The timber creaked beneath their feet as they walked across the bridge, the dark, closed gate rising up before them. Above, stone spouts jutted out from the wall through which hot pitch could be poured onto attackers during a siege. Karl also noticed numerous arrow slits. Was someone watching them from the inside? For a moment he thought he saw a flickering light behind the slits, but it disappeared before he could be certain.
With all his remaining strength, Johann pounded his fist against the heavy wooden door. The sound was as loud as thunder in the silence.
“Hey, open up!” commanded Johann as if it were the most normal thing in the world to demand entrance to a castle late at night. “No lesser man than the honorable Doctor Johann Georg Faustus requests admittance. Grant him entry and he will compile a favorable horoscope for you. Deny him, however, and the stars will shine on you with ill fortune!” He winked at Karl. “That ought to have awakened whoever’s inside.”
“And everyone in the village, too,” muttered Karl.
When nothing happened, Johann shouted, “I’ve traveled very far, from the stormy climes of the North Sea, across the wooded hills of the Vosges Mountains, all the way to Brittany. So far everyone has welcomed me and no one regretted it. Is the steward of Tiffauges going to be the first man to deny my helpful services—the services of the great Doctor Faustus?”
Still nothing. But then there was a sound behind them. When Karl turned around, he saw about a dozen men jogging toward them from outside the bastion.
One of them was very tall.
“Damn it, it’s the Swiss guards with Hagen,” exclaimed Karl.
The soldiers ran steadily toward the bastion and the bridge behind it. Karl could make out their colorful uniforms, their drawn swords and raised pikes. And at their front ran Hagen. A chill went down Karl’s back. This giant appeared to be invincible. It wouldn’t be long before he reached them. The only way to escape now would be if that damned gate opened—or if Karl jumped into the moat for a second time that day, the surface of the water looking oily in the light of the moon.
I’d rather get skewered, he thought.
Defiant and silent the gate stood before them, still no sound coming from the other side, while Hagen and his men got closer and closer.
Johann hammered his fist against the door as if he wanted to break it open. “Open up! Open the gate! Now!”
The first soldiers set foot on the wooden bridge. Karl thought that despite the darkness he could see Hagen smirk—when the gate finally creaked open like the gaping mouth of a huge fish.
“About time,” snarled Johann.
Karl and the doctor slipped through the crack, and the wings of the gate immediately fell shut behind them. Someone banged against it from the other side, but the timber was hard as iron. A pike that had found its way through the gap lay broken on the ground. As the soldiers pounded the gate angrily, Karl looked around. They were standing inside a narrow entranceway that was separated from the moonlit courtyard by an iron gate. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. But then a rattling and jangling set in, and the gate was lifted up as if by magic. The thumping behind them faded.
“A rather spooky reception,” said Johann, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “But I didn’t expect anything else.”
He stepped out into the courtyard and scanned the buildings they could make out in the moonlight. Not far from them stood the donjon, the keep Karl had seen from outside. To their left was a small watchmen’s hut, and just then two armored guards carrying swords around their waists emerged from it. Evidently they had been waiting for the two guests inside their dark room. One of the men carried a torch and shone it into Johann’s face.
“So you are Doctor Faustus?” he asked in French, tilting his head, sizing up Johann. “The Doctor Faustus?”
“Do you want me to demonstrate on your body?”
The man said nothing at first, as if he didn’t know what to think of the doctor’s appearance. Then he asked, “Who are those men out there?”
“They’ve got nothing to do with us,” replied Johann. “Now take me to your master, whoever he may be.”
“‘Whoever he may be.’” The soldier laughed. “Ha, that’s a good one! Follow me. The master would like to meet you.”
They followed the two guards across the courtyard, deserted and barren as if it had been forsaken by God and the world. Farther back they could see the outlines of the manor house and other buildings, but the guards led them to the right, to the donjon. Karl realized now how big and mighty this tower really was. It was surrounded by its own moat with its own drawbridge, a fortified gate, and a three-story main building—it was a castle within the castle.
As if the one who constructed it wanted to be safe from enemies not from the outside, but from the inside, thought Karl.
Now he saw another large building to the left of the donjon. It was an old church that, compared to the tower, looked weathered and crumbling. The keep’s moat ran right past the church, and it looked like the church had been cut in half and the front part had simply been torn down.
The guards led them over the narrow, squeaking drawbridge, then across a courtyard and finally into a low-ceilinged hall that was illuminated by dozens of torches. Nonetheless it was dim, the large room swallowing up the light. Thick smoke wafted below the ceiling and made Karl cough. It stemmed from a great open fire at the back wall that didn’t seem to draw very well. Moldy tapestries displaying battle scenes hung on the walls, like relics of a long-gone era. In the center of the room stood an enormous banquet table that easily would have
