's all your fault!'

A couple of spectators, thinking this was part of the performance, chuckled.

Fust, livid with rage, turned on them with his heavy ring-clad fingers. 'Fools!' he cursed again, his jewels catching fire in the light. 'You're all damned fools!'

This only served to increase the general sense of hilarity. People broke into a chorus of laughter and insults, taunting the Pope.

Immediately, Peter and Christina raised their hands to silence the commotion. Gently, with voices tinged with sorrow, they began to sing:

'King or Queen, Pope or Knight,

Each lies equal in God's Sight;

Earth to Earth and Dust to Dust,

We claim your Soul:  Johann Fust…'

Fust looked at them in disgust and then, as the full comprehension of his situation dawned on him, his mouth curled into a sneer.

'No!  I won't go!  You can't make me!'

Peter and Christina — as Adam and Eve — repeated the verse, emphasizing Fust's role as Pope, a preeminent member of the procession and the first to be led to the grave.  While they sang, a host of skeletons emerged from hiding and moved stealthily towards him, about to claim their first victim. Once summoned to the grave, Fust would have to wait in quiet compliance — death — until all the citizens of Mainz lay beside him, from the noblest knight to the poorest beggar. Finally, at the end of the symbolic dance, God would descend and raise them all from their slumber…by which time I would be gone.

One by one the skeletons approached Fust and bowed before him, inviting him to participate in the Dance of Death.

Fust became hysterical. 'No!  I won't go!  Never!  You can't take me!'

He ran from one side of the crowd to the other, appealing to people to let him pass, scrabbling at them, but the spectators, now a wall of bodies, blocked his way.

Peter and Christina walked steadily closer.

Fust attempted once more to run away, but a mischievous devil, sensing trouble, rushed up behind him and kicked him in the backside, causing him to fall down. On his hands and knees, he scrambled away from his daughter and chosen son-in-law, crawling like an infant.

Even now, the skeletons barred his way.

Impassive, Peter and Christina looked on as Fust, reduced to no more than a child, was dragged away by his arms and legs, struggling furiously against the ignominy of death. The crowd gave an enormous roar of approval — like the earth opening up — and the musicians on top of the wallstruck up their instruments. The last I saw he was pinned to the ground by an army of devils and demons in the realm of the dead and forced to remain still by an open grave. He was writhing desperately beneath their hoofs and claws, trying to pursue me and regain the book.

Peter and Christina shook their heads and scanned the faces of the crowd for the next person to join the Dance of Death. I longed for them to pick me out of the mass of heads, but I forced my steps away.

Blindly, I stumbled through the excited throng of people — an unnoticed beggar, hapered by a burden on his back — working my way towards the protective shadow of the great cathedral. I glanced back just once, when I heard Peter's voice soaring above the crowd like an angel's chorus:

'Naked we're born, Naked we'll go,

See how the Vain are soon brought low.

Godspeed the poor Boy on his Way.

Fear not, we'll meet some other Day…'

I turned and made my solitary way through the suddenly cheerless city, waling towards my future.

Oxford

19

Blake felt uneasy. A wind had picked up and leaves were blowing against the sides of the locked-up colleges, which towered above him like massive shadows. Gargoyles gripped the ledges of the buildings with chiseled claws and angels peered down at him from the roofs. He was making his way through the dark city streets towards AllSoulsCollege.

Duck trotted behind him. 'Did you bring Endymion Spring? ' she asked excitedly.

'Of course I did,' he answered, 'but you're not to mention it, OK?  We can't let anyone know we've got it until we figure out who's the Person in Shadow.'

'And then what?'

It was such a simple question, but it made him stop in his tracks. He wasn't sure.

'I don't know,' he said uncertainly.

Beside them an enormous drum-shaped building with blackened windows and a silver dome — the Radcliffe Camera — grew out of an islanded garden in the middle of a cobbled square. Just behind them was the Bodleian Library, a vast stone crown with windows lit up like jewels. Somewhere in the Upper Reading Room, beneath the rows of glowing lamps, their mother was working into the evening.

Until now, Blake had expected someone — either Jolyon or Psalmanazar or even Duck — to tell him what to do, but he no longer felt he could trust anyone. It was up to him to solve the mystery on his own.

Even Endymion Spring, it seemed, had abandoned him. All day long the book had taunted him with its silence. The black page was still there, warning him of the Person in Shadow, but there was no sign of the original riddle he had seen, nor any clues about the future.

To his left he could see the imposing walls of AllSoulsCollege, its thistle-like minaret and distinctive towers steeped in shadow. Inside its gates was yet another library, a chapel-like building with row upon row of leather books, reached by curving wooden staircases. The entire city, it seemed, was built of books. Stacked on top of each other, slotted side by side, they fitted together like bricks to form a tremendous fortification of reading, a labyrinth