Greta’s screams rang out again. Now Johann saw her, too. She was standing by a side entrance to the crypt, her face drained of all color. She was shivering, crying, and wailing like an injured animal. What was the matter with her? He had done her and everyone a favor. He had cut out the sore.
“Father, what have you done?” cried Greta. “For heaven’s sake, what have you done? Oh God! You . . . you murderer! You killed John!” She tore at her hair, swayed, and finally collapsed into a tiny bundle on the doorstep.
Johann thought of Tonio del Moravia and how much they could achieve together. Johann was very close to the master now—and far, far away from everyone else.
“O lord, receive your sacrifice,” said Johann.
One more time he thrust the blade into the lifeless body. John finally let go of Johann and slid into the pool amid a cloud of blood.
And somewhere deep down inside, Johann could hear Tonio laugh.
Greta no longer screamed. Until a few moments ago, she had thought all this was nothing but a nasty dream. That she would wake up and John would be beside her, that they would kiss and embrace to forget all this evil.
But it wasn’t a dream. She was lying on the floor of the crypt and the man she loved was dead.
It was the end of the world.
When John had seen that her father was about to stab Karl, he had thrown caution to the wind. He had rushed through the crypt, past the strange people with their strange clothes, and had climbed into the basin to take the dagger from her raging father. But then everything had gone terribly wrong. John, the royal bodyguard, the seasoned elite fighter from the Scottish Highlands who had seen and done it all, had refused to believe that the father of his intended would actually attack him. In his profoundly good-natured way, he hadn’t spotted the danger.
And it had cost him his life.
John’s body was floating facedown in the water, his fiery-red hair streaming around his head. Johann was standing next to him, the dagger still in his hand, his face turned toward the ceiling, muttering something incomprehensible. Obviously, he had gone insane. Or had his true self finally broken to the surface? Greta was too deep in shock to hate her father in that moment. Emptiness reigned inside her, and she felt like she was tumbling through black space, incapable of feeling pain.
Next to Johann in the water stood Karl, looking like a puppet that was held upright by invisible strings. Greta closed her eyes and opened them again, but the scene was the same. It seemed like complete madness, like a painting by that creepy Dutch painter Karl had shown her—paintings of the apocalypse, and yet this was reality.
The people in the crypt had stopped singing, and the organ music had also ceased. A man with a pockmarked face and the robe of a priest looked at Greta.
“Who are you?” he hissed hatefully. “How dare you disturb our ceremony? You useless . . .” Then he seemed to see something in her, as if he recognized her. His lips twisted into a malicious grin, and then he laughed out loud. “This is good. Great, even. Who would have thought that both of you—”
Greta heard a whirring sound, and the man broke off. Surprised, his eyes turned to his belly, from which, Greta saw now, a crossbow bolt protruded. A dark bloodstain spread on the man’s robe. The priest shook his head slowly as if he didn’t want to believe that he was fatally wounded. He swayed, then he fell forward and remained lying there, his hands clutching the shaft of the bolt.
For a few heartbeats, the crypt was eerily silent. Then panic broke out among the guests and they began to scream and run, calling for a lord whose name Greta didn’t understand.
A strong hand jerked her up by the hair.
“Devil’s brood,” someone grumbled behind her in a harsh voice. “About time we smoked out this nest.”
Greta recognized the man even before she turned to look at him. It was Hagen, who tossed her aside like a sack of flour and stormed the crypt, followed by a bunch of soldiers. Evidently, the Swiss guard had managed to invade the unprotected castle. The wailing and screaming devil worshippers were thrown to the ground or cut down. Hagen drew his mighty longsword and leaped toward the man closest to him, an older nobleman with a silver cuirass and a cape, who glowered at the giant and muttered something in a strange language, his arms raised in a gesture of conjuring. Hagen severed the man’s head from his body with one single stroke and turned to his next victim, a younger man in a feminine dress who tried to crawl away from Hagen on all fours, screaming.
“By the Virgin Mary, leave those heretics alive!” shouted Viktor von Lahnstein, who had entered the crypt after Hagen and his men. He wore a snow-white robe with a large hood that concealed the upper part of his face, but Greta recognized him immediately. His lips bore an expression of eternal triumph.
“They don’t deserve such an easy death. They shall burn before entering hell to meet their master,” he told the soldiers. “But first they will tell us everything they know about Gilles de Rais. By God, I want to learn every little detail, even if I have to pull off their skin in strips!”
Greta was still incapable of movement. She kept staring at John, floating facedown in his own blood. Next to him stood the man she had only recently thought to call “Father” and who had now become the murderer of her love.
“Get the doctor and his assistant out of the water,” ordered Lahnstein. “By Christ, this is disgusting. Sodomy is almost as repulsive as Satanism. Thank God this farce is coming to an
