understand, Matthias took the architect at his word. His journeyman years had taken him to the scaffolding of Troyes and the new churches in Paris, including the much-praised Sainte Chapelle rising up in the courtyard of the Palace of Justice. By the time the choir of Amiens cathedral was being built his opinion was valued more highly than that of many a French colleague. Pierre de Montereau, the builder of the abbey church of Saint-Denis, had been his teacher and he was in constant contact with Jean de Chelles, who was supervising the construction of Notre Dame.
Oh, yes, Gerhard Morart had been through a good school, the very best, and above all he had managed to bring together a team of master craftsmen who were familiar with the new style.
For one brief moment he wished he could turn around and forget everything, but it was too late for that now. It had already been too late when the group met for the first time.
He cast his doubts aside and felt his usual calm return. His stoicism was his great virtue. Neither Johann nor Daniel was sufficiently pragmatic to carry their plan through in a businesslike manner. They were liable to outbursts of rage, pangs of conscience, and indecisiveness. The only one he felt at all close to was the old woman. Not emotionally close—God forbid!—but close in their attitude to life.
The bell of St. Mary’s-by-the-Steps beyond the cathedral building site struck five.
He quickened his pace, left the chancel of the new cathedral and the old Roman wall behind him, turned right opposite Priest Gate into Marzellenstra?e and, after a few hundred yards, left up the lane to the Ursulines’ convent.
There was hardly anyone about. The convent grounds were surrounded by a twelve-foot-high wall and had only one narrow entrance, which was usually left open. Matthias went through the low arch into the long courtyard. The rather modest but pretty convent church on the right with its one spire corresponded more to Matthias’s own conception of what a church should be like. He knew that, as a person who relied on cold reason, he lacked the imagination to visualize the new cathedral in its completed state. It was a blind spot he at times regretted. At others, however, he saw the titanic enterprise as a symbol of his own ambitions. He would marvel at the way one stone fitted in with the next, obedient to the almost magic power of ruler, square, and plumb line, and watch how the windlasses allowed human muscle to raise a block of Drachenfels stone weighing tons high into the air for the masons to set it precisely edge-to-edge with its neighbor. The cathedral seemed to grow like a living organism, filling him with a sense of his own power and pride at what the future would bring.
Then the image of the old woman suddenly reappeared in his mind, replacing the cathedral with the vision of a gigantic ruin.
He leaned back against the wall, staring at the empty courtyard. Opposite the spire was a well. After some time two nuns came out of the convent building to draw water. They gave him a cursory glance.
If the man he had come to meet did not turn up soon he would have to go. A waste of time.
He swore to himself.
“
Matthias gave a violent start and scanned the courtyard. No one.
“Up here.”
His eye slowly traveled up the wall. Urquhart was sitting on the top, directly above, smiling down at him.
“What the devil are you doing up there?”
“Waiting for you,” Urquhart replied with his habitual mixture of politeness and gentle mockery.
“And I for you,” Matthias replied sharply. “Perhaps you would have the goodness to come down.”
“Why?” Urquhart laughed. “You can come and join me up here, if you like.”
Matthias’s face was expressionless. “You know very well—” He stopped as he suddenly registered the height of the wall. “How on earth did you manage to get up there?”
“I jumped.”
Matthias started to say something, but the words stuck in his throat. What was there to say? No man could jump twelve feet.
“Do you think we could talk?” he asked instead.
“Of course.” With a supple twist of his body Urquhart swiveled around and landed on his toes beside Matthias. He had put up his long blond hair in a kind of helmet shape, making him seem taller than ever.
“We’d better wait till those women have gone,” Matthias growled. He was irritated that Urquhart had kept him waiting longer than necessary.
His companion raised his eyebrows in surprise. “How complicated you make things! Isn’t openness the best disguise? If we were to behave like thieves, keep looking around shiftily and muttering in low voices, then we would deserve to end up in—what do you call that funny tower? Oh, yes, in the Weckschnapp. Just behave naturally. Let us show some courtesy toward the venerable servants of the living God.”
He turned to the nuns and gave them a gallant bow. “It’s going to rain,” he called out. “Better get back inside.”
The younger of the two beamed at him. “Rain is also a gift from God,” she replied.
“Do you still think that when you’re lying alone in your cell and it’s hammering against the walls as if the Prince of Darkness himself were demanding entrance?” He wagged his finger at her playfully. “Be on your guard, my little flower.”
“Of course,” she stammered, gaping at Urquhart as if he were every reason to leave the convent made all- too-solid flesh. Then she hurriedly lowered her gaze and blushed. Fifteen at the most, Matthias guessed.
Her companion shot her a sideways glance and hastily crossed herself. “Come,” she commanded. “Quickly!”
She turned on her heel and marched back to the convent with all the grace of a draught horse. The younger one hurried after, looking back over her shoulder several times. Urquhart gave her an even lower bow, combined with a mocking scrutiny from beneath his bushy brows. He seemed to find the whole business amusing.
They were alone in the courtyard.
“That got rid of them,” Urquhart stated complacently.
“Is that one of your tactics?” Matthias’s voice had a frosty note.
Urquhart nodded. “In a way. Openness is the best concealment, the best way not to be remembered is to make yourself obvious. Neither of them will be able to describe us, not even me. Had we turned away they would have wondered why we didn’t salute them and would have had a good look at our faces, our clothes, our posture.”
“As far as I’m concerned, I have no reason to hide from anyone.”
“But then you’re a respectable citizen.”
“And I don’t want to be seen together with you,” Matthias went on, unmoved. “Our next meeting better be somewhere more secluded.”
“You suggested we meet here.”
“I realize that. Now stop turning the heads of harmless nuns and tell me how you mean to go about your assignment.”
Urquhart put his lips to Matthias’s ear and spoke quietly to him for a while. The latter’s face brightened visibly with every word.
“And the witnesses?” he asked.
“Found and paid.”
A smile appeared on Matthias’s lips, the first in a long time. “Then I give your plan my blessing.”
Urquhart bowed his blond head. “If it is the will of the terrible God.”
Matthias frowned and tried to remember where he had heard the expression before, the Old Testament God of vengeance who is terrible to the kings of the earth.
He felt the excruciatingly slow drip of a bead of sweat running down his forehead. Disconcerted, he looked at Urquhart’s eyes. Were they really a dead man’s eyes, as Heinrich had whispered? At that moment the other gave him an amused wink and Matthias felt a fool. Urquhart was playing with words like a jester. The living were alive, the dead were dead.
“We shouldn’t meet at the same place twice. Understood?” he said icily. “Tomorrow at seven o’clock at Greyfriars church.”
“As you wish.”
